Volume 10, Number 1 · January 18, 1968
Catch-31
By Bernard Bergonzi
The Instrument
by John O'Hara
Random House, 297 pp., $5.95
A Bad Man
by Stanley Elkin
Random House, 336 pp., $5.95
Games of Chance
by Thomas Hinde
Vanguard, 255 pp., $4.95
First novels are generally treated with indulgent interest, second novels are approached with an anxious concern to see whether the author can keep up the level of his first, while third and fourth novels are inspected for signs of staying power. But by the fifth novel we begin to suspect that the author has been around rather too long. How then should we approach a thirty-first novel, if my rapid count of all the other titles by John O'Hara listed at the front of this book is correct? Once upon a time he wrote a good first novel, Appointment in Samarra, of which Walter Allen has remarked:
Review, 2313 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |