Volume 39, Number 1 & 2 · January 16, 1992
The World We Live In
By Robert Towers
The Translator
by Ward Just
Houghton Mifflin, 313 pp., $21.95
Joe
by Larry Brown
Algonquin Books, 345 pp., $19.95
The Dylanist
by Brian Morton
Harper Collins, 312 pp., $20.00
Ward Just is in many ways the contemporary American equivalent of the late C.P. Snow. Like Snow's, his novels are situated with great precision in the 'real' world, realistically rendered, and they are concerned with power, with decision making, and with the far-reaching consequences of the decisions made. While they often include family conflicts—most poignantly those of fathers and sons (as in Snow's The Conscience of the Rich and Just's The American Ambassador, 1987)—the domestic struggle is nearly always placed within a larger, more public sphere. The ethical quotient in their novels is always high, for the choices made typically involve questions of loyalty to one's colleagues or (as in Just's Jack Gance, 1989) to one's sense of personal integrity. Expert or 'inside' knowledge plays a large part in the fiction of both men—Snow drawing heavily upon his experience as a scientist and civil servant, Ward Just upon his years as a Vietnam War correspondent and prominent Washington journalist.
Review, 3870 words
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