Volume 33, Number 9 · May 29, 1986
The New Romantics
By Darryl Pinckney
Equal Distance
by Brad Leithauser
New American Library/Plume, 350 pp., $6.95 (paper)
Ransom
by Jay McInerney
Random House/Vintage, 279 pp., $5.95 (paper)
Family Dancing
by David Leavitt
Warner Books, 206 pp., $3.95 (paper)
Less Than Zero
by Bret Easton Ellis
Penguin, 208 pp., $5.95 (paper)
Lafcadio Hearn despaired of capturing the charm of Japan and perhaps it is the elusiveness of that quest that causes Danny Ott, the hero of Brad Leithauser's Equal Distance, to dwell at such length on his impressions when he disembarks at Kyoto. Hearn, self-conscious about being short, felt less like a gaijin, a foreigner, in Japan than he did in the West, but Danny, a do-gooder from Harvard Law School on the Wall Street track, seems to regard being tall and fair a form of patriotism. He is nostalgic for the lost entrepreneurial spirit of America, and defends its messy democracy over the dark discipline behind the Japanese economic miracle. After all, Dad works for Ford Motor Company, and Danny often has a rush of feeling for his home town, Detroit, when he rides in a Japanese car.
Review, 5735 words
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