Volume 53, Number 6 · April 6, 2006
Dimming the Lights
By Joyce Carol Oates
The Good Life
by Jay McInerney
Knopf, 353 pp., $25.00
A striking image is featured on the jacket cover[*] of Jay McInerney's seventh novel: a simple bowl, a fork, and a spoon covered in what could be volcanic ash or the accumulated tomb-dust of centuries, but which we know to be the airborne detritus of September 11: the ashes of violent and cataclysmic death. Such an image—the domestic made transcendent, the banal made iconic—would seem to be the natural province of the visual artist, for whom a single, swift, and powerful gesture is possible; to translate the equivalent image into fiction, with its very different expectations, of stories enacted in time, 'characters' required to be both authentic and mythic, a minutely observed background, or backgrounds, to provide authenticity, verisimilitude, 'reality,' is a more daunting task.
Review, 4135 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. |