Volume 32, Number 12 · July 18, 1985
Having It All
By Josh Rubins
Love Always
by Ann Beattie
Random House, 247 pp., $16.95
As perhaps befits a literary high priestess of the Baby Boomers' generation, Ann Beattie is a writer who insists on Having It All—at least in the tricky matter of an author's relationship with her characters. In both her stories and her novels, Beattie remains aloof from her fumbling spouses and lovers and siblings, those benumbed graduates of Sixties rebellion and Seventies alienation; but she also tries to get inside their somewhat silly heads—even if not for very long or very deeply. She seems to smile at pratfalls of behavior while fretting over missed connections, to laugh at nostalgia while being nostalgic, to mock the latest fashion while also somehow delighting in the fashionable. She wants to be ironic and clinical and worldly-wise—if never 'judgmental.' But Beattie is after pathos, too, not to mention a serious theme; and everything is meant to fall into place—sometimes within one story or chapter, even within one page or paragraph—without any real loss of narrative coolness or authorial ambivalence.
Review, 1747 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. |