Synopses & Reviews
Review
"It was a life on a roller coaster, a wildly erratic movement from an early existence as drifter, convalescent, soldier, detective to the roles of family man, artist, celebrity, alcoholic, and political prisoner. The man himself was a curious mixture of integrity, decadence, and what appears to be sheer laziness. He wrote several of the most interesting and influential romantic novels of the century in a period of four years, then ceased writing altogether, even though he advertised and exploited his reputation as a writer for the rest of his life. He remained committed, often at cost to himself, to the Left, yet lived in the style of a capitalist playboy. His achievement as an artist seems to have meant about as much to him spiritually as did his two tours of duty in the Army, and he managed to sustain a strange distance from the potential raffishness and adventure of his own experience. Maybe he just didn't have any real depth. The revelations and explanations his admirers
have long awaited do not emerge here, but that is not the fault of the author. Her narrative is full, intelligent, and sympathetic—marred only by her tendency from time to time to sound unnervingly like John Dos Passos at his coyest." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)