Gabriel's review
Will West,
by Paul C Metcalf
Gabriel's review
Will West, by Paul C Metcalf
Gabriel's review
rating:
Neither as daring nor as interesting as I had hoped for. This method had been tried before, as Guy Davenport notes in his introduction to the Collected Works, by O. Henry.
It feels as though Metcalf is uncommitted to his chosen method here, and the prose suffers as a result. What is history and what is fiction? I didn't care (one shouldn't). What is much worse, I didn't care what was happening in either.
That is a rather serious problem.
Ondaatje, among others, has since taken this sort of narrative assemblage much further, and, in great contrast to this work, achieved a degree of immediacy that is sorely lacking here, as for instance in "Billy the Kid." More than anything else, that is what is lacking-- yes, prose poetry, but even prose poetry must allow the reader some investment in the proceedings.
Say prosepoetryhistory then. But unless one is greatly interested in the subject, mildly sedative prosepoetryhistory.
Sporadically pretty (not quite up to the st...more
It feels as though Metcalf is uncommitted to his chosen method here, and the prose suffers as a result. What is history and what is fiction? I didn't care (one shouldn't). What is much worse, I didn't care what was happening in either.
That is a rather serious problem.
Ondaatje, among others, has since taken this sort of narrative assemblage much further, and, in great contrast to this work, achieved a degree of immediacy that is sorely lacking here, as for instance in "Billy the Kid." More than anything else, that is what is lacking-- yes, prose poetry, but even prose poetry must allow the reader some investment in the proceedings.
Say prosepoetryhistory then. But unless one is greatly interested in the subject, mildly sedative prosepoetryhistory.
Sporadically pretty (not quite up to the st...more
