Creator Spirit Come! Literary Essays

by Taylor Stoehr Paul Goodman

Book by Paul Goodman

Genres: Literary Criticism

284 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

Reviews

[Will]

Two reviews included are the best Goodman wrote—one on Kerouac's On the Road (negative), the other on Hemingway (positive but critical). The rest of the book I may as well have skipped, though including all five of his rejected Guggenheim applications is a nice touch! From the latter essay:

"Normally, we would expect characters in novels, especially toward the end, to do something, influence events. In Hemingway's novels the characters are done to, but at least they are done to by the events, they are engaged in them. In many recent novels, however, the characters just 'make the scene,' they are not engaged in the events but are like tourists. Or they con the scene like hipsters. They seem to have infinite time. Hemingway understood that people get worn out, grow old."