Customer Reviews

Death of a Writer: A Novel

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

(First, I apologize for the length of this review, but I included wordy quotes to illustrate exactly what I found tiresome with this novel.)

I gave up at p. 250 of this 300-page novel. I don't even know if the ending redeemed this slog of a read nor do I care who killed whom. An overwritten, meandering, repetitive and ultimately tiresome story. The PW synopsis was what lured me initially, and admittedly, I was engaged in the first half. For me, the story fell apart in the second half:

(1) Repetitive and pedagogical discussions on the existential significance of main character's novel. The reader is treated to a lengthy discourse on Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche ad nauseum; once is interesting, five or more times is annoying.

(2) William Carlos Williams' poem is interjected several times, yet the meaning is never made clear nor is its connection to the murder revealed (maybe it was on the last few pages, so correct me if I'm wrong). Several instances like this. Not necessary to ram down the reader's throat that you're into Nabokov, Dostoevsky, WCW, Nietzsche, Hawthorne, etc. when they have no bearing on the case/murder/mystery. It's like being back in the classroom again.

(3) Det. Ryder's inner turmoil (problem with daughter, problem with present wife, problem with past case, problem with this case) is revisited over and over. Okay, I got it, he has personal demons. What fictional detective doesn't?

(4) Main character's vegetative state is described repeatedly. Enough already--it's painful to read. Once or twice would have been more than sufficient, but time and time again, it almost smacks of cruelty.

(5) Peppered with characters who have no significance to the story, yet each is treated to recurring appearances and lengthy exposition each time. What's the point?

(6) Several reviewers here are spot on: the story became messier as it progressed and the progress was at snail's pace, and too wordy when a concise paragraph would have had more impact. I just picked a page at random...this is just ONE SENTENCE amongst numerous paragraphs throughout describing Horowitz's ascent to stardom:

"He was now entrenched in this collegiate reading circuit, keynote speaker at commencements, commanding a king's ransom for a mere night's engagement, recipient of no fewer than five honoree doctorates, and paid administrator of cash-rich grant-in-aid scholarships, almost always disquietingly named after the dead, or the near dead, insufferable socialite wives of the rich, from the L. Myrtle Schwartz Foundation for the Arts and the Kathryn S. Breedlove Grant to the Amaryllis Grubb Endowment, named for Amaryllis Grubb, a hard-of-hearing octogenarian heiress he had been forced to coddle for funds over numerous dinners, a woman who had lost the ability to ---- silently."

Not convinced yet? Here's another random selection...one describing an atrium. What's the significance of the atrium? None. Horowitz was just passing through it to get to another room:

"He had read somewhere that the flying buttressed colossal excess of medieval cathedrals had been created for the sheer effect of such contrast between peasant existence and the gilded mansion of heavenly eternal reward, though this building was different, of an eartly concern, a secular shrine to learning, the walls painted with various natural phenomena: images of erupting volcanoes, flowing magma, earthquake fissures, continental shelves, deep cave stalagmites, landscape images of a rain forest canopy, an ice sheet, a desert dune, a cross section of the earth with a molten ball at the core, a giant periodic table of the elements, all done in an art deco coloring of yellow and olive and tonal oranges, the drawings reminiscent of those in the World Book Encyclopedia Yearbook Horowitz's immigrant father had given him as a kid each year."

(7) What does this novel want to be: A murder mystery? An exposé on the ills of the publishing world/vanity presses? A denunciation of second-tier universities? A criticism of liberal arts degrees? A lecture on philosophy? An indictment of authors who sell out? I don't know because it doesn't focus on one or two themes; it's just all over the place.

Then, there was something about a chimpanzee. I'm not even going there.

Booker Prize nominee Michael Collins brilliantly combines a psychological study, the literary world, and mounting suspense in his latest novel Death Of A Writer. Collins's satirical take on academia is priceless, while his understanding portrait of the tragic compelling. More than a story this novel is also a telling picture of the lives of many today.

Part I introduces E. Robert Pendleton, acclaimed author of Winterland. He was hailed, called a literary rising star but that was ten years ago and the well quickly ran dry. "His latest work had been rejected by every major house in New York." Thus, he is reduced to teaching, becoming a professor at Bonnockburn College, a small Midwestern university or, as he puts it a "venerable cradle of mediocrity."

Yearning for the success that escaped him he drinks too much and hangs onto tenure for dear life. He has been asked to bring a known writer to the campus for the Distinguished Lecture Series. He does so, but schedules the event, an academic one, for Homecoming Weekend, the worst time possible to gather an audience. The Chair of the English Department calls the choice of the date a "setup" for failure.

Actually, the date conflict was not enough - he has invited Allen Horowitz, an author who had once shared the limelight with Pendleton as a rising star. But while Horowitz's career had skyrocketed, Pendleton's had died. He is so obsessed by Horowitz that he even keeps a spreadsheet of all of his reviews.

Disgruntled, depressed, Pendleton invites Adi, a voluptuous seven year grad student, to accompany him to the airport to pick up Horowitz. He is briefly revitalized when she tells him that she is reading his book, Winterland. That victory is short lived when Horowitz quickly captures her attention.

Pendleton decides there is only one option - he will take his own life. He hurriedly writes a will, leaving all to Adi and begins to kill himself. Despite quantities of pills and vodka he is unsuccessful but the attempt has left him in a comatose state and later relegated to a wheelchair. Adi has come by his house to check on him. She is the one who saves him from death to a living death.

While he is in the hospital a novel, "Scream" is found hidden in his basement. It is an incredibly fine story of a child murder. Adi and Horowitz decide to have it published. It is received with all the public and professional approbation that Pendleton sought. However, he is not in any condition to enjoy his success. Further, the murder at the center of the story bears an uncanny resemblance to the actual unsolved murder of a young girl, Amber Jewel.

Part 2, titled "The Investigation" introduces Jon Ryder, an experienced cold case cop who knows how to ferret out the truth no matter how long it has been hidden. He has the copy of a cassette mailed anonymously that brought to light the parallels in the deaths of Amber and a fictional victim. The taped voice ends with a question asking how the author, Pendleton, "had gotten so precisely the details between the two victims, given that Scream had been originally published before the April 1977 discovery of the true-life victim's body?"

Michael Collins proves once again that he is, indeed, a major talent. Five stars and a standing ovation for Death Of A Writer.

- Gail Cooke

Pendleton is a creative writing professor whose writing has not been very creative for a long time. He is in such despair about his failed career that he attempts suicide and put himself into a vegetative state. While he is comatose a graduate assistant discovers he has written and suppressed a brilliant novel, which contains details of the subsequent murder of a thirteen year old girl.
The first 75 pages read as a satire on academic life, along the lines of Mary McCarthy's "Grove of Academy" or Kingsley Amis's "Lucky Jim" or Randall Jarrell's "Pictures from an Institution" or Richard Russo's "Straight Man." The plot thickens and the atmosphere changes abruptly with the arrival of Ryder, a detective who is, amongst other personal problems, suspected of the murder of his first wife (a loose end that never gets tied up). From then on there's a lot of grim small town atmosphere (rather reminiscent of the author's "Keepers of Truth.") There's still some literary talk but it's serious and pretentious. He piles tragedy on tragedy and nobody has any fun. Collins seems unable to blend his mixture. Although the solution of the mystery is ingenious the ending was clumsy.
I was a little irritated by the carelessness about police procedures. One of the suspects is a local policeman, and we're not even told anybody's rank.

DEATH OF A WRITER begins with the attempted suicide of a has been writer, E. Robert Pendleton, who has been relegated to teaching at Bannockburn College in Indiana. He hates his job, but he hates successful novelist Allen Horowitz even more. He invites Horowitz to speak at Bannockburn during homecoming, when no one would attend his lecture, and he wants Horowitz to witness his suicide.

After Pendleton's failed suicide, his graduate student, now his literary executor, finds a box in his basement containing copies of his self-published novel entitled SCREAM. She loves it and decides to do her thesis on Pendleton. She convinces Horowitz to recommend it to a major publisher. But soon she discovers SCREAM was based on a real-life murder case, and Pendleton may be the murderer.

DEATH OF A WRITER is part murder mystery, part indictment against academia and post-modern literature, and part social commentary. There is little focus, beyond the murder mystery. Collins switches perspectives constantly, moving from Pendleton to Adi Wiltshire to cold case investigator Jon Ryder who is investigating the murder case on which SCREAM was based. One of the problems I had with the book is that none of these people are at all likable or believable. Adi Wiltshire is an eight-year grad student who can't decide on her thesis; she spends her time "entertaining" Pulitzer Prize winners. Ryder was a murder suspect himself at one time when his first wife disappeared. Horowitz can no longer work up the energy to write an actual novel; he now spends his time working on post-modernistic coffee table books. These people are bad enough, but the description of Amber Jewell, the thirteen-year-old murder victim sounds more like a twenty-five-year old trailer park slut than a teenager.

All of this would be tolerable if it wasn't for Collins's pretentious writing style. He never writes a five word sentence when fifty will do. This is Collins in Adi's head describing Pendleton's hands: "From those hands, everything emanated, the concatenation of words strung together, conduits between the interiority of thought and words on the page." Throw in an anecdote about inter-species communication that has absolutely nothing to do with anything, and you want to bang your head against the wall.

And this guy was short-listed for the Booker Prize? What Collins really needs is somebody like Raymond Carver to kick him in the behind until he gets over himself.

What started off as not your usual thriller, eventually became just that.

Collins's style flows hard. He has brilliant passages, truly out of left field moments (a signing chimp) and often ends his chapters in very bizarre spots. The character development is a left a lot to the reader's filling in the blanks and making assumptions. Ryder, for me, was the only character who the reader gets a strong sense of. I thought I had it figured out early on, then became convinced, through the convuluted (but compelling) introduction of the Ryder character, that I had no clue, only to realize that I, indeed, had it figured out.

Regardless, the story had me hooked soon after the initial suicide attempt scene. As soon as the events of the novel within a novel are revealed, I was desperate to find out what had really happened. The real failure of the book is its unwillingness to parrallel Scream!. Collins had the perfect chance to end the story with a vague and unnerving ( that for many readers who have to know everything, disappointing) ending, where little is revealed. And why not, we are never given clear pictures of the characters in the book, they are all a bit mysterious and unlikable, why not leave the ending that way? Even with the odd transitions, the difficult characters, and the randomness of some of the moments (cat food lady), the ending could have been sharp and in tune with some of the existentialist subtexts; instead we are given a pat and tidy ending disguised as a "deep thoughts" moment that makes for a very dissatisfying read.

Death of a Writer: A Novel, is an intriguing mystery by author and runner Michael Collins. Set in a small, liberal arts college, professor E. Robert Pendleton is suffering from a severe case of writer's block and depression, which worsen when a rival arrives on campus as a guest lecturer. Completely despondent, Pendleton attempts suicide and fails. He is left catatonic and falls into the care of his nemesis and a graduate student, who find brilliant unpublished murder novel by Pendleton. But is the novel fiction, or the tale of a real murder?

Ron Charles' review in the Post was enough to have me try "Death of a Writer". Unfortunately, I did not come to the same conclusion as Mr. Charles, as this was easily one of the weaker books I have read in the past year, with spots of excellent writing and commentary mixed in with a story lacking in drive, and populated by relatively uninteresting and unappealing characters with little redeeming value.

I will give Mr. Collins credit for beating up on academia, the hype machine for books, and the banality of normal existence. Who can argue when he implies that people say about books what other people have told them to think about books?

Regarding the murder mystery that connected with "Scream", I didn't really care about the true culprit or the low-life victim, and had guessed the perp well before the end anyway. Mr. Collins went overboard on Detective Ryder's character. Did he really need to have so many problems of his own? And what was with the ape and various other incidental detours? I suppose they justify some colorful English riffs, and the author can spin a paragraph, indeed. I prefer a little tighter story.

I was drawn to this intriguing-sounding book by a positive blurb for the paperback in the NY Times. But the book, unfortunately, is a mess: the narrative plods from one turgid character to another, encapsulating so many dreary and unlikable people that the novel never comes into focus; points of view change sometimes in successive paragraphs; we are constantly treated to awkward descriptions of landscape and skyline that evoke high school creative writing courses, and repeated uses of the words "moraine", "concatenation" and others too numerous to mention; the story veers off on tangents and ruminations that further dilute what little momentum the book has been building, all at the service of a book that touches on many things but is ultimately about very little. (The only poignant moment occurs [SPOILER!] between a young woman and the chimp she hasn't seen in years. In a book called "Death of a Writer'!)

Don't misunderstand me; a decent editor could (and should!) have turned this into a clean, readable book, but this is not written in the Amis style, placing literary virtuosity over content (or where style is content). This is written as if it were a first draft that nobody's proofed. It's clumsy and repetitive (really, Collins must repeat the phrase "on the night of Pendleton's suicide attempt" 300 times) - this is a careless and sloppily written book. Let's look at the last sentence. Go ahead, it's the last sentence of the book. Should it really end this way, with this kind of kerplunk? Here's what he wrote: (SPOILER!) "...anything but what he did, retreating within, sacrificing maybe not just Amber Jewel, but untold victims in his continued silence, burying along with them his own opus?" Why not something more like this?: "...anything but what he did, retreating within, burying not only the truth of what happened to Amber Jewel, but his own opus, too, and perhaps untold victims with his continued silence?"
I know, presumptuous, and maybe you like his version better, but the whole thing's like that, clunky, ill-thought-out...("in" his continued silence?) Maybe he's too busy squat-thrusting for his mountain climb, I don't know.

Trust the other reviewers who tell you the writing's just not quite there, like the work of somebody for whom English is not his first language, or it's a translation from the Urdu. Next time, he should get a real editor.

None of the characters in this book are likeable, simply because we have access to their interior lives. None try to do good things or create good art with out ulterior/interior motives. I found this premise quite refreshing, and very realistic. The concept of a pure heart doesn't even extend to the children characters. The whole novel is a constant exercise of looking under rocks for one another's nasty, sliminess. The absurd argument of the NBA committee debating whether Pendleton's book should be disqualified as fiction if it was based on "real" events is a particularly piercing jab at the holy sanctity of art awards. Even though the initial mystery isn't definitively answered, the ending was still, very satisfying.

E. Robert Pendleton is a middle-aged, frustrated college professor dying a little inside each day as he mulls over what he believes is the utter failure of his life. As a younger man his first novel had brought him acclaim as one of the literary world's new darlings - a Norman Mailer or William Faulkner. At the same time his sort-of friend and fellow writer, Allen Horowitz, provides some friendly competition. This would put me in mind of, say, Jay McInerny and Bret Easton Ellis during their heyday. There comes the fork in the road, though, when things can go either way, and the way Pendleton's goes is steeped in disappointment, humiliation and failure. His writing career spirals swiftly downward after that initial shine, like a shooting star that quickly burns out. To his horror, old nemesis Horowitz goes on to become wildly successful, each of his books more profitable and famous than the last, while Pendleton has had to scrabble to get and keep a job as a college professor (`those who can't write, teach'). Already drowning in his own disappointment and self-loathing, it suddenly gets a lot worse when Horowitz is booked to make a speech at the college and Pendleton is in charge of escorting him around. The night of Horowitz's arrival marks a turning point in Pendleton's life, plunging him even further into despair.

Adi Wiltshire is a perpetual graduate student who ends up becoming a pseudo-caretaker to Pendleton, and while living in his house and trying to finish her thesis, makes a stunning discovery in an old, unmarked box stashed away under the stairs. Suddenly, the fame and notoriety Pendleton had craved crashes down on all of them, in a way that he never imagined and certainly didn't want.

My review can't do this book justice. I've never read anything by this author before, but in reading a short bio learned that a previous book of his, Keepers of the Truth, was shortlisted for the Booker prize. I can see why. This writing is brilliant. The characters are absolutely genuine with not a hint of the two-dimensional glossiness most characters have; they're so real it's almost painful. I haven't read anything so evocative and engrossing in a LONG time. This particular story is billed as a mystery and it is that, but it's also one of those books that transcend genre. When you read a book like this, you realize just how powerful good writing can be. It doesn't just entertain; it becomes embedded in your brain.