From Publishers Weekly
Klinkowitz has made a university career of studying writers on the edge of academic acceptability, interpreting Kurt Vonnegut, Donald Barthelme, Jerzy Kosinski and others whose work both resonated with their contemporary culture and pushed it in new directions. His chatty, personal memoir begins back in the late 1960s, when as a young assistant professor in a Midwestern university he was stifled by an English department that still considered Hemingway and Faulkner members of the new generation. With each discovery of a contemporary writer his enthusiasm for "innovative" fiction grew, and he eagerly sought out those who were stretching the popular definition of the novel, for whom "the imagination took primacy over any supposed description of what passed for reality." Meeting those innovators before their books became widely known, Klinkowitz tracked their growing popularity and varying techniques and, in some cases, the wild ride of public notoriety. Klinkowitz has been interested in the margins of the literary world, and the ways that world was defined by these writers; most such writers were touched by his attention, though Klinkowitz writes fondly even of those with whom he lost contact, and in whose work he lost interest. If occasionally the book threatens to become "Me and My Famous Friends" and if one may not always agree with Klinkowitz on the importance of some lesser-known proteges, for the most part, he is realistic, honest and witty. These memories enrich our own view of a particular creative group, but also suggest that for many, their moment has passed.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Memoirs of an academic lucky enough to know the authors he teaches as contemporaries. Although Klinkowitz (English/Univ. of Northern Iowa) has written surveys of American fiction and edited collections on baseball and WWII RAF pilots, his academic specialty is contemporary experimental writingat least, what was contemporary in the 1960s. Among his credits as an editor is a Vonnegut bestseller, Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons, a collection of early stories and essays (Vonnegut vetoed the proposed original title: Rare Vonnegut sounds so utterly posthumous, murmured the novelist). Vonneguts challenge to Klinkowitz as critic? Vonneguts career made for a virtual checklist of noncanonicity; his work was just too new, too diverse, and too unorganized to allow any single critics view to function comprehensively. Klinkowitzs friendly relations with Vonnegut seem not especially intimate; his dealings with the mercurial Jerzy Kosinski underscore Kosinski's distancing manipulation. Many of the books other scenes come across as softened episodes from the academic novels of Malcolm Bradbury: e.g., a drunk Ronald Sukenick propositioning every woman in a faculty party's greeting line. In a smarting coda, Clarence Major, the only black writer in this white ``SuperFiction'' bunch, is portrayed as now keeping different literary company, writing more in the vein of realism, and deleting the '60s from his vita. One anecdote sums up Klinkowitz's experience of the writer-critic relationship: He was berated by Donald Barthelme for defending the inclusion of some also-rans of experimental fiction in his Literary Disruptions by claiming to have a .375 batting average in his table of contents. ``You're not the hitter,'' Barthelme countered. ``We're the hitters. You're the fielder, and you're not going to get anywhere if you keep dropping every other ball.'' Klinkowitz averages a little better than that here. A view of the passing literary parade from the porch of the ivory tower. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
