Customer Reviews

The Tower of Babel

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There are basically three sorts of readers who will pick up Jack Spicer's posthumously published, unfinished detective novel, THE TOWER OF BABEL. First of all, of course, are mystery enthusiasts, of which Spicer himself was one (as it explains in the afterword: Hammett and Chandler were particular favorites of his). Second, readers with an interest in the poets and artists of the San Francisco Renaissance of the 1950s and '60's--TOWER OF BABEL is both a portrait of that scene, and a critique of it. Finally, anyone who is an enthusiast for Spicer's strange, hermetic, brilliant poetry will want to see what he was like as a prose writer.

Of the three readers, perhaps only the mystery enthusiast will be disappointed, because TOWER OF BABEL--like Charles Dickens' MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD--if unfinished. But the writing is very fine, witty, discerning--poets often make the best novelists, because of their care for individual words, individual sentences--and Spicer's characterizations are brilliant. My favorite is Henry, the one-armed letter-writer. Anyway, find it and read it. And, as the editors suggest, make up your own ending.