Duncan Fallowell
After Dallas what?
And We Were Young
By Elliott Baker
Micael Joseph 184pp £5.95
Elliott Baker is an American. This is, I think, his sixth published novel. Norman Mailer finds Baker one of the funniest writers he knows. And We Were Young is dedicated to Norman Mailer. Elliott Baker is pictured on the back cover and he looks like Dennis Norden minus the spectacles and with a more expensive hairdo and a more golf-coursey wardrobe. Mr Baker’s eyes appear to be pointing in independent directions. The novel is 184 pages long and not deep. Nor is it humorous. It is serious, a story simply told in sonofabitch no-nonsense prose which would embarrass Hemingway for having influenced it (via Mailer), in much the same way as our soft-core pornography would embarrass D. H. Lawrence. Mr Baker’s style, if it amounted to style, would be called neo-realism. That is, he imagines ‘reality’ as something dead turned into string and wound on a spool.
Plot: the lives of three men from the same infantry unit re-mesh unpleasantly in the McCarthyite events following the Second World War. The book, which is really pure nostalgia, is ostensibly about Betrayal. The blurb flings this in rather desperately. In fact the blurb is a whole other torture in
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm