Category Archives: Fiction

The Outfit by Richard Stark

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Richard Stark (whose real name is Donald Westlake) has written twenty novels about Parker, a very tough guy who steals for a living. The Outfit is the third novel in the series. In this one, the Outfit (aka the Organization or the Syndicate) wants Parker dead, but Parker isn’t easy to get rid of. 

Parker quickly disposes of the guy sent to kill him and then comes up with a plan to get the Outfit off his back. The plan has two parts: (1) Parker and his fellow thieves will steal a lot of money from the Outfit and (2) Parker will replace the head of the Outfit with somebody who will agree to leave Parker alone if Parker and his pals stop stealing from the Outfit. The plan works.  (2/15/12)

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

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I didn’t like the movie (with Debra Winger and John Malkovich). But neither did Paul Bowles. After reading an article about the novel in the NY Review of Books, it sounded interesting. It was. I just had to keep in mind that the American couple who travel to North Africa in the late 1940s both lean toward the self-destructive, that the woman in particular is rather insane, and that the Sahara can do strange things to people’s minds. 

This was the author’s first novel. It’s beautifully written. Especially good are the descriptions of the characters’ unspoken thoughts, in particular, what runs through one character’s mind when he is delirious with fever.  (2/12/12)

Mao II by Don DeLillo

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I’ve read almost all of DeLillo’s novels. I didn’t enjoy this one. It’s about a famous novelist who has gone into seclusion, like J. D. Salinger. There are three other principal characters: a young man and woman who live with the novelist and work as his assistants, and a woman who is devoting her career to taking photographs of writers and is given the unexpected opportunity to photograph the famous but mysterious author.

The four characters come and go throughout the novel. There’s a flashback in which the young woman is married at Yankee Stadium under the auspices of the Unification Church. She later ministers to the homeless in New York City. The young man spends most of his time organizing the novelist’s papers. The novelist agrees to travel to London, and then to Greece, in a strange attempt to free a hostage being held by terrorists in Beirut. The novel ends with the photographer visiting one of the same terrorists to take his picture. She has moved on from photographing writers.

DeLillo’s language is poetic, as usual, but there doesn’t seem to be much point to this book. The people all talk the same, in DeLillo’s own style. Observations, often unclear or inaccurate, are made about the modern world. There are long, repetitious scenes in which nothing of interest happens. Mao II won a literary award in 1992. I would have voted for something else.  (1/15/12)

The Man with the Getaway Face by Richard Stark

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Tough guy Parker needs a new face because he’s in trouble with the Outfit. He gets his new face but keeps his old attitude toward other people: “They were in and he worked with them or they were out and he ignored them or they were trouble and he took care of them”.  

This is the second in the long series of novels about Parker, who steals for a living. The time is 1963. The target is an armored car. Parker doesn’t like the setup but he needs the money. The plot doesn’t make a lot of sense, but Parker is always fun to be around, so long as he’s “taking care” of someone else.  (12/27/11)

Therapy by David Lodge

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Laurence “Tubby” Passmore is the successful, middle-aged writer of a British situation comedy. He seems to have a pretty terrific life, but isn’t happy. He tries all kinds of therapy, but nothing helps until he finds himself surprisingly engrossed in the life and works of Kierkegaard. Just when Tubby feels he’s making progress, his wife announces that she’s leaving him.

Therapy is supposedly Tubby’s journal, but nobody’s journal has this much dialogue (of course, he’s supposed to be a scriptwriter). The story is engaging and Tubby is very good company, even when his life is falling apart. Maybe a novel like this has to have a happy ending, but I was disappointed when it ended that way. It all seemed more real when our hero was suffering.  (8/22/11)