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Cornell's boxes are not random, and they have an exquisitely ordered syntax. But Cornell rarely supplied a narrative. We do not know what the green Amazonian parrot is doing in Untitled (Parrot Habitat), 1956-57, sitting there in a box lined with mirrors and scraps of print; we have no idea what the white ball and the metal hoops mean to it. But it could not matter less, for these precise, mild, irrational encounters remain the stuff of poetry...
...recklessness, predicted that by then John would be dead. But the brash young Irishman's prophesy turned out to be correct; he was 29 when the form for Who's Who arrived. Little had changed decades later, when O'Hara wrote to Bennett Cerf at Random House: "It's no secret that I am working to get the Nobel. I am constantly at work, not only quantitatively but also maintaining as high standards as are within my powers, and this has been going on for some time...
...writer was never supported by reviewers or academics, before or after his death. Now, six years after his death, Matthew J. Bruccoli, professor of English at the University of South Carolina, offers a reassessment of the controversial author's work. In a critical biography called The O'Hara Concern (Random House, 417 pp., $15.00), Bruccoli argues that O'Hara must rank as one of America's best novelists and our greatest writer of short stories. In a final chapter, Bruccoli details his reasons. He lists what he considers O'Hara's strongpoints: the "American-ness" of O'Hara's fiction...
...quotation is from 1876 (Random House, 364 pages, $10), Gore Vidal's new novel. In any other year but the Bicentennial, 1876 would merely be a bestseller. It was, after all, prompted by two earlier Vidal bestsellers: Washington, D.C. (1967), a study of mid-20th century political scrambling; and Burr (1973), a revisionist appraisal of the foundering fathers. "With 1876" says Vidal, "I've examined the dead center of the country, the year of the Centennial, and there's a nice symmetry, obviously, that it's coming out the year of the Bicentennial...
This "nice symmetry" is even nicer calculation. For the historical fervor fostered by the Bicentennial promises to turn 1876 into a quasi-official happening. Prepublication signs have been uniformly bullish. Random House and Ballantine Books jointly paid Vidal an advance approaching $1 million for hardback and paperback rights. The Book-of-the-Month Club, which has made 1876 its main selection for March, shelled out more than twice its normal fee of $85,000. A first printing of 75,000 copies has virtually disappeared under a flood of orders, and a second printing...