Word: tree
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Tableau: American Literature, personified, in a balcony. English Department, up a tree. Night. Am. Lit.: 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy. Thou art thyself, though not an "English Department...
Joan and Joe Abbott bought this seven-room house in August 1966, just before Matthew was born. Joe left behind an unfinished project-a willow tree to be planted in the backyard. After he was gone, Joan turned it into a family test of hope. They tried many times to get a willow to take root. The trees kept dying. Finally, two years ago a root took. The omen was, of course, good...
...DEVIL TREE by JERZY KOSINSKI 208 pages. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich...
...insight into the author's reasons for pursuing such an unrewarding project. One of Kosinski's few gestures toward literary excellence amounts to a stylistic tic: his repeated use of Grim Bits from Mother Nature to give symbolic weight to Whalen's flounders. The grotesque baobab tree, we learn, seems to have its branches in the earth and its roots in the air; a certain species of African bird can soar gracefully, but nearly always crashes when it lands, with the result that the earth beneath its air space is littered with broken, still living hulks. Heavy...
...futile. The Painted Bird follows the frightful journey of a small boy as he stumbles through war-torn Poland searching for his parents, while Steps observes a refugee's nightmarish encounters with America. A reader trying to account for the disparity between those books and The Devil Tree is driven to the not entirely convincing conclusion that Kosinski, who is a Pole, has strayed too far from his artistic roots. -John Skow