Rediscoveries II: Important Writers Select Their Favorite Works of Neglected Fiction

Hortense Calisher, Herbert Gold, Doris Grumbach, Frederik Pohl and 45 other American writers recall some of their favorite neglected works of fiction, by authors as varied as Henry Green, Heinrich Mann, Carson McCullers, Flann O'Brien, William Saroyan and Ira Wolfert. Gore Vidal thinks fondly of Dawn Powell, ``our best comic novelist.'' John Updike regards Bruno Schulz as ``one of the great transmogrifiers of the world into words.'' Norman Mailer says that Jean Malaquais ``had more influence upon my mind than anyone I ever knew.'' Elmore Leonard states that Richard Bissell showed him ``you could write a book without its looking as if it was written.'' To John Hersey, Alejo Carpentier's prose is of such ``a ravishing tropical beauty'' that ``even the worst human frailties seem products of some kind of everlasting and mysterious magic.'' And Peggy Bach's image of Djuna Barnes is that of ``a female Errol Flynn,'' a swashbuckling figure in a black cape, projecting a feeling of elegance, composure, and self-possession.'' Stimulating insights that will send many readers into public libraries in a search for out-of-print entertainment. Madden (Bijou, The Suicide's Wife) is writer-in-residence at LSU. (July)