Books by Paul West and Complete Book Reviews

Paul West, Author McPherson $22 (0p) ISBN 978-0-929701-38-7
``Criticism, occupying time you might spend on the original text, should be at least as well-written as that text.'' Novelist and critic West ( Rat Man of Paris ), in his third volume of essays, continues to address the state of literature, past and
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Paul West, Author Viking Books $23.95 (224p) ISBN 978-0-670-86757-8
In this curiously disconcerting reminiscence, West, who won the 1993 Lannan Prize for fiction (Love's Mansion), struggles to understand his mother and her influence on him, but his effort founders in dense thickets of abstracted prose that conceals...
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Paul West, Author Viking Books $21.95 (192p) ISBN 978-0-670-84956-7
This memoir of prize-winning novelist West's (Love's Mansion) bouts with stroke, heart disease, diabetes and migraines is lushly metaphorical, mordant and ultimately moving. The sardonic pun of the title reflects the author's ambivalence: he never...
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Paul West, Author Random House (NY) $22 (339p) ISBN 978-0-394-58734-9
After a slow start and an initial lack of drama, this novel--cast as a family memoir--gains momentum and appeal. West ( The Women of Whitechapel ; Lord Byron's Doctor ) re-creates his parents' lives through the fictional device of their shadowy son...
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Paul West, Author Collier Books $9.95 (490p) ISBN 978-0-02-038260-7
``West's astonishing novel, which maps the lives of Indians in the American Southwest, reveals a Joycean genius in its exuberant play of language, and its mythic resonances,'' acclaimed PW , declaring that ``West's prose, dazzling in its fecundity,...
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Paul West, Author Doubleday Books $19.95 (277p) ISBN 978-0-385-26129-6
West's gifts as a writer are considerable ( Rat Man of Paris ; The Place in Flowers Where Pollen Rests ). But this engorged and fussy novel, based on the diary of Byron's personal physician, John William Polidori, may lose some fans. Though...
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Paul West, Author Doubleday Books $19.95 (490p) ISBN 978-0-385-24565-4
West's astonishing new novel, which maps the lives of Indians in the American Southwest, reveals a Joycean genius in its exuberant play of language, and its epic and mythic resonances. A Hopi creation myththat of a divine Uncle who assigns the...
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Paul West, Author Collier Books $0 (179p) ISBN 978-0-02-026250-3
The Rat Man lives on the streets in Paris, showing rats to passersby, waving banners of a Nazi war criminal; eventually it becomes apparent that he seeks to avenge a Nazi atrocity against his village. PW wrote that West's ""yeasty prose seethes with
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Paul West, Author Doubleday Books $16.95 (179p) ISBN 978-0-385-23115-2
Prestidigitator, mongrel, ""holy fool,'' and boulevardier of the nether city, Rat Man flashes his rats at the crowds; people recoil, throw coins. At night in his newspaper-lined hovel, he lodges the rats in an old dollhouse of his mother's. His...
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Paul West, Author Scribner Book Company $24 (304p) ISBN 978-0-684-84865-5
West (The Tent of Orange Mist; My Mother's Music), a prolific writer and adventurous stylist, squeezes Doc Holliday dry in a meticulously researched but overworked historical novel. The basic story is familiar. On his way from Georgia to the...
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Paul West, Author Scribner Book Company $24 (304p) ISBN 978-0-684-84864-8
Much celebrated for the inventiveness of his imagination, West (Terrestrials) turns to his own life for the plot of his 18th book. The name he gives his protagonist, Ariada Mencken--an anagram for Diane Ackerman, West's wife--establishes first off...
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Paul West, Author Scribner Book Company $24 (384p) ISBN 978-0-684-80032-5
West's latest novel (after The Tent of the Orange Mist) begins with a conceit: the narrator is identified as One Eighth Humbly, an alien from outer space. The densely textured story he tells concerns Booth and Clegg, two pilots who are forced to...
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Paul West, Author . New Directions $25.95 (362p) ISBN 978-0-8112-1467-4
West's latest novel strips away the touristy quaintness surrounding the English customs of Guy Fawkes Day (November 5) to reveal persecution, malice and a very modern paranoid style beneath the cause for the merriment. Guy, or "Guido,"...
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Paul West, Author McPherson $20 (214p) ISBN 978-0-929701-27-1
First published in England in 1965, West's ( Lord Byron's Doctor ) first novel is a depressing account of homelessness and spiritual death. Set in New Babylon, this eccentric story revolves around Papa Nick, a nurturing old man who lives among the...
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Paul West, Author British American Publishing $10.95 (346p) ISBN 978-0-945167-35-8
In this compendium of short, intimate portraits of well-known figures in the arts, science, politics and sports, West ( Lord Byron's Doctor ) uses his immense knowledge of his subjects to paint pictures that are extraordinarily imaginative, yet...
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Paul West, Author McPherson $10 (0p) ISBN 978-0-914232-98-8
``West, no mean novelist himself ( Rat Man of Paris , among others) is in love with the infinite expressive possibilities of the novel, and this anthology of his critical writings is an eloquent accounting of his passion,'' stated PW of these six...
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Paul West, Author Overlook Press $17.95 (224p) ISBN 978-0-87951-303-0
Paul West (Rat Man of Paris, The Very Rich Hours of Count Von Stauffenberg) gathers here 18 of his supercharged fictions from 1966 to the '80s. West is a gifted wordslinger. In the title story, the Universe speaks, as if recorded on a cassette tape,
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Paul West, Author McPherson $17.95 (221p) ISBN 978-0-914232-82-7
West, no mean novelist himself (Rat Man of Paris, among others) is in love with the infinite expressive possibilities of the novel, and this anthology of his critical writings is an eloquent accounting of his passion. In six longer essays and nearly
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Paul West, Author New Directions Publishing Corporation $24.95 (152p) ISBN 978-0-8112-1432-2
What happens to a dream deferred?"" asked poet Langston Hughes. West (Lord Byron's Doctor) grounds his new novel in one of the most famous deferred dreams of the 20th century: Hitler's childhood desire to be an artist. Masquerading as a chilling and
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Paul West, Author Overlook Press $14.95 (160p) ISBN 978-0-87951-666-6
A rich feast for lovers of ornate and stylish prose, West's (The Tent of Orange Mist) latest short novel takes as its protagonist the poet John Milton, although the story is a far cry from a conventional work of historical fiction. The bulk of the...
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Paul West, Author Overlook Press $14.95 (428p) ISBN 978-0-87951-478-5
Verbal wizard West, inspired by recent journalism, imagines the infamous Jack the Ripper to have actually been a depraved trio who murdered together to cover up for a slumming duke. (Oct.)
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Paul West, Author . McPherson $24 (187p) ISBN 978-0-929701-75-2
Novelist West follows up his well-received My Mother's Music with this intimate memoir of his war-scarred father. West focuses on his own early teenage years in Britain during WWII, when his father's experience as a WWI machine-gunner...
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Paul West, Author . New Directions $25.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-8112-1519-0
West (A Fifth of November) examines the legacy of the Egyptian leader who built the great pyramids in his latest historical novel, a vividly imagined but flawed book that begins with the once-powerful Cheops fighting a series of grave illnesses....
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Paul West, Author . British American Publishing $24.95 (269p) ISBN 978-0-945167-52-5
In his typically elegant prose, the prolific West (more than 30 critically acclaimed books, including novels—Rat Man of Paris, Lord Byron's Doctor —and nonfiction classics like Words for a Deaf Daughter) wryly and rather...
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Paul West, Author . Harcourt $24 (272p) ISBN 978-0-15-100574-1
"I am a species of Nero, good at his trade, but fiddling while Literature burns and the amount of it undertaken by successive generations becomes smaller and smaller." So says renowned novelist (The Dry Danube, etc.) and revered fiction...
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Paul West, Author, Susan Bell, Editor Random House (NY) $22 (420p) ISBN 978-0-394-58733-2
Inspired by a recent journalistic view that the infamous Jack the Ripper actually was a trio--Sir William Gull of Guy's Hospital, impressionist painter Walter Sickert, and a coachman called Netley--West delineates the roiling lives of the women...
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