Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
In his introduction to this anthology, Vause recounts launching the National Undergraduate Literature Conference as an avenue for students to read their critical and creative works before an academic audience, but it is the creative work of the Conference's renowned keynote speakersincluding Richard Ford, Ray Bradbury, Maxine Kumin and 25 othersthat the editors have chosen to anthologize. What the collected poems, stories and essays have in common, Vause argues, is "a reverence for reading and writing by those who practice the ancient and noble craft of storytelling." Most stories also reflect whatever the writer was working on at the moment, so the collection doesn't really cohere. Moreover, because many participants are writers with real reputations, most of the stories have already been collected elsewhere. Certainly the best storiesJohn Edgar Wideman's "newborn thrown in trash and dies," Raymond Carver's "The Errand" and Robert Olen Butler's "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain"have. There are a couple of fine essaysJohn Barth's "A Few Words About Minimalism," originally published in the New York Times Book Review and Ford's "One More Writer's Beginnings," from Harper'sbut the others don't hold up well when compared to the fiction. Of the three previously unpublished essays, only Antonya Nelson's piece on life, death and letters in Alaska has any heft; the othersa tiny musing on youthful reading by E.L. Doctorow; another very short piece on the bureaucracy at Rice University by George Garretseem to be included simply by dint of the names attached to them and the fact that nobody had grabbed them before. All in all, this Peregrine is a rather piebald bird. (Apr.)Kirkus Reviews
An unremarkable gathering of fiction, poetry, and essays by writers who have involved themselves over the years with the National Undergraduate Literature Conference held at Weber State University in Utah, where the editors teach.Many of the writers here (e.g., Ann Beattie, E.L. Doctorow, Carolyn Forche) are widely anthologized elsewhere. And lacking a strong thematic focus, this collection can't seem to find its own identity, although a handful of pieces do consider reading and writing as a topic. In Ray Bradbury's pleasantly manic story, a small-town boy meets up with an exotic out-of-town adult who claims to be Charles Dickens but is really a failed writer. The boy's admiration for the Dickens impersonator offers a parable as well as a fantasy—the enthusiastic reader as the best possible crony for any author, whether faux or bona fide. George Garrett's essay is another standout: He crisply tells the tale of his father's right- minded revenge on the bigoted southern burg where he practiced law. "This is a true story about my father, a true story with the shape of a piece of fiction. Well, why not?" begins Garrett. "The purpose of fiction is simply to tell the truth." Richard Ford's reminiscence about his early struggles to be published cheerfully dismisses conventional career wisdom about how to enter the literary ranks. Ford's bemusement with bromides leads to a realism that's appealing and convincing. Too many writers, though, don't contribute their best work to the volume. The poems by Garrett, Howard McCord, and Catherine Bowman are unextraordinary, and Doctorow's brief essay about his boyhood discovery of reading is emphatically minor. John Barth's "Excerpt From the Tidewater Tales" is a coy, tirelessly self-conscious flirtation with fiction as a genre. Only a small number of pieces included have not been published previously.
Mainly, this is a souvenir program for a creative writing symposium.