|
|
|
|
Garden State of Mind |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: Tom Deignan |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 1/1/2001 |
| Size: 1,918 Words, 11,474 Characters |
|
THE LOST LEGENDS OF NEW JERSEY
Frederick Reiken
New York: Harcourt Brace, 2000
312 pp., $24.00
William Carlos Williams. Bruce Springsteen. Philip Roth. Tony Soprano. Having produced such an eclectic bunch of bards and scoundrels, you would think New Jersey could shake its reputation as that banal state of swamps and suburbs, of tollbooths, turnpikes, and toxic dumps.
No, Jersey remains the "armpit of America, according to most people," as a character in Frederick Reiken's poignant new novel The Lost Legends of New Jersey puts it. Even though, as a recent New York Times story noted, New Jersey's Essex County alone has been "127 miles of literary inspiration" for such writers as Reiken, Roth, and Amiri Baraka, Lost Legends proves that the literary soil of Reiken's home state is as rich as ever. (Still, it never hurts to remind folks not to "touch anything that's glowing," as one character puts it, strolling near a landfill.)
Reiken's second novel, Lost Legends is a quiet, domestic work in many ways, none of them dismissive or "minor." (It is sentimental, perhaps, but not much.) Rich, subtle co...
Read Full Article
... sister: "Even the earliest practitioners of Kabbalah understood that sublime joy went hand in hand with the deepest sadness."
Yet any comfort to be taken from this will always be countered by a nagging desire that many of us--and certainly most of Reiken's characters--feel. As put by Jess' old (but married) friend, who'd like one more shot at her: "Damn, if I just had another life." vbcrlf
(1,174 of 11,474 characters)
|
|
|
Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
|
The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
