Description
Book SynopsisA collection of profiles and essays, which proffers observations on writers and writing in the post-1950s period. It considers writers associated with the New Yorker magazine, including John Updike, William Maxwell, Truman Capote, and Jonathan Franzen.
Trade Review"'Syncopations' should interest any observer of postwar American letters." -- Sam Munson New York Times Book Review "[Campbell's] best pieces deftly and economically capture the essence of their subjects, measuring the particular 'syncopations' that distinguish their work." -- Bharat Tandon Times Literary Supplement (TLS) "The object is neither to titillate nor to shock - though certain of Mr. Campbell's profiles do both - but to illumine. And this they accomplish splendidly." -- Eric Ormsby New York Sun
Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments PART I NEW YORK NEW YORKERS 1. Sunshine and Shadows: AProfile of John Updike 2. Updike's Village Sex 3. William Maxwell's Lives 4. Notes from a Small Island: AProfile of Shirley Hazzard 5. Love, Truman: Capote's Letters and Stories 6. Franzen, Oprah, and High Art 7. Drawing Pains: A Profile of Art Spiegelman 8. Listening in the Dark: AProfile of William Styron PART II THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE 9. I Heard It through the Grapevine: James Baldwin and the FBI 10. The Island Affair: Richard Wright's Unpublished Last Novel 11. The Man Who Cried: John A. Williams 12. All That Jive: Stanley Crouch 13. Love Lost: Toni Morrison 14. The Rhetoric of Rage: AProfile of Amiri Baraka PART III SYNCOPATIONS 15. High Peak Haikus: AProfile of Gary Snyder 16. Between Moving Air and Moving Ocean: Thom Gunn and Gary Snyder 17. Was That a Real Poem?: Robert Creeley 18. Fifty Years of "Howl" 19. Personal/Political: AProfile of Edmund White 20. To Beat the Bible: AProfile of J. P. Donleavy 21. The Making of a Monster: Alexander Trocchi 22. Travels with RLS Coda: Boswell and Mrs. Miller; A Memoir of Two Tongues
