WRITERS' CHOICE
EDITORS' NOTE: Writers' Choice
is a new department oj short comments
on oldas wellas new books that our contn'butors like particularly andwant to
callattention to.
GILBERT SORRENTINO:
The
Embodimento/Knowledge
by Wil–
liam Carlos Williams. (New Direc–
tions , 1974 .) A collection of frag–
ments, jottings, notes, and essays
written byWilliams during the peri–
od 1928-1930, and discovered in
manuscript in his archive at the
Beinicke Library at Yale, this vol–
ume is continually enthralling and
fascinating.
It
is especially useful to
the student ofWilliams, since it pre–
figures many of his later concepts of
poetics and the American language
as a vehicle for the literary artist. A
wonderful complement to the
Se –
lected Essays
and
In The Amen'can
Grain ,
the book is an unexpected
gift from a great poet ....
Sheeper
by Irving Rosenthal. (Grove, 1967.)
Outofprint now for some five years,
Sheeper
is Mr. Rosenthal's lapidary
account of the Beat movement in
New York during the fifties and
early sixties. A brilliantly styled,
episodic novel about a socioliterary
movement that has been officially
misunderstood and maligned, its
only comparison must be looked for
in the unique prose of Lautreamont
and Gerard de Nerval. There is, to
my mind, no American novelist
writing today with Rosenthal's ex–
quisite sense ofstyle ....
The Poor
Mouth
by Flann O'Brien. (Viking,
1974.) If there was anything more
needed to assure Flann 0' Brien's
position as one of possibly three
great comic writers of this century,
The Poor Mouth
is it. A bitter yet
hilarious satire ofIrish country life,
the novel has about it the same aura
of comedy combined with malevol–
ence that O'Brien created in
The
Third Policeman.
Translated from
the Gaelic by Ralph Steadman, the
book is supposed to be even funnier
in the original, but I can't imagine
how.
STEPHEN KOCH:
Chen'
and
The
Last a/Chen',
followed by
The Vaga–
bond,
followed, 1'd suppose, by
Colette 's
oeuvres completes.
The
world seems to be rediscovering Col–
ette. I should probably blush to
confess that my own discovery of her
has been postponed until only this
summer-but the discovery is too
splendid and exciting for any such
nonsense. What's more , Iknow I am
not alone in my ignorance : Colette
has been too long among the en–
shrined unreads. High culture's
classy old grandmother surrounded
by her cats-it has been all too easy
to pass over the creature at the center
