Both of the National Book Award winners in fiction are available at Des Peres Branch.
Augustus, by John Williams, is a serious, epistolary novel on Octavius Caesar. As the older Augustus reflects upon his life, the reader sees the growth of the Roman Empire mirrored and distorted by one man’s ideas and activities.
Chimera, John Barth’s latest, is exactly what it says — ambiguous. Both the tripartite monster and the will-o-the-wisp. Barth injects reality into myth in order to expand the realm of the fictional. Reading Barth is always an intellectual excitement; one of the 3 B’s for young writers (with Borges and Barthelme), he is doing as much as any man to influence and shape the directions of modern American fiction.
Cecelia Holland’s new historical novel, Death of Attila, maintains her high standards of excellence. Ms. Holland may be consistently writing the best historical fiction available today — she manages to receive both critical acclaim and immense reader popularity, no easy feat.
For Tonight Show fans who would like to be more slender, Slimming Down by Ed McMahon is available. This book will not help you lose 150 pounds, but does offer a way to drop 10-20 pounds without suffering. The good-humored anecdotes offer something to do besides nibbling, which makes this a much easier book to read than the normal diet book.
Pete Seeger’s semi-autobiography, The Incompleat Folksinger, is a book which is the true shadow of the man. Off-handed, happy, compassionate, joyful, it reminds me of a Seeger concert, and everybody clappin’ hands.
Originally published in The Paper, May 1973.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1973_05.pdf, printed page(s) 6.
