A David Huddle Reader: Selected Prose and Poetry (Bread Loaf Series of Contemporary Writers)

Book by Huddle, David

Unlike other writers published in the series, such as Rosellen Brown and Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Huddle's ( Nature of Learning , LJ 4/1/92) work will be unfamiliar to most readers. Thus, though insightful, his reflective essays on the writing process--thoughts on a novel's rejection, making time to write--lack a necessary frame of reference. Forming the bulk of this collection, the stories are mainly first-person reminiscences of a boy growing up in the Forties and Fifties in a small Southern town. Instead of action there is an innocent charm that, unfortunately, quickly becomes repetitive. Later essays, like the poems that follow, never escape from a preppy, chauvinistic sensibility. This entire collection is adequate but unmemorable.
- Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.