Swanny's Ways [Lucia Berlin's copy]

Katz, Steve

ISBN 10: 1557132097 / ISBN 13: 9781557132093

Published by Sun & Moon Press, Los Angeles, 1995

Signed by Katz, "For Lucia, from a "secret" admirer, Steve Katz. 10/12/95, Boulder." A thumb smudge to the bottom page edges, and slight edgewear to the dust jacket. Berlin and Katz were colleagues at UC Boulder.; 550 pages; Signed by Author. Seller Inventory # 23426

Synopsis:

William Swanson, the reluctant hero of Katz's Florry of Washington Heights, living awkwardly in the 1990s, mysteriously begins to write the stories of the obsession that came on him in the 1960s when he suddenly remembered the murder of Florry and of the injustice he witnessed years before as a child. He seeks to reconcile the past and the Washington Heights of his youth with that neighborhood today. When he anonymously delivers these stories into the hands of his former gang nemesis/hero, Jack Ryan, the latter's careful, rationally structured life comes unglued. In this novel time folds into itself and compresses fantasy into reality, nudges the unknown into illumination, pushes narrative until it crumbles at its boundaries.

Reviews: The last installment in a trilogy (Wier & Pouce and Florry of Washington Heights), Swanny's Ways has nothing in common with Swan's Way save sheer length. The book concerns the tribulations of one William "Swanny" Swanson, a self-involved person with supposedly endearing flaws, and his attempts to maintain romantic relationships after the death of Florry O'Neil, the object of a high school infatuation. Katz's detailing of obsessive desire is basically a written exercise in sophomoric and vindictive wish-fulfillment. With writing that appears to be embellished diary entries from the 1970s interrupted by passages of maudlin "highbrow" prose, it entirely convolutes story line, narration and characterization. One needs talent and skill to write a first-person narrative that smoothly pretends to the author, and that quality isn't here. Both bitterly misogynistic and race-baiting, Katz's sexual and solipsistic fantasies are been better suited for the couch of a therapist: in short, this is an attempt at narcissistic revenge masquerading as a work of experimental fiction.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The never-humdrum Katz is up to his old tricks in the last of a threesome (Wier and Pouce, 1984; Florry of Washington Heights, 1987) about life and death in a Manhattan neighborhood. Too bad the surrealism overpowers any palpable story. William Swanson, otherwise known as ``Swanny,'' is a former New York Bullets gang member from Washington Heights who's taking the night-course route to a law degree. Meantime, he's shacking up in tenements with an array of unsuitable women, taking calls from his Jewish mother from her retirement home in Florida, and heading south for his Irish father's funeral. Or is he? It's impossible to tell whether anything Swanny says is true, whether anything he does is really happening. Jackson Ryan, the other narrator, is equally unreliable. This former leader of the Fanwoods, a rival gang, receives and comments on a series of ``manuscripts'' (which compose the book) that Swanny apparently leaves for him outside his office or apartment. Much of the reflection in these writings centers on Swanny's memories of Florry O'Neill, the bright and beautiful girl from the earlier books in this series who was raped and murdered at 15 and with whom both Swanny and Jack were in love. Although Swanny is obsessed with a man he calls Kutzer, his former junior-high gym teacher who, he says, killed Florry, as the manuscripts progress it becomes unclear whether Kutzer is actually evil or whether he even exists. Other elements and themes appear dramatically and then disappear without a trace: Sledge, the black man who was imprisoned unjustly for Florry's murder; interracial cohabitation; Swanny's half-sister Madeline, with whom he has a brief sexual encounter; Jack's wife Clovis's lesbian affair--all are unceremoniously, tantalizingly dropped. Experimental Fiction with a capital F: If Katz (who writes well, plots less successfully) is out to baffle readers utterly, he has succeeded with flair. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Swanny's Ways [Lucia Berlin's copy]
Publisher: Sun & Moon Press, Los Angeles
Publication Date: 1995
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Signed: Signed by Author(s)
Edition: First Edition; First Printing.