| The words in this book hold on to one another like the schoolboys in Homer's "Crack the Whip." Between sentences is where things happen the reader must attend. Take this sentence, which comes near the end of the book, "Philosophy, Lou thought and so did Cornelius, had trivialized itself right out of the ballpark." To me this is an invitation to reread Plato's SYMPOSIUM, as well as to extend what I might imagine of Penelope, Telemachus and Calypso. Then, too, like John Cheever, Dillard writes New England elegy, in which respect WAPSHOT CHRONICLE is MAYTREES only recent peer. |