Negative Positive
Title: Beckett by way of a hurricane?
Review: I was first exposed to Mr. Powell's writing in a class I'm taking called "Progressive Fiction." Though the book was a bit difficult to find, the pursuit was well worth it. I'm not sure the best way to do this author justice, actually. He has a bit of Beckettian absurdity, but also a Raymond Carver sense of the downtrodden. Putting the two together results in some idiosyncratic insights. I also appreciate that he seems to be a "geographical" writer. His short-short stories with titles like "Texas", "Kansas", South Carolina" evoke a sense of place that really doesn't need more than the 2 or 3 pages he takes to convey it. My favorite stories were the title story, "Mr. Irony" and "Wayne's Fate," but the story "Texas" actually inspired me to write something of my own along the lines he set out. A must-read for any fiction writer as well as any reader who appreciates formal and linguistic play.
Is the review positive or negative? 