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My Man and other Critical Fictions by Wendy Walker and Treasure Island!!! by Sara Levine were reviewed by Ben Jeffery  in the TLS for 24 February.

Pieces of pieces

BEN JEFFERY

Sara Levine
TREASURE ISLAND!!! 176pp. Europa. Paperback, $15. 978 1 60945 016 8

Wendy Walker
MY MAN AND OTHER CRITICAL FICTIONS. 138pp. Temporary Culture. $22.50. 978 0 9764660 7 9

Here are two books that each take other literary texts as their foundation, but otherwise could not be less alike. [. . .] Treasure Island!!! is [Sara Levine’s] first novel — a wispy, hyper-caffeinated comedy about a young woman obsessed with Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic pirate tale. Wendy Walker is a New York-based author with a legacy of dense conceptual writing behind her. My Man and Other Critical Fictions is a collection of eight critical fictions — that is, texts that “explicitly declare” themselves “as a critique of another work of literature and explicitly make use of that earlier source text”, in the words of Henry Wessells’ introduction. The effect, in Walker’s hands, is the literary equivalent of austere interpretive dance.

[. . .]

The collection’s title piece consists of five numbered passages evoking Martin Decoud, the lovesick intellectual in Conrad’s Nostromo, and the sentences there are typical of Walker’s bristlingly inhospitable style.

The review must be classed as hostile despite the promise of the reviewer’s initial observation, “The effect, in Walker’s hands, is the literary equivalent of austere interpretive dance.”
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