Three Novels: The Lime Twig / Second Skin / Travesty

by John Hawkes, Patrick McGrath (Introduction), Robert Coover (Preface)

This volume brings together three early novels by John Hawkes. "The Lime Twig" is set in the underworld of postwar London; "Second Skin" is a tale of suicide and new life on two mythical islands; and "Travesty" is a monologue on fear and eroticism that takes place during a drive at night.

Genres: Fiction

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

John Hawkes, born John Clendennin Talbot Burne Hawkes, Jr., was a postmodern American novelist, known for the intensity of his work, which suspended the traditional constraints of the narrative.

Born in Stamford, Connecticut, and educated at Harvard University, Hawkes taught at Brown University for thirty years. Although he published his first novel, The Cannibal, in 1949, it was The Lime Twig (1961) that first won him acclaim. Later, however, his second novel, The Beetle Leg, an intensely surrealistic western set in a Montana landscape that T. S. Eliot might have conjured, came to be viewed by many critics as one of the landmark novels of 20th Century American literature.

Hawkes died in Providence, Rhode Island.

Reviews

[Samuel Moss · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of torn on these three. On the one hand Hawkes' style is brilliant, his descriptions profuse, his settings well wrought and imaginative. He does something I have never quite seen elsewhere. While there are characters and plots of a certain sense he - explicitly - forgoes plot and character in favor of something else (what that 'thing' is hard to describe explicitly, but you get a sense when reading his work). But there is something that fails to cohere.

These novels are like eating incredibly rich chocolate cake. Time is often slowed down to a crawl, moments are magnified down to the last detail and can last forever. At a certain point I found myself wondering whether Hawkes he was spinning all this description toward a goal or purpose, or more to distract from some holes elsewhere. I have sort of come to suspect that latter. It is very impressive and a sort of feat, but it is not sustainable as a reader, or perhaps might be if read one page long portion at a time. And while each is only around 100 pages they seem to last forever.

'The Lime Twig' was the most compelling. There is this thread of menace that persists through the thing and comes from nowhere really identifiable, or really just the writing style itself. It is pretty nightmarish in these strange ways. While nothing is overtly out of the ordinary there is just the thread of menace and unease.

'Second Skin' was sort of cloying. It has not aged well specifically the black and female characters who are rendered, at best, as caricatures. There is also all this creepy incestuous thread which sort of turned me off.

Travesty too had its moments. It is just this long narration by this guy who is totally nuts. Generally a recipe for success. Its alright, just sort of does its job but never really reaches any spectacular heights.

Doing some cursory reading I found Hawkes was an early post-modernist, which is pretty cool. I think in large parts this is writing of its time, working against the standard, realist threads that were prevalent then. I'm sure it was groundbreaking and exciting when it came out and I won't deny that Hawkes was doing something pretty impressive and unusual. But now most of these tricks have been integrated into our fiction at large and it is interesting primarily as a view into that time and world.

[Angelika · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5

I never thought that I would ever write about a book what I'm going to write now: Even for me this is a little too cerebral, although I have a propensity for that kind of thing. It took me months to finish it, I had to take long breaks in between. While the writing is nothing short of genius, it's not exactly flowing because half of the time I asked myself what it all actually means, especially the small details. It might have something to do with me not being a native speaker, but as an avid reader I actually considered myself to be pretty proficient.
At some point I will come come back to this book because it is, in fact, a work of art, a painting - breathtaking, beautiful, but at the same time exhausting and horrific. It commands your attention, almost constantly. You can't just sit back and enjoy it for what it is.
Reading with a contemporary lens also means you cannot simply ignore the borderline racist and sexist depictions of some of the characters. But since the writing is so incredibly skilled, even in those problematic parts, there is a strange kind of beauty to be found - sometimes, mind you - if you look at it simply from an artistic viewpoint.
Imagine an expressionist painting with hyperrealistic and surrealistic aspects. Everything about these stories is so extreme. I won't even go into the plots because there is no point in doing that. You have to experience it for yourself, to be able to appreciate it.

Maybe just one thing: The last story "Travesty" is about a man driving around in his car accompanied by his daughter. Both of their deaths are imminent, since the father plans on crashing the car in a very specific location in a predestined manner. It is utterly bizarre. At some point we learn the reason why he wants to commit murder-suicide, which seems to be a necessity from the father's point of view who appears to be a psychopath. He is definitely not of sane mind. Well, if this has peaked your interest, you may take "a liking" to the story.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you only have time to read one of these novels, I recommend Travesty, the shortest, for its totality of vision and remarkable perversity.

[Nj · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps the most underrated American writer?

[Nikolai · Rating 5 out of 5]

felt like reading ketamine prose. the third one, travesty, was probably most to my liking, but felt a bit like Nabokov