David Madden > Recent Status Updates

I am finishing THE GOLD OF THEIR BODIES, a novel about Gauguin by a neglected master novelist, Charles Gorham, published in 1955.

The realization that Sinclair Lewis, first American Nobel Prize winner, has inspired me to read all his works [10 so far] and write about his superior witty and lyrical style, which is my main interest. I am eager to add though that the subjects and themes of his books deal with many of the major issues of our era: racism, fundamentalist religion, and feminism, etc.

Line by line, Oz reveals, in first person, the subjective memoir of a wife and mother in Jerusalem of the 1950's who is moment by moment trying to fend off increments of insanity and who day by day somehow succeeds, causing the reader to fear for her and then to be glad she has kept still. She articulates her odd and perilous feelings as she observes her husband and son. She remembers lovely sex with twin Arabs.

I have been reading MY LIFE AND LOVES IN GREENWICH VIILLAGE by the romantic, lyric poet Maxwell Bodenheim. Every line is as rich as this one: “Our own crushed lives often sit beside us, staring at us with sharp, accusing eyes, like vengeful ghosts seeking retribution.” Wearing a trench coat, Bodenheim drifted every night into San Remo’s in Greenwich Village in the early 1950’s. I sometimes talked with the once celeb