Jeff Bursey’s Reviews > American Energies: Essays on Fiction > Status Update

This is a bit of a slog. The essays are drab, with hardly any pulse or wordplay, and coating every one is a depression caused by television. The "energies" the title speaks of aren't anywhere in the prose. It's not academese, at least, but it's dull.

No mention of Gass, one mention of Sorrentino, as he wonders why the novel is in such sad shape.

Such a concentration on t.v. (this book came out in 1992) sucking the life out of people in the first section. Seems like a simpler time. Occasionally, reading a nonfiction book from only a couple of so decades ago feels like reading a medieval manuscript written in easier to comprehend spelling.

No Gaddis or McElroy in the index. That doesn't sound promising.