Banks, Russell - Brian Morton (review date 7 July 1995)

Brian Morton (review date 7 July 1995)

SOURCE: Morton, Brian. “First of the Mohicans.” New Statesman and Society 8, no. 360 (7 July 1995): 37.

[In the following review, Morton places Rule of the Bone within the context of the American literary tradition.]

Uh-oh. Salinger wannabe on the scanner, Captain. “You'll probably think I'm making a lot of this up just to make me sound better than I really am or smarter or even luckier but I'm not.” That's no J D Salinger, Sulu … that's Mark Twain!

Russell Banks' prose, like Don DeLillo's, has an insistent, buttonholing quality even at its most neutral. But when it inhabits the coolly wised-up consciousness of Chappie, aka “Bone”, it's harder to get away from than a Big Issue ambush. Even allowing for the wonderful Continental Drift, this [Rule of the Bone] is the book that promotes Banks to the premier division of US novelists. In it, Banks seems...

[The entire page is 757 words long]

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