Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Dybek, Stuart - Michiko Kakutani (review date 20 April 1990)

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Michiko Kakutani (review date 20 April 1990)

SOURCE: "Lyrical Loss and Desolation of Misfits in Chicago," in The New York Times Book Review, April 20, 1990, p. C31.

[In the following review, Kakutani compares Dybek's The Coast of Chicago with Sherwood Anderson's Winsburg, Ohio, stating that while it lacks a central hero and "authorial perspective to put the characters' dilemmas in context with the larger world," the collection does possess an "emotional forcefulness."]

The narrator of one of Stuart Dybek's elegiac new stories goes to the Art Institute of Chicago and stands before Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks," that famous painting of a corner diner, done in somber tones of black and blue and brown. He stands there, closes his eyes, and thinks to himself: "It was night in Hopper's painting: the diner illuminated the dark city corner with a stark light it didn't seem capable of throwing on its own. Three customers sat at the...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Reg Saner (review date 1980)
   2. Robert Ward (review date 1980)
   3. Bruce Cook (review date 13 January 1980)
   4. Ivan Gold (review date 24 February 1980)
   5. David Clewell (review date Spring-Summer 1980)
   6. David Kubal (review date Autumn 1980)
   7. Joseph Coates (review date 8 April 1990)
   8. Michiko Kakutani (review date 20 April 1990)
   9. Katharine Weber (review date 20 May 1990)
   10. David Montrose (review date 26 July 1991)
   11. Thomas S. Gladsky (essay date Summer 1995)
   12. Stuart Dybek with Mike Nickel and Adrian Smith (interview date Winter 1997)
4. Copyright