Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Fast, Howard - David Savage (review date 22 February 1987)

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David Savage (review date 22 February 1987)

SOURCE: A review of The Dinner Party, in Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 22, 1987, p. 6.

[In the following review, Savage offers negative assessment of The Dinner Party.]

A Washington dinner party could make for a good novel. Politicians are calculators, and the best of them know how the figures will come out before all the numbers are punched in. An ostensibly social occasion—a dinner or a reception—is among the best places to watch a politician at work. He seeks information, asks what others think about an issue, tries out an argument on one side—analyzing, calculating. Put another politician there too, and you might want to listen in.

But not at a dinner party created by Howard Fast. Rather than ideas, issues, names and witticisms, you get a couple of college kids sounding off about Buddhism and meditation—reverberations of the worst of the 1960s. “I mean, to...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. George Mayberry (review date 10 May 1943)
   2. Irving Howe (review date 16 December 1957)
   3. Kenneth Fearing (review date 23 April 1961)
   4. R. Z. Sheppard (review date 7 November 1977)
   5. Merle Rubin (review date 30 September 1984)
   6. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (review date 9 February 1987)
   7. Diana McLellan (review date 17 February 1987)
   8. David Savage (review date 22 February 1987)
   9. Jacqueline Trescott (essay date 3 March 1987)
   10. Howard Fast with Mervyn Rothstein (interview date 10 March 1987)
   11. Michael Kilian (review date 21 April 1987)
   12. Bruce Cook (review date 23 October 1988)
   13. Rhoda Koenig (review date 5 November 1990)
   14. Christopher Hitchens (review date 25 November 1990)
   15. Leo Braudy (review date 9 December 1990)
   16. Stefan Kanfer (review date 10-24 December 1990)
   17. Clancy Sigal (review date 20 January 1991)
   18. Ronald Radosh (review date March 1991)
   19. Gerald Meyer (review date Spring 1993)
   20. Howard Fast with Alan Wald and Alan Filreis (interview date 1995)
   21. George Traister (essay date 1995)
   22. Andrew Macdonald (essay date 1996)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright