Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Parks, Tim - George Walden (review date 11 December 1998)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page

George Walden (review date 11 December 1998)

SOURCE: “Prisons of Desire,” in New Statesman, December 11, 1998, pp. 46–47.

[In the following review, Walden offers a positive assessment of Adultery and Other Diversions.]

“One admires those books,” writes Tim Parks, “whose complexity of content and vision gets closest to the grain of experience.” Hardly original, perhaps, yet the sentiment bears repeating. The grain of experience is of necessity irregular, yet a lot of contemporary writing suffers from an excess of self-regulation, as authors do their best to prove themselves regular guys. So the grain of experience is smoothed or polished away, as truth becomes gunged with sentiment, larded with the humour of evasion, or sweetened with moral politeness till it rots your teeth. In Parks there is irregularity aplenty and the grain is rough. “Job and marriage are our two greatest prisons … clearly it is very exciting when you...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Jo-Ann Goodwin (review date 17 October 1986)
   2. Michael J. Carroll (review date 24 January 1988)
   3. David Teagle (review date Summer 1988)
   4. Richard Eder (review date 16 October 1988)
   5. Peter Reading (review date 26 May–1 June 1989)
   6. Nicholas Clee (review date 30 August 1991)
   7. Tim Parks with Michele Field (interview date 6 July 1992)
   8. Christopher Bray (review date 4 September 1993)
   9. Nicholas Wroe (review date 10 September 1993)
   10. Frank Kermode (review date 4 November 1993)
   11. Jonathan Yardley (review date 10 July 1994)
   12. Jonathan Keates (review date 27 January 1995)
   13. Albert Read (review date 28 January 1995)
   14. Christopher Merrill (review date 24 March 1996)
   15. Nicholas Wroe (review date 19 July 1996)
   16. Keith Miller (review date 11 April 1997)
   17. Penelope Lively (review date 12 April 1997)
   18. John Derbyshire (review date 20 September 1998)
   19. Gabriele Annan (review date 5 November 1998)
   20. George Walden (review date 11 December 1998)
   21. Antony Rouse (review date 2 January 1999)
   22. Anita Brookner (review date 28 August 1999)
   23. Nicholas Fearn (review date 13 September 1999)
   24. Jenny Turner (review date 30 September 1999)
   25. D. J. Enright (review date 10 August 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright