Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Proulx, Annie - John Whitworth (review date 4 December 1993)

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John Whitworth (review date 4 December 1993)

SOURCE: Whitworth, John. “Was Love Then a Bag of Sweets?” Spectator 271, no. 8630 (4 December 1993): 40–41.

[In the following review, Whitworth offers a negative assessment of The Shipping News.]

Much American scorn has been poured on the European Art Film which improves and uplifts on government money, but conspicuously fails to entertain. It is curious, then, that America appears the natural home of the Art Novel, the self-referential productions of Barth, Donleavy, Vonnegut and Pynchon if you like them long, or Brautigan and Kesey, born out of Kerouac, if you like them short and equally pretentious.

What strikes one about much American writing from very early on (good writers too—Melville, Poe, James, Nabokov) is how intent its practitioners are on making it new, pushing back the boundaries of prose etc, and causing the reader to sweat a bit. Each one means to reinvent...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Loree Rackstraw (review date September 1989)
   2. Frederick Busch (review date 12 January 1992)
   3. William Green (review date 18 July 1993)
   4. Sandra Scofield (review date 1 August 1993)
   5. John Whitworth (review date 4 December 1993)
   6. John DeMont (review date 25 April 1994)
   7. Verlyn Klinkenborg (review date 30 May 1994)
   8. Ronald Rompkey (review date September 1994)
   9. Jane Gardam (review date 25 March 1995)
   10. B. A. St. Andrews (review date spring 1995)
   11. Ellen Akins (review date 30 April 1995)
   12. Sybil Steinberg (essay date 3 June 1996)
   13. Bharati Mukherjee (review date 9 June 1996)
   14. Ellen Akins (review date 23 June 1996)
   15. Celia McGee (review date 24 June 1996)
   16. Phoebe-Lou Adams (review date July 1996)
   17. J. Z. Grover (review date September 1996)
   18. John Sutherland (review date 7 October 1996)
   19. Caroline Moore (review date 12 October 1996)
   20. Helen Carr (review date 18 October 1996)
   21. Mark Shechner (review date winter 1997)
   22. Vicky Greenbaum (essay date December 1997)
   23. Louise Flavin (essay date spring 1999)
   24. Merle Rubin (review date 3 June 1999)
   25. Dean Bakopoulos (review date September 1999)
   26. Rita D. Jacobs (review date spring 2000)
   27. Hilary Mantel (review date 11 May 2000)
   28. Erin McGraw (review date summer 2000)
   29. John Noell Moore (review date September 2000)
   30. Michael Kowalewski (review date winter 2001)
   31. Karen L. Rood (essay date 2001)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright