Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Theroux, Alexander (Louis) - J. O. Tate

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J. O. TATE

If Sidney's Astrophel and Stella had been composed by Urquhart of Cromarty; if Poe's "To Helen" had been written by the Melville of Moby Dick; if the cookie-cutter form of the Harlequin romance had been glossed by Boethius—then the result might have been the sublime mulligan [satura>satire] served up to us by Alexander Theroux. (pp. 620-21)

The substance of Darconville's Cat is Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl. The end is Death in Venice. But the "novel" or "romance" breaks off into the form of Menippean satire, or anatomy, and proceeds by way of encyclopedic recapitulation of forms: a sonnet, a blank-verse dialogue, a formal oration, a formal essay, a vulgar sermon, etc., and a multitude of lists. Theroux is a master of tropes, schemes, and rhetorical devices; and for him as for Blake, the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom….

As in Three Wogs, in Darconville's Cat we discern the theme of...

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1. Introduction
2. Diane Johnson
3. The Times Literary Supplement
4. Miles Donald
5. Jack Beatty
6. Eve Ottenberg
7. BENJAMIN DeMOTT
8. John Leonard
9. J. O. Tate
10. Copyright