Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Wideman, John Edgar - Harold Jaffe (review date March-April 1988)

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Harold Jaffe (review date March-April 1988)

SOURCE: "Rage," in American Book Review, Vol. 10, No. 1, March-April, 1988, pp. 8-14.

[Jaffe is a noted critic, editor of Fiction International, and author of several books, including Othello Blues (1996). In the following review, he responds enthusiastically to Reuben, noting Wideman's ability to communicate the tremendous depths of rage present within the novel's characters and their surroundings.]

The stunning anger pulsing like an outside heart in Reuben underscores one of the signal questions of our time for the artist: how to forge an oppositional art. Not merely an art that is, or means to be, uncomplicitous with the dominant ideology, but a calculated art specifically designed to infiltrate, rupture, destabilize.

Fredric Jameson, in an essay on the visual artist Hans Haacke, puts it plainly: "It is no longer possible to oppose or contest the logic of...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. James W. Coleman (essay date March 1985)
   2. Jacqueline Berben (essay date Fall 1985)
   3. John Bennion (essay date Spring/Summer 1986)
   4. Gary Dretzka (review date 29 November 1987)
   5. Harold Jaffe (review date March-April 1988)
   6. Matthew Wilson (essay date March 1990)
   7. John Edgar Wideman with Charles H. Rowell (interview date Winter 1990)
   8. Jacqueline Berben (essay date April-June 1991)
   9. Ashraf H. A. Rushdy (essay date Fall 1991)
   10. Jan Clausen (essay date Spring 1992)
   11. Michael Gorra (review date June 14 1992)
   12. Sven Birkerts (review date 13 and 20 July 1992)
   13. John Edgar Wideman with Jessica L. Lustig (interview date Fall 1992)
   14. James Robert Saunders (essay date December 1992)
   15. Mel Watkins (review date 13 November 1994)
   16. Mark Shechner (review date March/April 1995)
   17. Sanford Pinsker (review date Spring 1995)
   18. Paul West (review date 29 September 1996)
   19. Gene Seymour (review date 28 October 1996)
   20. Sven Birkerts (review date 3 November 1996)
   21. Joyce Carol Oates (review date 27 March 1997)
   22. Michael Wood (review date 27 November 1997)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright