The King Is Dead (Magill’s Literary Annual 2004)
At a glance:
- Author: Jim Lewis
- First Published: 2003
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The second half of the twentieth century
- Setting: The United States
- Principal Characters: Walter Selby, Nicole Lattimore Selby, Frank Cartwright, Gail Cartwright, The Governor, Lenore Riviere, Kimberly “Kimmie” Remington
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Acting or actors, Murder or homicide, Twentieth century, Fathers, Tennessee, Adultery, Adoption or adopted children, Politicians, Films, movies, or motion pictures, Millionaires
- Locales: United States
The King Is Dead, an ambitious novel about the United States in the second half of the twentieth century, opens with a prelude delineating part of the genealogy of Walter Selby, going back as far as the year 1720. Its dual purpose seems to be to give the novel an epic, Faulknerian tone and to indicate that Selby (like many William Faulkner characters) inherited African American genes. This information is of little importance to the ensuing stories of Walter and his son Frank. (Walter, after all, is only one-sixteenth black.) It does, however, serve to make them seem somewhat more...
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