Short Story Criticism | Bradfield, Scott - Paul West (review date 24 February 1991)

Paul West (review date 24 February 1991)

SOURCE: West, Paul. “The Call of the Wild.” Washington Post Book World 21 (24 February 1991): X6.

[In the following review, West criticizes Dream of the Wolf for its monotonous narratives and artless prose, and further comments that Bradfield overdoes his references to commercial brand-names without delving deeply enough into the psyches of his characters.]

The word “vision” implies things present to the sense of sight, but also things commonly regarded as beyond this world. A writer like Chaucer deals in the first kind of vision and loses something by eschewing the second; a writer like Blake loses something by eschewing the first while achieving huge increments of the second. Perhaps there is a happy balance between the two, notably in Woolf and Proust, but it seems to be a shifting one peculiar to individual writers.

Nonetheless, since art thrives on contrast, a balance of...

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