Similar to when I read Robert Coover’s first novel, The Origin of the Brunists, which came out about this same time, I mistook the overall impression and reputation of the author when I first came across them for what that early novel would be like. Like Coover, McElroy is categorized as a writer alongside Pynchon, Delillo, Gass, and of course William Gaddis. But like Delillo and Coover, especially, there’s as much modern as postmodern in the fiction. This book also is slightly in the shadow […]