Campbell, James

Berkeley. 2008. July 2008. University of California Press. Reprinted Paperback Edition. Very Good in Wrappers. 9780520252370. 226 pages. paperback. keywords: History. FROM THE PUBLISHER - This compulsively readable collection of profiles and essays by James Campbell, tied together by a beguiling autobiographical thread, proffers unique observations on writers and writing in the post-1950s period. Campbell considers writers associated with The New Yorker magazine, including John Updike, William Maxwell, Truman Capote, and Jonathan Franzen. Continuing his longterm engagement with African American authors, he offers an account of his legal battle with the FBI over James Baldwin's file and a new profile of Amiri Baraka. He also focuses on the Beat poets Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg, as well as writers such as Edmund White and Thom Gunn. Campbell's concluding essay on his childhood in Scotland gracefully connects the book's autobiographical dots. The New York Times - Sam Munson The art of the literary profile is, if not dying, at least in some corporeal danger. Too often, it is a platform for inanities praiseful or damning, instead of what it ought to be: an examination of the mysterious third component of the relationship between book and reader, the person and personality of the author. James Campbell's new book, Syncopations-a collection of profiles, literary essays and reminiscences drawn primarily from the pages of The Guardian Review, The Times Literary Supplement and other British publications-suggests there's some life left in the form. Whether this impression stems more from Campbell's fluency and intimate tone of voice, or from his angled, trans-Atlantic vision of mostly American writers, is hard to say. Whatever the cause, Syncopations should interest any observer of postwar American letters. inventory #38115 ISBN: 9780520252370.