"We have here on the planet with us a man of such courage and strength of spirit that he has not lost what Alfred Adler calls 'the nerve for excellence.' He has kept it despite the burden of an awareness not only of the enormity of his project and of the limitations of his own human understanding, but also of the abject ignorance and indifference of his audience... "Somehow Connell makes you care. Many modern poets demand a good deal of work; Connell excites it. Sometimes the note-taker's narrator] tone is hectoring, even belligerent; if you have any competitive spirit at all, you seize...
"We have here on the planet with us a man of such courage and strength of spirit that he has not lost what Alfred Adler calls 'the nerve for excellenc...
The story begins with the unhappy marriage of junior clerk Earl Summerfield to the much older Bianca. Feeling victimized by his cold wife and mocking superiors at work, Earl decides to keep a diary, a chronicle of his apparently crumbling marital relations, the paranoia and abuses he is seemingly forced to tolerate at work, and the world around him going to pieces in 1960's San Francisco. What he sees, what he says, what he wants to say - everything swarms his head and consciousness, inciting and fueling fantasies of love, ambition, and avenging the violent crimes with which he was become...
The story begins with the unhappy marriage of junior clerk Earl Summerfield to the much older Bianca. Feeling victimized by his cold wife and mocking ...