Books: Harrowing Sex

THE PASSION ARTIST by John Hawkes

Harper & Row; 185 pages; $9.95

Novelist John Hawkes, 54, is a writer who has been read too little and interpreted too much. This is partly his own doing. His first two books came out of a writing class that he took at Harvard in the late 1940s, and his fiction has continued to radiate qualities dear to the hearts of academic critics: fractured narrative lines, surrealistic landscapes surrounded by the chiaroscuro of despair, irony, symbols galore and, most important, a self-conscious sense of being difficult. Small wonder that so much of his work has seemed to...

Want the full story?

Subscribe Now

Subscribe
Subscribe

Learn more about the benefits of being a TIME subscriber

If you are already a subscriber sign up — registration is free!