WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The New York Review of Books has published "The Complete Fiction of Francis Wyndham." Now in his mid-80s, Wyndham is best known in his native England as a critic. His collected works are small — a novella and two collections of stories, although it's unclear whether that's because of dilatory habits or because journalism is such a harsh mistress.
As a critic, Wyndham has a light, erudite touch, and it's repeated in his fiction, which evinces a taste for recessives and hidden malice that seems extremely English — there are echoes of Wyndham in writers from L.P. Hartley to Ian McEwen. Wyndham likes the first person narrator, and the tone is suitably confidential — an acquaintance is telling us something that happened in the past that formed their life. The stories are quietly confessional and invariably expert.
In the Pipeline...
Judy Collins is writing a memoir titled "Sweet Judy Blue Eyes" for Harmony, due to be published in 2011, in which she'll cover her loves and musical life ... Ecco will publish a graphic novel titled "The Scrapbook of Carrie Pratt" by Caroline Preston, which will tell the story of a Vassar student in the 1920s in the form of a vintage scrapbook ... The Dalkey Archive, an enterprising small press with a nice line in translations, will be issuing "Best European Fiction" next year, the first in an annual series of anthologies that will bring heretofore obscure literary material to our shores.
Mike Browning's Word of the Week ...
scunner: a strong dislike; aversion.
Scott Eyman writes for The Palm Beach Post. E-mail: scott(underscore)eyman(at)pbpost.com.