Commentaries


A Place in the Sun

“A deeply engrossing book, I couldn’t put it down. And now that I’ve finished reading it, I can’t put it away, for how it furthers my thinking of the genre itself. A Place In The Sun beautifully combines the high action and salaciousness of page-turners, with the self-reflection and risk-taking of post-modern fiction. It’s a must-read and a must-study.”

—Renee Gladman

“Lewis Warsh brings his poet's sensibility to a mash up of literary and genre fiction techniques—including constantly shifting perspectives and unexpected interconnections—to create an intriguingly compelling and deeply satisfying reading experience. I loved it.”

—Michael Lally

“A Place in the Sun is a beautifully rendered and expertly deconstructed novel. Warsh's stunningly effective use of multiple narratives, provided in exquisitely detailed lines, conveys an elastic and powerful emotional honesty. This is a sensual and desperate story from a writer with formidable powers of invention.”

—Donald Breckenridge

“In weaving together the cold, explicit facts, gossipy rumors and largely sexual fantasies of the lives of Clift, Taylor, and Drieser, Lewis Warsh creates a tripartite threnody of its own genuine American tragedy, the off-screen, off-page dark truths hidden beneath the drab, glittering surface crust of American life. William Carlos Williams wrote in “To Elsie”: “The pure products of America go crazy....” Warsh has captured that in mimicking a sensationalized tabloid voice of a 1950s Confidential mag's hot, breathless prose, and taking a transcendent leap from that gossip and rumor into one of the “great poems of death” Walt Whitman exhorted American poets to write.”

—Michael Rumaker

A Place in the Sun

2010, Spuyten Duyvil

Paperback 217pp

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