Rumble, Young Man, Rumble (review)
Rent from DeepDyve- Rumble, Young Man, Rumble
Underwritten by the confidence born of successful competition with a famous father—with whom, as a child, he learned to box (a proactive approach to the Oedipus complex)—Cavell’s subject is the excess of virility from which Virginia Woolf observed that the world suffers: defense systems, whether hi-tech or psychological—“preemptive strike” as a state of mind. As surely as Ulysses is, albeit in a lighter vein, Rumble is a study in genre, from farce to satire to realism, in stories “linked”—not by narrative, but by their degree of concentration. Cavell achieves a send-up of Hemingway and a satirical portrait of the Bush-era psyche. Often laugh-aloud funny, Rumble is pleasuring reading, with a deep end.
Belle Randall’s books of poetry include True Love, Drop Dead Beautiful, The Orpheus Sedan, and 101 Different Ways of Playing Solitaire. She has taught in several creative writing programs, including Stanford University’s.
