David James Duncan's first novel is as outrageously overblown and as seriously comical as that of Miguel de Cervantes, Laurence Sterne, and Charles Dickens. While some reviewers agreed with Peter Wild's assessment in Western American Literature (Fall 1983) that Duncan's first novel showed him to be "a writer of radiant potential," others sided with David Quammen's view in The New York Times Book Review (24 April 1983) that The River Why (1983) was limited in its appeal and "fogbound in its pretentiousness." Nevertheless, the unusual novel of fly-fishing and spiritual "questing" in western Oregon, which has the rare distinction of having been published initially by the Sierra Club, was made a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Duncan's The River Why and Duncan's second novel, The Brothers K (1992), which he has described as "a nineteenth-century Russian baseball novel," each won a Pacific Northwest Booksellers award. The Brothers K is an epic reminiscent in some ways...