Gayl Jones Critical Essay | Critical Review by Jill Nelson

Critical Review by Jill Nelson

SOURCE: “Hiding from Salvation,” in The Nation, Vol. 266, No. 19, May 25, 1998, pp. 30-32.

In the review below, Nelson praises the language, character development, and message of The Healing.

There was a time, not all that long ago, when writers could choose to be private people. People who spoke through words on a page, identifiable by the way they used language, a turn of phrase, a subject often written about, more obviously by their name on a title page. There was a time, I think, when most writers preferred it that way. But those days are long gone, swallowed up by television, the grind of book tours, the gobbling up of small publishing houses by conglomerates, America’s erasure of the line between celebrity and talent. Nowadays, too often the writer as personality/celebrity is either indistinguishable from or overtakes the written word. “I'm famous, therefore I'm good” might well...
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