SOURCE: “Caviare,” in On Louis Simpson: Depths Beyond Happiness, edited by Hank Lazer, University of Michigan Press, 1988, pp. 147–55.

In the following review, originally published in 1981, Makuck offers a positive assessment of Caviare at the Funeral.

Cette vie est un hôpital où chaque malade est possédé du désir de changer de lit. Celui-ci voudrait souffrir en face du poêle, et celui-là croit qu'il guérirait a côté de la fenêtre.

—Baudelaire

Since the Pulitzer Prize—winning volume At the End of the Open Road (1963) through Adventures of the Letter I (1971) and Searching for the Ox (1976), Louis Simpson has been quarreling with America and questioning the possibility of happiness, or looking for, as he says in this latest book, a “life in which there are depths / beyond happiness.” Simpson's poetry has been characterized by a strong narrative impulse, open form, a fine mix of...