Leonard Michaels Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Joyce Carol Oates

Critical Essay by Joyce Carol Oates

Going Places suffers from being unable to take itself seriously….

The best story in the group, "Going Places," leaves a man named Beckman on the brink of an ordeal he will overcome, and we are reminded of Christ in Concrete and other horrendous tales of physical suffering in which a man's wits and strength are reduced to nothing much, and only his will remains.

Other stories deal with a trio of pop characters or non-characters, Phillip, Henry, and the stuttering pathetic girl they share or seem to share, Margery. It is here that Michaels's talent fails him, for he simply cannot make us share a sustained interest in the wacky dialogue and the wackier activities of these three. And story after story resolves itself in comic violence, fights or orgies or self-annihilating tricks ("I started eating my face"). Charming though the bizarre antics may seem in the first few stories,...
(read more)