SOURCE: "Uncommonly Good Common Readers," in Book World The Washington Post, Vol. XVII, No. 31, August 2, 1987, p. 10-11.

In the following review of Sheer Fiction, a collection of essays explaining West's love of elaborate, colorful prose, Lehman praises the author's style in an era typified by minimalist writing.

In Sheer Fiction, Paul West votes for verbal gigantism, a high-caloric linguistic pleasure principle. West, whose 10 published novels include Rat Man of Paris and The Very Rich Hours of Count von Stauffenberg, is an unabashed proponent and practitioner of purple prose. He is for pageantry, against austerity; for prose that is "revved up, ample, intense, incandescent, or flamboyant"; against any sensibility that would regard "taut, clean, crisp, tight, terse, lean" as virtues; for baroque elaboration and sheer invention, against naturalism in any narrow sense. The foremost enemy is trendy "minimalism," a dandy punching bag. Minimalism, West writes, is "the ponderous ho-hum...