SOURCE: "Words of Power: Openings to the Universe of Paul West," in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 11, No. 1, Spring, 1991, pp. 212-18.

In the following essay, Lima studies the language of West's novels, which he compares to that of Dante's Inferno, as well as his characters, some of whom he refers to as "grotesques."

Many years ago, nearly twenty-three in fact, I received a request from a Spanish priest stationed in the Philippines for an essay by Paul West. Knowing that the author and I taught at the same university, he had taken it for granted that I would have access to the piece. I didn't. Since I was at a campus other than University Park, where Paul West taught, I didn't know the author either (nor, to my chagrin, even his name). Checking the meager holdings of my small campus library for a book of his that...