Making be in love with to the Minor Poets of Chicago * James Conrad * Thomas Dunne volumes * $25.

Making be in love with to the Minor Poets of Chicago * James Conrad * Thomas Dunne volumes * $25.95

for what cause do you write about reality love, poetry, and the Midwest without sounding hidebound or naive? For starters, you can mix in enough of power games, professional rivalries, and sex

If you're favorable the result might be as engaging as James Conrad's first appearance novel, Making Love to the Minor author of poemss of Chicago. This frothy coctkail of idealism and avarice is spiked with just enough braininess to give it a kick. The addition of a wacky plat revolving around--of all things--nuclear waste disposal makes it a puissant read indeed.

Conrad sustains his unstable concoction in consequence of his knack for sketching believable characters. Something like 20 distinct individuals play their parts in his tale of Chicagoans searching for their bliss in the copses of academe. Many are bards or aspiring poets, many are gay, and all take casts in a comical round-robin of flirtation, consummation, and rejection. It's like Jane Smiley's Moo suitables Melrose Place.

Conrad doesn't entirely avoid the missteps of a first-time novelist: a certain number of of his aphorisms are pat; one subplots, far-fetched. But his grasp of life's phases gives his writing authority. "Marriage seem[s] to be [a] negotiation of being alone in the vicinity of someone else," notes a woman in her late 30 Later an inexperienced society student compares two boyfriends: "The consideration Tom had started moving his hands from William's shoulders to his chest, [William] noticed a choreography that had not been as mixed in its possibilities with Peter"

Possibilities and their chain of cause and effects are Conrad's central concern. His talent obstructions him explore without limiting them.

Lehoczky writes regularly for the Chicago Tribune and Newsday.

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