Phoenix Fiction S.
2 total works
Cohen has achieved here a tour de force, bringing the idea of poetry to life in a messy little man, no hero at all, not even that much of a poet. . . . [The novel] is stately as well as funny, an authentically noble account of a celebrant. . . . It is the true article.--Geoffrey Wolff, New York Times Book Review
Arthur Cohen catches fire. . . . A Hero in His Time represents for him a great imaginative leap, for we are shown the interior mental landscape of a middle-aged Russian-Jewish minor poet and . . . most astonishing is that we believe, without question, in this poet.--Doris Grumbach, Village Voice
A tremendous achievement. . . . To have made this tremendous imaginative leap from the heart of American Jewishness to the heart of Russian Jewishness was a daring thing to do, and it has been accomplished with absolute conviction.--The Sunday Times (London)
A rich compound of high seriousness and robust comedy.--Newsweek
"[Acts of Theft] ranges from the lost world of the Austrian aristocracy . . . to a thick-walled hacienda in the jungles of Mexico in the 1950s. . . . Cohen has resurrected the special man, the one for whom experience is a search an an intellectual problem, the man who deceives himself grandly and discovers the fact when it may be too late. . . . Cohen's writing is as beautiful and complicated as it is possible for writing to be. Rarely, these days, do novelists risk so much so successfully."—K. Deborah Taub, Baltimore Sun
"One of the rare novels that one can begin to reread as soon as the last page is finished. By unfolding the drama of an artist obsessed by the authenticity and perfection of his work, Arthur A. Cohen recalls to us, in fact, the destiny of all human existence. Acts of Theft ranks with the best novels of the post-war period."—Mircea Eliade
"Acts of Theft is a very elaborate story of cops and robbers—but it aspires to much more and its aspirations are largely fulfilled. The parallels that spring to mind are Crime and Punishment and Les Mesérables."—Joseph McLellan, Washington Post