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Introduction: Philip Lee Williams' Perfect Timing
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19669 |
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BOOK WORLD
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9 / 1991 |
210 Words |
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A sensitivity for eccentric characters illuminates Philip Lee Williams' Perfect Timing--a journey to the heart of a man who hasn't seen his heart in years.
Ford Clayton is a music professor who has never achieved his dreams of symphonic greatness. "Wrestling with the triple burdens of marriage, music and maturity ..., I am the house god of the Middle Class," he says. On a TV show about New York City's homeless he sees Camille Malone, the great love of his college days, in rags, and becomes convinced that if he can rescue her he'll recover the promise of his youth.
Humor and pathos enliven Clayton's quest. His recently paroled redneck cousin, who "got religion" in jail, collaborates with the fervent free spirit Malone. Metaphors and allusions from the Bible, philosophers, and musicians punctuate the plot.
Author Philip Lee Williams is a recent winner of Georgia Author of the Year for Fiction. His latest novel, excerpted here, has been called "a successful version of the Sixties novel, about people who yearn to be who they were but settle for what they have." Following the excerpt from Perfect Timing, two academics comment on the style and content of this new specimen of academic novel.
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