Clyde Edgerton: Vietnam Vet, Jet Pilot, and . . . Small Town Housewife

Clyde Edgerton Vietnam Vet, Jet Pilot, and . . . Small Town Housewife some men make attempted to write using a womans character. Those who do choose to use the persona of a woman often separate in their effort, creating a character who does not quite sound authentic. Critics commonly note the authors inadequacies and point out difficulties when an author tries to capture the voice of a person of the opposite gender. One exception is Clyde Edgerton in his first novel, Raney. The voice of Raney seems genuine and Edgerton received great acclaim for his novel. Public acceptance of Edgerton public speaking as a young woman may be attributed to a number of factors involving the attitudes of the author, of the character, and of critics.Those who have interviewed Edgerton and reviewed his books are nearly all men. The one ut near-famed exception is author Barbara Kingsolver, who reviewed The Floatplane Notebooks in the New York Times bind Review. Not only does she neglect to take Edg erton to task for his use of a woman narrator in part of that novel, but she praises him generously and compares him to Jane Austen. Kingsolver apparently feels Edgerton can speak creditably as a woman, and she goes so far as to feel he is worthy to keep company with exceedingly respected woman authors.Another consideration may be that most critics have not yet found Edgerton. Raney was his first novel and he has not written another entirely from a womans point of view. His later works usually rotate among a prominent number of narrators, from a delinquent teenage boy to a wistaria vine in a family cemetery to a determined dog. If he had persisted in focusing upon women narrators as he became better known, he might have attracted more attention for that aspect of his work.... ...ete with blind spots and inconsistencies, and so is her phallic counterpart, Charles, who just might flush a cabbage core win the toilet, causing expensive plumbing problems. No one individual or gende r is portrayed as perfection all the characters are popular opinion their way down lifes corridors. That seems to make Raney a good example of the kind-hearted race rather than a representative of a gender issue. workings CitedEdgerton, Clyde. Raney. New York Ballantine, 1985.Kingsolver, Barbara. The Floatplane Notebooks. Rev. of The Floatplane Notebooks by Clyde Edgerton. New York Times bind Review. 9 Oct. 198810.Kozikowski, Thomas. Clyde Edgerton. Contemporary Authors. Ed. Susan Trotsky. Vol. 134. Detroit Dale Research, 1992.Robbins, Kenn. A Conversation with Clyde Edgerton. The Southern Quarterly A Journal of the Arts in the South. 30.1 (1991) 58-69.