Rating: 
Summary: Grandiose themes and a thinly conceived plot.
Review: From the author of such, at times, finely wrought short fiction, Kings and Planets is a serious disappointment. The title signals Canin's's intent to tackle such grand themes as the happenstance of birth, destiny, love, family, the kitchen sink--and he does clumsily make that attempt. But protagonists Orno and Marshall quickly become flat, unlikable caricatures of themselves as does the supporting cast of lovers, sisters, and parents. We don't *care* what happens to them, even if there was a brilliant plot to accompany this dull cast, and there is not. Indeed, Canin's attempt to substitute a hodgepodge of obvious themes and dramatic images seemingly cadged from Hemingway, duMaurier and Nathanael West for plot and narrative fails miserably. He literally resorts to telling the reader the meaning of this or that event, and I get that in the evening news, I don't need it in a novel. Almost nothing works well: even Canin's fine ear for conversation is here wasted on endless, meandering dialog.Such a handsome book with its two toned cover, "EC" embossed on the front and set in Janson typeface, which was selected--according to an explanatory note--for its "excellent clarity and sharpness." Would that the same could be said of the words and novel formed thereby. That's my diagnosis Dr. Canin. My prescription, if you will, is this: Continue to write the good short stuff when you can but please don't turn out another novel until you have characters you care about, a real tale to tell and the time to expertly weave the former into the latter.
Rating: 
Summary: His preoccupation with "genius" unfulfilled
Review: One can tell, forty pages or so into this flawed and obvious novel, that Mr. Canin wasn't having the easiest time assembling it. Lyrical, lucid and revealing passages are undercut by frequent laundry-listing of essential plot elements, some flat-out banal prose and guiless character manipulation worthy of, say, any other doctor who writes fiction in his spare time in lieu of mastering his vocation. Now, I know that isn't really the case here: Mr. Canin would rather be a writer than a doctor (in itself, an indication of a sincere "literary" tendency). But if we are to judge by his four major works, he is not much of a writer either. So what looked like a tendency now amounts to little more than a whim, or, more likely, a willingness to give in to temptation. Orno, are you listening? One look at the book and it is clear that the publishers intend to celebretize him (which is not to say that the bread makes the sandwich inedible). But Mr. Canin's fiction is not Updike's or Irving's (it is somehow appropriate that we know how they look); not Everyman's tales; it has never spoken for our generation, our cultural identity or our social fiber. It speaks (at its best) up for individual frailty, compassion and quixotic transgressions in the "normal" lives of consummately unique characters. (The Palace Thief is the place to witness Mr. Canin's gift.) For King's and Planets literally throws all of Mr. Canin's previous preoccupations into one tale. What's good in it, we've read from him in TPT. What's a failure we've seen too much of already (Emperor of the Air should have died in the workshop, in my humble opinion); and by the fourth book one can't help but to expect he get it worked out. The problems in this book are not a result of over-ambition (not that it directly applies here, but there's actually no such thing) but a damaged sense of completeness by the author, and, quite possibly, an expiration of talent and lack of fundamental skill. The best parts of For Kings and Planets (Marshall's insecure tendency to adorn his already colorful history are rich and complicated lies; the playing out of the primary, somewhat questionable friendship) do not succeed in carrying this book. This book is about character, and how will and fate battle to create it. But in the end (perhaps by the middle) all character has been drained by continuous vague innuendo and unrevealed motivation. Is Orno's resolve stronger as a result of his infidelity? Is Marshall better off after his father's death? It seems Mr. Canin would have concerned himself with these abandoned instruments before sewing up the wound. I, for one, am really sorry he didn't. My biggest concern when I finished this book was the ending itself. Not that it was abrupt, uncertain and of wobbly construction (which it was), but that it frightened me in its implication of "sequel". I cross my fingers I am wrong and that many smart acquaintances of Mr. Canin's in Iowa will advise him against resurrecting Orno the orthodontist, the main man of Maine. I'll return to The Palace Thief every now and again, but For Kings and Planets is too great a disappointment to relive.
Rating: 
Summary: a very well written, very likable novel
Review: For Kings and Planets was one of the best books I've read all year (and I'm up to about 50). Unlike some of the other reviewers, I found the very typical Midwesterner a unique protagonist and thoroughly enjoyed reading of his seduction by the world and its offbeat inhabitants. What made this book stand out, however, was the way in which Canin allows him to play out; Orno judges without judging, and we all should be so clever.
Rating:
Summary: There but for the grace of God go I.
Review: Like all the greatest fiction, Canin's "For King's and Planets" allows the reader simultaneously to fall in love with the characters and to thank God he is reading about their lives and not living them. This coincidence of feeling -- a sense of identification with and empathy for the characters, a desire to steer them away from the course they've set for their lives, an acknowledgement (as with our own lives) that eventually this is merely another experience of the world -- provides a powerful force that urges the reader through the book. Add to this an ability to create phrases from our language that by themselves will soothe your soul, and you realize again the wonder of the best fiction. Read this book, then read Canin's others.
Rating: 
Summary: A thought-provoking book, but weak character development.
Review: A truly thought-provoking book. "For Kings and Planets" can be enjoyed as a pleasant read or much more if the reader finds him/herself connecting with one of the main characters. I found the work almost poetic in the sense that, to me at least, there were rich allusions behind the words. The story's ending, however, might leave the reader unsatisfied, almost as if the author himself was not yet finished.
Rating: 
Summary: Great main character
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed For Kings and Planets, mostly because of the sophisticated, clever dialog and the excellent characterization of Orno. Orno was a very sympathetic character, and his antagonist Marshall was a totally unlikeable one.
Rating:
Summary: A good solid read
Review: Very well written, with good characters and a tale that pulls you along. The ending is a bit anti-climactic, but otherwise one of the better books I've read this year.
Rating:
Summary: No thrills, no surprises
Review: Not the worst book I've read this year, but by no means one of the best. From the first page, when we are introduced to one "Orno Tarcher" from the midwest, I knew we were in for some serious manipulating on the part of the author. I was right. Velvet smoking jackets came later. Maybe Canin should stop watching soap operas and read some good books on developing characters. John Gardner comes to mind.
Rating:
Summary: Hell is full of all types; accountants, judges, book critics
Review: I enjoyed this book. The characters are interesting and the story is wonderful. I am still mulling it over. If you enjoyed Msr. Canin's previous books, you will probably like this one as well. I found his second novel more similar to The Palace Thief than Blue River.
Rating:
Summary: A novel slump
Review: Ethan Canin, a superior writer of short fiction (certainly one of the best of the post-Raymond Carver generation) has yet to prove his talent as a novelist. There is no sin in this, though it is sad that he and his critics seem to feel that his ability must accommodate itself to the longer - and very, very different- form. It's sad because it results in something unworthy of Canin's skill as a creator of believable, complex people with believable (and deeply human) emotions and thoughts who have insightful (and wonderfully-presented) epiphanies. In For Kings and Planets the protagonist is never more than a dimly-imagined shade. No less unformed are the subsidiary characters, both major and minor: there is his friend Marshall, clearly meant to be the roman candle of this work, whose main problem turns out to be that he is an overly-intelligent, empty-souled, alcoholic Hollywood hyphenate (there's a surprise) to whom the protagonist passively reacts and reacts and reacts; his parents are salts of the earth from the salt of the earth, the midwest; his father-in-law, a Columbia biology professor rivals in emptiness Marshall (Prof. Emerson's specialty is invertebrates: there's a surprise); and an assortment of clichéd NYC undergrads, clichéd Mainers, clichéd Hollywooders, clichéd dental students, and so on: not a fresh face in the bunch. One of his silliest errors is calling forth The Great Gatsby, the last book a writer of Canin's fine though finite talent would want to evoke in a book about a young midwesterner-come-to-New York who is smitten by the promise of the city and by a dashing, more experienced, empty, enigmatic antagonist. He sets the end of the novel in Maine. But it's a Maine I don't know. Want to see rural Maine? Read The Beans of Egypt, Maine by Carolyn Chute. (For that matter, want to see the burned out Hollywood and Hollywooders? Read Nathaneal West. Want to see the glory of New York architecture? See Manhattan?) He writes about a nice man, (much too) rare in contemporary fiction. Want to read a book about a nice man? Read John Casey's superb and superior Spartina (there you also get, by the way, a view of the southern New England area - RI in Casey; the Cape in Canin - that Canin flails at). Without beating this to death: everything Canin tries to do - in every area by which you can judge a work of long fiction - has been done better. Canin seems to be trying too hard to be a novelist; he's pressing, as one might say about Sammy Sosa in a slump; the events, characters, even plot, do not grow organically out of anything that seems to matter. . . to Canin or to us. Too much is self-conscious (the use of Auden, Whitman, Fitzgerald, etc. is glaringly so). He tries too hard for fine writing (the novel is lacking in this, by the way, if we define fine writing as that which is exactly right for character, place, theme): we would like writing that is honest, no - that is unfair - "fitting." What the book lacks, in a few words, is a sense of organicism. But it is an honorable work, and a compassionate one. Yet to say, as did the Times's Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, that this book "is too suspenseful and surprising even to be hinted at" in his review is to say that he had a deadline to meet and couldn't be bothered. It's poppycock. There is not a suspenseful or surprising thing in For Kings and Planets: and to pretend that the book is something it isn't is to demean what is neither more nor less than a pleasant read. No mean feat and not something to be sneered at, insulted, or overpraised. Let's leave it at that and look forward to Canin's next book.
|
