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Review of Noon in Florida
You don’t find books like this often these days.
Every single line is finely honed. Every word has its place. This is the stuff of Hemingway, Steinbeck, Carver, a throwback to times when prose was admired as an art in itself rather than a mere vehicle to the action of a story. This is the work of an authentic wordsmith.
Yea, I admire it.
Back in my youth, I came to my love of reading through this kind of writing. It was Steinbeck, Dostoevsky, Bukowski, and Jack Kerouac who all drew me in. Now, Noon In Florida by Jim Latham isn’t like Kerouac at all because Latham opts for stoicism and restraint in emotional undertone while Kerouac shot for rambling tragedy and exuberance, but they’re similar in that both authors labored over every sentence.
I don’t have to ask Latham if this is true. I can feel it when I read his writing. These sentences have been pruned, grafted, and reworked into polished finish.
For most popular books today, language is supposed to be invisible, to take a back seat to the story. Writers like Cormac McCarthy, for whom the language IS the story, are derided as much as they are praised for their devotion to their words. I’m one of the guys who loves and praised McCarthy.
I love language as an artform in itself. I appreciate writing that respects the beauty…
