Toyland

by Mark Smith

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0007E24OO
• Release Date: January 1965
• Publisher: Little Brown
• Length: 245 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Flawed work of genius

How is it possible that Mark Smith, that great blazing star that for one glorius moment seemed poised to light up the entire firmment of American Literature has so quickly burned himself up and disappeared without a trace over the horizon? Make no mistake, Mark Smith could have been one of, no gawddammit, THE greatest American writer of the late 20th century. Nobody can read Death of the Detective and not walk away awestruck by the man's sheer unfathomable genius for writing, creating supporting characters more complex and real than any thousand lead characters in any thousand books, overall emerging in a work of hallucinatory power now, tragically, like Toyland out of print. As for Toyland itself, it was like a first draft of the Death of the Detective, irritating, annoying, repetitive, and yet just verging upon the wild and powerful genius that would so suddenly appear in Death of the Detective and the fabulously intricate personality sketch, the Middleman, now, alas, forgotten as well. Please, somebody out there, read read Toyland, read read Death of the Detective, read read the Middleman if you can find it somewhere anywhere - but don't read anything else by him, because if you do you will have no choice but to weep as I have for the impossibly brillant talent so inexplicably squandered in the later years in tomes of amazing triviality that read as if parodies of the greatness which was once Mark Smith.