James Lee Burke’s “Feast Day of Fools” is 463 pages of the kind of stuff a full semester of an English Lit course is made of.
Mr. Burke uses allegory, symbolism, and personification whilst interjecting bits of armchair philosophy and Freudian psychoanalysis as secret ingredients to this entirely movable feast of a highly seasoned literary delicacy. Burke revisits his main foil, Sheriff Hacberry Holland who has just enough baggage to make him step right up to but not cross the imaginary line; of which on the other side, proudly sits the villainous Preacher Jack Collins.
These two characters brilliantly move along parallel paths illuminating their moral compasses in word and deed until the final climatic showdown at what symbolically could be Hades.
But what about the showdown and the lesson learned from this vividly and intensely written thriller/drama? Do we have a wildly action packed adventure culminating to “the more things change, the more things remain the same” or is it as Burkes alludes “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust”
In the end, I find this quote by Burke’s namesake quite appropriate as an epilogue:
"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing."
-- Edmund Burke
www.jamesleeburke.com
Reviewed by: JRS
No comments:
Post a Comment