{"id":15943,"date":"2021-11-02T20:05:45","date_gmt":"2021-11-03T00:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15943"},"modified":"2021-11-02T20:08:23","modified_gmt":"2021-11-03T00:08:23","slug":"d-keith-manos-topless-reviewed-by-national-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15943","title":{"rendered":"D. Keith Mano’s ‘Topless,’ reviewed by National Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Our friend Dave Lull<\/strong> recently sent me a link to a National Review<\/em> article reviewing the late D. Keith Mano\u2019s novel, Topless<\/a><\/em>, which was released 30 years ago and is (like most of his work) out of print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope it won\u2019t be offensive to our readers to link to this review by Michael Washburn: Topless, a Noir Tragicomedy that Anticipated the Scandals of the Present<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Topless<\/em> is the first-person account, in the form of diary entries, of a Nebraska-based Episcopal priest, Mike Wilson, who comes to New York after the death of a young woman named Rita and the disappearance of a man involved with her, who happened to run the Smoking Car, a strip joint in Queens. The man is Tony Wilson, Mike\u2019s brother. How pitifully unprepared poor Mike is for the world \u2014 of exhibitionism, prostitution, alcohol, and drugs \u2014 in which his brother thrived\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

If the concept sounds salacious, it is, but the book looks at all the sleaze with a Christian (if often distracted) eye. Tony Wilson knows from the beginning that he\u2019s playing with fire, getting involved in his brother\u2019s world. But he is full of rationalizations. In the end, what he discovers is as much about himself and his limitations as about the solution to the mystery. And there\u2019s a biblical twist at the conclusion that I\u2019ve never been able to get out of my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As reading matter for Christians, I can\u2019t wholeheartedly recommend the book (if you can find a copy). Author Mano, to the extent I understand him, struggled most of his life to find a Christian response to the sexual revolution, which seemed so overwhelming and permanent back in the \u201870s and \u201880s. (Little remains of it now, I\u2019d say, thanks to Feminism and Wokeness, except for its contempt for marriage and its reverence for abortion.) I don\u2019t think Mano ever really succeeded in his effort, even to his own satisfaction. The book does anticipate our own times in a way, as Washburn says, but in other ways it\u2019s hopelessly stuck in a cultural moment now dead and buried.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our friend Dave Lull recently sent me a link to a National Review article reviewing the late D. Keith Mano\u2019s novel, Topless, which was released 30 years ago and is (like most of his work) out of print. I hope it won\u2019t be offensive to our readers to link to this review by Michael Washburn: … Continue reading D. Keith Mano’s ‘Topless,’ reviewed by National Review<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14,15,16],"tags":[617,3926,1983,3925],"class_list":["post-15943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","category-reviews","category-the-press","tag-d-keith-mano","tag-michael-washburn","tag-national-review","tag-topless"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15943"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15946,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15943\/revisions\/15946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}