Along its familiar paths, deep in the swamps of southern Louisiana, green bulges that could be knotty-headed gators occasionally break the bayou's tawny surface. Long beards of Spanish moss sway ominously from cypress and oak. And not far lies New Iberia, whose narrow alleys and Victorian buildings recall Burke's long-gone forebears. At 61, the writer still finds in this place not only the soul of his family, but also the soul of his art. But there's nothing literary about it.
Bad prose is as unwelcome in novels as it is in newspapers.