Crank: In Favor of the Outnumbered

Crank was written over a 30-year period, and covers the experiences of 40. Its “fiction” and “non-fiction” mix retains no more purity than does Mann or Conrad or the U.S. News. The settings – Copenhagen, St. Petersburg, Conakry, Brookline, Port-au-Prince and others – gave the props, not the essence of the experiences. Like strophic patterns of the French chanson, they stood the logic upright and sustained the tale, never diving for the observer’s heart but gaining ground on it by inadvertence. The foreign postings brought fresh news, conspiracy, javelins into the unsuspecting heart, then succeeded one another like lovers decamping before dawn.