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William Swanson, the reluctant hero of Katz's Florry of Washington Heights, living awkwardly in the 1990s, mysteriously begins to write the stories of the obsession that came on him in the 1960s when he suddenly remembered the murder of Florry and of the injustice he witnessed years before as a child. He seeks to reconcile the past and the Washington Heights of his youth with that neighborhood today. When he anonymously delivers these stories into the hands of his former gang nemesis/hero, Jack Ryan, the latter's careful, rationally structured life comes unglued. In this novel time folds into itself and compresses fantasy into reality, nudges the unknown into illumination, pushes narrative until it crumbles at its boundaries.

The last installment in a trilogy (Wier & Pouce and Florry of Washington Heights), Swanny's Ways has nothing in common with Swan's Way save sheer length. The book concerns the tribulations of one William "Swanny" Swanson, a self-involved person with supposedly endearing flaws, and his attempts to maintain romantic relationships after the death of Florry O'Neil, the object of a high school infatuation. Katz's detailing of obsessive desire is basically a written exercise in sophomoric and vindictive wish-fulfillment. With writing that appears to be embellished diary entries from the 1970s interrupted by passages of maudlin "highbrow" prose, it entirely convolutes story line, narration and characterization. One needs talent and skill to write a first-person narrative that smoothly pretends to the author, and that quality isn't here. Both bitterly misogynistic and race-baiting, Katz's sexual and solipsistic fantasies are been better suited for the couch of a therapist: in short, this is an attempt at narcissistic revenge masquerading as a work of experimental fiction. (Mar.) Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information.