Rules for Old Men Waiting (Random House, 2005) is both a good and bad novel. Some of the time it's rather wonderful, but there are long stretches that are maximally pedestrian. It's distinctly odd that the story-within-a story — a WWI morality about good and evil in the face of combat– is gritty and real and exciting, while the frame is flaccid and unconvincing and also offers some of the woodenest dialog I've read in the new millennium. Rules for Old Men Waiting is a first novel by a sexagenarian that recounts the story of an old man who's decided to devote his last days to writing fiction. It's less involuted than it sounds but still a little too self-consciously theatrical. Pouncey must have had tons of trouble bringing the novel to a close, because in the last few pages he invents a new character to help him staple on an ending. Nevertheless, the novel is an honest, respectable effort — and extremely effective when Pouncey sticks with his strengths.
My geezer group is going to read Rules for Old Men Waiting later this month, so stay tuned for a fuller report.
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