SOURCE: Morris, Gregory L. “Nicholas Delbanco in the Middle Distance.” Critique 29, no. 1 (fall 1987): 30-45.

In the following essay, Morris discusses In the Middle Distance in terms of its multilayered narrative, observing that the novel is an examination of the self and the writer's struggle to accurately represent the truth about himself.

Nicholas Delbanco is the author of eleven published works of fiction. The earliest of these works were experimental, dense, and highly subjective; Delbanco's emphasis here was largely upon language, and in such novels as Grasse, 3/23/66 and Consider Sappho Burning, he strained the limits of allusiveness almost to the point of obsessive linguistic sport. In 1971, however, Delbanco published a book entitled In the Middle Distance, a sort of “fictional autobiography” that turned Nicholas Delbanco the author into Nicholas Delbanco the character. The novel's protagonist is an architect by the name of “Nicholas Delbanco,” and the book's “outer narrative...