SOURCE: "Too Great a Sacrifice," in Washington Post Book World, Vol. XXVI, No. 39, September 29, 1996, p. 5.

West is an author and critic. The following is his highly favorable review of The Cattle Killing.

One of the men within John Edgar Wideman believes that over the centuries irreparable harm has been done to the black race, and he agonizes over this in his eight novels. Another Wideman, the thinker and scholar, is the Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Rhodes Scholar and two-time winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award. A third Wideman is the lyrical novelist, a stylist dedicated to reverie and musing, little concerned with plot or continuity, almost a symbolist. His novels fuse these simultaneous selves in varying ways and by now compose a shimmering collection. Few American novelists offer a mix this complex or satisfying, and Wideman's new novel gives us more of the same.

Let me explain. At...