The comparison of McGuane to Hemingway is still appropriate, perhaps now even more so. McGuane himself has noted that while Hemingway-bashing is a kind of approved stance in American letters, he remains in McGuane's words "a figure that casts a tremendous shadow for better or for worse." Here, with McGuane's focus on an isolated man fighting the forces of engulfment, and in his lean and highly polished prose style, the comparison to Hemingway is accurate. The most important precedent, however, is to be found in McGuane's earlier work, to which Keep the Change serves as a kind of culmination.

An essentially realistic manner comes to the fore in Keep the Change as well. The novel elicits a sense of American life as filled with "things," and with the struggle of honest efforts on all fronts. McGuane devotes much space to the business of ranching...