Books: Bunker Country Without Bunker

William Carlos Williams By Robert Coles Rutgers University Press, 185 pp., $8.50 At a time when the lower middle class American seldom turns up in the arts except as Archie Bunker, it’s good to be reminded of William Carlos Williams, who knew and cared so much about the America of tenements and factories and suburban aspirations. It’s particularly good when Robert Coles does the reminding.

Coles, who won a 1973 Pulitzer Prize for his Children in Crisis, shares many qualities of mind and sensibility with his subject. Indeed, Dr. Williams was something of a mentor to Dr. Coles when the younger man was, in his turn, trying to fit together the interests of a doctor and those of a writer.

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Anne Crutcher

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William Carlos Williams By Robert Coles Rutgers University Press, 185 pp., $8.50 At a time when the lower middle class American seldom turns up in the arts except as Archie Bunker, it’s good to be reminded of William Carlos Williams, who knew and cared so much about the America of tenements and factories and suburban aspirations. It’s particularly good when Robert Coles does the reminding.

Coles, who won a 1973 Pulitzer Prize for his Children in Crisis, shares many qualities of mind and sensibility with his subject. Indeed, Dr. Williams was something of a mentor to Dr. Coles when the younger man was, in his turn, trying to fit together the interests of a doctor and those of a writer.