"The Wide Sea," included in that issue, was excerpted from Earley's debut novel, "Jim the Boy," which readers have been eagerly awaiting since his inclusion, three years prior to his New Yorker coronation, in Granta's "Best of Young American Novelists" issue.
In this regard, Earley seemed a rather unlikely member of that diverse and sassy cast, as if Opie Taylor had stumbled onto the wrong stage set. It was polite, sincere and ineffusive conservative but not reactionary ambitious but not difficult charming but not flirtatious. Unlike that smart-alecky David Foster Wallace or that grouchy Sherman Alexie or - especially - that icky William Vollman, Earley's writing seemed blithely inoffensive. Of all the literary styles represented in last year's "20 Writers for the 21st Century" issue of the New Yorker, Tony Earley's was the one you'd most likely take home to Mama.
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