William McPherson reflects on going from critic to novelist

One of the most memorable (if belated) literary debuts of the past 30 years was by William McPherson, whose "Testing the Current" — an exquisite, semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel set in the late 1930s and early '40s in Grande Riviere, a small industrial city in northern Michigan — appeared to nearly universal acclaim in 1984, when the author was 51.

By Kevin Nance

January 12, 2013