April Newsletter
"Some books are to be tasted ... some few to be chewed and digested" (Bacon) ... here are some of both
Twain was right … while history does not repeat, it all too often “rhymes”. It is certainly doing so for me this year. As is being discussed in the media, 2024 is feeling a lot like 1968. I was a pretty nerdy and immature thirteen for most of that terrible year. I hated Middle School. Everything made me anxious. It was the only time I remember a real political difference between my mother (McCarthy and later Robert Kennedy) and my father (Nixon or anyone from the GOP). I remember lying in bed and hearing her scream from the den when Bobby was assassinated. The hippies both fascinated and utterly intimidated me. I hated that the cops were called “pigs”. From a mind only recently released from the cocoon of boyhood, the world felt unhinged and dangerous. I retreated into board games and science fiction.
The world of 1968 was, in fact, a very dangerous world – much more so than today despite the hysterics of Fox News and the Internet. Crime was approaching an all-time high, riots torched the cities, and rare acts of revolutionary violence were all contributing to extreme political and social responses on the left and right. Today we face similar polarization, similar weak or troubled politicians, increasing turbulence in the universities fueled by an unpopular war, a return of nuclear war fears, inflation and, to top things off … a Democratic Convention in Chicago! What does a person read in the midst of this ‘back to the future’ tsunami? If I am a representative party of one, NOT books about current affairs – coals to Newcastle. NOT traditional narrative histories as the past feels less and less comforting. NOT even (for me) military history as there is way too much rhyming going on to nestle up to a 600-page narrative on World War One (which I am trying to do). Angry identity driven fiction feels worn out, redundant in this angry world. Thus … I present an iconoclastic reading list in this unsettling spring.
Like before, the following list includes excerpts from the longer (but still brief) reviews on my website (please feel free to visit ... to forward to friends & family).
James by Percival Everett
“Whether he intended to or not, Everett’s beautifully realized, shockingly visceral and very funny rewrite may actually save Twain’s equally (for 1876) shockingly realistic and funny foray into race and what we are, as Americans and humans. It is a must read for anybody who has read Twain’s novel … a drop what you are doing must read.”
North Woods by David Mason
“Striking out on his own, making a stand of woods his place in time, David Mason’s elegiac utterly original North Woods is a “climate” novel that fits together, like a timeless set of tree rings, the past and the present and our ominous future.”
Smoke and Ashes by Amitav Ghosh
“After reading the new book by Amitav Ghosh, Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories, I realized that I have finally accepted the curtain being pulled, OZ being revealed for what it is. Ghosh is a writer for all seasons.”
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
“But like the colors in her mosaic cover, the characters hold up and their narratives eventually blend into a satisfying (maybe too satisfying) whole. It breaks no ground thematically embracing the all too familiar narrative cycle of love, loss, family, mistakes, and redemption. We live in an alienated world that requires the comfort that, like the weddings that end every Austen novel, things will come together … that we are not, in fact, in a constant state of fragmentation.”
November Road by Lou Berney
“I read it in three sneezing and sniffling sessions. It was terrific! It felt like the old days when I discovered Raymond Chandler, John D. McDonald, and the likes. Great characters getting better as the plot unfurls and twists combined with bits of penny philosophy and terrific dialogue … what’s not to like?”
Nuclear War by Anne Jacobsen
“Her story is in real time and covers the minutes after North Korea fires an ICBM at the United States. What follows is far from graceful reading with acronyms galore, ticking clocks, good photos and a style that mirrors the urgency of a ticker tape version of the end of the world. The horror is that it is all entirely according to the book, entirely plausible in every respect and easily read in one sitting, drink at hand.”
God’s Country by Percival Everett
“God’s Country is written from the unapologetic racist point of view of an ignorant, amoral, and violent white male in the dangerous unsupervised West. It is another imaginative tour de force – a black writer sitting in the shoes of a protagonist who would prefer to shoot or, at least, whip every black (or Indian) he encounters and is put in a tenuous situation of near total reliance on a capable, free thinking, free black man. It is shot through with dark humor and trots along at a very quick pace.”
I wish I could add two more books to the list but I was unable to finish them though they are admirable in so many ways. I recommend them and suspect that my failure with each may be more about timing with one and personal hang-ups with the other. The first was the critically acclaimed family saga set in the post 2008 world of Ireland, The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. I read one third and listened to the next third and just ran out of gas. It felt drop dead brilliant in places but it was too long, too uninhibited in its literary exuberance. I felt my life wasting away with the goal posts nowhere in sight. I was under the hood of this family and simply needed to get out for a bit of fresh air. But … I may be very wrong on this one. The Audible is fantastic and if you are ready for an intense immersion (an often hilarious one), I suggest listening to it. The second book is Amor Towles Table for Two - six stories about mostly New York City and a novella sequel to his utterly seductive first novel, Rules of Civility. The novella is set in Los Angeles and clearly tries to make the City of Angels a central protagonist. While the stories “work”, the novella feels forced both in intent and structure. The former benefits from Towles’ evident familiarity with the mores of New York while the latter suffers from an outsider’s reliance on worn LA stereotypes. Maybe only Joan Didion was truly equipped to write about these two wildly different but deeply similar worlds. Maybe I am just a bit too hard on the enviably gifted Towles. I continue to withhold my enthusiasm for the long and fantastical Gentleman in Moscow despite the sense that I am on thin ice critically. I would like Towles to take a good hard look at the work of Tobias Wolff and acquire more of an “edge”. Then again, it may just be envy …
Thank you for reading
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