The below blurbs are edited excerpts from my personal reading journal. I haven’t read much this year, but the most recent entries are entertainingly all over the place, in my opinion. There are spoilers for the one novel included, but knowing the plot in no way lessens the book.
Nobody’s Looking at You (Essays), by Janet Malcolm
There's something deceptively plain about Janet Malcolm's style. Her method relies heavily on quotes and summary, intelligent juxtaposition that only requires a few incisive sentences, or maybe paragraphs, to stake her thesis through the heart of her subject. (I don't mean that; just an image I couldn't resist.) But there is a lepidopterist's precision to what she does. Once pinned (Tolstoy writes with dream logic) the thesis always exists with snapshot clarity in the mind of the reader.
One of my favorite moments is found in her article on Joseph Mitchell's work (another and older New Yorker great). She describes Mitchell's surprising narrative turns, the way his essays seem to get lost in the obscure back alleys of his subjects’ monologues. Summary finished, paragraph break inserted, she gives it to us straight: “Where the hell is this going?”
I don't know how much I'll remember from this collection without being prompted. But if someone brings up pianists, I'll remember the details (if not the name) of the provocative prodigy whose personal motto lends the collection its title. I might even give Constance Garnett’s (updated) translations of Tolstoy prime place in my re-reads from here on out. Along with PD James—not quite a contemporary—Malcolm also thinks Alexander McCall Smith is comfort mystery remade as art. Fine! Fine! I will read him!
What I liked best, in some ways, were the tells that she is an ordinary, Hilary-voting type liberal (it seems), who remains a cool-headed dragon when considering literary merit. The groupthink of daily bustle doesn’t inhibit the originality of her prose. Her essay on Norman Podhoretz alone proves her steely temper, maybe timbre. Even so, I suppose someone has to watch Rachel Maddow. It might as well be Janet Malcolm, a woman with a mind illuminating enough to render even Maddow interesting, if only for a spell.
No One Left to Come Looking for You, by Sam Lipsyte
Is there anyone having more fun in the highfalutin' literary world than Sam Lipsyte? What’s great about this book is that it is a complete and utter triumph within its own parameters, and also a little clunky. Lipsyte’s a word wizard when he wants. He loves the rhythms of an insular half-slang. The book is funny, and the neo-noir is pretty accurate as a sincere sort of pastiche. The outsider detective, the street-level mistakes, etc., are all spot-on. In fact, if someone comes to this book not loving noir, I’m not sure its many layers would unpeel as they’re meant to (and which I savored).
Stupid, though, beyond grating to tie it to Donald Trump, the blonde villain who intrudes on the final third like a dark, schmoozing cousin to Tom Sawyer’s ruination of the climax of Huck Finn. Even worse to have the Epstein-like hanging of the main crony. Memes and headlines slapped onto an otherwise stirring piece of pop-punk comedic romanticism. The punk rockers at the center of the tale are dreamers suffering in the hope that aesthetic asceticism is true and good.
Oh well about Trump. Maybe that will age beautifully. If nothing else, the rock show at the end is perfect.
A Field Guide to the English Clergy: A Compendium of Diverse Eccentrics, Pirates, Prelates and Adventurers; All Anglican, Some Even Practising
by The Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie
The ultimate nightstand book. I can't remember half of it half as well as I should like; and I remember less than half of it half as well as it deserves. Maybe! Truly, almost none of the anecdotes sunk into my brain. But I enjoyed breezing along the Victorian follies, the piratical hobbies, the cross-dressing frenzies of Christianity's silliest sect. Long live the quirky Church of England, currently dying a thousand schismatic and bureaucratic deaths. The author’s sherry-drinking Wikipedian voice was the right pitch but too formulaic, and the birds-eye summarizing almost always too distant. Give me more of the pugilist preacher unpinning his shirt to punch a punk pilot for his prurient peeping. The specificity of the moment was perfect. All the same, a great book to have on hand, and having read it cover to cover, an even better book to pluck and skim at random.
Writing:
I wrote a sort of career retrospective on Connie Willis for LitHub about a month ago. I’m pretty sure the parts are greater than the whole, but I enjoyed sinking into Willis’s wry, charming, hair-raising, enthusiastic mind. Also, I spelled “Katharine” wrong, and every Kate in the world keeps commenting or emailing to tell me about it. They are not amused. They know where I live. They will Korrect me or die trying.
I love you all.