19 August 2007
In which we have a look at this week's New York Times Book Review.
What a crazy issue! Two books about linguistics, two books by or about Jack Kerouac (midsummer madness?), two books (at least in part) about the Plame case - and so many Maybes! Between lukewarm reviews and manifestly borderline subject matter, this is the most dubious issue of the Book Review that I recall. I'm on the fence, too, about the Handke. I think it's a No, but because I've never read the author I don't have the guts.
Poems from Guantánamo is a very disturbing entry. This collection of Pentagon-vetted (and at the same time -denounced) verses from hell poses so many threshold questions that one's critical faculties threaten to shut down. I feel awful about putting it among the Noes, but I see no alternative.
Dwight Garner's not-really Essay, "The Road Goes on Forever," is a collection of twenty-four dust jackets that have adorned various translations of On the Road into foreign languages. My favorite visual: the Russian rip-off of the Jack Daniels label. (Remember, children: Jack Daniels is not bourbon. It is better than bourbon.) My favorite translation: Yolda, the Turkish title. I won't bore you with how Turkish works, but it's a quite literal translation even though it looks like just one word. Mr Garner openly pillaged the collection from Jack Kerouac Book Covers, a Web site. There's hope for me yet.
Yes
The following titles appear to deserve coverage in the Book Review. The reviews may still be inadequate or useless.
On the Road: The Original Scroll, by Jack Kerouac; edited by Howard Cunnell. Luc Sante argues that this transcript of the first draft of Kerouac's ultimately inimitable masterpiece is better than the published version.
It is a dazzling piece of writing for all of its rough edges, and, stripped of affectations that in the novel can someetimes verge on bathos, as well as of gratuitous punctuation supplied by editors more devoted to rules than to music, it seems much more immediate and even more contemporary.
Glad I waited!
House of Happy Endings, by Leslie Garis. Noting that "Dramatically dysfunctional families have become a staple subject for memoirists," reviewer Joyce Johnson praises Ms Garis for steering clear of such pitfalls as settling scores.
At times she gives in to melodramatic writing, but the story she tells of her family's disintegration and the genetic inheritance of mental illness, which she herself has grappled with, is one of those dark melodramas provided by real life. Her own role in the story, as her father's willing child confidante and to some extent his knowing but silent victim, adds a fascinating layer of psychological complexity to this unusual memoir.
In short: the book about a pathological situation that is itself quite healthy.
Maybe
It is difficult to tell whether these books are actually as indifferent or pointless as the reviews suggest.
Crossing the Sierra de Gredos, by Peter Handke (translated by Krishna Winston). Neil Gordon winds up his unfavorable review of this self-conscious misery of a narrative, with a deadly comparison
Like much of Sebald's writing, Handke's novel is denuded of joy. Unlike Sebald's, it also deprives its readers of hope.
Dangerous Admissions: Secrets of a Closet Sleuth, by Jane O'Connor. If Ms O'Connor's first book for adult readers - she's the creator of Fancy Nancy - is indeed worthy of the Book Review, Chelsea Cain's review fails utterly to make the case.
Five Skies, by Ron Carlson. Tom Barbash likes this book, but he wasn't given enough room to unpack his praise, and the novel comes off as what I'll call Western twee:
In keeping with his portrait of this makeshift male family, Carlson lingers on small moments of pleasure in their daily lives: the morning's first gulp of coffee, the sound of eggs cracking over a hot pan, the damp feel of a cold can of beer.
Um...: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean, by Michael Erard. Christine Kenneally admires this book, up to a point. "Investigating how talking gets tripped up is rewarding because it reveals the dynamic nature of the human mind, but also because people get so upset about it." In the end, however, her review suggests that this book is addressed (one might think, uselessly) to the people who get upset by bloopers. Mr Erard apparently studies what Mark Crispin Miller called "The Bush Dyslexicon," but without inquiring as to whether the President's errors might be quite intentional, as Mr Miller suspects they are (me, too).
Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind, by Margalit Fox. Leah Hager Cohen's enthusiastic review makes it clear that this book will be of great interest to anyone interested in linguistics. Curiously, however, linguistics is not a branchy of literature. This is a book for Science Times, not the Book Review.
The House the Rockefellers Built: A Tale of Money, Taste, and Power in Twentieth Century America, by Robert F Dalzell Jr and Lee Baldwin Dalzell. I have never visited Kykuit, the house in Pocantico Hills that started out as a conventional Victorian summer house but wound up an Italian villa with strong French accents. I've read about it, though, and it sounds quite frightful. Reviewer Dominique Browning quotes Edith Wharton, who never wrote about the house (and who probably never saw it, either), with malignant glee - such phrases as "the vulgarity of current decoration." This is a book for House and Home, not the Book Review.
Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense, by Scott McCredie. Another book for Science Times. Is balance, as this book argues the sixth sense? Or is it a collaborative project, undertaken by touch, sight, and hearing? Daniel R Smith suggests that the author was motivated by concern for the "epidemic of falls" that kills off the elderly with a one-two punch: broken hip, pneumonia. There is also a lot of stirring writing about Karl Wallenda, who certainly had balance in spades. Quand même...
Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of 'On the Road' (They're Not What You Think), by John Leland. Matt Weiland dislikes Mr Leland's pop, "Post-it note" writing, but praises it for making "a solid case for Kerouac's essential conservatism." "In the end," he writes, however, "Leland's book begins to feel as if it's missing the road for the gravel and tar." Shrug.
Off the Record: The Press, the Government, and the War Over Anonymous Sources, by Norman Pearlstine. Mr Pearlstine is the Time magazine executive responsible for turning over Matt Cooper's notes to Patrick Fitzgerald. Jacob Heilbrunn is, as one would expect, doubtful that he is the go-to thinker for a report on the beleaguered status of reportorial confidentiality. "Nor does Pearlstine really show that a war is taking place over anonymous sources." No apologias, please! We're busy!
The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington, by Robert Novak. And, on the facing page, the memoir of the man who wrote up the leak but never got in any trouble for it, an act of Teflon that I never quite understood. Jack Schafer judges this book about "Novak's noisome journalistic methods" to be a length of rope with which the author happily hangs himself.
Jubilee City: A Memoir at Full Speed, by Joe Andoe. Amy Finnerty seems to be quite literally fascinated by this piece of racy self-exposure: her review is virtually incoherent. A great deal of laddish prose is quoted. I smell infotainment.
No
These books, if they deserve coverage at all, ought to grace other sections of The New York Times.
Power Play, by Joseph Finder. Julia Scheeres (not my favorite reviewer) summarizes the story of this "corporate thriller" to the extent that avoiding spoilers allows, but absolves the book of any literary importance. "None of the characters have very much depth, partly because the dashing lead is sure to prevail." What is this book doing here?
Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak, edited by Mark Falkoff. Dan Chiasson writes, of the verses in this collection,
But the bulk of these poems are so vague, their claims so conventional, that they might have been written at any point in history anyone suffering anything.
Poems may well be an important book. But it is not an important book of poetry, or of any other kind of literature. It's value is entirely political, as a rally against torture. In the end, Mr Chiasson concludes that the book was effectively edited by the Pentagon, which released the poems.
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