On Franzen’s “Farther Away”

My review of Farther Away, Jonathan Franzen’s new essay collection, ran in today’s Boston Globe. You can get to the review here. And here’s a chunk of the piece:

The rest of the collection isn’t as engaging. Franzen decries the vulgarity of contemporary technology; Franzen writes about not having a TV on 9/11; Franzen discusses literature and writing, which necessarily means Franzen discusses Franzen.

The problem reveals itself here, you see, because most of “Farther Away” takes Franzen himself as subject. Self-obsession is a hallmark of the essay. From Montaigne to Joseph Mitchell and beyond, sensibility, voice, and insightful idiosyncrasy offer the compelling arguments for publishing them. But Franzen isn’t Mitchell, and he’s surely not Montaigne. High standards, to be sure, but Franzen often invites himself into discussions of literary greatness, even though what we have to contend with in this collection isn’t the shadow of greatness so much as the stain of celebrity. Here’s my point: Without knowing that these essays are the product of Jonathan Franzen, many don’t merit re-publication.

Choose Your Own E-Venture

Another of my posts for the Boston Globe’s “Off the Shelf” blog.

Nobody would claim that the “Choose Your Adventure” books popular in the 1980s were great art, but these books were a great idea. Before you can become a book lover – so before you can condescend to people who “read for plot” – you get jazzed about reading because of sheer engagement with the narrative. And these books, usually mysteries pitched to the 10-14 year old age range, are nothing but juicy plot.

“Choose Your Own Adventures” are interactive tales told in the second person. Every few pages the protagonist (i.e. you) faced a decision. “You hear someone trying to pry open your window. If you choose to investigate flip to page 18. If not, turn to page 20,” or something like that. I’m sure that I wasn’t the only person whose first flaunting of authority was ignoring a stern librarian’s injunction to not bend or write on book’s pages as I marked each difficult decision in “my” adventure. One must be thorough about possible worlds.

The Hemingway Letters

Roberto Hererra, Byra ("Puck") Whittlesey, John (Bumby) Hemingway, Spencer Tracy, Ernest and Mary Hemingway, and unidentified bartender at bar at La Floridita, Havana. c1950s. Copyright: unknown.

Since the first of the year I’ve been an occasional contributor to the Boston Globe’s “Off the Shelf” book blog. Here’s the most recent entry.

“We have come at a most interesting time,” Ernest Hemingway wrote in a February1953 letter to his friend Gianfranco Ivancich, relaying the rather callous observation of some literary tourists who had dropped by Hemingway’s house in Cuba unannounced. “Just in time to see the great Hemingway cry because he has to kill a cat.”

“Miss Uncle Willie,” Hemingway wrote of the cat, which had been hit by a car. “Have had to shoot people,but never anyone I knew and loved for eleven years. Nor anyone that purred with two broken legs.”

This letter is one of fifteen from Hemingway to Ivancich that have recently been made available to scholars by The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Written between 1953 and 1960 the letters touch on a variety of topics, such as the death of Willie, complicating the stock image of Hemingway the macho, blunderbuss-toting bon vivant. All of the letters reveal the deep affection that Hemingway felt for Ivancich.

When I Was A Child I Read Books

My review of Marilynne Robinson’s When I Was A Child I Read Books was the lead book piece in today’s Sunday Boston Globe. You can find the piece here, and I’ve pasted in the start of the review below.

Here’s a representative passage from one of the collection’s strongest essays, “Imagination and Community” (If you’re interested, click here to listen to a recording of entire essay, as read by Robinson in the audiobook version of When I Was A Child I Read Books):

I have talked about community as being a work of the imagination, and I hope I have made clear my belief that the more generous the scale at which imagination is exerted, the healthier and more humane the community will be. There is a great deal of cynicism at present, among Americans, about the American population. Someone told me recently that a commentator of some sort had said, “The United States is in spiritual free fall.” When people make such remarks, such appalling judgements, they never include themselves, their friends, those with whom they agree. They have drawn, as they say, a bright line between an “us” and a “them.” Those on the other side of the line are assumed to be unworthy or respect or hearing, and are in fact to be regarded as a huge problem to the “us” who presume to judge “them.” This tedious pattern has repeated itself endlessly through human history and is, as I have said, the end of community and the beginning of tribalism.

…

It is simply not possible to act in good faith toward people one does not respect, or to entertain hopes for them that are appropriate to their gifts. As we withdraw from one another we withdraw from the world, except as we increasingly insist that foreign groups and populations are our irreconcilable enemies. The shrinking of imaginative identification which allows such things as shared humanity to be forgotten always begins at home.

And here’s a slice of my review:

In 1980 Marilynne Robinson published “Housekeeping,’’ a novel of staggering depth and beauty. The story of two sisters raised by a procession of their female relatives, “Housekeeping’’ is simultaneously grand and intimate, mythic and grounded in the rituals of daily life, lingering on resonances between daily domesticity and broader spiritual well-being. The novel received unanimous praise and a Pulitzer nomination, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award.

Then Marilynne Robinson stopped publishing fiction.

It’s a romantic assumption: Everyone has one novel in them. It would be more apt to say that most anyone can be induced by vanity or mania to produce a book-length manuscript. American literary history offers marquee support for this delusion, beloved books that seem solitary, brilliant flares. Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,’’ Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,’’ to name but two. So it wasn’t entirely surprising when Robinson appeared destined to occupy a small, albeit ravishing, spot in American literature.

A Fan’s Notes

It’s always frustrating to lead with someone else’s words, but a few years ago Walter Kirn said it best. Of Frederick Exley, author of one of the most blazingly depressing and hilarious minor American masterpieces, Kirn wrote: “Like Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf or anything by Antonin Artaud, Frederick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes is one of those books that gets pushed on you by crazy people.”

Kirn means that in a global sense – folks that are chock full o’ nuts – but I tend to think that people just go into full-on, hyperventilated Exely adoration. Exelytasy, or something, which must remain confined to A Fan’s Notes. Ex’s two other attempts are utter humiliations. But A Fan’s Notes?  That book is divine. I’ve never tried to write anything about it because it’s the kind of thing you want to keep to yourself. What’s it about? Among other things – alcoholism, thwarted ambition, shock therapy, writing, sex – it’s about Frank Gifford and The New York Football Giants, and it is one of the best non-sports sports books ever written.

So as we enter the final countdown to the Giants v Patriots (yes, I’m sorry, this is a Super Bowl post), let’s listen to Ex as he dilates on his adoration for the Giants, and football in general.

Why did football bring me so to life? I can’t say precisely. Part of it was my feeling that football was an island of directness in a world of circumspection. In football a man was asked to do a difficult and brutal job, and he either did it or got out. There was nothing rhetorical or vague about it; I choose to believe that it was not unlike the jobs which all men, in some sunnier past, had been called upon to do. It smacked of something old, something traditional, something unclouded by legerdemain and subterfuge. It had that kind of power over me, drawing me back with the force of something known, scarcely remembered, elusive as integrity – perhaps it was no more than a force of a forgotten childhood. Whatever it was, I gave myself up to the Giant’s utterly. The recompense I gained was the feeling of being alive. – Frederick Exley, A Fan’s Notes

Patriots Suck!

Our Favorite Weapon – Glock

This Sunday’s New York Times Book Review includes a review I wrote of Paul Barrett’s Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun. Pull the trigger here.

A snippet:

The Glock is everywhere, in innumerable TV shows and movies, strapped to most law enforcement personnel, name-dropped in hip-hop songs. The no-­firearms sign posted at airports features the distinctive, squat Glock silhouette. As Barrett writes, the Glock is “the Google of modern civilian handguns: the pioneer brand that defines its product category.” Barrett argues that the Glock achieved such market penetration and cultural cachet as much because of timing and marketing as any native characteristic of the gun. Barrett’s argument isn’t unique — what business thrives without luck and opportunism? — yet on balance “Glock” offers an instructive examination of American weapons fetishism.

The Inquisitorial Impulse

The sun rises and sets on my writing today: in addition to the Thinking Small review that the San Francisco Chroncile ran today (see the previous entry), my review of Cullen Murphy’s grisly, wonderful God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World was the lead book piece in this Sunday’s Boston Globe.

Click here to read the entire review. Here’s how it gets going:

July 21, 1643 was a typical day during the Spanish Inquisition – hot and dusty, haunted by flimsy denunciations, and tinged with blood.

Over the preceding year or so a nasty, convoluted debate between some friars and members of what passed for the civil authority had raged. Each faction made accusations of witchcraft and blasphemy, and in a sudden eruption of violence a group of renegade church partisans attacked and slaughtered Luis de Rosas, a former governor. On this July day the newly installed governor apprehended eight men he divined were responsible for the killing of Rosas and, with the authority granted by the Inquisition, had the conspirators beheaded. In “God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World,’’ journalist Cullen Murphy quotes a tourist guide’s description of this town’s plaza as site of “the largest mass beheading of Europeans by Europeans in a continental American town.’’

The town in question? Santa Fe, N.M.

We rarely think of the Spanish imperial presence in North America, but that the Inquisition raged with such ferocity in what was to become US territory feels doubly strange. Like much of the world, New Mexico, Texas, and California all saw spasms of inquisitorial rage. What the world hasn’t seen, “God’s Jury’’ argues, is the Inquisition’s end. “Modernity . . . is not a time – it’s a place,’’ Murphy writes, quoting geographer David Harvey. Likewise, the Inquisition isn’t an institution so much as an instinct, one that persists.

Das Wagensreich

Today the San Francisco Chronicle published my review of Andrea Hiott’s Thinking Small: The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle. If nothing else, this must be one of the few pieces ever written that mentions both Bruce Springsteen and Adolf Hitler – and in the same sentence, no less.

You can find the review here. Here’s a bit from the piece.

The Beetle’s rise is in many ways synonymous with the ascent of the Third Reich, and the bulk of Thinking Small traces the political and economic conditions of the Reich. Apologies to Bruce Springsteen, but Hitler was born to run. The monster couldn’t drive, but he loved car culture. Hitler’s psycho-pedantry furnishes a minor theme. For instance, after seizing the Chancellorship, Hitler addressed the Berlin Auto show.  “In the next five years,” Hiott writes, “millions of Germans would die in Hitler’s war, but there he was, lecturing them about traffic accidents.”

Hitler’s autoeroticism connected to his martial dreams. By motorizing Germany and building easily navigable autobahns – the creation of a WagensReich – Hitler satisfied his fetish for German technical superiority while mobilizing a wartime population. This is well-turned soil, but Hiott masterfully aggregates an impressive amount of scholarship then overlays the Beetle’s history of failed designs and blown production schedules onto the well-known contours of the 20th^th century.

Louisville Music

I don’t really write about music – most people shouldn’t write about music. Seems to me that more you feel the songs, the more opaque, the less transparent the writing. So I’ll just say this: Louisville is on fire right now with King’s Daughters & Sons, Seluah, and Nathan Salsburg (Nathan’s not a native, but I’m drafting him).

They’re all so very different – from KD&S’s dreadfully beautiful epics and Seluah’s crushing Sabbath-inspired ferocity, to Salsburg’s staggering acoustic guitar show pieces – but all so very brilliant. These folks are all the real deal. Click through the complete post for more songs. And after that don’t be a prick: buy these records as soon as possible.

King’s Daughters & Sons, “The Anniversary”

Pity the Billionaire

This past Sunday – New Year’s Day – The Boston Globe ran my review of Thomas Frank’s Pity The Billionaire as the lead review in the books section. You can find the review here.

A bit from the piece:

Welcome to election year – we’ve started our initial descent. The Iowa caucus looms, and in 310 days the polls will open and we’ll respond to the ludicrously expensive carnival of recrimination, strategic cynicism, and merciless sanctimony of campaign politics. The next 11 months will deliver much over-hyped stagecraft and little statecraft. Rather than a substantive debate on the most fundamental issues confronting the country – issues that reveal radically different conceptions of politics and human nature, such as how best to steward the physical health and financial security of our fellow citizens – what we’ll receive is a series of well-financed caricatures of political engagement.

None of this is surprising.

What is surprising, according to Thomas Frank’s “Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right,’’ is that the American right not only retains legitimacy but has thrived despite the 2008 economic collapse and ongoing recession, the direct consequence, he says, of ever-expanding conservative influence. “Pity the Billionaire,’’ which inaugurates the extended political publishing season, offers a spirited, acerbic, stylish exploration of this Republican resurrection.

Boston Globe’s Favorite Nonfiction, 2011 Edition

Today The Boston Globe ran a list of my favorite ten nonfiction titles of 2011. Here’s a link, and here’s the list:

“Pulphead: Essays” by John Jeremiah Sullivan (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
“The Missing of the Somme’’ by Geoff Dyer (Vintage)
“Sweet Heaven When I Die: Faith, Faithlessness, and the Country In Between’’ by Jeff Sharlet (Norton)
“Blue Nights’’ by Joan Didion (Knopf)
“Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography’’ by Errol Morris (Penguin)
“Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution’’ by Mary Gabriel (Little, Brown)
“Arguably: Essays’’ by Christopher Hitchens (Twelve)
“Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere’’ by André Aciman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
“Adventures in the Orgasmatron: How the Sexual Revolution Came to America’’ by Christopher Turner (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
“Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President’’ by Candice Millard (Doubleday)

Evel-Knievel-on-Kierkegaard

Today The Boston Globe published my piece on criticism, as manifested by Lionel Trilling, Adam Kirsch, and George Scialabba.

I’ll be writing more about this topic, and this particular review, soon.  In the meantime, here’s something both amazing and stunningly boring: network television featuring Vladimir Nabokov and Lionel Trilling discussing Lolita.

[sic]

The San Francisco Chronicle asked me to write up a brief capsule review of Joshua Cody’s surprisingly delightful, harrowing, and sexy memoir, [sic]. I say surprising because for the last several years most of the memoirs I’ve read have been dull, uninspired tracts that seem to be not much more than vanity projects. Not so with [sic]. Cody does make himself look pretty cool at times – I know that I’ve never managed to have nights like his here in NYC, and his adventures take place when he busy trying to avoid dying from cancer -  but on balance the book offers an artful, stylish exploration of literature, sex, music, and death. What more could you ask for?

I’d quote from the capsule review, but it’s only about three paragraphs. Check it out here.

The Perfume of Experience – Andre Aciman on Writing, Exile, and Ambivalence

The Nov/Dec issue of Poets & Writers features my profile of novelist, essayist, and memoirist Andre Aciman. Andre is at the top of his game in his new essay collection, Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere, which means right now he’s at the top of the game. He’s a wonderful, sensuous, intelligent writer. I urge you to check out any of his books – and while you’re at it, pick up a copy of the magazine. The other profile in this issue is of the incomparable Joan Didion, so you’ll get to learn about two masters of narrative nonfiction.

Teju Cole wrote a generous, wonderfully appreciative review of Alibis in a recent issue of The New York Times Book Review. Check that out if you don’t trust me.

P & W hasn’t made the profile available online, so to whet your appetite below you’ll find a few excerpts from the interviews I conducted with Andre. These are things that didn’t make it into the published profile, so if you find this at all appealing, buy a copy of the magazine.

The Better Angels of Our Nature

Two weeks ago The Boston Globe ran my review of Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

A bit from the review:

If reason is humanity’s saving grace, our persistent downfall isn’t madness so much as morality, or what passed as morality for our “morally retarded’’ ancestors. People often feel that violence results from amorality. “On the contrary,’’ Pinker argues, “violence is often caused by a surfeit of morality and justice, at least as they are conceived in the minds of the perpetrators.’’

Progress against aggression occurs when societies “retract’’ morality from privileged, foundational positions. This retraction is “precisely the agenda of classical liberalism: a freedom of individuals from tribal and authoritarian force, and a tolerance of personal choices as long as they do not infringe on the autonomy and well-being of others.’’

This should be fine by everyone: The values of classical liberalism are better than those of theocratic irrationalism or predatory autocracy, two alternatives. Pinker gums up the works a bit, however, when he exhibits some of the chauvinism that often attends the celebration of liberal superiority.