This beauteously drawn and colored graphic novel is a light fictionalization of the early life of Patricia Highsmith, the life that led her to write CThis beauteously drawn and colored graphic novel is a light fictionalization of the early life of Patricia Highsmith, the life that led her to write Carol (aka The Price of Salt). In an introduction, the author—a fan of Highsmith—is blunt about Highsmith’s misogyny, antisemitism, and general antisocial qualities, stating plainly that Highsmith was not a good person. Yet the comic itself is much kinder to her, making clear the deep shame Highsmith lived with and how it warped most aspects of her life.
Which makes this book sound like a bummer, but it’s actually great! It’s one of those perfect meldings of subject matter and visual style that can make graphic novels such a joy to read, and for all her many faults, the Highsmith of this book is exhilarating company in the way only a true iconoclast can be....more
When I reviewed the first Bibliophile volume, I mentioned how amazed I was that it recommended some books that I’d never heard of, given that I personWhen I reviewed the first Bibliophile volume, I mentioned how amazed I was that it recommended some books that I’d never heard of, given that I personally feel like I’ve heard of everything. Bibliophile: Diverse Spines is shorter than its predecessor, so before I even began it I again assumed that I would’ve heard of every book featured here. I was wrong again! So that in itself is great. This particular volume focuses on books by BIPOC and/or LGBTQ+ writers, and it offers plenty of fantastic-sounding reading suggestions as well as profiles of authors and mini-articles on indie bookstores. As always with Jane Mount books, the art is beautiful and will make you covetous of every book illustrated here. This is a great resource and a lot of fun to read. Very highly recommended!...more
My relationship with Louise Erdrich has been a bit tumultuous; I tend to prefer her more straightforward books, like The Round House, to her earlier (My relationship with Louise Erdrich has been a bit tumultuous; I tend to prefer her more straightforward books, like The Round House, to her earlier (to my mind more meandering) tomes. The Sentence was kind of a happy mishmash of these two styles. The novel, which takes place in 2020, brings in various elements, namely the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, the precarious state of indie bookstores, and a ghost that haunts the bookstore that’s at the heart of this novel. Some readers seem to feel this was too much to take on at once, but, you know, 2020 itself was a lot to take on at once. It’s nice to see a novel that addresses that. Plus, I just loved the characters—the narrator Tookie and her lively family, the eclectic bookstore employees, the aforementioned ghost, the bookstore itself . . . and Louise, the owner of the store, who Erdrich hilariously portrays as absentminded and kind of oblivious. I thought this book was fun and serious and original and completely endearing, but it’s pretty different from her others, so even if you don’t like this novel you don’t have to be discouraged from trying her other books....more
My feelings about so-called "guilty pleasures" are, I think, uncomplicated. Most of the time, the reason people feel guilty for liking the things thatMy feelings about so-called "guilty pleasures" are, I think, uncomplicated. Most of the time, the reason people feel guilty for liking the things that they like is because it's not considered cool to like those things. I don't have any time for that kind of guilt, and I think there's nothing more boring than worrying about what's considered cool and what isn't. But there's another kind of guilty pleasure: When you watch or read something that you know is actually bad for you, or bad for society as a whole. TV shows that perpetuate tired stereotypes, for example, or tabloid magazines that result in the actors and musicians we claim to admire being stalked by paparazzi 24/7. I can get as sucked in by these things as anyone, but I know I'll feel crappy afterward, so I tend to avoid them. Pretty simple distinction.
Arielle Zibrak feels differently. A good example may be one she cites: those columns in women's/teen girl's magazines where readers can write in to talk about their most humiliating experiences, often having to do with period mishaps and/or embarrassing themselves in front of their "crush." (Zibrak sees these columns as emblematic of the 1990s, but they've been around much longer than that.) I've always tended to think these columns were mildly harmful—basically teaching young women and girls that they're supposed to feel humiliated about normal human mishaps. Zibrak sees it differently. In her view, we're already well aware of all of these ways we can be humiliated in an unforgiving culture, and reading about other women/girls living through things we fear can be cathartic. Helpful, in other words, instead of harmful.
For me, this is a new way of looking at guilty pleasures, and between that and Zibrak's lively, smart writing, I was looking forward to a good reading experience. The first chapter, about romance novels (specifically those with dominant males), fit well with Zibrak's thesis: Given all the conflicting messages U.S. culture tends to give women about our sexuality, it—again—can be cathartic to see some of these conflicts play out within the confines of a story and come to some sort of resolution. With romance novels, Zibrak points out, the guilt can actually be part of the pleasure. This made perfect sense to me.
After that, unfortunately, things started to go downhill. The next chapter was about the guilty pleasure of "rich white people fictions"—i.e., movies where the (white) characters are clearly obscenely wealthy but it's just kind of treated as normal. The analysis of race and class issues in these films was interesting, but Zibrak's ultimate conclusions about why we enjoy these films as "guilty pleasures" were unconvincing. Ditto the next (and final chapter), about wedding movies, where Zibrak focuses a lot of her analysis on Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, which, uh, isn't a wedding movie.
I had other concerns. Zibrak has a strange focus on mostly older material. Why does the romance novel chapter focus on sentimental literature from the 19th century and romance novels from the 1970s instead of, say, Fifty Shades of Grey? Why does the section on rich white people fictions focus on Father of the Bride, of all things? I think this entire study would have been so much more relevant if it had centered on "guilty pleasures" of this particular moment. As it was, I had a strong feeling that most of this book was made up of recycled grad-school papers Zibrak had written years earlier.
My larger concern, though, was with the way Zibrak categorizes the guilty pleasures she discusses—romance novels, movies about rich whites, wedding movies and shows—as "femme." I no longer understand what "femme" even means these days (feel free to clue me in in the comments, but be nice—I did google it and didn't find anything useful), but deciding certain guilty pleasures are "femme" was too essentialist for my tastes. So if it's "femme" to like romance novels, what's it called if I, a cis female, prefer classics instead? Is that "butch"? Masculine? Or what? I find that whole thing exhausting. When can we just get rid of all that stuff and just be who we are? Soon, I hope!
Near the end of this short book, Zibrak refers to the way we process guilty pleasures as "deep-love/surface-hate." For some guilty pleasures, I wonder if the way we truly feel is precisely the opposite: "deep-hate/surface-love." This is the conflict I would have liked to see this book explore. I suppose I can't fault the book for not being exactly what I wanted, but what I got instead was a disappointment either way.
I received this advance review copy via NetGalley. Thank you to the publisher....more
All reading has to offer is a particular, irreplaceable internal experience. Readers should keep faith that that experience is enough. We should fightAll reading has to offer is a particular, irreplaceable internal experience. Readers should keep faith that that experience is enough. We should fight for it, especially if that fight is against our own sense of obligation to the world.
I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out how to review Books Promiscuously Read, a book divided into five distinct parts. The first, shortest part, "Propositions," broken into short, varied sections, deals with the desire to read, how it often conflicts with grown-up life, and how we should nevertheless view it as honorable and necessary.
the opposite of play in a child isn't work. // The opposite of play in a child is reality.
The second part, "Play," pivots to more conventional literary criticism, discussing the effect of constant reading on Don Quixote's sense of reality, before moving on to the relationship between reader and writer in Elizabeth Bishop's poetry, the use of language in Don DeLillo's Underworld, Christopher Bollas's writings on psychoanalysis, Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, and more. It's dense, heady stuff, but its main point, about the way a reading requires the reader to enter a liminal space of interplay with the mind of the writer, was one that rang true and really appealed to me.
The greater the claims a social system makes on an individual, the graver the transgression of reading will be. Where a threat to the system exists, volunteers will appear spontaneously to monitor and minimize it.
As White points out, Don Quixote was able to engage in all kinds of reading-inspired shenanigans without real consequences because he was a man. In Part III of this book, "Transgressions," White explores, among other things, the effect of reading on those less privileged: How knowledge brings unspeakable pain for Frankenstein's monster, for example, and how literacy brings similar pain but also liberation for writers like Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown. Dorothea in Middlemarch, White points out, "is as book-crazed, in her way, as Don Quixote," but because of her sex this is seen as transgressive in a way it isn't for him, and her steps out of bounds will thus be viewed more harshly. Less abstract than Part II, this chapter was probably my favorite, fully absorbing and fascinating even though (I admit it) I haven't yet read Middlemarch.
There are times when our reading is so good it causes us to look up from the page—when our reading is so good it makes us stop reading.
I've been there! In Part IV, "Insight," White further explores what the reader can get from reading: the insights that can accrue, but only as we allow the necessary time to take in the words, to remove the barriers to insight we tend to place in our own way, to return again and again to the place of receptivity reading provides. More poetry—Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, among others—illustrates her point, and this was the moment when the book fully came together for me, when I felt that sense of interplay between White's mind and my own, and when her writing became the most loose and enjoyable.
What matters is staying attuned to an ordinary, unflashy, mutely persistent miracle: that all the books to be read, and all the selves to be because we have read them, are still there, still waiting, still undiminished in their power.
In Part V, "Conclusions," White returns to the style of Part I, making a variety of points in a series of short sections. What most hit home for me: The portrait of the girl twelve-year-old girl reading and rereading everything in sight, fully absorbed, not yet aware that this passion will not be welcomed in many quarters, that because she is female, her interests will be seen as in need of "revamping." In the face of this, White advises that "if we are lucky, and resilient, and vigilant about respecting our instincts for what feeds us best, grown men and women can practice reading like girls. It goes like this: pick up a book and forget who you are."
So that's it! I think you can tell from the quotes above whether you might enjoy this book. As for me, I rarely read literary criticism of this sort, but the close readings White provides here were exhilarating and inspiring. In exploring the transcendence of reading, White actually tries to provide that experience for her reader, and in my estimation she succeeded.
I received this ARC via NetGalley. Thank you to the publisher....more
This is an endearing graphic novel about a writer who experiences the dual horrors of (1) being accused of a murder he did not commit and (2) going onThis is an endearing graphic novel about a writer who experiences the dual horrors of (1) being accused of a murder he did not commit and (2) going on a book tour. I enjoyed how it was simultaneously harrowing and full of gentle humor. The art, mostly city scenes, was lovely. Would read again and probably will....more
I'd been spending my professional life, at GQ and Esquire both, reading fiction by men about men.... There sure were a lot of trains. Why were there sI'd been spending my professional life, at GQ and Esquire both, reading fiction by men about men.... There sure were a lot of trains. Why were there so many prostitutes? And why were so many of the women dead?... Oh, if I had a dime for each time I read the sentence "She made me feel alive ..." (to which my private stock response was always "And you made her feel dead"). (p. 152)
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"I'm sorry I'm being so outspoken and bad-tempered," [David Foster Wallace] said. "I seem to have no filter when I talk to you. It's weird."
"Not a problem," I said. (p. 166)
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There's more than one way to look at In the Land of Men. For me, the most obvious way to look at it is as a source of literary and publishing gossip. Adrienne Miller worked as the fiction editor of Esquire from 1997 to 2006, and the stories she has to tell about writers, editors, and publishing are the kind of thing I want to be reading all the time. If every person who worked in publishing before the internet took over wrote a memoir about their experiences, I would read them all. I just can't get enough, and the whole time I was reading this book it was all I wanted to do.
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Of course, there's more to it than that. Miller became the fiction editor of Esquire at age twenty-five. It was a lot of power for a young woman and she had a good mentor, but it was a men's magazine and circumstances were not always ideal. The 1990s were an interesting time in that it seemed that a lot of progress had been made toward gender equality, and for a lot of men who considered themselves progressive and liberal and nonsexist, that seemed to translate into... freedom to be sexist. They seemed to feel that since they believed they were progressive and not sexist, by definition nothing they said or did could be considered sexist, even if it was actually sexist. And since we were all equal anyway, what did it matter? Certainly this book is full of examples like that; Miller experienced some truly outrageous behavior on the part of the men around her, and the recounting of it here is both the background and the foreground of In the Land of Men.
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In the Land of Men is also the story of Miller's romantic (albeit mostly long-distance) relationship with David Foster Wallace. Miller becomes Wallace's editor for a story at Esquire, and he pretty much immediately moves in on her; it's uncomfortable for the reader, who senses that if Wallace had had more twentysomething tall blonde female editors, he'd have done exactly the same thing to all of them. The relationship ultimately doesn't work and Wallace comes off badly; he's possessive and jealous even after he moves in with another woman (!), and he implies Miller, and women in general, are just not that smart in comparison to men. But Miller continues to have a relationship with him, in one way or another, for years; she clearly saw something in him. This part of the book is like having a long, one-sided conversation with a friend in a bad relationship; she recounts his misdeeds and overanalyzes his behavior, but always maintains that he has a good side that makes the whole thing worthwhile. Sometime you believe her and sometimes you don't.
***
Miller makes a point of noting that, during her tenure as Esquire's fiction editor, she hired as many women as she could, albeit in mostly low-level positions. She also mentions in passing that she edited several female writers in addition to all the men (Jeanette Winterson is one I recall). Yet so little ink is spilled on these relationships or experiences. In the Land of Men is in part a book about the sexism of the 1990s publishing industry, but it is also preoccupied with only one writer: the white, male David Foster Wallace. It's hard not to feel this book perpetuates some of the very same sexism it's calling out. "This is my story," not Wallace's, Miller often reminds both herself and the reader, and sometimes it's a reminder that we need. For a reader like me, In the Land of Men has much to recommend it, but like Miller and Wallace's relationship... it's complicated.
I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you to the publisher....more
I've always been a big fan of what Cathleen Schine has to offer: Comfort reads that are smart, funny, and well-written. (She puts me in mind of Meg WoI've always been a big fan of what Cathleen Schine has to offer: Comfort reads that are smart, funny, and well-written. (She puts me in mind of Meg Wolitzer, but a bit on the lighter side.) I've read three of Schine's other novels and all three have been 4-star reads for me. The Grammarians, then, should have been an obvious slam dunk: It's about identical twins, one of whom is a a writer, the other of whom is a copy editor. I'm an identical twin AND a copy editor! How could this go wrong?
Well, it went a little wrong. Too many points of view, for one—why not just focus on the twins? And I found the relationship between the twins to be a little unrealistic, hard to relate to. The beginning, when the twins graduated from college and moved to seedy 1970s Manhattan, was fun, but as they got older things got a little slower and a little stodgier. Ultimately this was enjoyable, but not as enjoyable as my past experiences with Schine.
I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you to the publisher....more
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. I opened them and asked my seatmate for the time. We were still hours away, and I willed the seconds to pass, eveI closed my eyes and tried to sleep. I opened them and asked my seatmate for the time. We were still hours away, and I willed the seconds to pass, even as I had an image then of the death moment as a fracture that had split my life in two, and every minute, every mile, was a measure of the growing distance between me and the part of life I much preferred. Some ten years later, I'm still on that train.
The writing in this book is almost too good. In All the Lives We Ever Lived, Katharine Smyth intertwines a tale of the life and death of her father with wisdom she's gleaned from her favorite book, To the Lighthouse. It's a neat hook to hang a memoir on, but Smyth doesn't really need it. Perhaps this isn't surprising given that she reveres Virginia Woolf, but the personal (non-Lighthouse) parts of this book are so well done, vivid, eloquent, moving and (huge compliment from me) well-organized and cohesive, that all the Woolf stuff, interesting as it is, isn't really necessary. I would've happily read more about Smyth's own life instead! Still, as far as criticisms go, that's a pretty mild one. I genuinely did like all the explication of To the Lighthouse; I just liked the personal stuff more. Overall, I was really impressed by this. Recommended!...more
I'm a fan of Jane Mount's art (I even have one of her prints), so of course I loved this. Mount says in the introduction that one of her goals is to iI'm a fan of Jane Mount's art (I even have one of her prints), so of course I loved this. Mount says in the introduction that one of her goals is to increase the reader's TBR list exponentially. I was skeptical of this because I feel like I've already heard of every great book out there, but I actually did learn about a few excellent-sounding books from reading this! Obviously recommended for bibliophiles....more
I'm somewhere between 2 and 3 stars so I'll be nice and round up. I find that I don't have the energy to say much about this book. Sometimes I enjoyedI'm somewhere between 2 and 3 stars so I'll be nice and round up. I find that I don't have the energy to say much about this book. Sometimes I enjoyed Leslie Schwartz's insights, and sometimes she drove me up a wall. Sometimes I was entertained and sometimes I was bored. This isn't a terrible book, but I wouldn't actually recommend it to anyone, not with all the other, better books out there. But, you know, read the description and decide for yourself whether you want to try it. Whatever....more
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