Old Media Monday: Reviewing the Reviewers

New York Times:

• Sunday Book Review cover: Robert Pinsky on While They Slept: An Inquiry into the Murder of a Family by Kathryn Harrison: "Like Jody Gilley’s example of the Bosporus — a strait connecting two separate masses — her brother’s vision, of the desolate rescued by the mute, suggests the unspeakable isolation of ruptured lives, and the reparative need to speak of that isolation, as Kathryn Harrison does here. Her telling brings moral clarity to the dark fate of a family: the daylight gaze of narrative itself as a form of empathy."
• Kakutani on When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris: "With many of these tales, the reader has the sense that Mr. Sedaris is scraping the bottom of the barrel for material, writing for the sake of producing another book, vamping for time instead of looking within or trying something new.... The essays about Mr. Sedaris’s own life tend to leave the reader thinking he’s simply got too much spare time on his hands. He talks about doing crossword puzzles, making scarecrows out of record album covers to scare away birds banging into his windows, and finding ways to trap live flies so he can feed them to the spiders in his country house in France."
• Maslin on Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives by Jim Sheeler: "Major Beck’s utter dedication to his job is one thing that gives 'Final Salute' its strong backbone. This is not a maudlin book, despite the endless opportunities Mr. Sheeler had to make it one. Instead it adopts Major Beck’s quiet decency in his conduct and his empathy for people in dire circumstances. 'Maybe that’s what hurts me the most,' he says: 'that because I’m standing in front of them, they’re feeling as bad as they’re ever going to feel.'"
• Bryan Burrough on The Legend of Colton T. Bryant by Alexandra Fuller: "As a nonfiction writer, I get all twitchy whenever a novelist, or in this case someone who writes as well as a novelist, ventures into the world of hard-won facts. Because whew boy, can Alexandra Fuller write. In 'The Legend of Colton T. Bryant,' a slender volume that tells the story of a Wyoming kid who died in an oil-field accident, Fuller strings together sentences that are as beautiful as anything you’ll read in contemporary fiction. It’s not a stretch to call them poetry. But the more I read of this book and the more I marveled at Fuller’s evocative descriptions of sunrises and mountain lakes and boisterous rodeos, the more one question kept nagging at me: can this really be called nonfiction?"
• David Gates on The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie: "I’m probably not Rushdie’s target audience: in literature, at least, I find the marvelous tedious, and the tedious — as rendered by a Beckett or a Raymond Carver or even a Kafka — marvelous. But if I can upset myself over the plight of a traveling salesman who wakes up one morning as a bug, why did this ingenious and ambitious novel — no less than a defense of the human imagination — leave me unmoved?"

Washington Post:

• Ron Charles on The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski: "Sit. Stay. Read. The dog days of summer are nigh, and here is a big-hearted novel you can fall into, get lost in and finally emerge from reluctantly, a little surprised that the real world went on spinning while you were absorbed.... The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is an enormous but effortless read, trimmed down to the elements of a captivating story about a mute boy and his dogs. That sets off alarm bells, I know: Handicapped kids and pets can make a toxic mix of sentimentality., But Wroblewski writes with such grace and energy that Edgar Sawtelle never succumbs to that danger."
• Lily Burana on Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk: "To the last page, Snuff is a moralistic work, but not in the way of tedious, partisan bickering about the dangers of porn. Snuff is, instead, a meditation on immortality, ambition, the lure of risk, the need for stability and, ultimately, on leaving a legacy. The question isn't why Palahniuk would take on such an off-putting subject, but rather, what took him so long. Chuck and porn. Porn and Chuck -- the two go together like fists and brass knuckles, moth and flame: a fatalistic coupling that happens to be, also, a perfect match."

Los Angeles Times:

• Jane Smiley on What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn: "'What Was Lost' is a delight to read -- poignant, suspenseful, funny and smart. Whoops! Here we go again -- plot, characters, style, wit, themes, social commentary rising from the grave and engaging actual readers! It would be best for you if I said as little as possible about the plot. This is a novel that should have no jacket copy, no advance notices. It should come into your hands unheralded, because if you simply open to the first page and begin reading, you'll proceed in a state of innocent pleasure."
• David L. Ulin on Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles: "'Dear American Airlines' is a gimmick novel, which we approach with a certain suspension of disbelief. Even the most despairing passenger, after all, would never write a 180-page complaint to customer service, nor would he reveal in it everything about himself: the refund request as public confessional. Yet the concept works beautifully."

New York Sun:

• Benjamin Lytal on The Delighted States by Adam Thirlwell: "As a short book, "The Delighted States" would have been adroit and delightful, but it seems to need its size. It wants to be marvelous, a cabinet of curiosities and a canon at once.... The best criticism drops us down into a text, and shows us how it works or why it is unique. Despite its length, 'The Delighted States' does this only occasionally and briefly. It purports to prize detail, but every chapter moves swiftly toward abstraction; it is perhaps a book to be read at paced intervals, like a literary calendar. And yet, for its problems, Mr. Thirlwell's book remains an enormous trove, a resource that is often provocative and occasionally brilliant."

Globe and Mail:

• Alexandra Fuller (see above) on Twenty Chickens for a Saddle by Robyn Scott: "Robyn Scott is smart and charming and, at the age of 27, surely precocious to be coming out with a memoir weighing in at 464 pages. And yet, in this woman's hands, the length is justified. It's a fabulous read, rollicking, good-humoured and intensely sane in spite of selling itself, in part, on the shenanigans of her adventure-seeking 'deeply eccentric' parents. (Please, by southern African standards, these people are refreshingly, almost unbelievably, normal.)"

The Guardian:

• James Buchan on Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (coming to the US in October): "This terrific novel, the first volume in a projected trilogy, unfolds in north India and the Bay of Bengal in 1838 on the eve of the British attack on the Chinese ports known as the first opium war.... In bringing his troupe of characters to Calcutta and into the open water, Ghosh provides the reader with all manner of stories, and equips himself with the personnel to man and navigate an old-fashioned literary three-decker." And Adam Mars-Jones describes it as "Amitav Ghosh's remarkably rich saga ... which has plenty of action and adventure à la Dumas, but moments also of Tolstoyan penetration - and a drop or two of Dickensian sentiment."

The New Yorker:

• There's no new issue this week (they assume you are still halfway through the Fiction Issue (yes, with an Amazon box on the cover)), so go back and read the "new" (previously unpublished in English) Nabokov story, "Natasha": "As usually happens when the weather is mentioned, the others looked out the window. That made a bluish-gray vein on Khrenov’s neck contract. Then he threw his head back on the pillow again. With a pout, Natasha counted the drops, and her eyelashes kept time. Her sleek dark hair was beaded with rain, and under her eyes there were adorable blue shadows."

--Tom

Comments

[Dale Salwak on June 11, 2008 at 10:30 PM]

Excerpts from James M. Lang's Review of Dale Salwak's new book, TEACHING LIFE: LETTERS FROM A LIFE IN LITERATURE (University of Iowa Press, 2008, trade edition, hardcover) - CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, June 13, 2008

"[Salwak] has clearly thought long and hard about teaching, and has come away from it with both an unwavering devotion to his students and a wealth of interesting reflections on the classroom and our place in it. Often his insights come from surprising places or seem to spring from his deep knowledge of a wide range of literary authors and their work."

" . . . rather than citing prolifically the literature on human learning, Salwak seems to arrive at his pedagogical conclusions from his long experience and careful thinking about his own teaching."

"Perhaps most endearing of all, Salwak believes in his students and wants them to succeed. His descriptions of his classroom practices paint a picture of a teacher who has devoted his life to learning -- both his own and that of his students."

"Salwak writes well, with a strong eye for narrative and descriptive detail."

"I came away absolutely convinced that Salwak must be an excellent teacher, imaginative and industrious."

Excerpts from Bernadette Murphy's review of TEACHING LIFE: LETTERS FROM A LIFE IN LITERATURE - LOS ANGELES TIMES, April 29, 2008 (reprinted Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel, and others)

BOOK REVIEW
'Teaching Life' by Dale Salwak
A life immersed in literature and teaching.
By Bernadette Murphy, Special to The Times
April 29, 2008

"After 35 years in the trenches as an English professor at Citrus College in Glendora, author Dale Salwak has learned a few things. In his latest book, "Teaching Life," he assembles an epistolary memoir intended as a guiding light to neophyte academics.

"The letters are all addressed to "Kelly," the pseudonym Salwak has given to a student who died in a 1978 car accident en route to a meeting with him. But "Kelly" is really a composite of all the students he's ever taught who have expressed a desire to become English professors. In heartfelt missives, he responds to Kelly's imagined queries for advice and direction as she undertakes her early teaching years with the wisdom he's gleaned during decades in the classroom.

"The memoir's tone is a cross between that of a grandfather passing along life lessons to a granddaughter and that of a minister reminding his flock about the purpose and importance of their lives. This ministerial voice firmly believes in the almost sacred role played by college professors and conveys Salwak's immense passion and reverence for the vocation.

"It's clear that Salwak sees the English professor's role as crucial in helping to keep our humanity alive and our civilization thriving. His devotion shines through in the hands-on chapters, in which he imparts concrete suggestions, including advice on lecturing and the use of technology in the classroom, as well as specific methods of getting students to interact and become engaged with the material at hand. . . .

"Salwak's description of the exhaustive preparation he undertakes before teaching a new class shows how seriously he takes his profession; implicit is the fact that he would hold "Kelly" and all others to the same rigorous standards. . . .

"[Teaching Life] has much to offer prospective English professors, particularly Salwak's passionate belief in the power of education to shape lives in countless, important ways, and the consecrated role of professors to call their students to their higher selves. 'Teach as if your life (and theirs) depends upon it,' he writes, 'because it does'."