Old Media Monday: Reviewing the Reviewers

New York Times:

• Sunday Book Review cover: Jonathan Lethem on 2666 by Roberto Bolaño: "'2666' is as consummate a performance as any 900-page novel dare hope to be: Bolaño won the race to the finish line in writing what he plainly intended, in his self-interrogating way, as a master statement. Indeed, he produced not only a supreme capstone to his own vaulting ambition, but a landmark in what’s possible for the novel as a form in our increasingly, and terrifyingly, post-national world. 'The Savage Detectives' looks positively hermetic beside it."
• Kakutani on Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan: "Although Fred Kaplan, the author of 'Lincoln,' never mentions Mr. Obama by name, it’s hard to read this volume without thinking of the current president-elect — who turns out to share a startling array of philosophical and literary qualities with his predecessor, as well as an equanimity of demeanor — and this book’s focus on the role that language and writing played in one president’s life promises to shed light on the role they may play in another’s."
• Kakutani on And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs: "None of these one-dimensional slackers are remotely interesting as individuals, but together they give the reader a sense of the seedy, artsy world Kerouac and Burroughs inhabited in New York during the war years. And so these, really, are the only reasons to read this undistinguished book: for the period picture it provides of the city — think of Billy Wilder's 'Lost Weekend' crossed with Edward Hopper's 'Nighthawks' — and for the semi-autobiographical glimpses it offers of the two writers before they found their voices and became bohemian brand names."
• Patrick Radden Keefe on Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie T. Chang: "By delving so deeply into the lives of her subjects, Chang succeeds in exploring the degree to which China’s factory girls are exploited — working grueling hours in sometimes poor conditions for meager wages with little job security — without allowing the book to degenerate into a diatribe. There is never any doubt that the factory owners in Hong Kong and Taiwan — and the consumers in American shopping malls — have the better end of the bargain. But for all the dislocation, isolation and vulnerability they experience, Chang makes clear that for the factory girls life in Dongguan is an adventure, and an affirmation of the sort of individualism that village life would never allow."

Washington Post:

• Ron Charles on A Mercy by Toni Morrison: " Toni Morrison's new novel, A Mercy, makes a spellbinding companion to Beloved, her 1987 tour de force that transformed our understanding of slavery and won the Pulitzer Prize. Her old themes rise up in A Mercy like a fever dream: the horrible sacrifice a mother makes to protect her child, the deadly vanity of benevolent slaveholders, the abandonment of a past too painful to remember. But this is a smaller, more delicate novel, a fusion of mystery, history and longing that stands alongside Beloved as a unique triumph in Morrison's body of work."
• Tony Horwitz on Champlain's Dream by David Hackett Fischer: "To a remarkable degree, Champlain lived up to his ideals and realized the dream of colonizing New France without brute conquest. This contributes, however, to a disappointing biography. Fischer is so admiring of his subject that he presents Champlain as more monument than man. The Frenchman appears almost perfect, and perfectly dull."
• Michael Dirda on Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell: "Both were absolutely superb letter writers, mutually admiring, each clearly striving to out-entertain the other. Yet even their literary gossip serves the greater purpose of inclusion, support and intimacy. For the most part, Lowell is the more dynamic of the two, the hot kid who lands the plum jobs, then prepares the way for the shyer Bishop to take over after him.... Oh, these letters are just so good!... Well, I just can't praise Words in Air enough. As Lowell and Bishop's friend Randall Jarrell used to say: Anybody who cares about poetry will want to read it."

Los Angeles Times:

• Ben Ehrenreich on Bolaño's 2666: "Bolaño left instructions that the five subsections that comprise '2666' be released separately, hoping this arrangement would better provide for his children. Fortunately, his heirs disobeyed him and published '2666' as a single giant work, strange and marvelous and impossibly funny, bursting with melancholy and horror.... Stories sprout from other stories. Digression rules. Nothing is ever finished, nothing answered, nothing solved. Bolaño is too smart, or too sad, to attempt to piece it all together."
• Carolyn Kellogg on The Drowned Life by Jeffrey Ford: "The collection 'The Drowned Life' raises a banner to salute the power of the imagination. Jeffrey Ford doesn't just invent one world with its own rules, creatures and imagery -- he creates dozens in 16 dreamlike stories, which move between science fiction, fantasy and (mostly) normal backyards."

Wall Street Journal:

• Wes Davis on Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America by Jay Parini: "If there is a genuine disappointment lurking in 'Promised Land,' it has nothing to do with the book itself. Reading Mr. Parini's accounts of the more demanding works on his list, it's hard not to worry that the habit of serious reading has lost its influence on American public debate. When he describes the authors of 'The Federalist Papers' -- Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay -- as 'worldly, superbly educated, and rational to the bone,' they sound like mythical creatures."

Globe & Mail:

• Andre Alexis on A Place Within: Rediscovering India by M.G. Vassanji: "Vassanji's book is much more interesting than its introduction suggests. It is more strikingly written than a typical Motherland-rediscovery narrative, beautifully observed, filled with myths, stories, legends, history, journal entries and family narratives. It is an expertly stitched collage and, as much as it reveals about India, it is a great portrait of Vassanji himself."

The Guardian:

• Hilary Mantel on Morrison's A Mercy: "It is certain that her powerful, elemental material bears reworking and revisiting. The issues she explores as a novelist go to the root of what humanity is, what society is for. They could not be more important or fundamental.... The language of the book, always supple, graceful and inventive, is enough reason to read and value it. But there are no changes of tone or pace to sustain the narrative, and a certain authorial weariness behind the whole enterprise. A Mercy is a shadow of the great novel it should be; its half-told tales leave cobweb trails in the mind, like the fragments of a nightmare."

The New Yorker:

• Short reviews of big books: on Bolaño's 2666: "By the end, after close to nine hundred pages, the reader will be impressed by the range and power on display but might wish that the novel cohered, rather than merely concluding." And on The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher (as even Gawker has noted, our #1 pick for the Best Book of 2008): "Hensher’s attention is on the foreground, revealing ordinary life through impressive, often funny set pieces and assiduously observed dramatic episodes, which almost compensate for the lack of an organized plot."

--Tom

Comments

[FredTownWard on November 11, 2008 at 04:41 AM]

That the obsolete media have been suffering from an unprecedented epidemic of religious delusion focused upon the President Elect, the Lord High Most Merciful Barack Obama, is not news, but it IS unintentionally hilarious whenever it occurs, as it does in Katukani's otherwise interesting NYT review of "Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer".

Earth to Katukani, you might want to wait until your secular messiah has been inaugurated and, I don't know, maybe DONE something before you start comparing him to Lincoln. Then again, that is the biggest knock on Obama raised by we heretics: the fact that up until now Obama hasn't done much of anything, either. It is not merely that Obama has just about the least experience of any President Elect that worries us; it is the fact that he has EMPTIEST experience. Even his disciples are unable to point out much of anything that Obama has actually DONE in the relatively few jobs he has held other than run for the next job; even as a community organizer, others organized the community while Obama taught a few classes.

What would undoubtedly make Katukani's head explode is the fact that of all recent presidents the most Lincoln-like is rather obviously Bush 43: victor in a stubborn war that he insisted on winning over the objections of defeatists everywhere, including in his own military, and certainly facing more open treason than any president since Lincoln.

As for Barack Obama, unless he is prepared to ditch virtually all of his stated or hinted at economic proposals, future historians will be comparing him to the last president to implement massive tax increases and trade restrictions in response to a severe stock market downturn:

Herbert Hoover.

[chl on November 11, 2008 at 08:02 AM]

Can someone please remove the previous comment?

[FredTownWard on November 11, 2008 at 12:14 PM]

Not to worry, chl, once President Obama is inaugurated, I am sure that he would be more than happy to issue an executive order to that effect. Why don't you report my comment to him?

[CHL on November 12, 2008 at 11:21 AM]

No, no, you're right. You words will be kept, and will stand as a monument to your hateful lunacy.

[FredTownWard on November 13, 2008 at 01:01 PM]

Well, chl has gone from demanding that I be silenced to merely insulting me because he or she disagrees with me. That is excellent progress for a progressive!

However, before we drop the matter entirely, I'm curious whether chl could articulate his or her disagreement with me in something other than insults?

Does chl deny that it is a bit premature to be comparing Obama to Lincoln? Unlike, say, a President Bush who after almost 8 years in office has faced situations and actually DONE things which can now be compared, favorably or unfavorably, with Lincoln's actions?

Does chl deny that there is something unprecedented and more than a little creepy about the (there is no other word for it) worship being directed towards Obama? Now no one is suggesting that Obama is responsible for every lunacy expressed by his more demented followers, but can chl point to ANY evidence that Obama has ever discouraged this worship? Rather than basking in it? In the Western tradition political leaders who have actively cultivated worship or religion-like cults of personality have tended to become catastrophes. In particular an alleged Christian like Obama with knowledge of the Bible's teachings concerning the Antichrist ought to be particularly leery of this sort of stuff.

Finally, does chl seriusly think that the proper way to deal with an international financial crisis and stock market decline is with the massive tax increases and greater restrictions on international trade that Obama and congressional Democrats have been proposing? Because that is EXACTLY what Hoover did, and FDR largely continued those policies, which is why the Great Depression did not end until WWII.

[Gary Baumgarten on December 13, 2008 at 06:58 AM]

Fred Kaplan will join me at 5 PM New York Time on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com to discuss his book and the comparisons being made between Lincoln and Obama.

To talk to him please go to www.garybaumgarten.com and click on the Join The Show link.

Thanks,

Gary