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“Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960” by William Boyd

Friday, May 13th, 2011

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The mail brought me a catalog for an exhibition of paintings by Jack Roth (1927-2004) opening this month at Spanierman Modern, in New York. Roth “worked his way through the major developments in postwar American art, from Abstract Expressionism, through Pop, and ultimately through Color Field abstraction,” yet today his work is largely forgotten. The catalog contains a well written essay — essentially a concise critical biography — by Thomas McCormick. It can be read (for free) here. As portrayed by McCormick, the artist had a strong personality, led a colorful life, and left a significant body of work (stored in a rural onion barn!). On the basis of the catalog’s reproductions, I’d say the large and colorful paintings of his final years are impressive, and they deserve to be rediscovered.

By chance, my learning about Jack Roth coincided with my reading a new hardback edition of British novelist’s William Boyd’s invented artist biography, “Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960,” featuring a similarly forgotten (as he never existed) postwar artist.  Initially published in 1998 as a lark by the author in cahoots with friends David Bowie, John Richardson and Gore Vidal, this was a spoof intended to entrap and embarrass art world cognoscenti. And in fact the short-lived scam caused a minor commotion, as recounted here. But now, in 2011, what does this book offer us?

Not so much.

In book form, the text of the monograph, which originally appeared as an article in an art magazine, manages to occupy a mere 38 pages. More than half of those pages display only a few lines each. On those meager pages the remaining space is filled with fuzzy photographs or art reproductions. The total word count is less than 8,000, and the average reader can get through it in about half an hour. Is this the book’s saving grace?

Yes.

Boyd relays the life story of Nat Tate with no joy and little finesse. It struck me as a shallow exercise, a paint-by-numbers effort. Of course Tate had a pinched childhood, his father disappearing before his birth (Roth’s father died when he was four). Of course Tate’s nascent talent is discovered by a discerning few (as was Roth’s). Of course he brushes up against an idiosyncratic mentor (Hans Hofmann, at his summer school in Provincetown; in Roth’s case is was Clyfford Still). Of course he hobnobs with the art pack at the Cedar Tavern; drinks too much; suffers and dies young, a suicide. What disappointed me is that in telling this tale Boyd displays little interest in granting the reader any relief from the dull proceedings. He dots his portrait with few details, and there’s not much fun in the game of Where was this item cribbed from? (E.g., Tate’s omnipresent bottle of Jack Daniels, borrowed from de Kooning and Rauschenberg). The fictional suicide of Tate failed to move me, while McCormick’s simple description of Roth’s end did:

“In the early 1990’s, Jack Roth began to suffer early onset Alzheimer’s disease and in 1992, he retired from teaching. He had great plans to keep working and wanted to study cellular biology. The disease slowly progressed, and one day he announced to his wife that he just could not paint anymore. She recalls that. true to form, he never complained. Roth became completely debilitated toward the end of his life and died in a care facility in March of 2004, just shy of his 78th birthday.”

Disappointingly, Boyd does not illuminate any really new aspect of the New York art scene of the 1950’s; he offers no psychological insights beyond clichés, no fine descriptions of places and incidents.With the exception of a quick cutaway moment when he inserts a funny parody of a Frank O’Hara poem (it spotlights the abstract expressionist circle, and its opening line asks, “What if we hadn’t had such great names?”), Boyd’s prose is uninspired, serviceable at best. Something of equivalent quality could have been concocted by any of several thousand other writers, after a minimal amount of research. All of which is to say this is a plausible biography but it’s not very good. (By the way, how many would agree with Boyd’s assessment that “the three great pillars of twentieth-century painting” are Picasso, Matisse and . . . Braque? And how many would consider Boyd’s talent at describing Tate’s paintings to be on par with the creativity of Michael Cunningham in summoning up the works of fictional artists in “By Nightfall“?)

Some might argue Boyd was compelled to write flatly in order to disguise his tongue-in-cheek designs. I’m not convinced: after all, by the time Boyd was conceiving Nat Tate, biographers had long since given themselves permission to use novelistic techniques to energize non-fiction. Biography is not inherently dull.

What the purchaser of “Nat Tate” is left with is a souvenir of a practical joke, a remnant of a hoax that once caught some people unawares. What is the appeal of such a thing? Is anyone today interested in reading Konrad Kujau’s fake diaries of Adolph Hitler? Does this false artifact have any continuing hold over contemporary imagination and thinking? Isn’t it telling that virtually all reviews of the book discuss it as an art world event, and say little if anything about it as a reading experience?

Buy this book if you want an object to talk about, a conversation piece.

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An abbreviated version of this review appears on Amazon, here.

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“The Art of Asking Your Boss For a Raise”

Monday, April 4th, 2011

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Georges Perec’s “The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise” is a tiny book whose endpapers feature a busy flow-chart that diagrams a slew of Yes/No events — obstacles that cleave and re-cleave the path leading to the elusive goal of winning a salary hike. The book’s publisher, Verso, has posted online an animated, interactive version of the flow chart, here. It is well worth a test drive.

The chart’s multiplying pathways, pursued seriatim by a minor functionary in a large corporation, are the basis for the plot of Perec’s inventive, comic, and a bit daunting, novella, written in 1968. The story is told in the second person singular voice (“you”) and, yes, “you” are an employee at “one of the biggest firms in one of the key sectors of the nation’s most national industries.” It is a corporation “which pays you a pittance while grinding away the best years of your life.” All you seek is a meeting with your enigmatic line supervisor who, you fear, has a “disinclination to listen to your squalid concerns over pay”. In 15,000 words on 78 pages, author Perec, and his fine translator David Bellos (who also provides a helpful Introduction), follow you from the start of your campaign all the way through to “your two hundred and fifty-fifth bid” for a raise. The prohibition on spoilers prevents my revealing more, other than to say the finale differs from that of another iteration of the story, found in chapter ninety-eight of Perec’s magnum opus, “Life: A User’s Manual” (1978).

Be forewarned, however, that Perec poses challenges to the general reader’s ready acceptance of his game plan. The book qualifies as a piece of experimental writing, and it is demanding of the reader. The primary challenge is Perec’s decision to dispense with punctuation. He uses no commas, no question marks, no quotation marks to indicate dialog, no capitalization, and no periods (until the final page). Essentially, the reader must be prepared to launch into a very long, run-on sentence, and then hold on tight. Only after you are acclimated to the author’s experimental style do you begin to notice subtle shifts in attitude, slyly humorous touches, and some serious philosophical implications.

What, then, is it like to read a novel that’s based on a flow chart, a story delivered in prose that matches the book’s hermetic character and its recursive rhythm? I’ve never encountered anything else like this in literature. The referents that came to my mind belong, instead, to myth, philosophy, the movies, and music. There’s Sisyphus’s legacy of repeated, forced returns to square one (the “recursion” part of the flow chart). There’s Zeno’s paradox of never reaching a goal because of endless intermediate steps. There’s a “Groundhog Day”-like enslavement by time’s tedium, that can be overcome, if at all, only through persistence and luck. And, even closer in feel, there is the experimental minimalist music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, among others. I am thinking of what composer and writer Tom Johnson described as music that moves in endless circles (in the novella, the made-up word “circumperambulate” appears two dozen times); and pieces that take a very long time to move from one kind of music to another (it is such a relief when, after what seems an eternity, you finally enter your boss’s office for the first time).

“The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise” is a short book with a high threshold of entry, but once inside, the reader’s diligence is likely to pay off handsomely.

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A version of this review is posted on Amazon, here.

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“Sempre Susan” by Sigrid Nunez

Sunday, March 20th, 2011

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In her short novel, “Mitz” (1998), Sigrid Nunez imagines the experiences of a pet marmoset who became an affectionate companion to writer and editor Leonard Woolf, husband of novelist Virginia Woolf. During the course of the story, little Mitz takes on the role of eye-witness to the ups and downs of the couple’s Bloomsbury household during the period when Virginia descended into depression. Based on actual events (Leonard really did own a marmoset in the mid- to late-1930s), the book is enlivened by the author’s imaginative scene-setting, and her exploration of a three-pointed relationship, sadly destined to last but a few years.

I read “Mitz” a year ago and reviewed it positively, here. I still remember the pleasure of its warm tone and modest charms. Within a slim frame, “Mitz” accomplishes many things. It is a playful writer’s holiday; a recreation of a time and place in history; and a deft exercise in stagecraft as the author directs the movement of significant personalities, among them T.S. Eliot, John Maynard Keynes, and Vita Sackville-West, as they intersect with the era’s quintessential literary power couple — a duo known affectionately among friends, and referred to none too kindly by enemies, as “the Woolves.” In Nunez’ hands, “Mitz” becomes a window into a storied household and the quotidian pleasures — reading, writing, eating, talking — sheltered therein. Nunez’ touch is light as air as she anatomizes domesticity via the device of a domesticated (well, mostly domesticated) pet. The book charts the breathing in and breathing out of a successful marriage. It offers lessons in patience and protectiveness and love.

CLOSER TO HOME

Now Nunez has written another story of a three-way relationship. The just-released “Sempre Susan: a Memoir of Susan Sontag” and “Mitz” both weigh in at about 130 pages. This time, however, the author has a long-simmering personal agenda to get through — and a volatile mix of objectives to achieve. That Nunez somehow pulls this off, and in such short order, is a testament to her talents as a writer.

In “Sempre Susan” Nunez reminisces about her  experience at the start of her writing career when, for a brief period starting in 1976, she lived and worked in the household shared by the older and notorious writer Susan Sontag and her son, Philip Rieff. The relationship that developed took the form of an unstable triad, a love/hate triangle. Inside Sontag’s apartment, Nunez shared a bedroom with David, who had become Nunez’ boyfriend soon after Nunez arrived at the apartment on an assignment to assist Sontag in managing her correspondence. Nunez reveals how Sontag treated David more like a brother or best friend than her son, and it was not long before a tense current encircled the three. The travails of this arrangement, Nunez writes, were aggravated by Sontag’s mental instability.

The first hundred pages of “Sempre Susan” are filled with observations about Sontag’s strong character. Her quirks were legion. She felt alive only in the city and lacked any appreciation for nature. She had never heard of a dragonfly. She wore a men’s cologne, Dior Homme. At the cinema she always sat in the first row. Her favorite words were: servile, boring, exemplary, serious, grotesque. Her credo: “Security over freedom is a deplorable choice.” She had, Nunez comments with what I take to be approval, “the habits and the aura of a student all her life.”

The reader is never far from another anecdote involving New York literary life as luminaries pass within Sontag’s orbit (Joseph Brodsky, Elizabeth Hardwick, Jean Genet). Her love life gets full attention. Nunez reports her resigned observation: “Mean, smart men and silly women seem to be my fate.”  Nunez pays attention to how Sontag managed the challenge of a being a female writer — and, even more dangerous, an intellectual — in the second half of 20th century America.

ROUGH JUDGMENTS

In the early pages of the book the thrust of Nunez’s cuts may be unkind (for example, at one point she notes how Sontag usually dressed like a “prison matron”) but her commentary is not vicious. Yes, Sontag had a high-maintenance personality, and so what? Nunez still conveys a modicum of respect for her teacher and the advice she dispensed, albeit commandingly. For instance:

“[Sontag] also believed that how other people treated you was, if not wholly, mostly within your control, and she was always after me to take that control. ‘Stop letting people bully you,’ she would bully you.” (p. 72.)

Though the irony may mask hurt, Nunez’ temper remains jocular. And even as you pass the halfway mark the author is still expressing appreciation for what Sontag gave to her, even down to the transfer of mundane habits:

“Because of her, I began writing my name in each new book I acquired. I began clipping articles from newspapers and magazines and filing them in various books. Like her, I always read with a pencil in hand (never a pen), for underlining.” (p. 85.)

Then things change, abruptly. As the pile of anecdotes grows higher, you begin to perceive a growing tension between mentor and protégé. In the book’s final third, magnanimity departs. Long-harbored resentments are let lose. You can almost hear the snap! of a breakthrough epiphany, as in a therapy session, when Nunez specifically recalls —

“[Sontag] reminded me to a remarkable degree of my German mother — another touchy, chronic ranter who thought she was surrounded by idiots, who practically lived in a state of indignation, and who happened also to share Susan’s contempt for American superficiality and American ‘culture.’” (p. 96.)

And so, for the remainder of the book, the text is overtaken by Nunez’ blunt, relentless portrait of a sick woman, a person oblivious to the feelings of others, a monster. Nunez reports that, as a mother to Philip, Sontag was an idiot from the get-go: “From the time she knew she was pregnant until the day she went into labor, she never saw a doctor. ‘I didn’t know you were supposed to.’” (p. 103.) Nunez’s rough judgments are swift and stark: Sontag was depressed (p. 114), paranoid (p. 115), narcissistic (p. 116). She was, in the final analysis, “a masochist and a sadist” (p. 118.)

AS FIRST INTRODUCED IN THE NY TIMES

Some readers may be attracted to “Sempre Susan” after having read an excerpt published in the New York Times’ Style Magazine (February 25, 2011). That article, titled, “Suddenly Susan,” carried the tag line: “When the author shacked up with Susan Sontag’s son and his brainy mom, in 1976, three was not company.” If that was your initial experience with the book, please know this: What you read was misleading. The material may have struck you as mildly critical of Sontag, mildly bitchy in tone, mildly voyeuristic. Some readers who posted comments online have said as much. And here’s how the magazine’s editor, Sally Singer, described its appeal:

“I want a good, sexy, neurotic story about New York literary life in the Seventies. I want the New York Review of Book parties. I want a little Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. You have that literary dream of New York. It’s got it all.”

But what Singer edited, for placement in the New York Times, was not representative of the content and tone of the actual book released to the public this month. True to its code (constraining the “Gray Lady” to print only what’s “fit”) the New York Times altered Nunez’ text for its readership. Whether this was accomplished with Nunez’s input and approval is not clear. The material published in the Times’ Style Magazine is described not as an “excerpt” but instead as a new product “adapted from” the book.

To give an example of the alterations, consider how Nunez herself treats the salacious rumor of incest between Susan Sontag and Philip Rieff:

“That there was feverish, prurient interest swirling around 340 [the address on Riverside Drive of Sontag’s apartment] was something I already knew. Before I ever met Susan or David, I’d heard the talk. Now people came straight out and asked: Is it true? Have they had sex together? Sometimes, rather than being asked, I was told: They must have had sex together.” (p. 100)

Here, as throughout the book, Nunez uses her skills as a novelist to lead the reader toward a tentative — if still uncertain — conclusion. In the pages leading up to that point she has built the platform from which to launch her heaviest character assaults. She has offered vignettes of Sontag’s disdain for convention (“What did it matter what other people said?”), her outlaw instincts, her transgressive behaviors. Then, as the reader absorbs the implications of Nunez’ flat presentation of the rumor of incest, Nunez simply moves on to other aspects of Sontag’s foul reputation. Nunez neither confirms nor denies the rumor, leaving the reader exactly . . . where?

Compare how the New York Times handles the text:

“Before I ever met Susan or David, I’d heard the talk. Now people came straight out and asked the absurd: Is it true? Have they had sex together?”

With the clarifying addition of two words — the thing some ugly people were wallowing in was the absurd — the editor steers the reader away from the rumor. Pay it no heed, consign it to the category of lies. A question you might have for the author is: Which of the two presentations is preferred?

THE “MEMOIR DEFENSE” OF OFFENSE

Then there is the question of the reliability of Nunez’ memories. Rare is the page of “Sempre Susan” that lacks one or more quotations from the mouth of the loquacious Sontag. Presented as transcribed conversations, Sontag’s words add punch to the proceedings. But consider: most of these are words Sontag uttered 35 years ago, and they are not commonplaces, not throwaway lines, but language with exactness, with pungency, with meaning. In short, character-defining utterances, down to their last nuance. These “quotations” are the material Nunez leverages to construct her brief against Sontag. Yet, as Nunez confesses early in the book, she kept no contemporaneous notes: “I didn’t keep a journal then — or if I did, it has long since vanished.” (p. 24). How, then, can the reader have confidence in the accuracy of her reconstructed conversations? Is Nunez’ memory of conversations supported by contemporaneous letters, notes, journals kept by Sontag herself, or by David Rieff? Did Nunez review that related material as part of her research and fact-checking?  Does “Sempre Susan” conform to professional and ethical standards of journalism, biography, history writing? Should we expect it to? Does the book’s presentation as a “memoir” shield it from those norms?

Some will argue a “memoir,” especially one from the imaginative mind of an author whose métier is the novel (Nunez has published six novels; this is her first published book of non-fiction), ought to be evaluated through a different lens. But even if that were the case, shouldn’t the author at least provide us with contextual support. How about an Introduction, an Afterward, an Acknowledgments page, or a section of Notes explaining and supporting the book’s content? Nothing of the sort accompanies “Sempre Susan.” Regrettably, at its close, the book simply peters out. There is a final expression of disappointment, a sigh of self-pity, and nothing more.

The reader is apt to remember how, earlier in the book, Sontag admonished her then assistant and future profiler: Stop letting people bully you! A reader inclined to armchair psychologizing may very well recognize the defensive posture Nunez adopts, a classic passive-aggressive mode. Consider, for example, this admission:

“But, to be honest, I often played dumb with Susan, and if there was one thing that could drive her insane, it was that.” (p. 131.)

I remembered the three-member household that Nunez lovingly recreated in “Mitz” (Leonard, Virginia and the marmoset) and how it was so alive, so charmed, so pleasurable. I — and I suspect the author as well — longed to trade places, if only for a moment, with the privileged position of that little resident-guest. In “Sempre Susan” Nunez often pauses to compare and contrast Sontag to Virginia Woolf, each time to Sontag’s detriment. With undisguised bitterness Nunez remembers Sontag referring to the trio — David, Susan and Nunez — as “the duke and duchess and duckling of Riverside Drive.” (p. 105.) Nunez knew the duckling part wasn’t good. She felt cheated.

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

It  is disappointing to realize how little “Sempre Susan” accomplishes. The missed opportunities are many.

Nunez, a serious and accomplished writer in her own right, offers few insights into Sontag’s writing. Although Nunez makes very clear her disdain for Sontag’s attempts at fiction, she offers no serious critical analysis of Sontag’s thought or ideas. She mentions but glossed over the themes and content of her ground-breaking essays. There is nothing about the genesis or evolution of Sontag’s political views during their years of intimacy. The reader searches in vain for Nunez to express an opinion on the question uppermost in many minds: Was Sontag a thinker of importance? You are left with the impression Nunez is simply not interested in the play of ideas that was the essence of Sontag’s breathing in and breathing out.

During the time Nunez lived with Reiff, Susan Sontag was assembling the essays that would become “On Photography” (1977). Although present “at the creation” of that seminal work, Nunez offers us nothing at all about its formation: only a single short paragraph mentions the book, and it is unenlightening. For many readers this will be frustrating. Nunez must have seen or overheard something of interest. If you are a reader who likes to learn about the “Eureka” moments that seize a creator, or who seeks the vicarious thrill of being a fly on the wall of the ugly but beautiful creative process, “Sempre Susan” will leave you starved.  Famished too will be readers expecting to experience at least something of Sontag the intellectual, some glimpse into her mind at work. Is that not something those persons who were her assistants, and those who shared even greater intimacies, may provide to us?  What, we ask, was the source of Sontag’s brilliance? What signs did you see?  In response to the curious reader Nunez grants us silence.

FINAL THOUGHT: THE “WHY” OF THIS BOOK

I understand why Nunez wanted to — and needed to — write this book. The exercise was therapeutic, for sure. Nunez’ reminiscences — however flawed — also have potential value to history, if time grants Sontag status as a durable contributor to American literary and intellectual history. At their most basic, Nunez’s pages are evidence, are material to be sifted through critically by future biographers. Nunez’ memories will be joined by the remembrances of Sontag’s colleagues, friends, editors, and other intimates. I was happy to discover another former personal assistant to Sontag, Karla Eoff, has written a piece for the Winter 2011 edition of the online literary magazine, blipmagazine.com, here. In a very brief space, Eoff describes the creative process that produced Sontag’s celebrated novel, “The Volcano Lover.” Her account is valuable evidence. Yet another reminiscence by a former aide-de-camp, this one painfully revealing, especially on the subject of Sontag’s sexuality, is provided by Terry Castle, here.

If the writing and preservation of Nunez’ recollections has value, a separate question arises over whether the material should have been published at this time. My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that Nunez would have been better advised to have kept the completed manuscript of “Sempre Susan” under her lock and key. Or, she should have donated it to a suitable library for preservation and use by scholars (a good choice would have been UCLA Library which houses Sontag’s papers).

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UPDATE: An adaptation of this review appears on Amazon, here.

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“Pym” by Mat Johnson

Sunday, March 6th, 2011

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The first thing you’ll probably want to know is whether you should read Poe’s “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket” before picking up Mat Johnson’s “Pym.” The answer is, that’s not really necessary. Johnson helpfully devotes 15 pages in the second chapter of “Pym” recapping the plot of Poe’s solitary novel and discussing its still-debated meaning. This background is all you need to appreciate this new, inspired-by-Poe, piece of imaginative fiction.

The novel’s narrator, Chris Jaynes, is a recently dismissed professor of African-American literature. He believes Poe’s enigmatic novel, maddeningly obsessed with motifs of black and white, is the talisman that can open up our understanding of race in America, especially the nature of “Whiteness, as a pathology and a mindset.” He seeks to discover, through literary detective work, “the primal American subconscious, the foundation on which all our visible systems and structures were built.” Sleuthing leads to grand adventure. Jaynes assembles an all black crew of six for a voyage to Antarctica to find “the great undiscovered African Diasporan homeland.” This quest is set within a satirical framework that allows Johnson to launch sallies against a slew of social and political targets.

A caution: You’re probably better off not reading reviews of “Pym” found in the mainstream press and magazines — or avoiding, at least, the type of review that spends paragraph after paragraph exposing too much of the plot, revealing too many of the critic’s favorite scenes, highlighting too many jokes and puns (for example, this one). I mean, please. “Pym” is a novel whose twists and turns and revelations you yourself deserve to encounter (and judge) afresh, without prior interference. Set aside those reviews for reading once you’ve finished.

One reason I enjoyed “Pym” is a nostalgic one, frankly. If you’re a reader of a certain age you remember living through what now appears, in hindsight, to have been a golden era of the American satirical novel. There once was a tribe of writers who yanked our chains, social and political. I’m thinking of the years that saw the publication of Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22,” Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint” and “Our Gang,” and the works of Terry Southern, John Barth, Gore Vidal, Robert Coover and others. First among them was Kurt Vonnegut, who sustained a long career of telling common truth to ignoble power. Who is extending that satiric tradition into the current day?

Based on the antic fun and strength of “Pym,” Mat Johnson may come to join that assembly of noble writers. The intelligence behind his satire is combined with a hearty sanity that reminds me of Vonnegut, especially.

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A version of this review is posted on Amazon, here.

Some amazing photos of the real Antarctica can be found here.

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“Open City” by Teju Cole

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

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There is no reason to believe Teju Cole intended his debut novel to present a challenge to reviewers, but that is what “Open City” does. The only way a critic can genuinely convey the force of this book — its full weight and effect — is to break a covenant with the potential reader by entering the forbidden territory of the spoiler, by revealing the specific shock that hits you like a block of concrete when you reach the novel’s final pages. No responsible critic will do that (nor will I).

Instead, you are apt to come across a positive reviewer of “Open City” saying the novel is, in some non-specific way, a “tour de force.” Another will cagily suggest something’s amiss by labeling the story’s narrator, Julius, a 32-year-old Nigerian-American who is completing a psychiatry fellowship in New York City, “an unreliable narrator.” I will put it this way: what this enormously talented writer has succeeded in doing is crafting a multi-layered reading experience that, at the book’s close, will redouble your receipt of its literary rewards. “Open City” is a novel you will be dying to talk about with other readers.

Since Cole is a newcomer, reviewers are falling over themselves trying to position him next to some veteran. Which writer will Cole remind the reader of? Candidates are piling up. One is Joseph O’Neill, who, like Cole, is a writer of mixed parentage, multicultural perspective, and author of a novel, “Netherland,” which, like “Open City,” explores themes of displacement and anxiety in post-9/11 New York City. Another is Zadie Smith, who, like Cole, unabashedly tackles matters of race, class, the immigrant experience, and suppressed history that must not remain hidden.

W.G. Sebald has been mentioned as well, presumably for his erudition and a shared style of writing that is slow and meditative, seemingly without much of a plot, and dependent on the cumulative accretion of observations. Cole, however, is not a formal innovator like Sebald, and the reader may be relieved to learn Cole is a conventional technician, using standard-length sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. Albert Camus’ “The Stranger” also has been cited as a model. At first blush this makes some sense (Meursault and Julius, twin protagonists of anomie) but my view is if Cole is following Camus, a stronger influence is “The Fall,” with its restless, talkative confessor.

An author I’d place on the list of comparables is Elizabeth Hardwick. Cole shares Hardwick’s keen turn of mind, her love of music, and her unerring command of language. Cole today, as Hardwick two generations ago, understands the seductive attraction of the walkable streets of Manhattan. Their ears are tuned to the innumerable personal stories waiting to be heard. (Cole has said wanted “Open City” to show how New York City is “a space full of ghosts and unfinished psychological business.”) Finally, like Cole, Hardwick showed no fear in letting autobiography undergird her fiction, notably in “Sleepless Nights.”

And, to add one more plate to the table: I see resemblances to the methods of Roberto Bolano’s “By Night in Chile.” Although Bolano’s short novel uncovers different sins and belongs to an earlier time of stress in a foreign nation, it shares with “Open City” a narrator prone to non-stop outpouring of stories, of exquisitely observed morsels of experience. Both narrators, it could be said, are engaged in a sort of “talking cure,” on a path to revealed truth. In both novels readers may find the meandering style frustrating. A stream of consciousness leaves some cold. Yet in each story it all adds up, at last, to a devastating contemporary psychological portrait.

But enough. Let Teju Cole and “Open City” be what they want to be: each reader’s own discovery.

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Notes:

(1) A version of this review is posted on Amazon, here.

(2) Cole has created on Tumblr a page “for and about the the novel Open City” here. For readers of the book it is a worthwhile resource, it takes the place of informative footnotes that a book as dense with allusions as Open City cries out for. But at this point the Tumblr page is only a beginning toward a collection of helpful annotations (I hope Cole, or perhaps others, continue to add material).

(3) A short but revealing interview with Cole is found on the Goodreads site, here.

(4) Audio of a BBC interview of Cole is available here (scroll down the page to find the list of “Chapters” (Cole is interviewed in Chapter 3 which starts at 26:30). The author’s spoken eloquence matches his written eloquence:

“I have not written a book about 9/11. I have written a book about how New York has habitually been a place that very quickly tries to get past the past and move on into the future. And so for characters such as Julius who are highly sensitive to it, it becomes an extremely heavy space. It becomes a space that is full of ghosts and unfinished psychological business.”

“I just think the work of mourning is very important, and if you don’t mourn properly your progress afterwards is sort of artificial, because there are things you haven’t dealt with.”

“It’s about finding your part in the human chain. And saying you’re not the first and won’t be the last.”

(5) Let me mention a few things that bothered me about “Open City.” One is the episode in which Julius takes a four-week vacation to go to Brussels in search of his maternal grandmother (his “oma”), with who he has lost contact. Yet Julius makes no effort to locate her, but instead continues his wandering habits (apparently it never occurs to him to simply hire a local detective). Although it is his essential psychological state, Julius demontrates a woeful passivity that began to grate on me somewhat. He is little more than an “eye and ear,” buffeted by events and strangers’ importuning, emasculated, a milquetoast set upon by bullies and opportunists. There is a wonderful moment during the BBC interview (linked to in Note 4) at 37:45 to 38:30. A fellow interviewee on the program, the passionately engaged sociologist Amitai Etzioni, shows frustration when Cole calmly mentions the Native Americans who once flourished in NYC but now are gone. Etzioni confronts Cole: “You’re so neutral, you’re so cool.” Cole is gracious in response, conceding the point, and assuring Etzioni that when it comes to the depredations of the past, “Believe me, I can get very strident.” “Please do,” recommends Etzioni.

(6) I cannot help but like an author who chooses to be photographed, in the year 2011, in front of what has always been, for me, a comforting reminder of man’s durable commitment to preserving hard-earned knowledge. I’m speaking of something you can still come across in great old libraries: a massive, oak-drawered card-catalog.

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UPDATE (05-12-2012): Just found a YouTube video of a recent interview with the author, here (video published May 8, 2012 by WNYC Radio).  Responding to a question on the influence his photography has on his writing, Cole’s answer segues smoothly into a statement of purpose:

“One very particular influence is that photography inspires me to play with points of view, with actual physicals points, vantage points — to imagine a scene from above or from below. And so Open City is full of bird flights, people in skyscrapers looking down, people in planes, subways, wells. Because when you move up or you move down you actually change what you’re seeing — to defamiliarize the everyday.

“In photography and in writing, I want to give people the same sort of feeling, which is that there is someone else out there who’s noticing the small things of life, the things that are viewed obliquely, the things that deserve our attention but often elude our attention.”

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“The Last Brother” by Nathacha Appanah

Friday, February 4th, 2011

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“The Last Brother” is a coming-of-age story, a survivor’s narrative, and a belated history lesson. A seemingly small-scaled tale told in 200 pages, it bursts open to reveal an emotional largeness that will earn the tears of many readers.

Set on the island of Mauritius in the years 1944-45, “The Last Brother” portrays harrowing events in the life of Raj, a nine-year-old middle son of an illiterate and impoverished Indian family. The book is narrated by the now elderly Raj, who, even sixty years later, is driven by an intense search for understanding. His central memory is of a childhood friendship, brief but golden, with an eight-year-old orphan named David, one of 1500 Jewish refugees interned at the island’s Beau-Bassin prison during War War II. The novel traces Raj’s path through loss, guilt, grief and pain, toward a final, remarkable forgiveness.

Nathacha Appanah’s prose is simple and clear. The translation from the French (by Geoffrey Strachan) is beautiful. I was mightily impressed with Appanah’s unflashy but sure command of story-telling. As the story unfolds she adopts a captivating pace and rhythm. The book never flags. Appanah has an intuitive sense of when the reader needs a respite from its dark material (deaths, squalor, cruel abuse from an alcoholic father). And so she pulls us away, from time to time, to land in the present day, where the ever-seeking Raj, by now a retired teacher, quietly reflects on the lessons of six decades ago.

If there are any critical disagreements over this book, one strand will be a debate over whether Appanah has achieved the right balance between the adult Raj’s reflective and retrospective presentation on the one hand, and the immediacy of the youthful Raj’s initial encounters with pain and loss, hope and love. I,for one, think the author has managed the integration masterfully.

Each reader will find treasures in “The Last Brother.” One element that charmed me was how the unshakable love of Raj’s mother is linked to her religious instincts, which are grounded in Hindu animism. The power and magic that suffuses the natural world is a recurring motif throughout the novel. It inspires Appanah to offer striking descriptions of the flora and fauna of Mauritius. This includes the appearance of an enchanted red parakeet, a significant symbol that, you may notice, has found its way onto the book’s cover illustration. As well, the author taps into Christian iconography, starting with the fated aura of the golden-haired David.

Raj is his mother’s son, and he too seeks patterns and purpose in an all too unforgiving world. It is to Appanah’s credit that she quietly convinces the reader that this nine-year-old boy has a view of the world — and most importantly of love and duty — that is worthy of our attention and understanding.

There are insights into the psychology of family relationships, and these also serve the purpose of furthering the thematic arc of the novel. In the first chapter, the 70-year-old Raj speculates why his grown son (a successful information technology entrepreneur) has become so attentive: “But for the past few years now he seems to have all the time in the world for me. It is because I am old, the only family he has left, and he is afraid.” Of course, this fear of being orphaned, of being left behind as loved ones disappear, was Raj’s own greatest fear. Yet the most hopeful element of the book relates not to a familial continuity, but to Raj’s breaking the curse of child abuse. The final chapters being us forward to observe the adult Raj, married with son, lifted up from primitivism, achieving a modern normalcy, as represented by a scene in which Raj takes his little boy to town to pick up a newspaper. I was almost struck dumb by the powerful relief this brings. I was also stuck by an even more up to date scene between Raj and his mother who’s happy ensconced in a fine retirement home by the sea, chatting away with her new friends (the shock is that the mother has her own intelligent voice, which has been suppressed in Raj’s recounting of his early years).

It occurs to me that “The Last Brother” would make a fine addition to a reading list for high school English classes. It is an eminently “teachable” novel. Consider, as a starting point, the numerous insights of Dalia Sofer, here.

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(A version of this review is posted on Amazon, here. An interview in which Appanah explains her attraction to the historical backdrop of the novel is available here.)

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What’s the Matter with Book Critics Today?

Saturday, January 8th, 2011

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Over a decade ago the distinguished critic Jonathan Yardley, whose book reviews appear in the Washington Post, observed, “There is no such thing as a powerful book critic.”

That remains true today.

Though there is reason to lament this state of affairs, it is not the diminished cultural impact of book reviewers that worries me. Rather, what concerns me is an overall decline in the quality of book criticism appearing in mainstream media publications. There is still a sizable number of people who read book reviews, and we deserve better.

I’ve been monitoring newspaper and magazine critics’ reactions to “Bird Cloud,” Annie Proulx’s non-fiction book released earlier this week. I’m finding that a diseased strain of “reviewing” — a strain that first came to my attention last year around the time of the publication of Jonathan Franzen’s novel, “Freedom” — appears to be spreading.

I’m speaking of a mode of critical attack that exposes not so much the flaws of the book under review as the deficiencies of the book reviewer who indulges in its practice. This baleful approach is characterized by ad hominem attacks delivered in a voice that blends self-absorbed gusto with made-up grievance.

If this virus has a ground zero it might be an execrable “Freedom” review/profile from the pen of Jennie Yabroff, an article that Newsweek editors unwisely chose to publish last August as another marker in the decline and fall of that once vital periodical.

A month later the self-absorbed component of the style was placed center-stage in a review of Philip Roth’s latest novel, “Nemesis,” in The New York Times. In the piece, Leah Hager Cohen spends the first five paragraphs, a sizable chunk of the entire piece, talking about herself, her history, her touch points with Roth’s oeuvre, her moods, her equivocations, her journey. Yes, it’s all about me-me-me, before I go head-to-head with the author. This diversion into the self is “relevant,” she says. To her credit, she then goes on to say intelligent things about the book, judging it fairly on its merits.

Most of us who’ve reached middle age can sense when someone else has pre-judged a matter. I am especially concerned about reviews that signal the presence of prejudice.

One such stink bomb, a book review that adds to the mix an aggrieved whine and some tired preppy insults, landed in December. In an online review posted by The New Republic, Andrew Butterfield does a hatchet job on Steve (“lazy”) Martin’s novel, “An Object of Beauty.” Typical of Mr. Butterfield’s approach is the bloodless delivery of this calumny: “All [Martin] makes you feel is that your ignorance should arouse your envy—that you, poor thing, are less fortunate than he and the fancy people in his book.”

Now, personal rants of this sort, especially those that rise to histrionic pitch, are usually full of howlers, and Butterfield does not disappoint. For example, his command of the book is so slipshod that he is unable ever to get the book title correct, not even once. Three times he refers to it as “The Object of Beauty.” (But wait, you say — is it possible a gremlin slipped Butterfield a rogue, evil version of the good book I had the pleasure to read?) His paragraph assuring us there has never been an art collector who ever wore an Armani suit is a real hoot.

The decline continues to manifest itself in 2011.

Early in his review of “Bird Cloud” published in the New York Times this week, Dwight Garner lays down a marker, dubbing the book “shelter porn.” It can be viewed, he says, as a product of “a wealthy and imperious writer who . . . believes people will sympathize with her about the bummers involved in getting her Japanese soaking tub, tatami-mat exercise area, Mexican talavera sink and Brazilian floor tiles installed just so.” In truth, the tub installation problem that needed correcting (described on page 118) involved a clogged outflow drain which caused water to leak to the downstairs library, threatening Proulx’s research files and vital book collection. I wonder how Garner would react if his auto mechanic were to chide him for selfishly wanting his oil-leaking car engine tweaked “just so.” Oh, never mind.

Then there are the words “tatami mats.” These four syllables have an exotic sound that attracts easy mockery, but does Garner really want to throw his lot in with the class warriors who made hay of Obama’s expression of arugula-love, back in 2008? And what’s with Garner’s prissy “just so” fillip, anyhow? I defy any reader to come away from “Bird Cloud” with the impression of Annie Proulx as a prissy lady (although I have to admit that taunt — Prissy Annie Proulx! Prissy Annie Proulx! — feels kinda good tripping off the tongue). I also defy anyone to come away from “Bird Cloud” with the feeling that Proulx wants us to “sympathize with her” for any of her travails, large or small.

While others (in Slate and in The New Yorker, before which I normally bow down in awe) are saying sweet things about how clever Garner’s review of “Bird Cloud” is (I agree Garner can be witty, and he delivers verdicts with a good comic’s sense of timing), I have a sneaking suspicion neither of the encomium-givers (Timothy Noah and Ian Crouch) has read “Bird Cloud” in full.

One thing I know for sure: no one’s interested in my reviewing their reviews of a review of a book. To get caught up in the vagaries of a posse of literary critics — a dysfunctional family if ever there was one — is not conducive to anyone’s mental or moral health. So, returning to the merits of Proulx’s “Bird Cloud,” I simply will say as a reader I disagree with Garner. With him you get a twofer: a misunderstanding of the book and a misreading of the author.

There has always been a moral component to the best literary criticism. That tradition, when examining “Bird Cloud,” would call on the critic to examine the environmental ethic so important to Proulx’s experience on her 640 acres of raw Wyoming rangeland. Keep in mind this is land the author decided to purchase by trading in her fair-gotten gains from her writings. The seller was The Nature Conservancy, and it is under the constraints of rigorous covenants that Proulx enjoys the property.

Few if any reviewers appear interested in this aspect of the book. Instead, critics stir up (or, in my opinion, make up) grievances. Garner, for example, finds it “deplorable” that Proulx writes so freely about “the perks of [her] success.” Joining Garner in his descent into status resentment is Michael Upchurch, who, in his review of the book in the Seattle Times, gives Proulx the raspberry for overreaching. He sums up his disdain for the 75-year-old author with this barb: “You wonder if Proulx has a single ounce of common sense.”

A notable element in these complaints is the loopy premise that the status of America’s economic health at the moment of a book’s publication could justify placing cautions, if not actual fetters, on free expression. Can that really be what these scolds advocate? Consider how Upchurch upbraids Proulx: “Her decision to publish this account of her extravagance when so many Americans are losing their homes seems in dubious taste.”

All too often nowadays the cultural impotence of book critics’ messages is matched by the imbecility of their content.

I wonder if it’s time to spin a variation on the Catskills resort joke (the food is terrible . . . and such small portions!).

How about this:  What book critics write is terrible . . . and it has no impact!

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“Bird Cloud: A Memoir” by Annie Proulx

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

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It is common for a reader proceeding through an Annie Proulx novel or short story to find that it is growing on you page by page, layer by layer, as her sure carpentry builds a fine and strong effect. That was my experience while reading the non-fiction “Bird Cloud.” If in her best fiction Proulx carpenters untold stories into life, this new work finds Proulx retelling old stories, resurfacing tales of history, geology, geography, climate, biology. Her evident pleasure in doing so means that many readers will be pleased with the telling.

Take note of the book’s cover: a photograph, well-selected, mostly likely a Proulx choice. It is a harbinger of what the 234 pages inside are really about. It is not by mistake that you cannot see the author’s new home whose three-year construction (2004-2006) some publicity material and reviews mistakenly suggest is the main subject of the book. You are right to sense that the vast sky and rangeland extending to the horizon hold multitudes. “Bird Cloud” is not a Wyoming version of “House,” Tracy Kidder’s meticulous recounting of the planning, design and construction of a New England custom home. Proulx offers us no schematics, no blueprints, no floor plans, no budget details. While she does parcel out a handful of practical homebuilding “how-to’s” and a selection of anecdotes (dominated by snafus and disappointments), the house-related material in fact occupies less than half of the book’s content.

The building is not where Proulx fixes her emotional energy. Her heart lies elsewhere: in side-tales of her family’s genealogy; in stories of the “rapacity and venal grasping” of all too many of Wyoming’s founders; in the terrible legacy of insults to the land, its game animals, its Indian inhabitants; in a child-like delight she takes in the “archeological possibilities” of her 640 acres; and in her experience of the raw power of nature at 7000 feet above sea level, where hurricane-force winds and isolation-inducing snowdrifts are routine. The book’s emotional apogee is the final, and longest, chapter — a narrative that tracks through the 12 months of 2007 as Proulx watches the lives of the site’s abundant bird life unfold. In these pages Proulx, amateur as a birder but first-rate as a raconteur, unleashes a warm observational humor.

The book is vulnerable to two criticisms. One is that “Bird Cloud” lacks an overarching theme. It hosts lots of little stories but does not have a big story, and readers who demand an entirely consistent narrative experience may be disappointed. Another criticism is that the book’s subtitle — “a Memoir” — is misleading. This is not a memoir as that label is understood in our era of no-holds-barred confessional outpourings. Anyone expecting this author, now in her eighth decade, to lay bare the intimacies of her personal diary, to expose her emotional core, or to explain, for example, how her three divorces have shaped the woman she is today, will come away empty-handed. Proulx is one author unlikely to appear on Oprah’s couch.

If you see yourself as a potential reader of “Bird Cloud,” consider first reading a rare and revealing interview conducted at her Bird Cloud Ranch, published in the Spring 2009 issue of Paris Review. Another useful prelude to immersion in the book is the free audio excerpt of its second chapter. Entitled “A Yard of Cloth,” it is a stand-alone story of how an eerie intervention of fate saved Proulx and her sister from a fatal accident. The audio clip is available at the website of the publisher, Simon & Shuster. Finally, readers who complete the meandering but engrossing experience of this book and who may, at that point, wonder about the current status of the site, will find the answer in the new property listing, here. Yes, Proulx has placed Bird Cloud Ranch up for sale for $3.7 million.

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“An Object of Beauty” by Steve Martin

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

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Many readers are going to enjoy this rich, wise and entertaining novel, especially those of you who happen to be:

Part of the art world. “An Object of Beauty” is a closely-observed story that traces the rise and fall of a young business woman in New York City, from 1993 to 2009. It is set in a corner of the commercial arena that traffics in works of fine art. If you work or play in the world of artists, art dealers, gallery owners, auction houses and their supporting enterprises; or if you are simply a curious outsider interested in what Martin calls “this insular collective” — then “An Object of Beauty” is sure to please. During the course of a well-constructed tale, Martin holds a mirror up to the art community’s denizens and their transgressions. If this is unfamiliar territory, you’ll want to be in “learning mode” as Martin (himself an experienced buyer, seller, and lover of art) pauses the narrative from time to time to deliver a mini art history lesson next to an illustration of a painting or sculpture (there are 22 in all) important to the developing plot. On a practical note, he also offers tips on how to negotiate your way through this strange jungle. Martin names names and reveals prices (throughout the novel there is a Balzac-like focus on the prices of everything).

Collectors. Although the reader’s attention is on the wily plots of the young careerist Lacey Yeager, and secondarily on the fate of her friend Daniel (an art critic and the story’s narrator), the author also populates the book with a parade of minor characters who suffer from the collecting disease. They occupy a spectrum from the savvy and methodical to the passionate, obsessive, and borderline insane. Martin displays a psychologist’s skill in exposing the emotional sources of their never-ending longing. If you are, or if you know, a capital-“c” Collector (of coins, dolls, baseball cards, whatever), you will likely find these sketches funny and right on the money.

Fans of Mr. Martin. We know Steve Martin can be a consummate happy clown, and part of the marketing campaign for this novel will (misleadingly) associate the book with his antic, feel-good, sweetness-and-light side. But Martin is more than that, as true fans and readers of his two novellas (Shopgirl and The Pleasure of My Company) know. And we value and trust his serious interests. Yes, there is wit in the new novel, and Martin’s trademark wordplay and love of paradox (“it was easier to sell a painting that was not for sale”), but he wisely suppresses his protean comedic chops in furtherance of the story. Fans of the author will appreciate that “An Object of Beauty” is a serious novel.

In telling a tale of misplaced values and money run amuck, in a world where relationships are polluted by greed and dishonesty, what comes through is Martin’s essential modesty. He avoids making definitive statements. While he may wax philosophical, especially on matters of aesthetics (his own seduction by the power of great art is evident), he makes no grand pronouncements. Instead, there is simply a keen-eyed view of human failings and, sadder still, a sober acceptance of the rarity of love. Martin is a quiet moralist.

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“Nemesis” by Philip Roth

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

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“Nemesis” is an old-fashioned novel.  The book has the glow of a twilit, though painful, reminiscence.  It is set in the Jewish Weequahic section of Newark during the war year of 1944.  Roth imagines the community suffering through a devastating polio epidemic that cruelly maims and kills its youngest members.  The protagonist is Bucky Cantor, a young man, a stalwart common man, whose decision to abandon his post as summer playground director will have fateful consequences.

Advice from an Elder

Very early in his career Roth sent to Saul Bellow a draft of a short story he was trying to get published, asking the elder writer for comments and advice. One of the remarks in Bellow’s 1957 letter responding to Roth (included in “Saul Bellow: Letters”, slated for release on November 4) stands out: “My reaction to your story was on the positive side of the scale, strongly. But mixed, too. I liked the straightness of it, the plainness.” A half century later, Roth’s new novel respects Bellow’s preference. Direct, straight and plain, “Nemesis” unfolds in a manner you may not immediately associate with Roth. It is as if, having chosen to set his tale in the mid-twentieth century, Roth decided to set aside the signature style and quirks he’s perfected in the last few decades, and, instead, hark back to the American literature of that earlier period, embracing its feel and direction. For me, that embrace is one of the pleasures of this short novel.

The straightforward narrative of “Nemesis,” which follows the traditional path of exposition, rising action, conflict, and aftermath, eschews the inventive and experimental course Roth took in some ambitious novels of the 1980’s and 1990’s, notably “The Counterlife” and “Operation Shylock.” The surprisingly plain voice of the new novel, narrated not by some maniacally garrulous Nathan Zuckerman type but by an even-tempered, practical-minded witness (who later reveals himself to have been one of the Newark child polio survivors), imparts a classic balance to the proceedings. Also un-Roth-like is the absence of ethnic satire (the Jewish community is lovingly portrayed). Readers expecting to encounter Roth’s comical eye for the worst in people, a celebration of rebellion, a sexual adventurousness, will be disappointed. Also, though fulminating anger abounds (Bucky repeatedly shakes his fist at a God “who spends too much time killing children”), that energy may not be sufficient for some readers who may very well find the book lackluster and timid.

A throwback to the last century

In its style (earnest and unfussy) and in its themes, “Nemesis” reminds me of the classic mid-20th century American fiction that has long been a staple of high school English classes — especially the books, stories and plays featuring common men, ordinary Joes who meet tragic ends. “Nemesis” shares with Steinbeck’s “The Pearl,” Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea,” and Thornton Wilder’s “The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” the theme of the vicissitudes of fate and the contingency of our existence. Roth shares with those authors and their social realist contemporaries — the writers who commanded the stage when he was young — an interest in the way the world at large shapes our private lives and how accidental forces shape individual destiny. If you still have a fondness for those books — maybe because they were the vehicles through which you first learned to read and interpret critically — then you are bound to like “Nemesis.”

“Nemesis” is unafraid to tackle the moral dimension of our actions and lives. We are witness to the corrosive effects of resentment, self-pity, suspicion and rage. By book’s end we have come to realize all of us are carriers of disease — “bringers of crippling and death” — if not in a literal sense then in the guise of anger, hate, spite and selfishness. Roth raises anew the old questions: What is our responsibility to our fellows? Are we all to blame? One is reminded of Arthur Miller, especially the stark examination of these issues in his play “Incident at Vichy,” set in World War II. Are we left with the impossible choice between either resigning ourselves to the suffering of others, or taking on a responsibility whose dimensions doom us to failure?

The draft short story Roth had shared with Bellow back in 1957 reminded the elder writer, in one respect, of “The Plague” by Albert Camus, a book Bellow disliked. He warned Roth against writing stories too beholden to a controlling idea: “I have a thing about Ideas in stories. Camus’ The Plague was an IDEA. Good or bad? Not so hot, in my opinion.” I’m not certain exactly what Bellow meant by this; my guess is that he was warning against turning the text into a (mere) parable. And yet there is no mistaking the correspondences between the fictional devastation visited upon the inhabitants of Camus’ Oran and Roth’s Newark, and contemporary or near-contemporary events in Europe. As the writer Abraham Verghese observed in his recent review of Sigrid Nunez’s “Salvation City” (a novel set in a near-future America consumed by a flu epidemic): “An epidemic makes such a great backdrop for a novel.” In reaction to a disease that with shocking speed maims, paralyzes, and kills a community’s “beautiful children,” Roth depicts society’s descent into fear, apprehension and suspicion of outsiders, a course that ends, appropriately, in a search for meaning. 

Coda

One final note: the pages of “Nemesis” close with the narrator’s achingly beautiful memory of an afternoon near the end of June, 1944, before the epidemic seriously took hold of the city, when the Chancellor Avenue playground boys gathered to watch Bucky Cantor demonstrate the throw of a javelin. He writes: “None of us had ever before seen an athletic act so beautifully executed right in front of our eyes. Through him we boys had left the little story of the neighborhood and entered the historical saga of our ancient gender.”

Time will tell, but “Nemesis” could emerge as the one classic Roth novel all of us should read.

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(A shorter version of this review is posted on Amazon, here.)

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