The Elegant Variation: LATBR THUMBNAIL®

« HIDING FROM THE LAWYERS, INSTALLMENT 2 | Main | NOTHING TO DO WITH BOOKS »

May 09, 2005

LATBR THUMBNAIL® - MAY 8, 2005

We were disappointed to extract an even flimsier insert than usual this week - a mere 12 pages down from the usual 16. But imagine our surprise as we started turning pages and ended up tossing around A's with almost giddy abandon. A few misfires this week (wouldn't be LATBR without them) but in the main - unless we're experiencing an odd burst of sentimentality over the departure of Steve Wasserman - not bad at all. Not even a single AI ALERT (that's for Authorial Intrusion) to mar the landscape. Though we would have liked to have seen a bit more fiction covered, or at least a bit less Elmore Leonard. OK, on to the grades:

STATS
Full length fiction reviews: 3
Full length non-fiction reviews: 5
Columns: Discoveries and Poets' Corner

TITLES, AUTHORS & REVIEWERS
Blodd Father by Peter Craig. Reviewed by Paula L. Woods Grade: C
The Hot Kid by Elmore Leonard. Reviewed by Denise Hamilton Grade: B-
Guitar by Tim Brookes. Reviewed by Louis Sahagun Grade: A
The Treehouse by Naomi Wolf. Reviewed by Deborah Friedell. Grade: B
When Trumpets Call by Patricia O'Toole. Reviewed by Zachary Karabell. Grade: A
The Power of Delight by John Bayley. Reviewed by Matthew Price. Grade: B+
A Perfect Red by Amy Butler Greenfield. Reviewed by John Eidinow. Grade: C-
Empire of the Stars by Arthur I. Miller. Reviewed by Simon Singh. Grade: A
The Complete Peanuts by Charles Schulz; and Thrashed by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman. Reviewed by Charles Solomon. Grade: C-
Poets' Corner Column: Overlord by Jorie Graham. Reviewed by Carol Muske-Dukes. Grade: A
Discoveries Column: I Got Somebody in Staunton by William Henry Lewis; Twilight of the Long-Ball Gods by John Schulian; and The Bitch Posse by Martha O'Connor. Reviewed by Susan Salter Reynolds. Grade: B
The Italian Secretary by Caleb Carr. Reviewed by Leslie Klinger. Grade: C

WHAT WE LIKE ...
Mark this day in your TEV memorial calendar as the first time that more energy goes into the "What We Like" section than the "What We Don't" ... Many goodies this week ... Ever since he shared his rules on writing with the world, we've not been much interested in Elmore Leonard (especially when he's also on the cover of NYTBR) but Hamilton's review actually made us mildly curious to have a look ... We also don't have much use for memoirs but Guitar sounds right up our alley, and we experienced an sympathetic involuntary bodily contraction when we learned that "airport baggage handlers snapped the neck of [Brookes'] beloved 22-year-old handcrafted guitar" ... Friedell's review of the Naomi Wolf book earns high marks for calling it out as an insipid bit of self-help ... And although it's true that we're probably reaching Teddy Roosevelt overload, Karabell's review is a crisp, smart and deep look at the latest TR title to hit a flooded marketplace ... The Bayley book sounds just terrific and almost makes up for the lack of serious fiction coverage this issue ... and Singh's review of the Miller book looks at one of those controversies of British science of the 1930s - who first came up with the idea of black holes - that are rife with compelling characters and big stakes.

WHAT WE DON'T ...
A few groaners but nothing that sent us for our smelling salts ... Woods can't seem to help trafficking in cliche from the first paragraph -

"Writers who attempt to capture Southern California in fiction must contend with the ghosts of those who preceded them ... " (TEV note: Which makes it different from writers writing about NY? Or London? But it's a silly statement because all writers contend with all writers who precede them period - geography is but one part of that.)

- to the last, in which she annoints Peter Craig "a writer to watch." Time to add that overworked phrase to the banished-from-reviews pile ... Whose genius idea was it to run a full page review about the history of cochineal, a red eye ... Eyes glazed over after about a third of the review - we can't imagine slogging through a whole book on the subject ... And what's with the full page for Peanuts/Zits? Are we going to lose a full page of the book review for every volume of the Peanuts series to be released? (It's intended to cover the whole 50-year run of the series, and they're just at 1955-56.) ... and finally the review of The Italian Secretary by noted L.A. Sherlockian Leslie Klinger is a muddled bit of business that suffers, perhaps, from too much expertise in his subject matter ... Klinger talks too much about pastiche (which he makes sure to define for us) but doesn't tell us nearly enough about the book (which we remain quite interested in and which floats very the near the top of our TBR pile).

GRADE: B- We should probably hack off another half-grade for the lack of serious fiction coverage but that seems like it would be churlish, especially when the non-fiction reviews are as well-written as interesting as they were this week. Keep it up, Mr. Wasserman (we assume some issues bearing his thumbprint are still in the pipeline and will only emerge post-departure), and you can leave the building with your head held high.

Posted at 12:01 AM in LATBR Thumbnails | Permalink

Comments

I've got to disagree with you a bit on the LATimes running reviews for each volume of 'Complete Peanuts'. When the LIbrary of America's Complete Philip Roth starts (this year?), should the LATimes review only the initial volume? What about the writer's evolution, missteps, etc.?

Posted by: Scott | May 09, 2005 at 02:35 PM

I agree with Scott on this one. There will be one volume every six months for 13 years. If in each of those cases, the reviewer devotes 3/4 of a page to the two years covered, and a 1/4 page to one of the countless strips that were heavily influenced by Schultz, it still might not be enough ink.

Enjoy,

Posted by: Dan Wickett | May 09, 2005 at 03:10 PM

The editor of the LATimes Book Review is leaving and the LATimes itself is under a lot of fiscal stress. Are these two events related? And what will the future hold for this section of the paper? And could it be that the review of the review is softening a little thinking about these questions?

That's what I wonder. Every publication has its ups and downs, and I've always wished the review would simply cover more books, but still, all in all, I think our Sundays would be considerably poorer without this section of the paper, or with the half-hearted attempt subscribers had to live with for years and years before Wasserman.

Posted by: Kit Stolz | May 09, 2005 at 04:41 PM

i noticed that, yet again, the graphics/photos, though nicely done, take up a huge amount of space. even where the total number of pages drops to twelve as it did yesterday, you could easily add another four reviews by shrinking the graphics/photos (doing away with them altogether would almost double the space for reviews, but that's kind of radical).

Posted by: daniel olivas | May 09, 2005 at 05:07 PM

While living on the other side of the continent, i am aware of the existence of the LA Times because about 10 years ago a reporter once wrote a decent=long article on men in dresses and skirts (non-bifurcated clothing)-- it was reprinted in the Japan Times -- and because a year and a half ago, my first book in English was almost reviewed by it. Because the reviewer had a blurb on my book's back cover or because i mentioned her book after her name after the blurb, the editor poohpoohed the review as a conflict of interest. Imagine that! All because i put some words from a letter (i had not asked for a blurb much less paid for it!)on my back-cover, the people of los angeles (who, judging from your list of recommended nonfiction, could use the stimulation my books offer) still do not know i exist (and i am still too poor to send review copies out to prime the pump). But note: my books are up for you to view at Google Print and Amazon's Look Within. And, that brings me to the idea that surfaced as i wrote the above:

Why not try reviews based on reading what can be read (20% a month or whatever) at Amazon and Google? Do you recall Wilde's words about not reading a book before reviewing it lest he be prejudiced as to the content? This would not be quite that interesting, but would it not be more fair -- and kind to readers -- than the situation today, when the selection of books for review reflects the $$$$$$$$$$$ put into the pr?

"Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!"

Posted by: robin d. gill | May 10, 2005 at 06:08 AM

The comments to this entry are closed.

MY NOVEL

HARRY, REVISED - Get all the details here.

TOUR DATES

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal by Rob Riemen

This slim volume by the president and founder of the Nexus Institute, a European-based humanist think-tank, stands as the most stirring redoubt against the ascendant forces of know-nothingness that we've come across in a long time. A full-throated, unapologetic defense of the virtues of Western Civ – in which "elite" is not and never should be a dirty word – this inspiring exploration of high art and high ideals is divided into three sections: The first looks at the life of Riemen's great hero Thomas Mann as a model for the examined life. The second imagines a series of conversations from turning points in European intellectual history, populated with the likes of Socrates, Nietzsche and others. The final section, "Be Brave," is nothing less than an exhortation to dig deep, especially in times of risk. The notion of nobility of the spirit might strike some modern ears as quaint but it seems more desperately necessary than ever before, and there are worse ways to read the accessible Nobility of Spirit than as a crash refresher in the Great Thinkers, free of academic jargon and cant. As a meditation on what is at stake when the pursuit of high ideals is elbowed aside by the pursuit of fleeting material gain, however, Nobility of Spirit might well be the most prescient book we've yet read on what's at stake in the current election cycle and in the developing global situation. Agree or disagree with Riemen's profound, ambitious and high-minded plea, you will be thinking about his words for a long time. It's been ages since a work of non-fiction moved us this way. Read it. Discuss it. Argue about it.
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

With rave reviews from James Wood, Michiko Kakutani and Dwight Garner, it might not seem like we need to tell you to drop everything and go read Netherland, but we are telling you, and here's why: The way book coverage works these days, everyone talks about the same book for about two or three weeks, and then they move on and the book is more or less forgotten. Whereas a berth here in the Recommended sidebar keeps noteworthy titles in view for a good, long time, which is the sort of sustained attention this marvelous novel deserves. A Gatsby-like meditation on exclusion and otherness, it's an unforgettable New York story in which the post 9/11 lives of Hans, a Dutch banker estranged from his English wife, and Chuck Ramkissoon, a mysterious cricket entrepreneur, intertwine. The New York City of the immigrant margins is unforgettably invoked in gorgeous, precise prose, and the novel's luminous conclusion is a radiant beacon illuminating one of our essential questions, the question of belonging. Our strongest possible recommendation.
Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick

"History," wrote Henry James in a 1910 letter to his amanuensis Theodora Bosanquet, "is strangely written." This casual aside could easily serve as the epigraph of Cynthia Ozick's superb new collection Dictation, which concerns itself with lost worlds evoked by languages -- languages which separate and obscure as readily as they bind. It can be risky to look for connective tissue between stories written years apart and published in magazines ranging from The Conradian to The New Yorker. But themes of deception, posterity, and above all, the glory of language -- at once malleable and intractable -- knit together this quartet, recasting the whole as the harmonious product of Ozick's formidable talent. Read the entire review here
Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee

Now, on the one hand, you scarcely need us to alert you to the existence of a new J.M. Coetzee novel, or even to have us tell you it's worth reading. But we can tell you - we insist on telling you that Diary of a Bad Year is a triumph, easily Coetzee's most affecting and fully wrought work since Disgrace. Formally inventive, the book intertwines two narratives with the author's own Strong Opinions, a series of seemingly discrete philosophical and political essays. The cumulative effect of this strange trio is deeply moving and thought provoking. It's increasingly rare in this thoroughly post-post-modern age to raise the kind of questions in fiction Coetzee handles so masterfully - right down to what is it, exactly, that we expect (or need) from our novels. It's telling that, for all of his serious pronouncements on subjects ranging from censorship to pedophilia to the use of torture, it's finally a few pages from The Brothers Karamazov that brings him to tears. Moving, wise and - how's this for a surprise - funny and lightly self-mocking, Diary of a Bad Year might well be the book of the year and Coetzee is surely our essential novelist. We haven't stopped thinking about it since we set it down.
The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt

David Leavitt's magnificent new novel tells the story of the unlikely friendship between the British mathematician G.H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan, mathematical autodidact and prodigy who had been working as a clerk in Madras, and who would turn out to be one of the great mathematical minds of the century. Ramanujan reluctantly joined Hardy in England - a move that would ultimately prove to his detriment - and the men set to work on proving the Riemann Hypothesis, one of mathematics' great unsolved problems. The Indian Clerk, an epic and elegant work which spans continents and decades, encompasses a World War, and boasts a cast of characters that includes Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Lytton Strachey. Leavitt renders the complex mathematics in a manner that resonates emotionally as well as intellectually, and writes with crystalline elegance. The metaphor of the prime number – divisible only by one and itself – is beautifully apt for this tale of these two isolated geniuses. Leavitt's control of this dense, sprawling material is impressive – astonishing, at times – and yet despite its scope, he keeps us focused on his great themes of unknowability and identity. The Indian Clerk might be set in the past but it doesn't resemble most so-called "historical fiction." Rather, it's an ageless meditation on the quests for knowledge and for the self – and how frequently the two are intertwined – that is, finally, as timeless as the music of the primes. (View our full week of coverage here.)
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

Joshua Ferris' warm and funny debut novel is an antidote to the sneering likes of The Office and Max Barry's Company. Treating his characters with both affection and respect, Ferris takes us into a Chicago ad agency at the onset of the dot-bomb. Careers are in jeopardy, nerves are frayed and petty turf wars are fought. But there are bigger stakes in the balance, and Ferris' weirdly indeterminate point of view that's mostly first person plural, underscores the shared humanity of everyone who has ever had to sit behind a desk. It's a luminous, affecting debut and you can read the first chapter right here.
Christine Falls by Benjamin Black

Coming to these shores at last, John Banville's thriller, written under the nom de plume Benjamin Black, has drawn rave reviews across the pond since it first appeared last October. Those who feared Banville might turn in an overly literary effort needn't worry. Influenced by Simenon's romans durs (hard stories), Banville unspools a dark mystery set in 1950s Dublin concerning itself with, among other things, the church's trade in orphans. At the heart of the book is the coroner Quirke, a Banvillean creation on par with Alex Cleave and Freddie Montgomery. Dublin is rendered with a damp, creaky specificity – you can almost taste the whisky.
The Paris Review Interviews, I by The Paris Review and Philip Gourevitch

Scanning our Recommended selections, one might conclude we're addicted to interviews, and one would be correct. If author interviews are like crack to us, then the Paris Review author interviews must surely be the gold standard of crack (a comparison Plimpton might not have embraced). The newly issued The Paris Review Interviews, Volume I (Picador) rolls out the heavy hitters. Who can possibly turn away from the likes of Saul Bellow, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Jorge Luis Borges, Dorothy Parker, Robert Gottlieb and others? The interviews are formal and thoughtful but never dry and can replace any dozen "how-to" books on writing. What can be more comforting than hearing Bellow, answering a question on preparations and conception, admit "Well, I don't know exactly how it's done.” The best part of this collection? The "Volume I" in the title, with its promise of more volumes to come.
The Dead Fish Museum: Stories by Charles D'Ambrosio

The best short story collection we've read since ... well, certainly since we've started this blog. And we might even say "ever" if Dubliners didn't cast such a long shadow. The short story is not our preferred form but D'Ambrosio's eight brilliant stories are almost enough to convert us. Defy the conventional wisdom that short story collections don't sell and treat yourself to this marvel. (We're especially partial, naturally, to "Screenwriter".)
The Mystery Guest by Grégoire Bouillier
*Now in Paperback*

What would you do if the woman who’d left you high and dry ten years ago called out of the blue to invite you to a party without any further explanation? If you’re French, you’d probably spend a lot of time pondering the Deeper Significance Of It All, which is exactly what Grégoire Bouillier does for the 120 hilarious pages of The Mystery Guest. This slim, witty memoir follows Bouillier through the party from hell, and is a case study in Gallic self-abasement. Before it’s all done, you’ll set fire to any turtleneck hanging in your closet and think twice before buying an expensive Bordeaux as a gift. But fear not – just when it seems that all is, indeed, random and pointless and there is no Deeper Significance, salvation arrives in the unlikely form of Virginia Woolf, and the tale ends on a note of unforced optimism. Parfait.
Ticknor by Sheila Heti

When George Ticknor's Life of William Hickling Prescott was published in 1864, it received rapturous notices, and reviewers were quick to point out that the long-standing friendship between Prescott and Ticknor made the latter an ideal Boswell. Sheila Heti has pulled this obscure leaf from the literary archives and fashioned a mordantly funny anti-history; a pungent and hilarious study of bitterness and promise unfulfilled. As a fretful Ticknor navigates his way through the rain-soaked streets of Boston to Prescott's house ("But I am not a late man. I hate to be late."), he recalls his decidedly one-sided lifelong friendship with his great subject. Unlike the real-life Ticknor, this one is an embittered also-ran, full of plans and intentions never realized, always alive to the fashionable whispers behind his back. Heti seamlessly inhabits Ticknor's fussy 19th-century diction with a feat of virtuoso ventriloquism that puts one in mind of The Remains of the Day. Heti's Ticknor would be insufferable if he weren't so funny, and in the end, the black humor brings a leavening poignancy to this brief tale. But don't let the size fool you — this 109-page first novel is small but scarcely slight; it is as dense and textured as a truffle.
The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers by Vendela Vida

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you and yes, we are recommending a Believer product. Twenty-three interviews (a third presented for the first time) pairing the likes of Zadie Smith with Ian McEwan, Jonathan Lethem with Paul Auster, Edward P. Jones and ZZ Packer, and Adam Thirwell with Tom Stoppard make this collection a must-read. Lifted out of the context of some of the magazine's worst twee excesses, the interviews stand admirably on their own as largely thoughtful dialogues on craft. A handful of interviewers seem more interested in themselves than in their subjects but in the main this collection will prove irresistible to writers of any stripe - struggling or established - and to readers seeking a window into the creative process.
The Sea by John Banville

John Banville's latest novel returns him to the Booker Prize shortlist for the first time since 1989's The Book of Evidence. In The Sea, we find Banville in transition, moving from the icy, restrained narrators of The Untouchable, Eclipse and Shroud toward warmer climes. Max Morden has returned to the vacation spot of his youth as he grieves the death of his wife. Remembering his first, fatal love, Morden works to reconcile himself to his loss. Banville's trademark linguistic virtuosity is everpresent but some of the chilly control is relinquished and Max mourns and rages in ways that mark a new direction for Banville - and there's at least one great twist which you'll never see coming. Given the politicized nature of the British literary scene, Banville's shot at the prize might be hobbled by his controversial McEwan review but we're rooting for our longtime favorite to go all the way at last. UPDATE: Our man won!
Here Is Where We Meet by John Berger

We've been fans of Booker Prize winner John Berger for ages, and we're delighted to have received an early copy of his latest work, Here is Where We Meet. In this lovely, elliptical, melancholy "fictional memoir," Berger traverses European cities from Libson to Geneva to Islington, conversing with shades from his past – He encounters his dead mother on a Lisbon tram, a beloved mentor in a Krakow market. Along the way, we're treated to marvelous and occasionally heart-rending glimpses of an extraordinary life, a lyrical elegy to the 20th century from a man who - in his eighth decade - remains committed to his political beliefs and almost childlike in his openness to people, places and experiences. There's no conventional narrative here, and those seeking plot are advised to look elsewhere. But Here is Where We Meet offers a wise, moving and poetic look at the life of an artist traversing the European century from a novelist whose talent remains undimmed in his twilight years.
Home Land by Sam Lipsyte

In his recent TEV guest review of Home Land, Jim Ruland called Sam Lipsyte the "funniest writer of his generation," and we're quite inclined to agree. We tore through Home Land in two joyful sittings and can't remember the last time we've laughed so hard. Lipsyte's constellation of oddly sympathetic losers is rendered with a sparkling, inspired prose style that's sent us off in search of all his prior work. In Lewis Miner's (a.k.a Teabag) woeful epistolary dispatches to his high school alumni newsletter ("I did not pan out."), we find an anti-hero for the age. Highly, highly recommended.

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel is the tale of Florence Green, a widow who seeks, in the late 1950s, to bring a bookstore to an isolated British town, encountering all manner of obstacles, including incompetent builders, vindictive gentry, small minded bankers, an irritable poltergeist, but, above all, a town that might not, in fact, want a bookshop. Fitzgerald's prose is spare but evocative – there's no wasted effort and her work reminds one of Hemingway's dictum that every word should fight for its right to be on the page. Florence is an engaging creation, stubbornly committed to her plan even as uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the enterprise gnaws at her. But The Bookshop concerns itself, finally, with the astonishing vindictiveness of which provincials are capable, and, as so much English fiction must, it grapples with the inevitabilities of class. It's a dense marvel at 123 pages, a book you won't want to – or be able to – rush through.
The Rider by Tim Krabbe

Tim Krabbé's superb 1978 memoir-cum-novel is the single best book we've read about cycling, a book that will come closer to bringing you inside a grueling road race than anything else out there. A kilometer-by-kilometer look at just what is required to endure some of the most grueling terrain in the world, Krabbé explains the tactics, the choices and – above all – the grinding, endless, excruciating pain that every cyclist faces and makes it heart-pounding rather than expository or tedious. No writer has better captured both the agony and the determination to ride through the agony. He's an elegant stylist (ably served by Sam Garrett's fine translation) and The Rider manages to be that rarest hybrid – an authentic, accurate book about cycling that's a pleasure to read. "Non-racers," he writes. "The emptiness of those lives shocks me."

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

May 09, 2005

LATBR THUMBNAIL® - MAY 8, 2005

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

May 09, 2005

LATBR THUMBNAIL® - MAY 8, 2005

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism