Conspicuous Consumption

  I've just read five Chekhov plays in rapid succession. That may not be the best way to do it. Surely it would be wise to allow time between each to fully appreciate what one has just read. I couldn't help myself, though. Having entered Chekhov's world in one play, one wants to continue there in the next and the next and the next. And Chekhov's world, even across plays, is consistent. We are most often on the country estate of fading Russian aristocracy who are at once lampooned for how ineffectual they are in protecting the laudable culture that their privileged position has allowed them to develop, but at the same time portrayed affectionately as bearers of that laudable culture. One thing that makes these plays remarkable is that, like filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, who must have read them, the plots are buried. Narrative, much less melodrama, doesn't muddy things up. There are suicides, shootings, duels, love triangles, and so on, but they take place off stage. We see...

   I read this first soon after the English translation appeared, and, realizing that I was in the presence of genius, I immediately acquired several more of Sebald's books. Then I set them aside. I do this sometimes with work that I feel certain I will love; I save them for the right time, a pleasure deferred. The right time has come. Rereading The Emigrants , I find it just as moving, just as surprising, just as astounding as I did on first reading it. As with much of the best art, one isn't certain how Sebald does it. It was, when it first appeared, "unlike any book one has ever read" (Susan Sontag), though of course now there are libraries filled with books in which writers, with varying degrees of success, have attempted follow where Sebald has lead. No one, of course, does his mix of memoir, travel book, fiction, and subtle reflection on history better. The holocaust is alluded to, but never explicitly discussed. It is the best book about the holocaust that I ha...

   I’m pretty sure this is the first novel I’ve read by an “internet sensation.” The author, who writes under the pseudonym Uketsu and appears on his YouTube channel wearing a mask and using a voice modulator, writes novels that are at the same time puzzle mysteries and horror, and employ visual aids—strange pictures—as important pieces of the puzzle. In Jim Rion’s translation, the prose in Strange Pictures is simple, making for a quick and easy read. I’m guessing the target is young people, less sophisticated readers who enjoy the dark and mysterious. And this is quick, simple, and enjoyable, but also very dark. Indeed, almost no characters who could be called good even in the simplest way appear until toward the book’s end. They’re not missed. It’s a fun diversion.

Every time I think I’m done with contemporary American literary fiction, especially of the divorce in the suburbs type, I stumble upon work in that tired category that convinces me it can still be worth one’s precious reading time. Edith Pearlman is definitely an author whose work is worth one’s time. I guess one reason I enjoyed her stories is that she’s willing to venture far outside the generic bounds which bind so many other writers. Several of the stories are set in a fictional Boston suburb, and yes there are divorces, but several venture far beyond it to Europe, for example, and Central America. The connected stories featuring a woman who works with “displaced people” (Jews escaping the Nazis) in London are among my favorites. Likewise, the view she gives us of a community slightly removed from the mainstream, the Jewish bourgeoisie in the US, is fresh. Mostly though it is her skill as a writer. Her characters are alive, and it is her exquisite prose which makes them so. My only...

   I'm on record as saying that I don't like children's literature. This is not because there is anything wrong with children's literature, but I'm not a child, and neither am I a "kidult" (I thought Will Self had coined that, but apparently it's much older) who revels in the books and media he or she enjoyed or would have enjoyed as a child. I've never read Harry Potter, and probably never will. And yet, here I am writing about a children's book that I enjoyed. I enjoyed the first in the series The Wolves of Willoughby Chase , more, but that's by way of saying that this is not even the first children's book I've read in recent years. I moved on to the second book in the series because I had enjoyed the first a great deal. What both books share is a clever plot, elegant writing, and rollicking humor.   The thing that makes it possible for even as curmudgeonly a reader as me to enjoy these novels is that Aiken does not assume that ch...

  I have concluded my year of reading E.M. Forster with the work that many consider his magnum opus, A Passage to India . It was good in the way that all Forster's fiction is good. The prose is shapely, the characters well-drawn, the humor humorous. Those who like that sort of thing will probably also applaud his philosophizing, but I much prefer the wit. As the title indicates, Forster has stepped outside of England and Europe, and in spite of his being a pre-postcolonial, he does a good job of treating Indian culture and people with respect. He doesn't make them into downtrodden saints or paragons of goodness, but rather allows them to be human. Likewise, he gives us a clear view of how inhuman were the colonialists in the country they administered.  It's hard to say which of Forster's novels I like best, but although I did enjoy Passage,  it is certainly not my favorite of his works. Perhaps that would be  A Room With a View as it's the most humorous of the lot ...

  Somerset Maugham worked in the British Secret Service during World War I. This series of stories about the British agent Ashenden are, therefore, to some extent autobiographical, though Maugham reminds us in his introduction that his experiences have been "rearranged for the purposes of fiction [because] fact is a poor storyteller." Ashenden / Maugham is no James Bond (though one is certain Fleming read these stories). He is diffident, and is not always confident that he doing the right thing in the operations with which he is involved, or that the outcomes he achieves actually make the world a better place. He moves from country to country, but does not live a glamorous life, and it is unclear whether he possesses a gun or would know how to use one if he does. Don't, therefore, open this book in search of a thriller. Rather, read it for the gentle humor and the astute observation of a gallery of human beings. Ashenden was recruited, after all, because he is a writer, a...