Southern Bookman

Dear Lord, Is It Pretentious

Sam Sacks in a haughty Wall Street Journal review Thursday dismisses Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's new novel "Americanah." "...Dear Lord, is it pretentious," Sacks says.

The in-house fiction critic for the Journal's Saturday literary section, Sacks likely gives his honest appraisal of "Americanah," calling it preachy and moralizing. Yet I wondered why the WSJ couldn't find an African-American woman, or man, to do the review.

I read an excerpt of Adiche's book in the New Yorker and thought it a strong work of fiction. The full "Americanah" might be as bad as Sacks says, but his condescending tone raises my doubts about his ability to appreciate her work.

A Critical Look at "Gatsby"

With the new hip-hop 3-D "Great Gatsby" crash-landing this week, New York magazine's Kathryn Schulz blasts the actual book, avowing that she's read F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel five times without pleasure.

While engaging in the tiresome game of shooting down American classics - the same has been done with "A Catcher in the Rye" and "Huckleberry Finn" - Schulz makes valid points. The book is simplistic and contrived, and Gatsby's attraction to Daisy is more adolescent fantasy than complex adult love. Like "Catcher" a gateway book for high school readers, "Gatsby" lacks the sophistication of "Anna Karina," "Madame Bovary" and "Swann's Way." Fitzgerald's "Tender Is the Night" displays more depth.

Shulz does give Fitzgerald credit for his lapidary writing. I was puzzled by her statement that she finds no wit or humor in "Gatsby." The narrator Nick Carraway's wit and style were the main attractions of the book when I and my friends read it for the first time 40 years ago at the dawn of its resurgence to prominence. Shulz is right that the characters represent types; I always thought that Fitzgerald intended a satirical take on American culture and its mistaking money for culture. Somehow, Shulz misses this.

A main point of the book is American shallowness compared with Europe, that Gatsby's attempts to manufacture elegance and refinement are doomed to failure. Shulz flails away at "Gatsby" and lands a few blows, but fails to land a knockout.

Frank Bascombe's Return

Frank Bascombe acolytes stirred last week when Slate reported that Bascombe had unexpectedly returned. Richard Ford in an appearance at New York City's 92nd Street Y delighted his audience with the surprise reading of a new short story about Bascombe, Ford's iconic everyman character whose progress from young manhood to late middle age was shown in three novels.

The excitement bubbled over because Ford had previously said that he would not bring back Bascombe following the last novel "The Lay of the Land," in which Bascombe is a semi-retired realtor beset by prostate cancer. In the new story, Bascombe has aged another decade or so, living in post Hurricane Sandy New Jersey. In the novels, the affluent suburbs of northern New Jersey are transformed into one of literature's mythical places.

Bascombe first appeared 30 years ago in "The Sportswriter," a generation-defining novel for many who came of age in the late 1960s and early '70s. Like the TV show "30 Something," the book reflected the closing of possibilities, the arrival of maturity and its disappointments. Plus, it had for male readers one of American fiction's most intriguing, mythical, generational muses, Bascombe's former wife, identified only as X. Like Gatsby's Daisy, X embodies the golden sexuality and transcendent cool of American femininity. The long awaited second book, "Independence Day" was a letdown, while "The Lay of The Land," while not as epochal as "The Sportswriter," aptly defined the edgy atmosphere of the post Sept. 11 era.

Each book was associated with a holiday: "The Sportswriter," Easter, and "independence Day" and "The Lay of the Land" the American celebrations of the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving. Ford told radio great Bob Edwards that he would shun linking a fourth Bascombe novel to Christmas because that holiday's symbolic and cultural weight would be too difficult to navigate.

Perhaps Bascombe will live on in short stories or a new novel not connected to Christmas. No matter the form, Ford fans will welcome the return of Bascombe, like John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom a character who defines a generation as it ages and reacts to time and history.

E-books Hit the Stacks

Anthony W. Marx, head of the New York Public Library, in a New York Times op-ed article today praises the Big Six (not the Original Six - that's hockey) book publishers for increasing the library's access to e-books. Yet Marx's piece makes clear that the publishers have placed severe restrictions on e-book circulation.

Marx, in another context under fire for plans to renovate the library's Fifth Avenue crown jewel, sees e-books as the future. My take-away is that limits on e-book circulation widen the "digital divide" between those who can buy the newest devices and e-information and those who can't. At least Marx is consistent - his plans to rip up the hallowed Fifth Avenue library reading room and create some kind of Internet cafe gave a collective shudder to the intellectual class horrified that the plan would be taking democracy too far, block that cappuccino!

Meanwhile, the irrepressible Tom Friedman, in his adjacent column, comes up with another of his glib concepts. Nowadays, it's a "401 (k) world," says Mr. Tom, meaning that unlike in the old pension-Social Security world, workers have to fend for themselves and acquire ever more rarified skills to survive in the "hyper-connected" world. Mr. Tom finds "a lot of this scary," although it can be presumed that his 401 ( k) looks pretty good. It's cold out there for a pimp, but Mr. Tom can charge nearly $1,000 a head to attend his seminar on this scary, scary hyper-connected world.

As Marx says, - Anthony, not Karl - more and more people are using the library for Internet access, to check e-mail and increase those skills Friedman discusses. Yet library funding goes down and the profit-hungry publishers place limits on e-books.

After all of this, I felt a bit queasy to find on the business page that cash-heavy Apple, the leading maker of smart phones and tablets for easy e-book enlightenment, is issuing millions in bonds, essentially acquiring more cash by raising debt. Apple reportedly will use some of that money for dividends to shareholders. If only I had bought Apple Stock, my 401 (k) would look much brighter and I could afford to acquire whatever skills Mr. Tom somewhat murkily says I will need for the scary 401 (k) world. I might even be able to attend one of his seminars, or figure out how to download e-books from the library to my Apple-made I-Pad. Marx says many folks don't even know they can download e-books from the library. I tried to download some to my Nook, but all the books I wanted had a long waiting time, as admittedly is the situation with old fashioned paper books. Marx's article makes clear why.

Perhaps we could go back to that other Marx and say "workers of the world unite" but that boat has apparently already sunk in our 401 (k) world. Groucho Marx might give us a bit of insight too; I'm sure his clips can be found on You Tube.

If the Big Six makes you dizzy, there's always the Original Six: all of them are in the NHL playoffs for the first time in ages. The best bet for the Stanley Cup, an ESPN analyst says, are Pittsburgh and Chicago, two cities that make me nostalgic for the old non-hyper-connected world.

"On the Road" Film Out of Gas

Add Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" to the list of American novels that result in disappointing movies. I'd read negative reviews of Walter Salles' film, but decided to give it a go when it showed up on the Comcast On Demand menu at the same time it's still in theaters (which can be a sign of a flop).

The movie is even worse than the reviews. I was going to give a detailed condemnation but decided not to waste the words. Suffice it to say that the most interesting part of the movie are the cactuses in one visually gorgeous shot.

Will the newest " Great Gatsby" succeed where other films of the novel have failed? We wish it luck, although I have my doubts about Leo as Jay. Too short.

More Writing Tips From John McPhee

John McPhee in this week's New Yorker continues his primers for writers, discussing how he goes through several drafts before giving his articles and books that trademark polish. His confession of despair, turmoil and frustration in producing the all-important first draft offers encouragement to struggling scribes.

For grammar nerds, McPhee's piece devolves into a discussion of such points as when which can be used to modify a restrictive clause. He affectionately recounts tussles with the New Yorker's formidable copy desk, giving tribute to the magazine's longtime grammarian, Eleanor Gould, whose name lives on when copy editors "Gould" a proof. McPhee's piece brought an amusing follow up from copy editor Mary Norris on the New Yorker's web site about why the magazine spells traveler traveller.

...The Wall Street Journal today had a charming piece about sax player Sonny Rollins. I was amused at Rollins's (New Yorker style, as McPhee discusses) comment that at age 81, he has less energy for practice, often playing his instrument for just three hours. Three hours! I'm lucky to last for 30 minutes at the piano.

...Farewell to George Jones, one of America's great originals. A distinctive voice and a wild character.

Salinger Letters Show Writer's Youth

Nine letters written by J.D. Salinger in the early 1940s to a young woman in Toronto have been purchased by the Morgan Library in New York, The New York Times reported this week.

The letters reveal a breezy, flirty, gossipy young man, not yet darkened by his World War II combat. He mentions the New Yorker buying a short story featuring a young character named Holden Caulfield. The story, "A Small Rebellion Off Madison," was not published until after the war. The Times quotes Salinger as saying the magazine expressed its interest in other stories about the disaffected young boy. For whatever reason, Holden remained in his imagination, at last culminating in the classic "A Catcher in The Rye."

Salinger, who fought extensively in Europe, including D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, suffered severe mental trauma and eventually made himself a recluse toward the end of his life. "For Esme With Love and Squalor," perhaps his finest achievement, tells of a young soldier's correspondence with a young woman, starting with light-hearted letters before the experience of combat and ending with war-haunted letters outlining the soldier's severe emotional collapse.

"Esme" was based on his letters to another young woman, not his Toronto pen pal, who's still alive and in her 90s. But the newly discovered letters reveal the same exuberant joy of living whose loss is registered in "Esme." The new letters show Salinger's love of slang and colloquial speech. That wit and gift for the vernacular lived on in "The Catcher in the Rye," "Nine Stories," "Franny and Zoey" and " Raise High the Roof Beams Carpenters." Along with his fresh American language, the deepening of his tragic sense because of the war made him one of our great writers, despite his small body of works.

Pushcart Prize Anthology Uneven

For years, I've enjoyed reading the Pushcart Prize Best of the Small Presses anthology, so was tickled to come across the 37th edition. While Bill Henderson's project boosts of its grass-roots authenticity, it's gained over the years some institutional pomposity; the collection is slickly published, along with the volume number in Roman numerals, à la the Super Bowl. Henderson's introduction espousing the literary virtues of the pieces gleaned from the nation's small publishing entrepreneurs has a smug, self-congratulatory quality.

Indeed, the contents are uneven, especially the poetry, chosen by Bob Hicok and Maxine Kumin. Hicok and Kumin talk like battle heroes of choosing from hundreds and hundreds of poems, which is scary, since the poems I've encountered so far strike me as amateurish, overwrought, poorly considered, and unfinished. A typically sentimental and banal Ted Kooser poem made the most of an impression. Henderson points to a poem by a fourth grader. Perhaps it will raise the intellectual and artistic level.

On the prose side, the most notable piece so far is one of Marilynne Robinson's mind-stretching essays, "On Beauty." The late Harry Crews shows the best of his macho style with a memoir fragment. I started but grew bored with a short story by Karen Russell, the new it girl of short stories a few months ago. I've liked Laura Kasischke's poems, but her short story reprinted in the anthology, "The Barge," strikes me as something a talented high school girl would produce. While discovering some new voices, the anthology has its share of familiar names such as Joyce Carol Oates, Wendell Berry, Jane Hirshfield, Andrew Huggins, and Adam Zagajewski.

I'll keep browsing; surely a jewel or two will be found.

William Styron's Letters

"Selected Letters of William Styron" could be one of the last collections of written letters, a long and distinguished literary tradition. In the future, volumes of collected e-mails, tweets, text messages and Facebook posts may arise, though these will be unlikely to have the depth of thought and feeling and complexity of personality reflected in long letters written on paper. Would Keats have worked out his negative capability reflections using Twitter?

Styron's letters are his first draft of history about a life that has been thoroughly examined through the refined lens of biographers, critics, fellow writers, family members and Styron himself in memoirs and personal essays. As with other letters by famous people, Styron's reveal him with immediacy and frankness: caring, affectionate, serious, and tender as well as self-righteous, opinionated, vindictive, racist and sexist.

His widow, Rose Styron, edited the volume along with R. Blakeslee Gilpin. From William Styron's youth as a struggling writer through the rich years of his literary success to his sad final years beset by depression and other illnesses, the letters range from chatty and jokey messages to chums like Philip Roth, Willie Morris and Mia Farrow to earnest, detailed reports to intimates such as his father, William Sr., and his writing mentor at Duke, William Blackburn. Literary feuds, parties, conferences, politics and the editorial business of writing and publishing come alive.

He gives fewer thoughts on writing and literary theory than might be expected, although he often reflects on such matters as critical reaction to his books. A grievance that endured to death was the fierce criticism of some black critics to his "Confessions of Nat Turner" and some Jewish commentators to "Sophie's Choice."

The letters' conversational tone sounds close to Styron's speaking voice, giving the impression that he is there talking to you through every step of his life.

David Shields' After Glow

After reading David Shields' "How Literature Saved My Life," I feel as if I've been on a drunk with a self-absorbed, irritating, neurotic, whining mess. Throughout the book I kept wanting to leave and stagger home to my collected T.S. Eliot criticism, yet stayed for another round.

Shields, at age 57, is consumed by adolescent angst, a childish fear of death. To keep this at bay, he chatters about books, writing, literature, art. Many of his comments strive for hip, ironic originality but sink to banality. His riffs faintly resemble a monologue from a Woody Allen movie, only not as funny.

Shields gives a post mortem on the death of the novel, claiming traditional narrative is too slow moving and contrived for our fragmented, distracted, short-attention-span age. He speaks for the immediacy of collage and blogs.

The book itself seeks to meet this aesthetic principle; Shields organizes his work by chunks, some only one or two paragraphs long. As the book builds to its finish, his interludes grow longer and more insightful. While saying he's abandoned the long-unfolding novel, he's actually expressing his anguish over the decline of the novel's culture. He pulls off the neat paradoxical trick, a book, increasingly mediated, about the end of the book.

When thinking about this blog -- ha, ha, Mr. Dave -- I was going to say the book's appeal was just barely above that of the Kardashians, not that I've ever watched. For one thing, we can assume that Shields has read many more books than Kim and family. On the whole, "How Literature Saved My Life" gave more morbid fun than aggravation. Too bad he thinks James Agee wrote "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" while working for Forbes instead of Henry Luce's Fortune. That howler shows one of the misfortunes of publishing's decline: fewer fact checkers.