June 14 & 21, 2010 Issue

Before the city, there was the land; but you’d never know it from the stories in this week’s “Summer Fiction: 20 Under 40” issue of the magazine. What a denatured collection! There’s hardly a tree or a plant or a sky or a river in any of these writings. Instead, we get all that man-made-social-network-second-nature-urban-landscape stuff: dinner parties in fancy houses (Joshua Ferris’s “The Pilot”), brainless chatter about loving “tiny socks,” “watching movie trailers on my computer,” intolerance of “trace amounts of jelly in the peanut butter jar,” etc. (Jonathan Safran Foer’s ridiculous “Here We Aren’t, So Quickly”), suburban excess, e.g., “He had been on the floor all morning – Brazilian cherry …” (Philipp Meyer’s “What You Do Out Here, When You’re Alone”), surrealistic nonsense like “Prison bars of not-money grew around me in dreams, like wild magic corn” (Rivka Galchen’s “The Entire Northern Side Was Covered With Fire”) international airports (Salvatore Scibona’s “The Kid”), “the streets of Northside, down in the little choke valley, befouled by industry” (C. E. Morgan’s “Twins”), e-mail, data, texts and computers (Gary Shteyngart’s undeniably ingenious, but still artificially-natured “Lenny Hearts Eunice”). Shteyngart’s story does contain a reference to an elephant, but the elephant’s in a zoo and he's a sad looking creature: "He slowly flicked back one huge ear, like a Galician shopkeeper of a century ago spreading his arms as if to say, ‘Yes, this is all there is.’” It’s almost as if the end of nature is one of Shteyngart’s points. ZZ Packer’s “Dayward” is an exception to the urban trend. It’s a story about two runaway “free” slaves, a brother and a sister, who scratch their way across country, pursued by dogs. Packer shows a bracing awareness of nature: “morning clouds the color of silver fox,” “drops of water as fat as pumpkin seeds.” And consider this beauty: “Herons rose up and over them, a litter of wings, soundless flaps, turning into white rags against a white rag sky.” The story is told well enough, but I confess I found it mild in comparison to, say, Cormac McCarthy’s hair-raising chases and the amazing interior monologues of some of Faulkner’s similarly situated characters. The pearl of the pack is Shteyngart’s piece. It alone has the shimmer of inspiration in its sentences, some of them, anyway; these, for instance: “Take a look at me, diary. What do you see? A slight man with a gray, sunken battleship of a face, curious wet eyes, a giant gleaming forehead on which a dozen cavemen could have painted something nice, a sickle of a nose perched atop a tiny puckered mouth, and, from the back, a growing bald spot whose shape perfectly replicates that of the great state of Ohio, with its capital city Columbus, marked by a deep-brown mole.” As much as I like Shteyngart’s “Lenny Hearts Eunice,” I like his non-fiction better, particularly his wonderful “Teen Spirit,” which was published in The New Yorker (March 10, 2003). When it comes right down to it, I am biased in favor of non-fiction. I seek the “real” in writing, and it seems to me that non-fiction is more adept at catching it. This is why I look forward to next week’s issue and a return of the magazine’s extraordinary journalism.

June 7, 2010 Issue

Regarding Pankaj Mishra’s “Islamismism,” in this week’s issue, I’m going to repeat one of my pet peeves about New Yorker book reviews these days, to wit, the absence of extended quotation. Mishra reviews two books: Hirsi Ali’s “Nomads” and Paul Berman’s “The Flight of the Intellectuals.” Mishra is so anxious to engage these books in argument, he forgets to carry out one of the reviewer’s main duties: to show what the author has written. And this is best done by quotation or by a series of quotations. In Mishra’s piece, the lines march down the pages, and, except for a smattering of fragments from Ali’s and Berman’s books, it’s all very much Mishra’s show. He’s on the side of conflict-avoidance - that much is clear. And he does a good job showing Ali’s lack of historical perspective. For example, he says, “But ‘Nomad’ reveals that her life experiences have yet to ripen into a sense of history. The sad truth is that the problems she blames on Islam – fear of sexuality, oppression of women, militant millenarianism – are to be found wherever traditionalist peoples confront the transition to an individualistic urban culture of modernity.” This is well said. On Berman’s “The Flight of the Intellectuals,” Mishra’s critique takes off from Berman’s description of himself as a “laptop general.” Mishra says, “Berman’s hopes for delivering reason and freedom at gunpoint have proved calamitous.” He is right. Mishra seems to be saying that people like Tariq Ramadan, “a Swiss-born Muslim professor at Oxford University, whose work seeks to integrate observant Muslims into secular Western societies,” point a reasonable way forward. Ramadan’s name is mentioned time and again all through the piece. I wish that Mishra had included a representative quote or two from Ramadan’s work so that I could get a taste of what kind of writer he is. However, I realize that space in the magazine is limited. I will have to look up Ramadan’s work for myself. Mishra’s review has motivated me to do so. Therefore, I concede its effectiveness, notwithstanding its violation of one of the central tenets of reviewing.

May 31, 2010 Issue

This week’s issue is a surreal package of good and evil. “Sunflower or a wet peony seemed the very essence of transient beauty” (from a “Goings On About Town” review of a Jocelyn Lee photography show), and “its tomato-red wallpaper printed with three hundred and fourteen leaping zebras” (from Gay Talese’s wonderful “Talk” piece “Basta”) are only seven or so pages away from “A few days earlier, six decapitated men had been left on a road just outside Apatzingan. All had large ‘Z’s carved into their torsos” (from William Finnegan’s horrific “Silver or Lead”). Right in the middle of Finnegan’s horror show, there’s David Huddle’s poem “Roanoke Pastorale,” which I found a welcome relief from all the Mexican mayhem. Huddle’s description of the heron as “wizard of stillness” is inspired! What is it with the book reviews these days? There’s hardly any extended quotation anymore. Ruth Franklin’s review of Selina Hastings’s biography of “The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham” is interesting enough. It made me want to read “Of Human Bondage” and “The Moon and Sixpence.” So, I suppose in that regard, it could be considered a successful review. But I missed being allowed to assess Maugham’s writing (and Hastings’s writing, too) for myself. I miss John Updike’s book reviews. He always served up representative passages from the books he was reviewing to enable the reader to form his own impression, to get his own taste. In fairness to Ruth Franklin, she does provide numerous snippets of Maugham’s writing, and one substantial quotation. But I guess I’m insatiable. When Franklin refers to Maugham’s “raw powers of observation” and his “singularly unemotional style,” I want samples illustrating what she means.

May 24, 2010 Issue

Alec Wilkinson's "Immigration Blues," in this week's issue, takes us on the road with the norteno band Los Tigres del Norte. I enjoyed the ride immensely. I particularly enjoyed Wilkinson's writing. The piece contains a number of inspired sentences. For example: "Behind them were rows of cowboy hats, like a skyline." Here's another example: "Raul and Eduardo sang a mournful song, in which their voices were so tightly fitted to each other that they seemed braided, and when they finished someone said, 'That's a good one.'" And one more: "On boleros, the entire band seems to move here and there in a trancelike way, as if on currents." Los Tigres sings corridos, which, as Wilkinson points out "are almost always factual, or at least claim to be." He goes on to say, "Their audience no more cares to hear about imaginary characters and imaginary happenings than the readers of the Wall Street Journal would care to read about made-up businessmen and made-up business deals." I smiled when I read this because I, too, feel the same way, and I strongly suspect that Wilkinson does, as well. It's probably one of the things about Los Tigres that drew him to them as a subject for a story. That and the fact that Los Tigres sings "mainly about things that happen to poor people in Mexico, or to Mexicans in America." As Wilkinson has shown in previous writings (e.g., Big Sugar), he deeply relates to migrant workers. I like the way that Wilkinson, in "Immigration Blues," includes quotes from people in the huge crowds that attend Los Tigres' "dances." At the end of his piece, when he describes a random search of Los Tigres's bus, led by a power-tripping white cop, I could feel his fierce indignation on behalf of the band members. "Immigration Blues" is bluesy, lyric, and real. In fact, it has many of the attributes of a great corrido.

May 17, 2010 Issue

My favorite piece in this week’s issue, “The Innovators Issue,” is Alex Ross’s “The Spooky Fill.” Ross’s article is a profile of the film composer Michael Giacchino. I like the way it’s written. In classic journalistic fashion, Ross let’s us in on his various moves as he writes the piece. For example, early in the story, he says, “One day in February, I visited Giacchino’s home, in Tarzana, in the San Fernando Valley, to watch him create the uncanny sounds that cause viewers to clutch their sofa pillows.” As soon as I read that I knew I was going to enjoy “The Spooky Fill.” In the piece, Ross also takes us to a recording session at the Eastwood Scoring Stage, on the Warner Bros. lot, in Burbank. I enjoyed being in on Giacchino’s creative process. And I could sense Ross’s creative juices really flowing, too. Consider this inspired sentence: “The shivery sound would match the Hitchcockian camera-work.” I read “The Spooky Fill” first because I had a hunch it would be good. Ross is a great writer. I wish he would write more pieces outside the world of classical music.

Hank Jones (July 31, 1918 - May 16, 2010)

Riccardo Vecchio, Hank Jones (2007)

This is my tribute to Hank Jones, who died May 16, 2010. Jones is the subject of two of my favourite New Yorker jazz reviews: Whitney Balliett's "The Dean" (July 15, 1996) and Gary Giddins's "Autumn In New York" (June 4, 2007). The Giddins piece is wonderfully illustrated by a Riccardo Vecchio portrait of Jones, which I reverently reproduce here. Over the years, I've compiled innumerable jazz piano playlists for my personal enjoyment, and practically all of them include at least one piece by Jones. The one I most often play is his irresistibly affecting "Wade in the Water" from the 1996 album "Steal Away." A close runner-up is his great, rhythmic "'Round Midnight" from the 2004 compilation "Giants of Jazz." His album "Hank Jones: Live at Maybeck Recital Hall" (1991) is a gem. The "I'm All For You" album he cut with Joe Lovano in 2004 is a classic. What I like most about Jones's playing is that it is full of sparkling single-note lines. Balliett describes Jones's style as quiet, lyrical, and attentive - "so subtle and technically assured as to be almost self-effacing." Giddins says, "As his most intricate phrases skitter over the keyboard, he barely seems to depress the keys, yet each note is cleanly articulated." Jones's passing removes from the jazz scene one of our subtlest, most poetic, swingingest pianists. Our only solace is the knowledge that his glorious recordings will live on - an immense bequest to future jazz lovers.

May 10, 2010 Issue

The item in this week’s issue that I wish to discuss is Calvin Trillin’s “Incident in Dodge City.” No one is more exuberantly subjective in his writing than Trillin, except – and this is a big exception – when he writes his “Annals of Crime” pieces. When writing about crime, Trillin totally banishes “I” from his narrative. For example, in “Incident in Dodge City,” at no time does he actually say he went to Dodge City to cover the story. Of course, there is such a thing as inference, and I think it can be reasonably inferred from, say, Trillin’s description of Bonilla’s sentencing hearing, that he was actually there and that his description is based on personal observation. But it could also be the case that he’s working from transcripts and other second-hand reports. Such inference would be unnecessary, of course, if Trillin had chosen to let us know what he’s up to the way, say, Janet Malcolm does in her “Iphigenia in Forest Hills.” Another aspect of Trillin’s strict use of third-person narrative to tell his story is that the source of some of his quotations is unclear. Here’s the way Trillin typically writes quotation in the story: “‘In a sense, we have two communities,” Jim Sherer, a former mayor who is one of the people encouraging Hispanics to participate in the life of the city, said recently.” Who did Jim Sherer say that to? Calvin Trillin? Maybe, but it’s not clear. I compared Trillin’s approach to crime writing with the way Mark Singer, who also wrote some crime stories for the magazine’s “U.S. Journal” series, approached it. For the most part, Singer keeps himself out of sight and writes mainly in the third-person. But when he quotes someone who spoke to him, he doesn’t hesitate to say so. For example, here’s a passage containing a quotation in his great “Who Killed Carol Jenkins?” (January 7, 2002): “When I asked the prosecutor, Steve Sonnega, for a prognosis, he said, ‘I think we’re making progress. I’m not willing to say how much, because I really don’t know. I think people think that if this case is going to be solved, now is the best time.’” I think Singer’s approach is preferable, but I confess that in Trillin’s case, and only in his case, it is fascinating to see the drastic lengths this usually ebullient subjective writer goes to in removing any hint of his personal self from the narrative. Reading “Incident in Dodge City,” I had the thought that in dissolving himself the way he does to tell Bonnilla’s story, Trillin is an artist. His aim, like Chekhov’s, is total objectivity.