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.
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