In which I recap all the books I've managed to read in the past month. This month: 4, because we were leaving New York and had to make the best of the time left, and because getting rid of an apartment full of stuff is very, very, very exhausting.
On Beauty, Zadie Smith - Both hilarious and empathetic, this novel's all-too-human characters fall victim to surface beauty in both direct and indirect ways. Smith effortlessly vears from one character's thoughts to the next, personifying uppity British academics as successfully as young inner-city black males.
The Disappointment Artist, Jonathan Lethem - In this series of linked essays Lethem expounds on his cultural influences from his early teens to the present, including Kubrick, Godard, Cassavetes, Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler, Don Delillo, The Talking Heads, David Bowie, and many others. Rather than just name-dropping, the essays reveal that submergence in art was a way mold himself into a writer, to cope with his hippie upbringing, and to forget his mother's illness and subsequent death during his most formative years.
By trying to export myself into a place that didn't fully exist I asked works of art to bear my expectation that they could be better than life. In fact, I believe they are, and do. My life is dedicated to that belief. But still, I asked too much of them: I asked them also to be both safer than life and fuller, a better family. That they couldn't give. At the depths I'd plumb them, so many perfectly sufficient works of art that would become thin, anemic. I sucked the juice out of what I loved until I found myself in a desert, sucking rocks for water.
Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto, Victoria Abbott Riccardi - This book had been sitting on my bookshelf for about two years. I had either forgotten about it, or thought, "What was I thinking? Seems like another ho-hum travelogue by some wealthy American 'finding' herself abroad." Turns out, some sections were very ho-hum and overly sentimental, like a cross between a well-workshopped creative writing piece and a Reader's Digest article. The author is, however, very good at describing the food she made and ate, particularly the tea kaiseki foods she went to Japan to study. Certain passages left me very hungry.
White Album, Joan Didion - Oh, Joan Didion, how I love thy way with words. A good read, though I still prefer Slouching Towards Bethlehem. The former consisted of stunning essays, the latter felt more personal, like edited passages from a journal. I find it amazing that someone who experiences frequent dibilitating migraines can produce so much handsome prose.
