The Armies of the Night

There is no Norman Mailer around today that I know of. Matt Taibbi has a bit of Mailer's dash, but nowhere near the authority supporting his prose. (And I haven't read him in years.) Mailer wrote about the peace march on the Pentagon in 1967 as if he were writing a novel, put himself in the third person, infused the text with enormous humor and self-deprecation (and self-aggrandizement), and spun tiny observations into encompassing philosophies. This is an achievement that far surpasses anything written about the current situation, where we see books like Peril by Bob Woodward that are nothing more than the emptying of a reporter's notebook.

Here, we have metaphor:

"For years he had been writing about the nature of totalitarianism, its need to render populations apathetic, its instrument – the destruction of mood. ... (M)ood was a scent which rose from the acts and calms of nature, and totalitarianism was a deodorant to nature. Yes, and by the logic of this metaphor, the Pentagon looked like the five-sided tip on the spout of a spray can to be used under the arm, yes, the Pentagon was spraying the deodorant of its presence all over the fields of Virginia."

We have timeless aphorism:

"Mediocrities flock to any movement which will indulge their self-pity and their self-righteousness, for without a Movement the mediocrity is on the slide into terminal melancholia."

We have insights into mass psychology:

"The guards were here to work out the long slow stages of a grim tableau – the recapitulation of that poverty-ridden rural childhood which had left them with the usual constipated mixture of stinginess and greed, blocked compassion and frustrated desires for power."

We have lost a lot in this century. Perhaps what is missed more than anything is a Mailer to observe and warn.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Scrolling through the online auction catalogue for Ruth Bader Ginsburg's personal library I found a lot of five Nabokovs that surprisingly included his lesser-known chess novel, The Defense. The discovery created a spark of connection that was no less real for being imagined. In another lot, touchingly, there was a volume titled The Widow's Handbook. If a public figure is measured by her library, Ginsburg's death was a great loss indeed.

From the auction catalog: "At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write," Ginsburg wrote in a 2016 op-ed. "Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea."

(Update: The lot went for around $7,000.)

Vengeance

Author Benjamin Black (John Banville) has become a bit of a bore with this installment of the Quirke series. The repeated emphasis on drinking, smoking, and descriptions of nature wears the reader down. The mystery itself is interesting enough, though not particularly complex. Also, at 300 pages, the book is flabby and could have done with a sharp-eyed edit of, say, 50 pages.

The Chill

Ross Macdonald strikes again with a convoluted plot that works itself out to perfection in the final pages. Throughout The Chill, the sardonic and dogged Lew Archer spins witty dialogue seemingly effortlessly. What sets Archer apart from his predecessors Marlowe and the Continental Op is compassion compounded with toughness, with a dash of concern for the social issues of the day.

The Instant Enemy

To say that the plot of this Ross Macdonald novel gets tangled is an understatement. As in other Lew Archer stories, and as in the Quirke novels that I am also reading this month, dark family secrets play a large role in the resolution of the case. Macdonald's facility with dialogue, and the skill of his detective in untangling those knots, makes The Instant Enemy an unalloyed pleasure.

A Death in Summer

Book Four in the Quirke mystery series by Benjamin Black (John Banville) is the best so far. It has a clear line, the usual sharp dialogue and similes, and a main character who is thankfully not up his own arse.

The Boys

Ron and Clint Howard have packed all the ingredients necessary for a good memoir into The Boys: frankness, selectivity, self-deprecation, and a large quantity of interesting anecdotes. The book takes the Howards from their parents' fledgling acting careers in the 1940s and 50s through Ron's first major directing feature, Grand Theft Auto, in 1977. The stories about Andy Griffith and Gentle Ben are here, as expected, but there are also some unexpected insights into acting technique and a show business work ethic from the father, Rance Howard, and a touching account of the sometimes tragic but determined life of the mother, Jean. Clint had a drug problem that he kicked; Ron was basically as squeaky-clean as his image. An impressive family story about "sophisticated hicks," as they called themselves.

The Invention of Sound

Chuck Palahniuk's novel offers some satisfactions for the first two-thirds of the text: a father's hunt for a missing child, a sound engineer's gruesome method of capturing screams, the ways of Hollywood. But The Invention of Sound spirals into a fever dream that is confusing and frustrating. Sometime the strain of a writer trying to be bombastic and interesting really shows.

Consider This

Chuck Palahniuk's book of writing lessons is hard-nosed and practical. Use strong verbs, kill off a secondary character, vary the points of view – these and other strategies are mixed in with anecdotes from his travels to promote his books. This is an excellent resource for any writer, although it could produce more Palahniuk clones than original stylists. Maybe not a bad thing. 

A Crown of Feathers

At the end of one of these perceptive and affecting stories, a character says, "Man does not live according to reason." That might be the theme of the collection. These people – Jewish immigrants from Poland, the deeply religious and irreligious, the schemers and dreamers – have their lives disrupted by situations and people that are wholly irrational. The characterizations are spiky and piquant, and most of the stories end with either that satisfying "snap" or falling notes of pathos. Isaac Bashevis Singer throws into the bargain a wealth of information for a Gentile like me about Jewish sects and practices. A great book to end 2021 on.