Most of the time, if a writer recommends a book it is new and publicized well enough that the recommendation is mostly unneeded. Recommendations for older books have proved worth following up, though. From Theodore Dalrymple I picked up Malice Aforethought, an excellent mystery that would belong with Ronald Knox's and Dorothy Sayers' mysteries, except for its quiet lack of sentimentality. George Will recommended I Hear America Swinging, which was an odd but entertaining experience in itself, and a little unsettling, too, to see how far its satire had become reality in thirty years. I just now finished The Belles Lettres Papers; it is a pity I have already forgotten who recommended it, because it was well worth interrupting the Johnson marathon. Which reminds me, I first read Rasselas because of Dalrymple's recommendation.
So far all the recommendations have given the best kind of delight, unexpected and unobligatory. Belles Lettres is written as though a history of a literary journal, narrated by a smooth, politic young editor. It is a light satire on office and literary politics, which I enjoyed even though I last read the NYT Review of Books, where the author was once an editor, five or six years ago and do not keep up with literary fashion. I also cannot help thinking the author, Charles Simmons, must be the namesake of Charlotte Simmons in Tom Wolfe's novel, but none of the reviews suggest why that might be and I am not very willing to read one of his tomes just to find out. Wolfe, for me, suffers the blight of over-recommendation, which encourages all that is mulish in me; there is enough of that to start with, so I may never get around to him. It may be just as well, since reading lengthy descriptions of college girl sex written by an elderly man has a slightly creepy feel to it.
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2 comments:
If you have to read a Wolfe novel, I'd recommend _The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test_. It's a fascinating look at Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, and serves as a snapshot of all that was foolish and tragic, and sometimes interesting, about the '60s. I happened to like _A Man In Full_, as well. I'd recommend _The Right Stuff_ and _Bonfire Of the Vanities_, which are regarded as his best novels, but I've never actually read them.
I'm not sure how much you'll like Wolfe's writing, as it's heavier on the feel of reportage than of narrative. So there you go, for whatever that's worth. And that's not much.
Also, gimme an assignment for our two-man book club, and perpare yourself to outread me 100 pages to one.
Well, I was going to go next to Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, but with a quick break for the Knox mystery, which by pure willpower I've held off at chapter three, and probably also for Stevenson's The Amateur Immigrant. Burton's backbreaker is somewhere above 1000 pages, though, and I'm likely to take as long with it as with the Life of Johnson, and for the same reason: there are too many books to read long ones twice, so they need to be read with extra care.
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