Jessa Crispin: “To be even more insulting, the femaleness that the anthologies want me to get in touch with is always of one particular type: the middle-to-upper-middle-class, white, married-with-children kind. The May Queen is especially homogenous, with a large chunk of the contributors writing about how to balance motherhood with their writing.”
Jessa must have read a completely different book than I did. Sure, there may be some essays dwelling on upper-to-middle class life in the book, but the copy of The May Queen I have has a gripping tale told by Flor Morales about crossing the border while pregnant — a decidedly working-class predicament. There’s Meghan Daum’s essay about not wanting to have children, wherein she expresses her frustration at the way society judges her by this decision. There’s Laila’s essay about coming to terms with her ethnic identity. And that’s all off the top of my head, without even flipping through the table of contents.
I don’t entirely disagree with Jessa’s sentiments, but it’s a pity that some people need to fabricate examples rather than use real and specific ones.
Magic Hours by Tom Bissell: This marvelous collection of essays chronicles everything from film shoots to novelists rescued from oblivion. (The essay on the Underground Literary Alliance, with its portrait of raucous factions, unexpectedly reveals how soft today's literary world has become.) But if you peer between the cracks of these smart pieces, you may very well see how cultural lives are formed from the most unexpected life choices. And as we follow Bissell's development as a writer over the years, that goes for Bissell as well. (
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway: Harkaway's latest novel greatly improves on his previous book, The Gone-Away World, which I'm already on record as praising. Angelmaker adopts genre elements without ever feeling like a genre book, and it leads me to believe that Harkaway is well on his way to a narrative grace close to China Miéville's. Yet inexplicably this very fun book, which includes an eightysomething badass named Edie Banister, a mysterious mechanical object that may destroy the world, farcical scenarios involving lawyers and the police, and some unexpectedly moving moments about fatherhood, doesn't appear to be getting much attention in American newspapers. Nothing from the snobs at The New York Times Book Review, nothing from The Washington Post. And since I can't get Harkaway on Bat Segundo, I hope this Jump Up and Down mention gets you hopping as well.
The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel: Unless you're really pressed for time, forget Jonah Lehrer. If you want to understand creativity and its relationship to neuroscience, then the bowtie-wearing Nobel laureate is your man. In addition to being a physically beautiful book (you will drool over many of the paintings), there are helpful overviews on optical illusions, science, biographical backgrounds, and many vital figures from the Vienna Secession. Kandel's enthusiasm (and his call for greater unity between the humanities and science) is contagious.