We’ll give Tanenhaus half a brownie point this week because it’s close to Xmas. This week’s NYTBR is a big mixed bag. We advise against the continued employment of Joe “I Never Met A Subject I Didn’t Hate” Queenan (along with the end of silly photo captions such as “Johnny Unitas of the Colts” asuming that educated folks aren’t familiar with football legend-team associations). But we dug the Truman Capote profile, which combined biography, light critical consensus and some naughty bits into a hot essay by the always excellent Daniel Mendelsohn.
However, Laura Miller needs to get out of the house more. We take pride in our dirty minds, pointing out that sexual suggestion and naughty jokes come with most of our book recommendations (some over the course of our lives, in flagrante delicto), while recommending that intercourse itself is best performed rather than endlessly talked about.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
Ah ! I was lulled into a false sense of hope that perhaps the times are changing at the NYTBR, but when I got my print edition today found the picture not quite as rosy as you suggest. I count 4 each full-length reviews, with one of the non-fiction ones (by Hitchens) a multiple-book one — so while the fiction covergae is a bit more in depth, it’s still more non-fiction books that get the fuller coverage (6 vs. 4). Throw in the fact that this week’s “Books in Brief”-section is devoted to six non-fiction titles, and the balance doesn’t look quite as impressive any more.
Other observation: the two reviews by women are, of course, of the fiction titles — the weaker sex obviously can’t be trusted with the serious stuff (i.e. non-fiction), of course. (Amazingly, last week’s issue didn’t have a single full-length review written by a woman, even of a mere fiction title).
One brownie-crumb I would give Tanenhaus: the review of Mark Axelrod’s “Borges’ Travel, Hemingway Garage” is in the Non-fiction-”Books in Brief” coverage. This volume is vaguely grounded in reality (authentic photographs, real people), but was published by FC2 (that’s Fiction Collective Two), with “Literature/Fiction” as the genre description on the back-cover, and a note that “Some of these fictions have appeared” elsewhere previously at the beginning of the book. But apparently Tanenhaus even has trouble accepting actual works of fiction for what they are — or is embarrassed to review them as such.
Looking forward to next week’s T-Watch.
This is a great service!
In addition to counting how many reviews are written by women, what about considering number of books by women? I am especially disturbed by the almost complete lack of non-fiction books by women in the last couple months…