Hello Smarty, It's Your BookWag!
Dear Wags,
Three critics walk into a bar.
Well, those three critics didn’t really walk into a bar. They live in three different states and write for three different newspapers.
But if they could walk into a bar at the same time, two of them might have started a fight with the third.
Last Thursday, my review of Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds appeared in the Los Angeles Times. On Friday, the Boston Globe published Lorraine Berry’s take on the same novel. Later that day, the Washington Post released Ron Charles’s review.
Three critics reviewed the same novel. Guess which one hated it?
Full disclosure: Berry and Charles are close friends of mine (they don’t know each other, but if they did, I bet they’d be great pals, too). For quite a few years, Charles was my editor at the Post. I hold both of these people in high regard. They are smart, compassionate, and incisive writers — and good humans.
The critic who hated Groff’s new book is Charles. I’d argue that he hated it because he didn’t appreciate its radical take on what an “adventure novel” can be. More specifically, he might not grasp how the main character—a 16th-century woman who endured years of trauma—would experience adventure differently than a male explorer.
Or maybe he just didn’t like the book.
Charles and I have disagreed about books before, and I’m sure we will again. No book suits all readers. That, not what I think he missed, is the point. If three critics walk into a bar, you are going to get three different takes on the same book. Should thirty of them decide to meet up, look out: You’re going to be overwhelmed by perspectives.
If cultural criticism were dead or deadly boring, all our takes would be the same. I don’t agree with Charles about The Vaster Wilds, and I find certain threads in the narrative more interesting than Berry does. Still, all three of us agree that the novel merits serious consideration and critique.
Three critics walk into a bar. One orders a martini, one orders a ginger ale, and one orders a cappuccino. Each is happy with their choice. They have a lively discussion about the book they all reviewed and head down the street for dinner. What’s not debatable is that pizza sounds perfect.
Yours ever,
BKP
Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
If you already know who Naomi Klein and Naomi Wolf are, you won’t be surprised to learn they are periodically mistaken for one other and even conflated into a single progressive female pundit. They are about the same age and published big idea books back in the ’90s. Both are telegenic and have stumped for Democratic candidates over the years. But when the global pandemic hit, Wolf gained notoriety as an anti-vaxxer, and Klein began to wonder about the other Naomi and her detour into conspiracism. Klein’s book isn’t a takedown of Wolf, but a treatise on why we give so much attention to those who provoke us. The other Naomi became a darling of the alt-right, and Klein thinks that says a lot about tribalism and the sorry state of our discourse.
The Young Man by Annie Ernaux
The days will soon be getting shorter and colder, so grab a copy of Ernaux’s tale of her hot, hot, hot affair with a much younger man now. The 2022 Nobel Laureate for Literature doesn’t get lost in erotic detail. She’s more interested in how the liaison affected her mind — and that’s sexy. Those who haven’t read Ernaux before may be surprised by her ability to dissect emotional and physical passion with such clarity. She fearlessly examines how being the older, more dominant partner gave her the same power men have when they pursue younger women. Along the way, she delves into how such relationships are attempts to rekindle lost youth. It’s an unflinching treatment of a tricky topic. There’s a reason why she got that Nobel.
Omega Farm by Martha McPhee
Already an accomplished novelist, McPhee reveals her gifts as a memoirist in her latest book. Along with her three siblings, the daughter of acclaimed writer John McPhee was raised on a New Jersey farm by her mother, who took up with a still-married unlicensed Gestalt therapist named Dan Williams. In 2020, the author returned to the property to care for her mother, then in the throes of dementia, and also tend to the neglected house and unruly acreage. McPhee carefully sifts through the chaos of her bohemian childhood while eradicating bamboo, replacing the septic system, and replanting hardwoods. Those humble tasks helped reconcile her with a very complicated past.
The Six by Loren Grush
Whenever I see a book with a subtitle like The Untold Story of America’s First Female Astronauts, I want to scream: “And why has it been untold?” Almost always it’s because powerful people—typically men— held the story back or diminished it. Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon hit many obstacles, including macho fighter pilots who left the stratosphere before them and a culture that believed women couldn’t withstand the rigors of space travel. Still, Grush’s real subject isn’t misogyny, but how “The Six” formed a supportive bond of sisterhood that helped them clear those hurdles and reach the stars.
Chenneville by Paulette Jiles
This story bills itself as A Novel of Murder, Loss, and Vengeance, and it delivers. John Chenneville is a Union soldier who seeks to avenge the murder of his sister and her family by Albert Dodd, a cold-blooded killer he believed to be a comrade. Dodd’s trail leads deep into the dark heart of Texas, territory the San Antonio-based Jiles explored in her superb novel News of the World (made into a 2020 film starring Tom Hanks). Jiles’s writing is so exquisite that her books feel less like historical novels and more like dispatches from the national subconscious.
