A Calling for Charlie Barnes - Joshua Ferris (2021)

Oeuvre rule: Joshua Ferris has a manageable bibliography. He has 5 books, and I have now read 2 of them. Whether I read the other three (two novels--To Rise Again at a Decent Hour and The Unnamed--and a short story collection--The Dinner Party) is an open question. Of course, his debut, Then We Came to End, was a borderline selection for the Best Books list here, and while it is still his most famous book, his other work has also been honored, to varying degrees.

For some reason, I didn't hear as much about those other books (maybe their plotlines or themes defied easier categorization) as I did about A Calling for Charlie Barnes, or his debut. I could point specifically to an article I read on my phone, in the lobby of a hotel in Rome, on or around August 14th, waiting for a driver to take us back to the airport, which also listed The Magician and I Wished as novels to anticipate in the Fall of 2021. I added those to my Holds list at CPL, along with this book, which I imagined was getting more publicity because it was a "comeback" of sorts for Ferris. As for a final assessment, it is not as good as either of those books (though it was brisker than The Magician, it took me almost twice as long, perhaps due to other distressing elements in my life, which made me care less about literature), nor is it better than Then We Came to the End. It is, however, a very interesting book "philosophically" that turns into a certain puzzle for the reader, and legitimately surprised me. I cannot say I loved it, but it did cause me to reflect upon the nature of art, truth, storytelling, and how we choose our subjects.

***

The first thing to mention is the opening, because it shoots out of the gates like a rocket. The first 30 pages set an impossibly high bar for comedy, and what follows is a convoluted history of a man and his various wives and the family that springs up around.

It feels telling when the book uses, as its epigraph, the acknowledgements page from The Glass Castle. Now I have not read that book, but I know it was very popular many years ago and is about a crazy family with an abusive (alcoholic?) father. Of course, the acknowledgements thank everyone in the family except the father, and so one may conclude this, too, will be a story about a bad father. 

The father in question is Charlie Barnes, who is 68 years old in the Fall of 2008, where the novel begins. Once again, because a thorough examination of the book requires a discussion of spoilers, that section of the review will be denoted below. There are, in fact, 68 chapters in this book. The "turn" of the book happens around page 200, chapter 43, and the "second turn" comes at the very end, around page 329 and Chapter 67. Thus, everything after page 200 should be withheld from the reader. But the first part of the book feels less interesting to discuss.  

Because this is a character study, and it seems to be about Charlie Barnes, and Charlie Barnes alone. But then we realize that his family is rather expansive and confusing, owing to the five wives, and the narrator soon becomes slightly cheeky, until we find that this is a book being written by Jake Barnes, youngest son of Charlie Barnes, and something of a foster kid, which continued to confuse me (perhaps the child of an ex-wife with a different father, that Charlie treats as his own). 

Charlie believes he has cancer and is something a hypochondriac. Bear Stearns has recently declared bankruptcy, and because he worked there in the 1980s, he tries to contact an old colleague, while railing against their former boss. He tells everyone he has pancreatic cancer and that it is basically a death sentence, and excruciatingly painful, so he sets out to put his affairs in order, it seems. Charle is a very disillusioned figure who has come up with half a dozen business ideas, all of which are enormous failures, and who cannot not stick with a job for more than a few months or a year at best. His career is a mish-mash of failed dreams, and he has settled into a sort of niche as a financial advisor and fiduciary for the investments of a small number of clients, one of which has just died, whose son wants $10,000 of unpaid proceeds from the account. 

He makes these phone calls, and yes, the beginning of the book is fantastic, broadly comic and charismatic. But soon Charlie learns that he does not, in fact, have cancer, and he has told his children that he does, and then has to consider telling them he was wrong, and they consider him a liar, and then he does, actually, have cancer (certainly The Royal Tenenbaums cannot be the only story to utilize this trope, but it is the first thing that comes to mind--but Charlie is no Royal). 

***

Really, it is just the phone calls at the beginning that set the tone, such as when he tries to call his daughter Marcy, finds her unavailable at the office, and talks to her colleague Bethany, asking if she knew anything about pancreatic cancer:

"'I don't know anything about it,' she said.
'Well, I can tell you this: it's not good. People with pancreatic cancer go to their graves as if shot out of a cannon, okay? Hospital personnel can hardly collect a gurney quickly enough to send that particular patient off to hospice care before he keels over right there in the lobby of the hospital. You want to know what it's like?'
There was a long pause.
'I'm sorry, are you asking--'
'It's like priority mail,' he said. 'It gets you where you're going faster than the other methods, but you have to pay extra--in fear, I mean, and the surprise factor, and physical devastation. There's no time to make amends or settle your accounts. You just die.'
'I will be sure to give Marcy this message right away,' Bethany said." (19)

This is in "Farce, or 105 Rust Road," which is what we expect the novel to be--that is, this plot of "I have cancer, I don't have cancer, I have cancer,"--and is 175 pages long. From there, it goes to "While Under," which is relatively short, about 20 pages, and then there is "Fiction, or 906 Harmony Drive," which is about 125 pages, and then "The Facts," which is about 20 pages. So, there are 4 big chapters, basically, and the opening is very good, and while there is a real payoff at the ending, I cannot say it ends on a high note. The ending "redeems" the book and renders it much more meaningful, though it doesn't transform the book into a masterpiece, necessarily, just a very strong "position statement" of sorts, an unveiling of a r'aison d'etre, and I see I am becoming vague and unmoored, so we should just talk about the ending and segregate that section of the review with double asterisks, so you are doubly aware not to read below, unless that sort of thing doesn't bother you

***
***

So, there is obviously a big twist in this book that happens somewhere around the surgery scene of "While Under," and what happens in "Fiction, or 906 Harmony Drive." So right there, Ferris is basically telling the reader what he is doing, but they probably will not be aware until "The Facts." This is probably the deftest move in the book, where even a seemingly impossible turnaround is rendered totally believable. Maybe I am naive or stupid, but I believed it was real. I'm curious about other people, and I feel like I am not alone, here. Basically, the reader does not yet realize the book is something of a puzzle until the end, and that was not apparent to me (the only "puzzle" was assembling their family tree).

By the time of "The Facts," the truth is something of a letdown, but it elevates the book into the "noteworthy" category (better than merely "enjoyable," yet not a "masterpiece."). Because the issues the ending addresses are absolutely essential to the nature of literature, they are worth considering. 

In short, we find that the "Fiction" chapter is, in fact, fiction. Charlie does not live long past the procedure known as the "Whipple" (an emergency last minute measure to physically remove cancer that may have already metastasized), maybe a number of hours, whereas "Fiction" shows him in a long recovery period, then finally being reinvigorated by his business idea "Chippin' In," which is a kind of Kickstarter-esque venture, while his wife Barbara the nurse starts medical school in her late 40's, jumping ahead to 2016 when Charles is in his late 70's and now rich and successful, and by this point Jake has also finished a draft of this book, and an electronic version has been leaked to members of the family who question his adherence to reality. 

While this is certainly an incredible chain of events, and an odd way of invoking metafiction, I was not incredulous, I bought it. There is even a reference to 2020, with Charlie's older brother Rudy dying of Covid-19, and Charlie still alive at 81, but then all of that is decimated, and Ferris plays with his own persona:

"Then we came to the end of another dull and lurid book. Time to wrap things up, give thanks, move on. Important to move on. Fail to move on, you die. Wouldn't want that. Wouldn't want to linger or dwell. No living in the past, either. That's right, let it go. if the past is full of bitterness, the future is always bright. Right? How good does this feel? Eh? Feels pretty good, am I right?" (329)

"The Facts" serves as a true acknowledgments section as well as an author's note--but is it, in fact, true? There is probably some fact to it (on his wikipedia page, it does say that Ferris was born in Danville, IL, which is one of the major settings over the course of the book) but just as much twisting of reality. 

So, we don't quite know how much stock to put into passages such as the following, which is on the second-to-last page of the book: 

"I began writing this book in 2009, in the thick of grief. A year later, I'd taken the facts as far as they would go--up to the day of his surgery. For the next ten years, I banged my head bloody against a wall of truth, searching for a way out. There was none--unless I defied his request that I stick to the facts and got a little fancy, gave him the ending he deserved. If he was not the angel Barbara believed him to be, he was a better man than most people knew. Suddenly, the color came back to me, the music resumed. It was the end of grief. I could play again. He's right: it's a silly occupation for a grown man. I had bowed out of an impossible situation, but without losing my mind. Turns out, he was my calling." (341-342)

But it seems pretty clear this book is an exercise in grief. We do not know if Charlie Barnes, or Steady Boy, was really Ferris's father. Excuse me, he is the father of Jake Barnes, which is also the main character from a famous novel by Ernest Hemingway, an author with an award named for him that Ferris has received. Hemingway is invoked at one other point in the narrative, but there is nothing of his literary style here. No, but Hemingway was born in Oak Park, IL, and this novel lives in the western suburbs of Chicago. It reminded me of my father too, born not far from there and not much younger than Charlie Barnes, working in the financial industry, similarly re-inventing himself (but not with the "Doolander" or "Clown in Your Town," or four additional marriages). There is something in the character of that locale in that era that felt shared. Invoking that deeper truth about humanity--through this sort of very specific psychological profile--is one of the greatest successes an author can attain.   

So yes, this book is flawed, and so is the character of Charlie Barnes. If Ferris is truly writing a tribute to his father, it is about as fine as one could expect. It's not a hagiography, and plenty of people seem only to see the flaws in Charlie, but Jake sees him as a whole person, and one that had an almost uniformly positive effect on him. Perhaps he was not the greatest husband, or the greatest father or role model, but still at the end of the day, he was a good father when it mattered. And so it is with this book, when the ending finally comes.  

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power - Max Chafkin (2021)

Peter Thiel founded PayPal, invested early in Facebook and sits on their Board of Directors, and also started Palantir, to say nothing of his other companies (AbCellera Biologics, anyone?). I had heard the name, I knew he had something to do with Gawker, that he was responsible for its demise, I knew he was very rich, but I didn't particularly care to inquire more deeply because he didn't affect my life. Until I bought Palantir stock. 

SO I read this book to determine if I should retain my PLTR stock. Yesterday, shortly before I finished reading The Contrarian, I sold it all at a loss of $311.69. This was shortly after I learned that PLTR had won multiple ICE contracts, realizing that a former client of mine, who protested renewal of the ICE contract for a detention center in McHenry, IL, would be disappointed in me for supporting their company. Then I read that Palantir's software was very helpful (though it could have been better utilized, it seems) for COVID-19 contact-tracing. It's a weird technology but it was used to locate terrorist targets in combat zones; I'm probably off but I think it serves as a kind of geo-location device for individuals that do not already have a GPS signal on them that can be hacked, using data analytics--and it's very precise. PLTR may, or may not, have played any role in the capture and execution of Osama Bin Laden; it seems more likely they did not, but it played to say they did.

***

It seems this book mostly gets negative reviews for being a kind of "liberal hack job," but I strongly disagree. For as much as it demonizes Thiel, it also glorifies him. The Contrarian in the 2020's could be what Wall Street was in the 1980s, if only kids today read more; Gordon Gekko is a villain in the film, but also a cultural hero, as a fictional archetype. Peter Thiel is kind of like a real-life version of him--but he is also so much more, and that is why he should not burn this book, but put it in a prominent place on his bookshelf: we should all be so lucky to be the subject of such an excellent book, even if much of it is critical. 

Because as much as Chafkin does criticize Thiel as inconsistent, befuddling, xenophobic, misogynistic, vindictive, etc., not all of those are bad, and he acknowledges him as a brilliant maneuverer. In fact, when Thiel is vindictive, it is more humorous than not (against Google, for one). Perhaps that is not funny to the many Gawker employees who had to find new jobs, but Chafkin fairly portrays Gawker as the trashy institute of tabloid journalism it was. Perhaps Bloomberg has better morals, or integrity. (I do not fault paparazzi for their life choices, but one must know that making a living by breaking into people's private lives is a risky proposition.)

And maybe it is interesting that Chafkin works for Bloomberg. We have Bloomberg and Stacey Abrams to thank for the Biden administration, but one could not call Michael Bloomberg the antithesis of Peter Thiel; their politics may differ, but Bloomberg is older now, he may have shifted in his political beliefs (I don't know enough about him, even though he was my Mayor for many years), and he generally seems more "hands off" than other media moguls, i.e. Rupert Murdoch or Jeff Bezos. It would behoove Bloomberg to be on Thiel's good side, and it would behoove most people in general: you do not want to fuck with this man, and I think Chafkin walks a fine line where Thiel could still be on speaking terms with him after this book, because its clear--though he has retreated more recently from the public-eye--he will continue to hold our country in his vice grip, and Chafkin respects that power.

Of course, that's overstated. Peter Thiel is not Donald Trump--he is an actual billionaire that went to Stanford and Stanford Law, that rejected the practice of law after failing to secure a Supreme Court clerkship, that loves to read The Prince and other classics, and has written several books that are inflammatory to liberals. He is not a technologist, but he has controlled a large swathe of Silicon Valley for the past two decades. 

There are too many things to discuss in this book, suffice to say it should be dissected theme-by-theme, for Chafkin's book reads like a streaming-network television series: Season 1 is in Germany, South Africa, Ohio, California, and New York, and ends with Thiel quitting his white-shoe firm job at Sullivan & Cromwell, but that's only 40 pages; Season 2 has Thiel making his first moves in Silicon Valley, eventually starting PayPal with support from X.com guest-star Elon Musk--it ends with 9/11; Season 3 would include the sale of PayPal to eBay, Palantir's origins, Thiel's ascendance as a member of the moneyed elite and embracing his burgeoning eccentricities--it ends with Gawker outing him as gay; Season 4 would be comprised of the entire timeline of that case, along with the Thiel fellows ("20 under 20"), sea-steading, increasing embrace of alt-right radicals, investments in life extension, etc., ending with Trump's campaign announcement; Season 5 would cover Thiel's role in the administration, and end with the pandemic, which proved Thiel right when he often wrote that the apocalypse was upon us. Maybe my timelines are screwed up, but that seems like a pretty good show to me, and it would not be unheard of because Thiel has already turned up as himself in The Social Network and as a parody in Silicon Valley. 

***

Thiel is often portrayed as cold, calculating and humorless, a person with few friends, many enemies, and scores of sycophants. His work on The Stanford Review, a conservative newspaper he founded while in undergrad, is unearthed in this book (not for the first time), and it is apparent that many of the ideas of the alt-right (though Thiel was not nearly as extreme, he later sees value in such alliances) are nothing new; it is important to recall the "PC" movement in the 1990s to see that the "woke movement" in the late 2010's is simply a more virulent version of the same. The mobs may have descended in the 90's if Twitter had been available but back then they needed to put themselves out there in person with their real name. One of Thiel's proteges, Keith Rabois, two years younger and a writer on the Review, once shouted "Faggot, you are going to die of AIDS. You're going to get what's coming to you, damn faggot!" (34) as a stunt in order to try to get kicked out of student housing so he could say the school did not protect freedom of speech. This is the type of trolling that still goes on today, just online where people have no guts. Thiel would not be nearly as crass, but he would couch similar ideas in his polemics. He's not quite a troll himself (at least not an "in-your-face" one, unlike his co-founder), but he doesn't denounce any of this because it plays into his agenda. 

Though his politics may be odious to many, his business-sense was spot-on, if somewhat nefarious and manipulative. For example, PayPal marketed itself to eBay sellers as a more efficient way of being paid, enticing them to open accounts with a complimentary $10 balance, so that sellers would encourage the buyers to also use PayPal:

"In November [1999], PayPal's user count was a few thousand. By January, the World Domination Index [a software app the company used to track new sign-ups] had risen to 100,000, and just three months later, it was up to 1 million. That was a more or less unprecedented rate of growth, even in Silicon Valley, but it meant that PayPal had spent something like $20 million on referral fees out of the $28 million raised so far. Early employees tell stories of walking in and seeing that thousands of users had signed up overnight--and feeling a sense of awe and terror." (60)

Around this time, eBay begins courting PayPal for an acquisition, first offering $300 million for the company in late 2000, then $900 million in 2002. By July, the deal was done, and Thiel owned 4% of the company after its IPO (the first after 9/11), which meant he was due stock "worth more than $50 million." (90) Now, I believe that Chafkin means $50 million in 2002, when PayPal was trading around $20. Today it's at $214. 

But Thiel had been lucky:

"As PayPal was preparing to file to go public, Thiel traveled to New York with chief financial officer Roelof Botha for a meeting with banks from Morgan Stanley. It was September 10, 2001. The meeting that afternoon was a total failure. PayPal confused the bankers--was it a technology company or an unlicensed bank, they wanted to know--and neither man cut an especially impressive figure. Thiel was a thirty-three-year-old conservative political wannabe; Botha was, at twenty-seven, absurdly young and inexperienced for a public company CFO. 
The Morgan Stanley bankers indicated they weren't interested, and Thiel and Botha took a car to John F. Kennedy International Airport in the rain, feeling dejected. Their sense of misery grew when their plane, the last United flight of the day, was delayed for hours on the tarmac. Eventually, the crew offered passengers the option to disembark and take a morning flight, but Thiel and Botha opted to sit, grimly, and wait while several passengers elected to get off.
They eventually made it home to San Francisco very early the next morning. Hours later, Thiel learned that a San Francisco-bound United aircraft from Newark airport--flight number UA 93--had been hijacked and had crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. It seemed possible that at least some of the people they'd been with the night before were now dead." (87-88)

***

The subject of death in Thiel's mind is simple: it is evil, and we should do everything we can to fight against it, and eliminate it. The descriptions of his interest in the life-extension industry comprise some of the most amusing sections of the book. I love one passage in particular so much that it is necessary to excerpt:

"In 2008, Founders Fund had invested around $500,000 into Halcyon Molecular, a startup founded by William Andregg, who'd started the company with his brother Michael when he was just nineteen, with a modest plan of developing inexpensive genomic sequencing technology in order to cure aging. In 2009, during his freak-flag stage, Thiel met with the Andreggs and was almost instantly enamored with their enthusiasm and approach. Thiel is not normally emotive, but was on this occasion. 'He actually jumped up and down,' William Andregg recalled. 'He was like, "We have to solve this or we're all gonna die." That was the first conversation.'
Thiel would personally invest $5 million in the live-forever company and was a constant presence at the company's offices, with Founders Fund kicking in another $5 million on top of that. 'He was spending so much, it was like, 'Okay there's only so much advice you can give,' Andregg said. 'We had to start doing actual work.'" (138)

There is also some discussion of parabiosis, which is the procedure of transferring blood from a younger person to an older person for a rejuvenating effect, and Thiel was asked, "true or not true?" by Andrew Ross Sorkin, in the last interview he gave before the pandemic, and he responded, "I want to publicly tell you I am not a vampire." 

And there are other cheeky moments throughout the book. When Palantir went public, one of the requirements of California law included at least one female board member, and Palantir settled on Alexandra Wolfe Schiff, a longtime friend and author of a flattering book about the Thiel fellowship:

"To those who knew Thiel well, the nomination of Wolfe Schiff seemed particularly brazen. Wolfe Schiff, who lives in New York, had often stayed at Thiel's house during visits to the West Coast, and during the mid-2000s, before Thiel was fully out, she'd posed as Thiel's girlfriend at Davos, according to the journalist Felix Salmon. Shortly after the announcement, an associate sent Thiel a text asking if he'd intended the Wolfe Schiff appointment as a troll. After all, offering Wolfe Schiff as the first woman on the Palantir board was quite the fuck-you to the PC police. Thiel's response: a winking emoji with its tongue sticking out." (312)

***

It's very difficult to know how to end this review. Whenever I flip back through the book to find an excerpt, I find myself wanting to include the paragraph before, and the one before that, etc. Most of this book is gold. My only criticism is that it sometimes gets repetitive: we can only hear that Peter Thiel is a contrarian so many times. Chafkin asserts this in several different formulations, but perhaps most potently near the end:

"The contrast between Thiel's professed hatred of death and his apparent indifference to the many hundreds of thousands of deaths from COVID was one of the many examples that I encountered in the reporting of this book where Thiel's most deeply held beliefs seemed at odds with his Machiavellian actions. That these inconsistencies have mostly gone unnoticed, and that Thiel is regarded as a contrarian free-thinker rather than a calculating operator, is a testament to his singular facility for personal branding. He is self-created, a Silicon Valley Oz, who has, through networking and a capacity for storytelling, constructed an image so compelling that it has come to obscure the man behind it....
The Thiel mythology contains a good deal of truth: He has created companies that have defined our culture and economy over the past quarter century. The industry that Thiel helped build is responsible for trillions of dollars of wealth creation and hundreds of thousands of jobs. He has been the rare futurist who actually managed to accelerate the future--and for that, at least, he deserves history's respect.
And yet this is only half the story because Thiel has also contributed to a reactionary turn in our politics and society that has left the United States in a much more uncertain place than he found it when he went into business for himself in the mid-1990s. He is a critic of big tech who has done more to increase the dominance of big tech than perhaps any living person. He is a self-proclaimed privacy advocate who founded one of the world's largest surveillance companies. He is a champion of meritocracy and intellectual diversity who has surrounded himself with a self-proclaimed mafia of loyalists. And he is a champion of free speech who secretly killed a major U.S. media outlet. 'He's a nihilist, a really smart nihilist,' said Matt Stoller, the anti-monopoly activist and author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. 'He's entirely about power--it's the law of the jungle. "I'm a predator and the predators win."' That, more than anything, may be the lesson that Thiel's followers have learned--the real meaning of "move fast and break things." (329-330)

So in a way, The Contrarian could be seen as a much shorter modern day Power Broker (a comparison I probably should not make without having read the latter, but one that feels accurate). It is probably not destined to be a timeless classic, but it's an engaging text and gets to the heart of Thiel's success, which is not unlike the success stories of many other people in power today: surround yourself with the "Right" people (lame pun intended). Play into people's insecurities and fears. Disdain democracy and regard America as a corporation in need of a CEO-Dictator. Have wild ideas and get people's attention. Take things personally and vow revenge. Reject progressive immigration policies. Donate to Super PACs and get friendly Senators elected. Deny, downplay or minimize climate change. Respect the right to freedom of speech and look away when it veers closer to "hate speech." Read Ayn Rand and be an Individual. Value yourself above all others.

Chafkin acknowledges that Thiel has created hundreds of thousands of jobs. Unlike Trump, he did not control the American response to the pandemic, and did not contribute to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Trump may be evil, but certainly does not see himself as such. Thiel may be evil, but really not very evil, and probably sees himself as such. That self-awareness is his strength, and the depiction of how he turned various personal weaknesses into advantages makes The Contrarian an important book for any would-be entrepreneurs with outsized ambitions. We are often counseled to Think Big and this book shows one way--perhaps the way in our present era--to do that. 

Grade: A

I Wished - Dennis Cooper (2021)

I Wished is like a "greatest hits" collection of Dennis Cooper's novels. It is a meta-commentary on the entirety of his work, but mostly it is about the so-called George Miles Cycle (five novels). Beyond those five novels, however, his entire oeuvre may also be about George Miles, and I Wished is Cooper's most confessional work. I am not sure it is his most accessible, but it appears that he wanted that to be the case, judging from the opening, "Overture (2021)":

"I guess because I want someone who knew my friend to read this book and find me. I want this book to be more public than my others so it will find people who don't normally read novels or who don't give a shit about some weird cult writer's books because it seems like everyone who either knew him or used to know me doesn't.
I want to know that all my love for him is worth it or find someone who'll convince me he was no one much, or who'll say, 'He never mentioned you,' or that he referenced me offhandedly enough that it's clear I didn't mean that much to him, and that's the hope, and that's the fear, and I know that's only semi-interesting to read, but it's very hard for me to even do this." (6)

In short, a masterful opening. However, from there it goes into "Torn From Something," which is vintage Cooper, and will probably make a lot of people (who aren't familiar with his work) throw the book away. In short, if there was a question of banning Thomas Mann or the book about him, there is no question this would be banned. It's as sick and gross as anything he's ever written, at least the first part of it. But it feels like a delusive move because after that rough first part, which is either a twisted reality or fantasy, it goes into a rather conventional "novel" about George Miles, the actual person--for certain stretches, at least. 

Cooper's work is easy to read and difficult to understand. Certainly, there is nothing else like it (as far as mainstream options go). But finally in I Wished, he pulls back the curtain, he writes as himself, he is completely confessional about his r'aison d'etre, and as a result his work seems less sketchy as a whole. Like the early readers of Lolita, if you read his work out of prurience, it may say more about you than it does about him--but there's no judging here. Because Cooper is a modern-day Marquis de Sade, or at least an adherent of his philosophy. 

There is a certain genre that Cooper fits into--indeed, he may have created his own genre, his own style of writing, of which there are now many admirers and imitators--and it is time that he is recognized for his contributions to American literature (though it is likely he'd rather be associated with the movement of the nouveau roman in mid-20th century France). He is almost pushing 70 but there's no pretense about "being a mature adult," practicing moderation, growing wise with age; he flatly admits that he can't really get over events that happened 30-55 years ago. Maybe it's all part of an act, but it feels way too real to be that. 

***

Many of Cooper's books are essentially plotless, but they tend to follow a single narrative thread. That is not the case here. While there is a callback later on to scenes the reader may perceive as "reality," this comprises about 1/3 of the book; another 1/3 of it is also "reality," but the one inside of Cooper's mind, his "wishes" and fantasies; the remaining 1/3 of the book is rather impressionistic and abstract, sometimes humorous, and mostly inspiring a reader-response of "WTF?" These parts did not work as well for me, but they also need to be in the book, because they add another dimension to the work and further expands character development and enlivens the search for meaning in the loss of his friend.

Obviously I am talking about the "chapters" of "X-Mas (1970)" and "The Crater" (the first of the two), which feature Santa Claus, or the idea of him, and a talking natural landscape in Arizona that is being ravaged as part of an ambitious art project (The Roden Crater, which I now want to visit). Later there is another inanimate "crater" that speaks and it's questionable how interrelated these two chapters really are. 

Apart from the two variations of craters, there are two variations of "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" (the movie, not the book). The former ("Thialh") is a kind of longer-form review of the movie, or a distillation of its story, whose main character may be Dennis (on IMDB, the character's name is John Singer), who is deaf-mute and serves as a "confessor" for a number of friends that he helps. One of these is a younger woman whom he falls madly in love with, and she serves as a kind of avatar for George Miles. The description of the eternal hope for and impossibility of real love with her is particularly affecting:

"He fell in love with her. It was so stupid. He was agonized and embarrassed by this love since he knew he was unworthy, but he tried to let himself believe she visited so often because she cared or even loved him or, at the very least, had missed him. He knew this theory made no sense, and that their closeness was a technicality, and that she'd never fall in love with someone whose body sucked, but he wanted her to love him so badly, and he understood that love, at least in theories proffered by the church, etc., was supposed to be extremely flexible.
Sometimes, he thought, She wouldn't let me be so kind and giving and devoted if she didn't love me. He thought, She has to know I wouldn't be so giving and devoted to her unless I was in love. He thought, She wouldn't let me be so obviously in love with her unless she was in love with me in some way. He thought, If she didn't love me, she would tell me to stop doing all these things for her because the fact that she gives nothing but her presence in return would make her feel uncomfortable.
He loved her so incredibly much. When she needed something, no matter how peripherally or trivial, he would spend days on the phone [This seems impossible for a deaf-mute-Ed.] or negotiating streets and local stores with great difficulty, trying to find someone to help him give her what she needed. When she needed money, he lied to her and said he had a lot of money and went deeply into debt so he could give her everything that anyone could ever give another person." (34-35)

Later, "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" details Dennis's first meeting with George, who is 12 and freaking out on an acid trip. This is a very brief chapter that then leads into "I Wished," which is the closest bit of self-examination in the book. It's only about 21 pages--I'm not sure if it's the longest chapter--but it feels like the center of the book. The book ends with "Finale (1976)," which is also very short, and along this timeline, it seems that this is the period when Dennis actually had something approaching an actual romantic relationship with George, for a brief window of time when the latter gets on a medication that curtails his manic-depression. Yet there is nothing distinct about that (that period is referenced earlier), and it feels more like "Overture (2021)" in that it seems to come from a present-day perspective.

***

The "Cycle" consists of Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and Period. Is this the 6th? I don't think so; this is more memoir than novel. The Marbled Swarm was Cooper's previous novel and came out 10 years ago. This is probably better than that, because it's more concise, and as confusing as it is at points, makes a great deal more sense. Having read the five novels in the Cycle, and now reading this, I want to revisit the other three that have not been reviewed here yet. I remember Period making almost no sense at all and I feel like this book contextualizes it. Guide is not as good as Frisk but I remember getting through it quickly, also in Paris about 18 years ago, after Try. Frisk was made into an average film at best, mostly notable for an excellent performance by the always-good Parker Posey; I mention this because adapting Cooper's work seems very difficult, but Frisk is a pretty straightforward serial killer narrative that is mostly engaging and served as proof that he was not a flash-in-the-pan after Closer. 

I am not sure where Cooper's career goes from here. One imagines he could write a magnum opus yet, that would be even more "public" than this one, but it seems hard to imagine that he has much more to say on this topic. Perhaps it could be an exploration of his later life, with Miles in the back of his mind, post-1987 or so, and how he has supported himself through his writing, and other artistic endeavors, which have more recently included stage and screen. But that seems rather basic. In any case, his oeuvre is a testament to the love that he fully examines in I Wished. If there were a way that Miles could know the books that he had inspired, I imagine that he would be flattered and enamored with the idea that his abbreviated life could have spawned such a mythology. One hopes that Cooper's "wish" with this book comes true, and that someone may contact him; one also hopes that he found some measure of happiness and satisfaction with this life where he spent so much time ruminating on the hopelessness of loving someone that he could only bring back into existence on the page. This book should be good for anyone that can relate. 

Grade: A-

The Magician - Colm Toibin (2021)

Over thirteen years ago, Flying Houses began with a review of Doctor Faustus, I have often lamented that few readers today are aware of Thomas Mann. Now, with the publication of The Magician, we can expect all sorts of Mann propaganda to enter the cultural conversation. After this release, I would not be surprised to see an increase in the sales of Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain, or Doctor Faustus. Nor would I surprised if the estate entered into an agreement with xx streaming provider for adaptations of those books. I would be least surprised of all, however, to see a film adaptation of The Magician. This is because the novel is by Colm Toibin, the author of Brooklyn, which was made into a very successful film. But moreover, the story of the life of Thomas Mann should be catnip to anyone involved in the business of making and buying and selling shows. Because his was an epic life. And the LGBTQ angle is very hot right now.

Perhaps it is best for us to start there. Now, I knew various autobiographical details about Mann, insofar as I had read (some) of his books and did not skip past the introductions and glanced over his Wikipedia page a few times. His appearance near the beginning of Sontag was a surprise, but I knew he had lived in Pacific Palisades near the end of his life, and had lived to about 80. I knew that he likely, to one degree or another, was closeted--but closeted-bi, as opposed to closeted-gay. In Toibin's version of his life, he is closeted-gay, and maybe I don't want to think of him that way. Is it wrong to say this cheapens his work? Perhaps, and true, Toibin does focus the majority of the novel on politics and family, rather than sexual frenzy, but a few times in the text, I was embarrassed to read what Toibin imagined. Sometimes, we don't want our heroes to be "mortalized." 

Now then, one should not doubt Toibin's understanding of Mann's work. He acknowledges 34 books that assisted in the writing of this novel--though to be fair, a number of them are about Schoenberg, Mahler, his wife (Alma, who is depicted as a camp figure here, I think), Mann's children, and other famous figures (i.e. Franklin D. Roosevelt). And true, the most salacious material in this book is probably lifted straight from his diaries, but therein lie sometimes troubling revelations about the inner life of the artist. 

Take, for example, a paragraph that I read to a friend, who immediately responded by saying, "ban it": 

"As a youth, his eldest son had struck him as being especially beautiful. Once, on coming into the bedroom that Klaus shared with Golo, he had found Klaus naked. The image had remained with him, enough for him to record in his diary how strangely attractive he found his son.
There must have been, he thought, a few more times when he wrote in his diary about the allure of Klaus's body, or how aroused he was by the appearance of Klaus in a swimsuit.
These were thoughts that not many fathers must have felt, he imagined. He was sure that he could not be completely alone but he was aware that the few other fathers, perhaps very few, who found their son sexually attractive had not been foolish enough to share what they were feeling. He himself, of course, had told no one, and he was certain that neither Klaus nor any other member of the family had the slightest idea what was going on in his mind.
Instead, he had noted it all in his diary. Now, somewhere in Germany, it was possible that those pages were being examined by people who had every reason to want to wreck his reputation." (211)

While philosophical discussions about cancelling artists and banning books and burning books may be had in the hundreds of book clubs that will select The Magician as their next item, it seems evident that Toibin is not interested in wrecking Mann's reputation. That said, what comes immediately after is something Mann is even more worried about coming to light from the diaries (with another Klaus--not his son, or brother-in-law)--and frankly, the "incident" is one of the more beautiful sections of the book; it seems disingenuous that he would worry more about the latter Klaus than the former Klaus. That is, at a few points in the novel he develops certain crushes, sometimes on those that are familiar with his work and see him as some sort of god-like being. There is no real consummation, apart from one scene earlier in the novel, which is also depicted in a very passive and euphemistic tone; in this later instance, it ends in a kiss and nothing more. 

A side note: the book is called The Magician because this is the pet name his family gives to him. His children do not call him Daddy, Dad or even Father much of the time; they refer to him as the Magician. An incredible opportunity to depict the writing of his excellent short story "Mario and the Magician" is missed. And this is one of the few criticisms I have of this novel: short shrift is given to his work, apart from Buddenbrooks, Venice, Magic Mountain, and Faustus. Toibin gives fair due to these four--especially the first and last--and there is some reference to "Reflections of a Non-Political Man" and Disorder and Early Sorrow, and it does end with Felix Krull, but there are about three or four sentences (if that!) which reference Joseph and His Brothers. This seems insane. I have no idea how long it took him to write those four books, why he felt such a strong urge to do them, and how he felt about them afterwards. One imagines that Toibin must have read it in order to write this book, but six years ago at least, he hadn't, and was ashamed. Some of the early short stories merit brief mention (including a scene ripped straight out of "Tonio Kroger"), but not Joseph and not The Holy Sinner, either, nor Royal Highness, nor Lotte in Weimar. Perhaps including all of his works would be tedious and turn this novel into a bibliography, but considering the precision of detail--really the chief virtue and flaw of it all--I do not think it would be unwelcome to readers. 

Because while there is plenty about the "life of the writer" in here (for example, his daily routine, only really writing in the mornings), this book is more about the Magician's family than the Magician himself. I can list his children off the top of my head after reading this now: Klaus, Erika, Golo, Monika, Elisabeth, and Michael. There is also his older brother Heinrich, his wife Mimi, their child Gotschi, his second wife Nelly (one of the more memorable portraits), and the various spouses of his children, the grandchildren, etc. But above everyone else is his wife, Katia. There is a lot of dialogue in this book (it is not a breezy 500 pages, but many sections do go quickly) and most of the time, Katia dominates that aspect.

Katia comes from a bohemian family, part Jewish, and has a twin brother named Klaus. Mann supposedly took the relationship between Katia and Klaus as inspiration for his short story "The Blood of the Walsungs." Katia and Klaus seem to enjoy "playing" with Thomas and subtly acknowledging that he seems more attracted to her brother than her. This could be humiliating and awkward, but instead they fall into a sort of love that is far from idyllic, but very beautiful in its own way. What they lack in passion for one another, they make up for with real partnership and love, keeping the family together as well as they can through war-torn Germany. Katia later explains that her father was a philanderer, and so she likes Thomas because she does not have to worry about him looking at other women. If one knew nothing about her, Katia might be regarded as a sort of tragic figure, a helpless trophy wife, ignorant of her husband's real desires, but by the end of the novel it is clear that she is the strongest person in the family. 

It is only here that I want to pause for a moment and note another criticism: it is hard to tell how much Toibin is extrapolating or making up or fictionalizing. Certainly, these are complex human beings, and the tidy encapsulation of their "arrangement" seems a little too simple. Regardless, the family is very liberal in this regard, particularly when his son Klaus is gay, his daughter Erika is a lesbian (and marries twice--the second time to W.H. Auden, also gay), and correct me if I am wrong but Golo, too (mentioned in maybe two sentences)? 

There are also the suicides, and here we find one glaring aspect of the novel: earth-shattering events are tossed off casually. Most glaringly, this happens early in the novel, when not one but two of Thomas's sisters take their own lives. Several other people die in this way, and each time, it is almost as if Toibin does not want us to care. It is almost comical. 

"Soon Heinrich told them that Lula had been seen following this man in the street, or entering cafes and restaurants checking if he was at one of the tables, and then sitting alone in a state of despondency as she gave his name and insisted that she would wait for him. 
And then the news broke that Lula had taken her own life. When Heinrich arrived at the house to tell Thomas and Katia, she and Golo immediately went to comfort Lula's daughters, but Heinrich and Thomas stayed behind, finding refuge in Thomas's study.
Heinrich reminded him of the nights when their mother would tell them about her childhood in Brazil.
'Can you imagine on one of those nights if someone had come into the room and told our two sisters how they would die?' Thomas asked.
'When Carla went,' Heinrich continued, 'part of me followed her. And now Lula. Soon we will all be gone.'" (191)

There is more of a cold objectivity to this novel that perhaps kept me from getting too invested in it--Mann may have had an epic life, but it was also rather boring in the domestic sense, in that there are not many fights, and nothing to bother him very much except fearing discovery of the diaries: all drama in the story is subsumed by his children. Perhaps too often, the novel feels more like a recitation of events than a deeper investigation into the artist's psyche or motives (we do learn that his baby grandson Frido is the inspiration for the baby nephew Echo in Faustus, and that it seemed to bother his family, which seems sort of insane--except for the fate he gives Echo). The novel is at its best when it is focused on the smaller world of the author's mind, rather than the Mann family, or the fate of the German people. There are just very many people in his life, and it seems that they keep him rather busy, apart from his solitary morning hours in his study. He is only interrupted perhaps three times in the novel, and it really only bothers him once.

If you are interested in learning about Thomas Mann, one of the biographies in the acknowledgments may serve you better (of course, reading his work itself will be the best primer). If you are interested in learning about his family, however, then you will probably enjoy this. If you are a very successful writer managing a large and tumultuous family, it should be particularly meaningful to you. However, very, very few writers today (perhaps Salman Rushdie, 20 years ago) need to deal with political drama, or serving as patriarchs or family scions. Mann worked in the era of the Famous Writer, when cinema was in its infancy and actors had not yet captured the popular imagination, and his status as a German winner of the most prestigious literary prize sets him far enough apart that readers may not empathize with him, since most characters (save his children) are obsequious with him; he is rarely challenged after he publishes Buddenbrooks. 

So in that sense, the earlier parts of the novel are most interesting, and unfortunately they feel rushed. The years 1875-1930 are covered in the first 200 pages; 1930-1955 consumes 300 pages. The framing of the novel, as a family drama, posits the escape from Germany as the most significant event in their lives. Monika in particular suffers the most crushing loss, and her PTSD is regarded as almost histrionic. Golo is probably the most interesting character in the novel because he seems like such an afterthought, but he really does more to serve as the "glue" of the family than anyone else. It feels like he is underappreciated, vaguely neglected, and so when he calls out his family about the way they have been treating Heinrich's second wife, Nelly, it is one of the most moving passages of the book:

"'It is appalling,' Golo said, 'that we had to be in Alma's company last night. On that journey over the Pyrenees, Nelly could not have been more kind and more careful. She loves Heinrich, she really does, and she made that obvious all the time. She even helped me to lift him and at times carry him when he was too weak to go on. She was so sweet to him. As we rested, she reassured him. She is a most graceful, tender person. On the journey by ship as my uncle lay in his cabin making drawings of women [a certain recurring theme in the novel is Heinrich's pastime of doodling nude women], Nelly told me that he had actually left her behind when he fled from Berlin to France. He left her to take money from his bank account and settle his affairs, all of which put her in grave danger. She was even arrested at one point and was lucky to escape. Alma, in the meantime, was still worried about her luggage. Varian Fry crossed the border with some of it, which she then sent separately to New York from Barcelona. Varian was infinitely patient with her on the luggage question, as he was wise all the time in how he saved us. In the future, the world should know what he did, just how brave he was. But now, here in this house, I insist that what Nelly did should also be understood and her warm heart suitably appreciated. I do not want her being called a trollop or a slattern or any other word. She is a good woman. I want that to be known. Yes, she was a barmaid, and I trust that, since we are in exile now, we have not brought with us the snobbery that so maimed our lives when we lived in Munich.'" (344)

There are not many other moments like this. Erika and Klaus call out Thomas at various moments for his timid political stance. At one point, Michael calls out Thomas and Katia for being too cold and distant as parents, for showing them only conditional love. I have never enjoyed when people tell me that my writing does too much "telling" and not enough "showing," but this is part of the reason why Golo's displeasure feels earned, while Erika/Klaus/Michael's does not. 

This should have been one of my favorite novels of the year; I was very excited to read it. There is certainly much to admire in it, yet I really only felt touched by about 20% of it, perhaps 100 pages that I read very quickly (note: I read pp. 350-420 by taking photos on my phone of each page and reading them in line at Great America--these went quickly because few things are more boring than standing in line for 2 hours for Superman or Raging Bull). Ultimately, Toibin's subject matter is very rich, but this feels like something of a disappointing sequel to The Master, which is apparently a very similar type of book about Henry James that earned high praise. Credit Toibin for sort of creating this "genre" (I am sure that similar books have been written, but I am not familiar with them) and for taking on as towering a figure as Mann. This wouldn't have been an easy book for anyone to write. If it had more emotion, I might have liked it more.

Grade: B+ 

Chicago Cubs 2021 Boom Bust Deconstruction Analysis

So we come to the end of the second season of MLB, Covid-style, and this one looked much more normal. Capacities returned to 100% (even though 1,800 people are still currently dying on a daily basis) and 162 games were played. Certain rules remained in play: 7-inning doubleheaders, and the runner on 2nd base rule for extra innings, but no DH in the National League (not yet). The season felt much more normal than 2020, and the Cubs generally played better, but they did not do as well. 

To explain: for those that have forgotten, the Cubs were absolutely terrible last year and they still somehow won the NL Central Division. They were quickly dispatched by the Marlins in the post-season. Then, in the off-season a number of things happened that did not bode well. No contract extensions were made. Jon Lester and Kyle Schwarber were traded to the Washington Nationals. Yu Darvish and Victor Caratini were traded to the San Diego Padres. Quite frankly, this was traumatic. The Cubs did pick up Zach Davies in the Darvish trade, and they did pick up Joc Pederson to replace Schwarber, but apart from that, they were cutting payroll, and going out for prospects.

With Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, and Javier Baez all playing in the final years of their contracts, and with no extensions, their only option was to win everything and remain with the team through the end of the season, and hopefully, beyond. And for a long time--at least the first two months of the season--they looked capable of doing that. In May, the Chicago Cubs were basically unstoppable. 

Part of this hinged on the success of their bullpen (which got off to a rocky start in April, accounting for a merely average record that month). At a certain point, they set a record for the most scoreless consecutive innings pitched. Ryan Tepera, Andrew Chafin, and Craig Kimbrel formed their own unofficial version of Nasty Boys. I was deeply saddened by the tribulations of Jeremy Jeffress, who languished on Twitter in 2021, bemoaning the unbelievable fact that nobody wanted him after being more-or-less perfect in 2020, but regardless, the bullpen emerged as one of the strongest in the MLB. This undoubtedly hit its high point when they achieved a combined no-hitter, the first such in franchise history. And then, the next day, their decline began. 

Offensively, Kris Bryant returned to previous form, and made the All-Star team. Rizzo, while not an All-Star, played much better than in 2020, as did Javier Baez, though unfortunately his free-swinging ways essentially became his default. There is no more teaching plate discipline to Javy. He is simply himself, and will continue to occasionally dazzle and delight fans, while striking out swinging approximately 1/3 of the time. I think people stopped caring about that, here, and when he went to the Mets, their fans were not very happy when he did not put them over the top and into the playoffs (I'm sure it was very exciting for them at first, though).

Really, this was a season of two teams, with the trading deadline as the dividing line. It was a sad year, for many reasons, and Cubs fans may now feel their "dynasty" is over (for comparison, look to the Blackhawks--though the NHL is not the MLB, perhaps that is what happens when you stick with your core--still, there is a whiff of hope for them with each season, though they haven't been the same since Hossa retired). But at least an opportunity cropped up for someone that we were lucky to see.

Frank Schwindel: A

We now live in the SchWindy City. Is he a rookie? Does it matter? You can consider him a rookie. He's 29. He hit .067 for the Royals in 15 plate appearance and at-bats in 2019. He didn't play in 2020, and in 2021, he hit .150 for the A's in 20 plate appearance and at-bats. So he had walked up to the plate 35 times in his major league career before the Cubs picked him up after the A's DFA'd him, after the Cubs traded away Rizzo and needed a replacement infielder. Enter Schwindel, who proceeded to hit .342 in 222 at-bats and 239 plate appearances, and who made the Offspring song "Self Esteem," one of the most perfect walk-up songs of the year. I think it's his rookie year, and it's sad that he didn't get more playing time, because he seemed like the real deal, and would have won that award. It seems rather clear that Schwindel will enter 2022 as an essential everyday player in the Cubs lineup. We should not expect him to fill Rizzo's shoes--not yet, at least--but he is one reason to have hope, to be excited after such a depressing year. But he wasn't the only star that emerged.

Patrick Wisdom: B+

Patrick Wisdom was the silver lining to this season---before Frank Schwindel emerged. This could also be considered his rookie year, despite brief appearances for the Cardinals and Rangers. And I think he was a very good rookie of the year candidate. However, he only had about 100 more at-bats than Schwindel, and his greatness faded down the stretch, as his average dropped and his strikeout rate went up and as it seemed he was swinging for the fences regardless of the pitch because he wanted to mimic Javy's energy after his departure. He did not replace Kris Bryant--but Kris Bryant became incredibly versatile, and an afterthought as the everyday 3rd baseman. Wisdom also plays 1st Base and Left Field, but as a 3rd baseman, he definitely was trying to bring some KBE on days when Bryant was elsewhere on the field--i.e., no one is more attractive than Kris Bryant, though other 3rd basemen, such as Nolan Arenado, may try to approach the level, as does Wisdom (though I think many acknowledge Arenado as the superior player, though KB was close to equal this year). Wisdom, also, should remain a fixture in the 2022 starting lineup, but it's possible pitchers have figured him out and he will need to make adjustments. His strikeout rate, I've heard, ended up being about 40%, even worse than Javy's, I think, so that is why he gets a B+ and not an A-, because his batting average also dropped. I think we should continue with the other, probable, next year fixtures. No pitcher/hitter segregation for this year's report card.

Kyle Hendricks: B-

Hendricks's trajectory each year is predictable. He is a slow starter. This is probably why he still has not made an All-Star team, and this year, he really should have made it. At the time he was tied for the MLB lead in Wins, but people don't care about Wins anymore. He finished 14-7 with a 4.77 ERA and 180 innings pitched. This is a totally respectable year. The reason Hendricks grade slips to what must be his lowest since his debut, is because he did something he hasn't done, which is to decline as the season wound down. Perhaps this was because he didn't think it mattered, there was less anxiety with every game that might be important for the playoff run, as there has been every other year. I am not saying he didn't play as hard, but I am saying there was no hope of this team making the playoffs, earlier than in any other year since 2014. And his placement 3rd in this year's report card is questionable. Some people think he may be shipped off in the next 6 months. He's a very attractive piece for any team that is in the playoff mix, and I don't expect any different from him next year. Expect a slow start, but then again, we will have to see how he plays for a team that is not in contention (most acknowledge that the Cubs will not be competitive in 2022, but perhaps in 2023). He is still the de facto opening day starter and one of the last legitimate stars left from the dynasty. There is one other, that we also hope will never leave us (or be forced to leave us...).

Willson Contreras: B

Pictured here silencing a crowd at an away game, Willson's attitude and emotion did not flag, and though he had a weaker season, I do not think anyone lost faith in him. After the core was destroyed, Willson survived, and seemed to acknowledge that he would be one of the team's leaders going forward (perhaps replacing Rizzo as the "captain," and I still do not want to accept that Rizzo will not return...). He only hit .237 with 21 HRs and 58 RBIs. Patrick Wisdom was the better offensive player, but Willson's OBP was about 50 points higher. Sometimes, though, there are intangibles, and Contreras has that special quality that makes him a franchise cornerstone, and it is reasonable to expect that he will remain that, at least in 2022.

Jason Heyward: D+

It was two steps forward for Jason Heyward in 2019 and 2020, and one step back in 2021. Heyward's status in Chicago is well-known. We need not repeat it again. He was nominated for the Clemente Award this year, and while I do not think he will win a Gold Glove again this year, I would not be totally surprised. In any case, his batting average was .214 and he hit 8 home runs and drove in 30 runs in 323 at bats. He did walk 27 times and his OBP was .280, but this is not the Jason Heyward of the past 2-3 years. Something happened. Maybe COVID, and his vaccination status (still not sure if that has changed, but it was surprising he was not), maybe that injury was worse than we were led to believe (a common trick this team liked to pull), or maybe he just didn't have it. Heyward has intangibles, like Willson, and he is an excellent fielder, but the offense is just not there. I do think Cubs fans would be happy if he returned to form of recent years--hitting above .250 would probably be good enough to satisfy them. It doesn't seem like they will (or can) do anything with him, so he is likely to remain, now a PT player essentially, and we can say that he is still young, he has already had a mystifying career, and anything seems possible with him. But experience shows that we should not expect a high ceiling 2022.

Ian Happ: C+

Last year's best player (or perhaps 2nd best after Heyward, depending on your view) shriveled up in the first half of 2021, when he might have made a difference, and apparently had a pretty decent 2nd half, so his numbers don't look that bad, except for his batting average (.225). 

A note on batting averages: at the beginning of this year, before the "sticky stuff" controversy that resulted in new MLB rules to level the playing field between pitchers and hitters, it was often remarked that the league average batting average was about .245. Maybe that went up after, but regardless, it seems as though we should reset our expectations for what is considered a "good" hitting percentage.

He did hit 24 home runs and drive in 64 RBIs in 457 at-bats, and drew 58 walks, good for a respectable .319 OBP. It wasn't all bad, really, but it was his anemic performance in the first half that sticks in my mind because--let's face it--after they gave up on the season and deconstructed, I pretty much stopped watching. So his inconsistency continued, but it appears he is done with AAA, at least, and one hopes that he returns in 2022 in 2020 form, and is once again in the MVP conversation. There is a world in which the 2022 Cubs are contenders, and in that world, Happ, Schwindel, Wisdom, and Contreras are All-Stars. It's not inconceivable. I cannot predict with any kind of certainty whether Happ will be good or not in 2022. But I lean towards further improvement.

David Bote: D+

Last year's RBI leader drove in 34 this year in 286 at bats, hit .199, 8 HRs and 25 BB for a .270 OBP. So he was pretty comparable to Jason Heyward. Mr. Clutch, he was not. And when the Cubs had that demoralizing 11-game losing streak, Bote was on the IL, and we could partly explain that skid by his absence. But when he returned, he wasn't the same. Bote is pretty inconsistent. He comes up huge in certain situations, but that happened less this year than normal (for him). Hitting below .200 is unacceptable for an everyday player, and Bote was not an everyday player (never has been, for the most part, though has often made a case for himself). I do expect him to remain in 2022, and play a certain role. One hopes for a resurgence, and it would not be that unusual for him to be one of the leaders of the team. 

Nico Hoerner: B+

Though none of them were heralded as stars of the team, I do not think it was a coincidence that the Cubs went on their fatal 11-game skid in part because Jason Heyward, David Bote and Nico Hoerner were on the IL. Of those 3, Hoerner was the best (he actually batted over .300), but played the least, and was injured the most. Hoerner is in a rather unique position on the team, not totally unlike Starlin Castro, who, though he debuted in 2010, stayed on through 2015 and contributed to that playoff run. Hoerner debuted while the Cubs were still contenders, suffered some unfortunate injuries that kept him from playing a major role on the team, and now appears poised to stay through this next re-build. Perhaps he will be a similar player to Castro in the end---not a Hall of Famer, but one that cobbled together an impressive resume. It looks like Castro will pass 2,000 hits in the next 2-3 years.  That should be a success in anyone's book.  Hoerner may not get there but I do think they are comparable, except Castro seemed to have more speed and power. That said, Hoerner is still very young....

Matt Duffy: B

For a minute, when the Cubs were firing on all cylinders, it felt like 2016. That year, the team worked beautifully together as a unit. A new guy would step up every day to make the difference to put them over the top for the win. That hasn't been the case over the past few years, and so when Matt Duffy first appeared to be doing this sort of thing (along with Patrick Wisdom), it did a great deal to inspire confidence in the team. His signature "thumbs up," became a team-wide gesture. He came through in various clutch moments, but unfortunately, around the time cracks began to show in the team, I distinctly remember two games, not far apart, where Duffy was up as the last batter in the game, with an opportunity for a walk-off or at least to keep the game going. He got out both times, and I dismissed him as being "underrated overrated." Regardless, along with Rizzo, he put the bat on the ball. He was a good contact guy. He ended the year hitting .278 with an OBP of .347 (not stellar, but respectable in 2021). I am unclear on his contract status, but as 2022 looks to be a year of rebuilding (I would prefer "re-imagining"), and as he is roughly the same age as Wisdom and Schwindel, that trifecta should stay in the infield and daily lineup. They are not Rizzo, Bryant and Baez, but if forced to comp, Duffy would be the Rizzo, Schwindel would be the Baez, and Wisdom would by the Bryant (obviously).

Adbert Alzolay: C

Look, I love Adbert. I still think he should be in the starting rotation next year. And people says Wins don't mean quite what they used to, but when you go 5-13, there is not much nice to say. His ERA, 4.58, does not seem very bad, in comparison to recent history, but in this particular year, when hitters could not hit, in part because pitchers became very sneaky, it is average at best. This was Adbert's first big year, and he pitched 125 innings, compared to 12 in 2019 and 21 in 2020. He looked great, at first, in 2019, but his ERA ended up at 7.30. In 2020, he was better in limited action, and pitched like the Adbert we know he can (and will!) be, 1-1 with a 2.93 ERA. 

He is a fountain of enthusiasm. If you need proof, go to his Twitter account. He loves the game, and he loves playing for the Cubs. This is the type of person you want on this team. 2021 sucks for a lot of reasons, but Adbert should not be written off based on a below average performance. Of all the grades I am forced to give, this is the hardest. I want to give him a C+ but it would not be fair to others. The "new core" will not be the old core, at all, but Adbert and Nico will be the interim holdovers, from one era to the next, along with their elders Ian Happ and Willson Contreras and Kyle Hendricks. We hope.

Alec Mills: C+

Is it fair to give Alec Mills a C+, when I gave Alzolay a C-? Not sure. But Mills had to play a more complicated role on this team. His ERA was higher than Alzolay's at 5.07, but his record was 6-7 in 20 starts and 119 innings pitched. He should have been a lock for the rotation this year after throwing a no-hitter last year, but he wasn't. He got injured a couple times. He effectively turned into the long reliever that he had been before, returning to starting after the departure of his pseudo-successor, Zach Davies. I gave Mills a higher grade than he deserved last year because of the no-hitter. And this year, I think C+ is fair, but maybe even B- would be fair, because I still really like him, and I still think he should part of the rotation next year. No matter where he pitches, he is a valuable member of the team, and I would anticipate improvement next year as well.

 Zach Davies: C

Zach Davies started off in a difficult position--as the replacement for Yu Darvish that no one wanted. He was the only piece of that trade that had any immediate return, and the Cubs got him to fill in Darvish's spot in the rotation. He was not an ace, but he had pitched quite well in 2020. This year was a mixed bag. At times, Davies looked masterful, and the Cubs had a trifecta of the slowest pitchers in baseball (Davies, Mills, Hendricks). Other times, he looked as bad as any of the worst pitchers they had featured over the past several years. Perhaps his performance is best summarized in the no-hitter that he helped to throw. Though he played the biggest part in that game, throwing 6 no-hit innings, he gave up numerous walks. You then had Tepera, Chafin and Kimbrel come in to save it--and these guys largely performed the way they had all season long. So Davies deserves some credit, to be sure, but he did not pitch like the All-Star we were hoping he would. Looking at his stats, he went 6-12 with a 5.78 ERA in 148 innings pitched. Seeing this, I had previously given Alzolay a C-, but I moved that up to a C, and I moved Davies down from a C+ to a C. Now this seems sort of unfair as Davies did throw a no-hitter (gets partial credit for it, at least), started 32 games, and pitched very well at times. But for just as many games as he mastered his opponents, his opponents mastered him, and when he looked bad, he would get absolutely crushed and the game would be out of reach (I am speaking from anecdotal experience, so take that as you may). He is on the Giants now, he is still young, and he did not do himself many favors with this season--but there was the no-hitter, and there were many bright spots. A difficult grade to give.

Justin Steele: B+

While he is not going to register in any Rookie of the Year ballots, and while this was a small sample size (arguably next year he would be a true rookie), Steele stepped up after the Cubs were deconstructed and pitched decently, going for 4-4 with a 4.26 ERA. He pitched in relief for 11 games and started 9 games. Many people consider him a lock for the 2022 rotation along with Hendricks, and perhaps Alzolay. I do not know very much about him, but I went to two games this season, and he started the second one. He ended up losing. But apart from that, when I saw him pitch, he didn't mess things up too badly. In a way, that is all you want from a 4th or 5th starter in the rotation. Right now, I would still give Alzolay the slot ahead of him. The 2022 Cubs, at this moment, would have a very average to below average rotation. But, both Steele and Alzolay may have yet to reach their potential. There is another starter coming up in the minor leagues that apparently many people are very excited about, but I can't recall his name at the moment. People are saying he will be in the rotation as well, but I will believe it when Spring Training comes around. 

***

There are several others on this team that are apparently, still here. Some of them are Rafael Ortega (pretty decent!), Sergio Alcantara (not too bad!), Robinson Chirinos (fine!), Brad Wieck (good!), Rowan Wick (just OK), Keegan Thompson (good!), Trayce Thompson (amazing but small sample size!), Jason Adam (I don't know!), Nick Martini (???), Austin Romine (serviceable!), Andrew Romine (what!)...is Miguel Amaya really on the roster now? I've heard a lot about him. Nick Madrigal is a solid pickup. I've written too much and didn't see enough of these guys in action to provide fair assessments. 

Everyone Else That Left:

Kris Bryant: A

Anthony Rizzo: C+

Javy Baez: B+
Craig Kimbrel: A+
Andrew Chafin: A
Ryan Tepera: A-

Joc Pederson: B

Trevor Williams: C+

Jake Arrieta: D
Jake Marisnick: C+

There are probably a few I am forgetting. I could wax philosophical about the 2016 Cubs, and really, the Cubs from 2015-2020, but my feelings should be obvious to most. There is not much to be excited about in 2022, but some of the prospects featured in this article provide some semblance of hope, in the near future. I hope we will be competitive in 2022, but realistically I think 2023 is when that will happen. That said, nobody expected the San Francisco Giants to go where they went this year, and while baseball does, generally, work out the way it is supposed to, what with the long season, unpredictable injuries, the strength of proven stars, statistics upon statistics upon statistics that can accurately predict win totals (since when have analysts been able to differentiate between a 90 win and a 95 win team?), there is always still the chance for some spark from an unexpected source. For now, we can only hope that Schwindel will save us all.

Against Interpretation - Susan Sontag (1966; 1995)

It was over a year ago that I resolved to finally read a book by Susan Sontag. Because I expected she would make for difficult reading, when Sontag was released, I reached for it. Clearly, it was evident "Notes on Camp" was the place to start, and Against Interpretation compiled many of her most influential essays, including this one. 

Sontag was primarily a critic, and secondarily a novelist. She writes about art almost exclusively, especially in this collection. It appears to contain several "breezier" reads, at least two of which are diaries released by Camus and Pavese (who I had not heard of before).

One of the pleasures of the text is its curatorial quality--the writers and artists that have been, more-or-less, forgotten by time, that Sontag effectively preserves through these essays. While the appropriate place to start the review is with "Notes on Camp," it actually appears near the very end of the book, so perhaps we can end there. The first one I want to address is the review of Manhood by Michel Leiris. I had never heard of this writer before but from the way Sontag describes this book, I sort of feel like I have to read it:

"Manhood begins not with 'I was born in...' but with a matter-of-fact description of the author's body. We learn in the first pages of Leiris' incipient baldness, of a chronic inflammation of the eyelids, of his meager sexual capacities, of his tendency to hunch his shoulders when sitting and scratch his anal region when he is alone, of a traumatic tonsillectomy undergone as a child, of an equally traumatic infection in his penis; and, subsequently, of his hypochondria, of his cowardice in all situations of the slightest danger, of his inability to speak any foreign language fluently, of his pitiful incompetence in physical sports.....
Far more than any avowals to be found in the great French autobiographical documents of incestuous feelings, sadism, homosexuality, masochism, and crass promiscuity, what Leiris admits to is obscene and repulsive. It is not especially what Leiris has done that shocks. Action is not his forte, and his vices are those of a fearfully cold sensual temperament--wormy failures and deficiencies more often than lurid acts. It is because Leiris' attitude is unredeemed by the slightest tinge of self-respect. This lack of esteem or respect for himself is obscene. All the other great confessional works of French letters proceed out of self-love, and have the clear purpose of defending and justifying the self. Leiris loathes himself, and can neither defend nor justify. Manhood is an exercise in shamelessness--a sequence of self-exposures of a craven, morbid, damaged temperament. It is not incidentally, in the course of his narration, that Leiris reveals what is disgusting about himself. What is disgusting is the topic of his book." (62-63)

One can see from this excerpt that Sontag is both a flashy and articulate critic. She praises most of the work that she covers ("I don't, ultimately, care for handing out grades to works of art (which is why I mostly avoided the opportunity of writing about things I didn't admire)."(x)), with notable exceptions (After the Fall by Arthur Miller; Marco Millions by Eugene O'Neill). She distrusts literary theory, turns up her nose at Freudian and Marxist readings of texts (a gross simplification, but reasonably accurate, I think). Above all, she provokes and one could talk about the ideas in these essays for days. Just as writing a review of a short story collection is very difficult, so too is it for an essay collection. The essays are fit to be discussed by students in college and pretentious coteries in salons. Reading them by oneself, in 2021, it is possible to misinterpret her general theories, for she is hyper-intellectual, and able to casually refer to the most complex philosophical concepts with pithy conclusions--allusions that may be entirely lost on readers that are not familiar with, say, Heidegger. She never condescends to her readers, never "writes down to them." It is understandable, however, that she still held (holds?) popular appeal.

***

While Sontag wrote criticism of all art forms, she appears most passionate about film here. Film, she mentions several times, has eclipsed the novel. And there are several essays on film--her favorite directors seem to be Robert Bresson (The Angels of Sin, The Ladies of the Park, The Diary of  Country Priest, A Man Escaped, Pickpocket, and The Trial of Joan of Arc--several of which she acknowledges as bad) and Jean-Luc Godard (mostly Vivre Sa Vie). At a certain point (in "Notes on Camp"), she references the Marlene Dietrich film The Devil is a Woman and though I never really watch movies from the 30's, I got it from the library and found it reasonably entertaining, with noteworthy art direction and costumes. 

Her quality as a "tastemaker" is singular in her era. Clearly, a note of praise from Sontag would make any artist forget about any other negative reviews of their work. Her essay on Flaming Creatures, for example, makes a case for it when so many other critics found it execrable. I feel like I may have heard of this movie once before, but maybe it was from a section of Sontag. In any case, the essay is from 1964, and the film seems a bit graphic for its time, and seems to have a kind of Warhol-ian edge to it, or maybe a kind of proto-John Waters vibe. Many found this film disgusting but Sontag saw the beauty in it: "a triumphant example of an aesthetic vision of the world--and such a vision is perhaps always, at its core, epicene. But this type of art has yet to be understood in this country." (231)

I had to look up "epicene," which means indeterminate sex, having characteristics of both sexes, or characteristics of neither sex.  

It is impossible for me to move on from the film essays without reference to "The Imagination of Disaster." Here, Sontag reveals herself to be a disaster movie junkie. One wonders what she thought of Independence Day, or perhaps Deep Impact or Armageddon. (While Sontag is totally an art snob, she frequently asserted that guilty pleasures should not be seen as such, and it amused me to read that one of the last films she saw was Spiderman 2, which was not a bad choice.) In this essay, she basically writes the template for any such "end of the world" movies. She goes on for so long about all the different "cookie cutter plots" of these films that it could provide inspiration for less imaginative filmmakers for decades to come. It is remarkable that this essay is from 1965, and that there had already been so many books and films fantasizing disaster scenarios--and how little they have truly evolved:

"Another version of the first script involves the discovery of some fundamental alteration in the conditions of existence of our planet, brought about by nuclear testing, which will lead to the extinction in a few months of all human life. For example" the temperature of the earth is becoming too high or too low to support life, or the earth is cracking in two, or it is gradually being blanketed by lethal fallout.
A third script, somewhat but not altogether different from the first two, concerns a journey through space--to the moon, or some other planet. What the space-voyagers discover commonly is that the alien terrain is in a state of dire emergency, itself threatened by extra-planetary invaders or nearing extinction through the practice of nuclear warfare. The terminal dramas of the first and second scripts are played out there, to which is added the problem of getting away from the doomed and/or hostile planet and back to Earth." (211-212)

Now this essay is most likely influenced by the burgeoning Cold War, and the threat of nuclear annihilation, but these do not sound all that different from The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, Interstellar, or Oblivion (which I just watched last weekend and made me think of this essay). She says that the science fiction film is concerned with the aesthetics of destruction, "the peculiar beauties found in wreaking havoc, making a mess." (213)  The films also reflect world-wide anxieties, and serve to allay them. She says this may be morally fallacious. For whatever philosophizing she may be doing to these B-movies and matinees, it certainly elevates the viewer of a "cheap thrill" into a noble aesthete. I just find it amusing that she basically lays out the contours of Star Wars, in all of its ubiquity, more than a decade before it appeared. One wonders how many directors of such films have read this essay and whether they have purposefully or unintentionally "stolen" one of her plots, or made a film in the hopes of pleasing her. Regardless, this was the most surprising essay in the collection for me.

***

Apart from "Camp," there are several essays on theater which mine topics and writers one would expect Sontag to mine: Artaud, Brecht, and Peter Brook, including a paean to "Marat/Sade." She writes about "Happenings," a peculiar spectacle at its apex in the mid-1960's in New York City, one of which became the Velvet Underground. She references Warhol, but does not seem particularly interested in pop art (except when it is camp--which it sometimes is, right?). She writes about Jean Genet and Jean-Paul Sartre and Alain Robbe-Grillet, rather often. One of the most intriguing essays concerns Nathalie Sarraute and what the novel can do and where it can go:

"Whether or not one enjoys Sarraute's novels (I really like only Portrait of a Man Unknown and The Planetarium), whether or not she really practices what she preaches (in a crucial respect, I think she does not), the essays [from The Age of Suspicion] broach a number of criticisms of the traditional novel which seem to me a good beginning for the theoretical consideration long overdue on this side of the Atlantic." (105)

Sarraute envisions the novel as a continuous monologue, where dialogue between characters is a functional extension of that monologue, "real" speech a continuation of silent speech, a "sub-conversation," comparable to theatrical dialogue, without any exposition or interruption by the author, but not broken up or assigned to clearly separable characters. She directs that the novel should disavow introspection and proceed by immersion instead. It must "record without comment the direct and purely sensory contact with things and person which the 'I' of the novelist experiences. Abstaining from all creating of likenesses (Sarraute hands that over to the cinema), the novel must preserve and promote 'that element of indetermination, of opacity and mystery that one's own actions always have for the one who lives them.'" (108)

I have not read Andrew's Brain by E.L. Doctorow, but a friend recommended it to me, and maybe it reads something like what Sarraute proposes. In any case, the novel undergoes a certain evolution with each new generation, and while I have seen numerous rejections of quotation marks and other expository "empty" phrases (i.e., he said, she said...), few writers today seem willing to write from such an amorphous perspective. Protagonists and narrators may go nameless, or barely named, yet I am hard-pressed to think of any novels with inseparable characters. The nouveau roman flowered in this era, and while it transformed French literature in a similar way that nouvelle vague transformed French cinema, such works demand the type of attention the modern American audiences may no longer possess. There is another distraction waiting on our phone. The future of the novel, here at least, became Dept. of Speculation and a willingness to compete with the collective ADHD of our society, a novel that does not chide the reader for their short attention span. This is rather depressing but perhaps inevitable as Tik-Tok and Instagram (and still YouTube...) boil amusement down to short bursts of 15-60 second videos, as streaming entertainment upends traditional television and cinema, and as novels are expected to "grab" the reader. There is no great mainstream literature, as in early parts of the 20th century. Now, in order to find truly revolutionary literature, one must seek out books that no one else really discusses, apart from the cognoscenti of small and independent presses.  Generally this is because, revolutionary work does not tend to make for good business. We await the exception.

***

"Notes on Camp," then, is a 17-page essay consisting mostly of 58 numbered points, separated only by non-sequitur quotes from works of Oscar Wilde. In it, Sontag attempts to define the idea of "camp." It is practically impossible to sum up a fair definition, for the essay is as much of a work of art as it is a work of criticism. This is the most famous example of Sontag's boldness in experimentation as an essayist. It is very reader-friendly, and yet the overarching meaning is elusive. 

Camp is a "sensibility" (which is distinct from an idea, and one of the hardest things to talk about), or "a certain mode of aestheticism," (277) that is "unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication, but hardly identical with it." (275)

Rather than attempting to summarize my understanding of the concept, it would be easiest to simply list--as she does here--things that are camp, and things that are not camp. 

Things that are Camp
-Zuleika Dobson
-Tiffany lamps
-Scopitone films
-The Brown Derby restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in LA
The Enquirer, headlines and stories
-Aubrey Beardsley paintings
-Swan Lake
-Bellini's operas
-Visconti's direction of Salome and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
-certain turn-of-the-century postcards
-Schoedsack's King Kong
-the Cuban pop singer La Lupe
-Lynn Ward's novel in woodcuts, God's Man
-the old Flash Gordon comics
-women's clothes of the twenties (feather boas, fringed and beaded dresses, etc.)
-the novels of Ronald Firbank and Ivy Compton-Burnett
-stag movies seen without lust (277-278)
-the personality and many of the works of Jean Cocteau
-the operas of Richard Strauss
-concoctions of Tin Pan Alley and Liverpool
-the major films of Louis Feuillade (which may be approached as Camp) (278)
-Art Nouveau (the Paris Metro entrances, as an example) 
-the androgyne
-Greta Garbo
-a relish for the exaggeration of sexual characteristics and personality mannerisms
-Jayne Mansfield, Gina Lollobrigida, Jane Russell, Virginia Mayo
-Steve Reeves, Victor Mature
-Bette (279) Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Tallulah Bankhead, Edwige Feuilliere
-Pope, Congreve, Walpole, etc.
-les precieux in France
-the rococo churches of Munich
-Pergolesi
-much of Mozart (280)
-Burne-Jones, Pater, Ruskin, Tennyson
-Wilde and Firbank
-the number devised for the Warner Brothers musicals of the early thirties (42nd Street, The Golddiggers of 1933...35...37, etc.) by Busby Berkeley
-Trouble in Paradise and The Maltese Falcon
-Wilde's epigrams themselves
-a seriousness that fails--but only with the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naive.
-the spirit of extravagance
-Gaudi's buildings in Barcelona (283), notably the Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia 
-the attempt to do something extraordinary (284)
-the quality of excruciation in much of Henry James (The Europeans, The Awkward Age, The Wings of the Dove) (287)
-Genet's ideas 
-a peculiar affinity and overlap with homosexual taste 
-an insistence on not being "serious," on playing" (290) 

Things that are not Camp
-the personality and many of the works of Andre Gide
-the operas of Wagner
-jazz (278)
-Swift (280)
-All About Eve and Beat the Devil (283)
-William Blake's drawings and paintings (284)
-tragedy (287)
-Genet's books (288)
-Peyton Place (the book) 
-the Tishman Building (292)

Judging alone from this list that I have compiled, it seems much easier to identify an item as Camp, rather than not, yet this must be a simplification. Here, Sontag has pinpointed a "sensibility," and attempted to define it through some amorphous quality of the work, which generally seems to include gaudy fashion. Why should we care about Camp? Perhaps the term is a relic of its era, but it still stands for something precise and pure, which Sontag owns by dint of this survey. The ability to write about a sensibility, with such refined meaning--and in such a studied and grandiloquent manner--is why we should care. "Notes on Camp" essentially created its own genre of essay, and its own way of thinking about art. We should care about Camp because Susan Sontag cared about Camp and showed us that we could write epochal essays on highly-specific convergences and similarities of feeling in art, or anything else. 

***

Against Interpretation is excellent, but it is not one of the Best Books reviewed on this blog because, as a collection of essays, the material is somewhat uneven, and jumps around between different modes of art, such that it cannot be compared to a consistently-engaging/amusing essay collection by David Sedaris, such as Me Talk Pretty One Day (Sedaris's work is clearly Camp, unless I am missing something). It is not one of the Best, but it is excellent, and it is important to this blog--namely, the question we sought to answer after reading Sontag: is the criticism published herein on Flying Houses actually "against interpretation," in the Sontag-ian sense?

In the title essay, she asks, "What kind of criticism, of commentary on the arts, is desirable today?...What would criticism look like that would serve the work of art, not usurp its place?" (12) 

She answers that it is more attention to form in art. "If excessive stress on content provokes the arrogance of interpretation, more extended and more thorough descriptions of form would silence." (12) What is needed is a vocabulary--a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, vocabulary--for forms. [In a footnote, she says we don't yet have a poetics of the novel, any clear notion of the forms of narration]. "The best criticism, and it is uncommon, is of this sort that dissolves considerations of content into those of form." (12) She then lists a number of essays that fall into this category of formal analysis. 

"Equally valuable would be acts of criticism which would supply a really accurate, sharp, loving description of the appearance of a work of art," (13) she writes, noting that this seems harder to do than formal analysis, and then offering a few examples.  

She then states, at the beginning of the 9th and penultimate section of the essay, "Transparence is the highest, most liberating value in art--and in criticism--today. Transparence means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are." (13)

"Our is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life--its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness--conjoin to dull our sensory faculties. And it is in the light of the conditions of our senses, our capacities (rather than those of another age), that the task of the critic must be assessed." (13-14) 

Before ending it all with the one-sentence-section 10, "In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art," she offers the clearest statement of what criticism that is truly Against Interpretation should be:

"The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art--and by analogy, our own experience--more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means." (14)

Have I done that here, over the past thirteen years?

Certainly there have been times when I have puzzled over the meaning of certain texts, or moments within them, such as marrying the chapters of Ulysses to the chapters of The Odyssey, or analyzing certain characters in The Magic Mountain (both pre-law school writings), but I have always been concerned foremost with the experience of reading the actual text, and whether it is enjoyable or not, for me personally. It does necessitate some reference to plot, or content, and comparison to other similar texts or works of art in my reading experience. But it always (or almost always) contains at least one excerpt from the text, so the reader of the review has a real idea of how the author actually sounds.

There is criticism of things current, and there is criticism of things past, and these seem to be diverge. Criticism of things current, of new works of art just being released, informs the reader of what the work is like, so they can decide if they would like to experience it or not. Criticism of things past--the a significant portion of the blog--also serves the same function, but serves additionally to ask if the work has survived its time. Perhaps I have not focused clearly enough on form, much of the time, but there is generally at least some small amount of discussion of it in each review. I have always tried, however, to describe how the work feels, or how it made me feel, and while sometimes such feelings may prove inaccurate or false or mistaken to others that have a better understanding of the work itself, or of the human experience in general, I have always done my best to remain honest about my limitations. 

Grade:) A-