I came to Sally Rooney's work as I come to so many others' today: the NY Times Book Review podcast. I don't believe Rooney did the long-form interview with Pamela, and I believe Normal People was read by one of the critics that talk about their current reading at the end of the show. Or maybe she read Conversations with Friends, like I did, because she was underwhelmed, as was I (I think this was the case based on a surface-level Amazon skim: Conversations with Friends has far from perfect reviews while Normal People's are quite glowing). Basically, it's a story about two college friends (Frances and Bobbi) that hob-knob with a writer/photographer and her husband (Melissa and Nick). Spoiler alert: Frances has an affair with Nick. What's interesting is that Melissa doesn't really seem to care, they seem pretty progressive, and then Frances has a pregnancy scare. The ending redeems this book because it doesn't wrap itself up as predictably as one could imagine. Even though I found much of it banal, it was never exactly unpleasant to read, and perhaps it may not aspire to be anything more than light reading. This is a really great book for high school and college students in the same way Less than Zero is, because it shows that writing a popular novel and establishing a career in letters is not outside the realm of possibility when one hits the ground running fast. Besides Ellis (only comparable as a "voice of a generation"), Rooney could also stand up against Nick Hornby,as it owes a certain debt to his literary style (the book is rather unpretentious and realistic; one of the few lines that cracked me up involved referencing Baudrillard without actually reading him). Normal People was one of Obama's Best Books of 2019. I'll probably check it out.
Grade: B-
Patti Smith - Year of the Monkey (2019)
"Sam Shepard would not physically climb the steps of a Mayan pyramid or ascend the arched back of a sacred mountain. Instead he would skillfully slide into the great sleep, just as the children of the dead city spread waxed-paper sheets over mounds of corpses rushing toward paradise. You get there faster sliding downhill on waxed paper, every child knows that. This is what I know. Sam is dead. My brother is dead. My mother is dead. My father is dead. My husband is dead. My cat is dead. And my dog who was dead in 1957 is still dead. Yet still I keep thinking that something wonderful is about to happen. Maybe tomorrow. A tomorrow following a whole succession of tomorrows." (168-169)
This quote is from "A Kind of Epilogue" to Year of the Monkey, Patti Smith's latest entre into the literary canon. Previously it was acknowledged that Just Kids is her essential volume, and that M Train is somewhat more meandering and impressionistic and less arresting. It would be interesting to re-read that review of M Train, because my knee-jerk reaction is to put this above it, but still below Just Kids. Really, these shouldn't be ranked. They all represent different facets of Patti Smith's artistic sensibilities and inspirations. And re-reading that M Train review (http://flyinghouses.blogspot.
Grade: B+
She Said - Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
She Said is the story of breaking the Harvey Weinstein story at the New York Times in October 2017. It involved talking with Rose McGowan, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashley Judd and a number of other less famous non-actresses that worked at one point or another for Miramax or the Weinstein Company. Twohey also played a part in breaking the "Access Hollywood tape story" and spoke with Trump on the phone about it, as such stories require the opportunity to respond. (Note: it is hard for me to separate the two authors, but it seems as if Meg does a lot of the on-the-ground reporting and Jodi does a lot of the writing at the office.) Finally, while they didn't break the Christine Blasey-Ford story (Washington Post did), it might not have happened at all but for their efforts. Her testimony at the SCOTUS confirmation hearing should stand, I think, as the climax and apotheosis of the movement.
I could write a long form review of this but maybe I'll do that later with Catch and Kill, which I just reserved from the Chicago Public Library and am now #557 in the Queue. That is the biggest number I have had yet for any book or film from CPL. I don't believe She Said's number was much higher than 100. I guess the difference is that Ronan Farrow is now a household name while Cantor and Twohey are not. And you know what, I resent that. I don't need to go off on a rant about privilege or precociousness or Yale or NBC or famous parents or white maleness, because it's too early, and who knows, perhaps Catch and Kill is a better book than She Said. Short form reviews are not the place for such rants. Suffice to say this was a very good book that became quite the page-turner. It reminds me at first blush of All the President's Men or Spotlight (the movie, as I haven't read the book). Inevitably there will have to be a movie as well. Harvey himself joked about that eventuality to the Hollywood Reporter days before the NY Times story broke. And it is the story of that week that elevates the material to a higher level. Most people probably don't want to read a book about this stuff because it's been reported and hashtagged to death. But during that part of the book, She Said becomes a true thriller. When Weinstein makes Kantor (or was it Twohey?) laugh for the first time, for example, the humility is disarming to the reader. Of course the man will go down in infamy, but the book also hints at ways he could redeem himself yet, and is an ironic sacrificial wolf for untold generations of men abusing their positions of authority for their own (generally sexual) gratification. It would be safe to say that this story did more good than harm.
Moreover, Kantor and Twohey do not blindly endorse every accusation that came about in the wake of their story, but insist on the stringency of the rules of journalism. The Internet may be quick to cancel celebrities and rush to judgment, and the legal apparatus may be unfairly tilted in favor of the wealthy (sex crimes are notoriously difficult to prosecute), but in journalism at least, something approaching the truth is most likely to be found. (His trial, which began yesterday, for two offenses not detailed in this book, may bear this out.) In this sense, She Said should be required reading for all journalism students. Farrow is on the trail behind Kantor and Twohey. They respect and admire his work. I'm curious to see how he could have done better than this book.
Grade: A-
