Greetings, fellow readers and writers!
Before I dig into this month’s books:
One of the reasons I conceived of a Substack focused on book reviews is because I feel more comfortable promoting the work of other writers than my own. That said, I should share with you all that a short story from the novel-in-stories I’ve been working on was just published by Southern Humanities Review as an online fiction feature. I’m thrilled for this story to have found a home out in the world. It’s a fairly quick (though intense) read, only a little longer than this post; I hope you’ll consider checking it out!
Secondly, I’m not quite sure I can let November pass without acknowledging one of the high holy days of the American literary year: the National Book Awards ceremony on November 15th. I stumbled across a re-airing on PBS for the first time last year and got hooked. For me, it’s less about which books win and more about feeling a point of access with the broader literary community, even if only via livestream. (There were about 1,600 of us watching this year when I logged on.) This year there was also controversy in the lead-up to the ceremony regarding a statement writers planned to make about the Israel-Hamas war, and I was intensely curious about how this would be handled. In case you are wondering, the statement turned out to be quite brief, was saved for the very end after fiction winner Justin Torres’s acceptance speech, and decried antisemitism and Islamophobia alike in a general call for peace.
Setting the political context of this year’s ceremony aside to speak of the event more broadly, yes, I dream of winning a National Book Award myself (or at least being a finalist, and having to fly to NYC to be in that room), and tears spring to my eyes as I vicariously experience the validation the winning writers must feel after years of laboring in obscurity. But the speeches that move me most are just as often those made by the chairs of the judges’ panels. Imagine: these people (typically writers themselves) read all of the books submitted in their category that year over the summer. For nonfiction, that can be as many as 500 books (alas, I couldn’t find the average number of fiction submissions specified on the National Book Award website that explains how this process works). It’s difficult for me to comprehend such a generous act of literary citizenship and service.
I especially appreciated this year’s speech by Mat Johnson, the fiction panel chair, who gracefully acknowledged the essential subjectivity of the award even as he went on to laud this year’s finalists, noting: “Literature is not track and field. Literature is not a horse race. There is no numerically conclusive way to gauge literary greatness…Books heralded today are often ignored tomorrow and vice versa.” (You can find his full speech included in this video.)
While I know such prizes have their limitations and some great work inevitably goes undercelebrated in its own time, much of the joy and risk of fiction is in its literal subjectivity to the human element of interpretation. As Johnson reminds us, there is no objective measure, only the meeting of two minds on the page—the writer’s and the reader’s—and the results of any single reading experiment can never be replicated. It’s one of the challenges of writing reviews, which keeps me often cautious, particularly with criticism, but also one of the great joys of reading. I share that with you now in the spirit of gratitude that you, dear readers, are willing to take into account the opinions of this specific human reader as you weigh what books might be worth your limited time.
And without further ado, this month I have for you two “classic” novels that are often taught but perhaps less often sought out for pleasure, as well as two recent releases:
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
I first encountered this book when I was roughly the same age as its eponymous character, which I do not recommend as the ideal age for reading this book. However, Claire Dederer’s thought-provoking exegesis in Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma (mentioned in September’s post) inspired me to give this novel famous for its prose style and infamous for its lecherous, predatory protagonist a second try. According to Nabokov’s afterword (which I’m pretty sure I ignored as a teenager, along with the fictional foreword, which clearly situates the protagonist as a criminal and provides a crucial moral frame for the book), the book’s genesis is in a story of an ape who, after researchers’ long efforts, produced a piece of artwork understood to be a drawing of the bars of the inside of his cage. This may be the perfect lens through which to view this arguably brilliant but admittedly difficult-to-stomach book. I had to take a few breaks partway through, just to get away from being inside the cage, so to speak, with the distorted mind of Humbert Humbert, but the writing is incredible and kept drawing me back. More than anything, reading Nabokov makes me want to write better sentences. One of my favorite lines from the end of the book: “And presently I was driving through the drizzle of the dying day, with the windshield wipers in full action but unable to cope with my tears.” I also listened to four episodes of the The New Yorker Fiction podcast that discuss Nabokov stories and highly recommend “Symbols and Signs,” Nabokov’s first story published in TNY, read by Mary Gaitskill, and discussed with fiction editor Deborah Treisman.
Our Strangers by Lydia Davis
I am a great admirer of Lydia Davis; I met her when she visited the University of Pittsburgh while I was an MFA student, and while from that visit I fear I can now only clearly recall her warm, understated presence at the seminar table on the fifth floor of the Cathedral of Learning, I have since gotten to know her much better through her work. Our Strangers is her latest book, comprised of Davis’s characteristic (mostly very) short stories, which are frequently understated and deft in their wit and poignancy. The book is organized into five sections, marked by large, ghostly Roman numerals, giving a pleasant sense of shape and order to the reading experience in the absence of an overarching narrative. Several series of stories, one numbered out of order (“Claim to Fame #7” and so on), are also scattered throughout the book. I recommend David Naimon’s Between the Covers interview with Davis as a companion or prelude to the book if you wish to become more deeply acquainted with the mind and sensibility behind the stories. If you enjoy Lydia Davis, you’ll enjoy this book; otherwise, this book is a great introduction.
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, trans. by Lydia Davis
Curious to read some of Davis’s translation work in addition to her stories, I decided to check out this critically acclaimed 2011 translation of Madame Bovary. (While reading, I learned that Nabokov extensively studied and admired Flaubert, and I enjoyed this serendipitous confluence.) It’s basically the tale of a fairly privileged middle class woman slowly going rancid with discontent and bringing herself and her family to destruction. The story is often comic and brutally realistic and admirably avoids flattening the humanity of even its least likable characters. It woke me up to the treasure of reading an older book written by someone observing their own time. Likely in part due to Davis’s translation but no doubt to the original French text which she seeks to faithfully represent, there is a depth and richness of texture that feels qualitatively distinct from even the most thoroughly researched historical fiction. I was previously ignorant of Flaubert aside from references to his letters in some of Davis’s stories and was also startled by how emotionally accessible this novel feels across more than a century of time.
Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter
This very short novel began as a short story (according to Leichter’s interview on the Maris Review podcast, preserved in its original form as the stunning first chapter) in Harper’s. The premise involves a young couple with a baby living in a cramped apartment whose closet magically becomes a beautiful terrace only when a particular friend and coworker visits. I would describe it as a contemporary fable on grief, time, space, and memory. Rich with layers, it takes some quite startling but fascinating leaps and turns and has the self-sustaining paradox quality of an M.C. Escher painting. I wouldn’t have minded a longer version, but I was not sorry to have spent a couple of evenings reading this one.
Thanks as always for reading! If you know any reading or writing friends who might enjoy these posts as well, please consider sharing!
Warmly,
Jules
I love your story. That phase of life seems closer and closer to me. Congratulations on its well-deserved publication!
First things first being my natural inclination, naturally enough, I've taken pause to read your 'Shoot the Crows' Jules. Just as you say it is short read, making not too much of time this 1st Sunday of Advent. A fine, mind stirring read, which'll likely be sending me to check out England's east coast Grimsby's past trans Atlantic commerce. Thanks for sharing it. I'll be sure to be re-reading it over again, probably wondering just how many of those crows it would take to make a dark crow pie?