John Szwed, Cosmic Scholar *** 1/2

Cosmic Scholar is a biography of Harry Smith, the mysterious polymath best known (to me anyway) as the compiler behind the influential Anthology of American Folk Music. He was an anthropologist and experimental filmmaker hovering around the edges of the avant-garde art scene. He was "always broke, generally intoxicated, compulsively irascible," and surviving on the generosity of his friends such as Allen Ginsberg.

Smith (1923 - 1991) was a downtown New York characters whom everyone in the artistic demimonde seemed to recognize and loan money to, but few people knew more than one facet of his interests. He was a pack rat who loved to collect things –– obscure records, Seminole patchwork clothing, paper airplanes, Ukrainian Easter Eggs. He fascinated friends with his wide-ranging abstruse knowledge. He sought insight by seeing patterns in his collections. In his art he attempted to bridge modalities, with paintings based on jazz recordings and films incorporating folk art. He spent a decade making a film that he hoped would be understandable to every human culture.

Cosmic Scholar makes stimulating connections between anthropology and modernist art (as attempts to understand alternate worldviews), and illustrates the fine line between mental illness and artistic genius. The author Szwed does an excellent job of presenting an overarching artistic vision that links all of Smith's diverse obsessions. He is less successful at capturing Smith's personality. People describe Smith as charming and temperamental, but we rarely hear what this translates to in practice.

Harry Smith reminded me of "Professor Seagull" Joe Gould from Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel. Szwed notices the similarity as well.

Gould managed to survive as long as he did by entertaining [Greenwich] Village people with his bizarre and antic behavior on the streets, in bars, and at parties that he crashed. ... Harry Smith is sometimes unjustly included among such colorful Village failures. But he, in contrast, succeeded at much of what he attempted.

I think it's entirely fair to compare Gould and Smith, and that it's arguable whether Smith succeeded. Both of them did field work with Native American tribes, befriended modernist artists, struggled with alcoholism, spent time in mental institutions, and pursued impossibly ambitious projects (Gould's Oral History of Our Time; Smith's Materials for the Study of the Religion and Culture of the Lower East Side).  I would say that Smith lived the kind of life that everyone assumed Gould was living.

Smith was awarded a special Grammy in 1991. He brought five kittens with him because he wanted them to experience the ceremony. When he accepted the award, he left the kittens in the care of the parapsychologist he had invited along as his guest.

Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake ***

I started Creation Lake with high hopes, so high that I bought the hardcover on its publication day. I had been impressed with the memorable scenes and thematic depth of Kushner's earlier book The Flamethrowers, but felt that it lacked narrative drive. Creation Lake promised to address this shortcoming with an espionage plot: an American woman infiltrates a group of French climate activists.

Alas, Creation Lake doesn't use espionage to generate suspense; instead, it uses it to explore more cerebral questions of personal identity and responsibility. The balance between action and reflection is tilted decidedly toward the latter. The narrator Sadie Smith doesn't meet her surveillance target Pascal Balmy until page 146, by which time we have heard more about the crackpot theories of Pascal's mentor than about her assignment. 

My favorite image in the book comes early. Sadie is driving from Marseille to the rural French district where Pascal's group lives:

I was on toll roads, pulling over to drink regional wines in highway travel centers, franchised and generic, with food steaming under orange heat lamps... I sampled these wines from the vantage of plastic seating overlooking fuel pump and highway. I sipped rosé from the Luberon at a clammily air-conditioned Monop' off the A55, a chaotic place where children screeched and a haggard woman dragged a dirty mop over the floor. The rosé was delicate and fruity, crisp as ironed linen. I found a Pécharmant from the oldest vintner in Bergerac at the L'Arche Cafeteria on the autoroute A7, a wine that was woody with notes of ambergris and laurel and maybe dried apricot.

I love the contrast between the industrial setting and the rich human experience, and I appreciate how the scene reflects the theme of modernity vs traditional ways of living. Another vivid image occurs about halfway through the book as Sadie walks home from the group's commune:

It was seven p.m. and the hottest part of the day, the peak temperature spike, at least forty degrees Celsius, maybe 105 in Fahrenheit, and by any measure hot as balls. Up ahead, something dropped from above and landed on the road. It was a snake. Snakes in heat waves don't coil up on tree trunks. They sleep hanging down from a branch; it's a tactic for staying cool...

I walked in the middle of the road, instead of the shade of overhanging trees, in order to avoid falling snakes.

Kushner regularly offers these kinds of meaningful images alongside her sophisticated themes. However, Creation Lake reinforces my impression that she's not great at plotting.

Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story ****

Shteyngart's books come festooned with blurbs extolling his "linguistic exuberance" and proclaiming their satire to be "wildly", "snarkily", "devastatingly" funny. The title Super Sad True Love Story is at odds with this reputation, signaling that Shteyngart won't be going for a joke in every paragraph.

Super Sad True Love Story takes place in an alternate America, one that is extremely online, undoubtedly repressive, and deeply in debt to foreign creditors (notably China, Saudi Arabia, and Norway).  Our hero Lenny Abramov falls in love with a Korean woman half his age. The tenderness of their relationship provides a refuge from the demands of society.

When I read Shteyngart's previous novel Absurdistan, I felt a huge tonal mismatch between the smart satirical commentary and the cartoonish plot. Super Sad True Love Story is much better balanced, its main story as insightful as its dystopian backdrop. Lenny and Eunice make a believable couple because they provide each other with a salve for their insecurities. They are also both children of immigrants, which feels relevant despite the vast differences between their Russian and Korean parents.

Despite the warning in its title, Super Sad True Love Story is funny.  I was fond of the animated otter that serves as the mascot of the American Restoration Authority. The key words in the title turn out to be True Love.