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.

Alex Ross, Listen to This ***

Listen to This is a collection of essays from the music writer for The New Yorker and author of The Rest is Noise. Ross primarily covers classical music, but this book covers topics ranging from Mozart and the conductor Esa-Pekka Solonen to Radiohead and Björk. 

Each piece is a pleasant profile, and most have an interesting insight or two, but they lack a clear point or point of view. "I Saw the Light," about Bob Dylan, is emblematic. Ross describes the scene at contemporary (circa 1999) Bob Dylan shows, provides a potted history of his career, and quotes a few Dylanologists. Then he notes that "Dylan is seldom talked about in musical terms. His work is analyzed instead as poetry, punditry, or mystification." Ross spends a page analyzing Dylan's musical approach, then returns to the pablum. In my opinion, he squandered his unique angle.

I found Ross to be at his best when describing the day-to-day life of classical musicians: touring with a string quartet, searching for a conductor with an orchestra's board of directors, attending a summer camp "finishing school for gifted young performers."

Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil ***** / **

Here is what I said when I read The Death of Virgil twenty years ago:

The Death of Virgil was published in German in 1945. When the Vintage International edition was published in 1995, I picked it up in a bookstore and read the first paragraph:

Steel-blue and light, ruffled by a soft, scarcely perceptible cross-wind, the waves of the Adriatic streamed against the imperial squadron as it steered toward the harbor of Brundisium, the flat hills of the Calabrian coast coming gradually nearer on the left. And here, as the sunny yet deathly loneliness of the sea changed with the peaceful stir of friendly human activity where the channel, softly enhanced by the proximity of human life and human living, was populated by all sorts of craft—by some that were also approaching the harbor, by others heading out to sea and by the ubiquitous brown-sailed fishing boats already setting out for the evening catch from the little breakwaters which protected the many villages and settlements along the white-sprayed coast—here the water had become mirror-smooth; mother-of-pearl spread over the open shell of heaven, evening came on, and the pungence of wood fires was carried from the hearths whenever the sound of life, a hammering or a summons, was blown over from the shore.

I was extremely taken with the poetic description, especially with the images of the water. However, I could tell that this 400+ page novel would require the kind of careful attention you need to read poetry, so it was a few years before I got to it.

This first paragraph sums up what's good and bad about the novel. On the plus side, it creates a mood using detailed, vivid images. On the minus side, the sentences can be long-winded, roundabout, and overly "profound." The heart of the novel is Part II, which chronicles a long night during which Virgil ponders the meaning of life and of art. While it contains a number of interesting ideas and deep images, it hides them amongst pseudo-profound prose along the lines of "the forecourt of reality was merely a sham-reality." 

I have to admit to frequent bouts of impatience. I feel sure The Death of Virgil would reward closer reading.

On that closer rereading, I find Part I even more astonishing, as close to poetry as prose can get. Its bewitching mood and evocative imagery of transitions (from sea to land, day to night, clamorous to silent) have, as the translator says in her afterward, "at the same time a concrete and metaphysical meaning."

And I find Part II even more impenetrable and interminable, with its esoteric nighttime visions  untethered to any concrete action. The exposition of Part III, as Virgil speechifies with his friends and with Caesar Augustus about the goals of art, is also tiresome. 

Mystery of time! Saturnian mystery of perception! Mystery of fate's commands! Mystery of the pledge! Light and darkness, united in the two-toned dusk unfold of themselves to the seven colors of the earthly creation, but when the transformation in being will have reached to universal perception, having become unalterable by virtue of being whole, only then will time come to a standstill, not immobile, not like a lake, but like an all-embracing moment, an unending sea of light, lasting through all eternity...

I have to give The Death of Virgil a split rating. The 73 pages of Part I are a five-star revelation. The rest of the book is a two-star slog.

Giles Tremlett, Isabella of Castile ***

Isabella of Castile is a biography of "Europe's first great queen," the woman who seized the throne of Castile at age 23, merged the kingdoms of Spain through marriage and conquest, funded Columbus' voyages to the New World, kicked off the Inquisition, and expelled both Jews and Muslims from her dominion. She might more accurately be called "Europe's first ruthless queen" or "Europe's first consequential queen."

Isabella reigned for 35 years, providing a surfeit of momentous events and decisions to cover. As is typical for a general-audience royal biography, too much of the book is hastily sketched political intrigue.

The Grandees were self-interested and fickle, making them faster to jump ship and easier to manipulate than the cities. The Stunigas had been among the first of La Betraneja's supporters to swap sides. But her rival's two main backers were Lopez Pacheco and the archbishop of Toledo. ... Isabella decided to divide and rule, offering pardons to some in order to weaken Lopez Pacheco himself. The first to come over was his cousin Juan Tellez Giron, Count of Unreuna....   (zzzZZZ...)

As if Isabella's life isn't packed enough, Tremlett includes (admittedly entertaining) chapters on Columbus' disastrous follow-up voyages and the colorful debauchery of the Borgias in Italy. 

Tremlett does his best to insert tidbits that illuminate Isabella's personality and/or the significance of key decisions, but he doesn't have time to linger on anything in particular. The two subjects that I wanted more detail about were her relationship with Ferdinand and her gradual ratcheting up of pressure on religious minorities. A closer look at either of these would provide a clearer picture of Isabella as a person.

She chose Ferdinand over the objections of her advisors, demonstrating her strong will. Their innovative marriage contracts revealed her political acumen, and their lifelong collaboration showed unqualified trust. The most dramatic scenes in the first half of the book revolve around the couple. Ferdinand is off fighting in Aragon when Isabella first claims the crown, and everyone expects him to assert his masculine rights when he returns; instead they withdraw from the pressure of their advisors and jointly draw up a marriage contract. A few years later, Isabella publicly berates Ferdinand for retreating from a battle against Alfonso of Portugal, and he quietly but firmly explains how patience was the smarter course of action.

When Isabella came to power, Spain was known as a place where Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived in harmony. By the end of her reign, all Jews and Muslims had been expelled or forcibly converted, and Christians suffered under the Inquisition. To what extent were her various actions driven by sincere religious conviction versus political calculation? Why, for example, did she support forced conversions for Muslims in Granada but not for Muslims in Aragon where they were an integral part of the economy? Did she insist on the authority to reform the Spanish church because she was disgusted by its licentiousness or to increase her power?

By reforming in advance, Isabella can also be credited with helping prepare Spain to resist the impact of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. As a result, it remained an almost universally Roman Catholic country that would spread the faith through the Americas and to other Spanish lands like the Philippines.

Dag Solstad, T. Singer ***

Dag Solstad is among the most respected and influential Norwegian novelists, although his highly literary style and penchant for prosaic characters makes him less well known internationally than some of his peers. I was impressed with his novel Shyness and Dignity, so I browsed Solstad novels in the "Norwegian authors in translation" section of the various bookstores we visited in Norway. I chose T. Singer based on the online critical consensus.

The title character sets aside an aimless youth to take a job as librarian in a small Norwegian town. His explicit goal is to lead an incognito life. He marries a local woman and helps raise her daughter, and eventually moves back to Oslo for a job at a more prestigious library. That's it; that's the whole story. The real action of the book is watching Singer struggle to understand himself and his relationships with others.

The first pages find Singer remembering with shame incidents where people judged him for behaving inauthentically. His fear of judgment leads him to pursue an invisible life. He wants to connect with other people but has anxiety whenever he is the center of attention.

It meant that they were talking about him, discussing him and his relationship with his deceased wife and his stepdaughter, in numerous places when Singer was not personally present, nor was he aware of what they said. Because that's how it is with the person who is the subject of gossip...

In the later stages of the story, Singer worries about his stepdaughter when she appears to have inherited the same reserve.

T. Singer shares many Solstadian trademarks with Shyness and Dignity: a regular-guy protagonist in a low-level intellectual job, meandering passages about the character's feelings, a plot whose details are beside the point, a title that tells you nothing about what to expect. It covers a whole life rather than a single fateful day, which is perhaps why it felt unfocused to me. While I empathize with Singer's warring inclinations, I didn't connect to him.