Review by New York Times Review
THE ANNOTATED MEMOIRS OF ULYSSES S. GRANT Edited by Elizabeth S. Samet. (Liveright, $45.) If you liked Ron Chernow's recent biography of the 18th president, this annotated version of Grant's memoirs provides the context necessary to appreciate one of the most celebrated pieces of presidential writing, team human By Douglas Rushkoff. (Norton, $23.95.) A professor of media theory, Rushkoff files field notes from the war between man and machine, arguing gloomily that technology is currently winning, quickly chipping away at our humanity, bookends By Michael Chabon. (Harper Perennial, paper, $16.99.) Chabon offers a glimpse at his influences in this compilation of previously published odds and ends. Much of the book is made up of introductions to eclectic cult classics, the kindness of strangers By Salka Viertel. (New York Review Books, paper, $17.95.) Born in a remote province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Viertel made her way in the 1920 s to Hollywood, where she had a career as a screenwriter and became a confidante of Greta Garbo. Her memoir captures both the intellectual world she had to leave behind - one peopled by the likes of Kafka, Musil and Einstein - and the home and refuge she made for herself in Los Angeles. DIDEROT AND THE ART OF THINKING FREELY By Andrew S. Curran. (Other Press, $26.95.) In this new biography, Curran looks to remind us just what a radical Diderot was in his time. "I read a lot of contemporary fiction, but the books I keep coming back to in recent months are American noir novels from the '40 s and '50s. I've recently read more Raymond Chandler than I have at any time and can't quite figure out why except that the dark underworld he brings to life, a boozy and beautiful Los Angeles, is one I can get completely lost in. The latest novel of his I can recommend is the lady in the lake, about two missing wives, one rich and one poor, and the men who want them back, and not always for the right reasons. People often forget how extremely funny Chandler is, particularly when it comes to painting a room: 'The whole place was full to overflowing with males in leisure jackets and liquor breaths and females in high-pitched laughs, oxblood fingernails and dirty knuckles.' And I especially enjoy how he describes female characters: She was 'smart, smooth and no good. She had a way with men. She could make them crawl over her shoes.' He also evokes California landscapes better than just about any writer, making it easy to smell the jasmine and feel the heat from the Santa Anas, air, he writes, 'hot enough to blister my tongue.' " - JULIE BLOOM, DEPUTY EDITOR, NATIONAL DESK, ON WHAT SHE'S READING.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 31, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Chabon, the incandescently imaginative and artful author of a dozen works of fiction, including Moonglow (2016), is a connoisseur of introductions and postscripts. In his Meta-Introduction to this lively collection of his warmly conversant intros and outros, he offers fresh and illuminating analysis of the various styles and intentions of forewords, an often-dismissed literary form that he turns into scintillating hybrids of literary appreciation and memoir. Chabon devotees will relish his ensnaring essays for the insights they provide into his inspirations, including the supernatural literature of M. R. James; Michael Moorcock's heroic fantasies; Ray Bradbury's The Rocket Man ; Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth (1961); Wes Anderson's films; and the works of various comic-book artists, including Ben Katchor. Of particular tenderness and grace is the prelude to his own novel Summerland (2002), in which Chabon writes about his boyhood fascination with fairies, family sorrow, and the magic of books, which, while you read, could bind up and repair all the cracks in the world, relight the lamps, restore what had been lost, heal what had been broken. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Pulitzer Prize-winner Chabon (Pops) presents a collection of brief but insightful essays, most of them introductions or afterwards ("outros") to his own and others' books. Selections from the latter category reflect his fascination with genre fiction, pop culture, and childhood, and were originally written for, among other things, a Ray Bradbury short story, the classic children's novel The Phantom Tollbooth, an anthology of Mars sci-fi sagas, an art book devoted to superhero costumes, and a study of Wes Anderson films. In the pieces about Chabon's own work, he is especially strong in reflecting on his writing process, for example in the foreword to his YA novel Summerland, which punctures the easy clichAcs authors use to explain how they find their subjects ("The whole book just came to me, like a vision, complete"). Chabon's range of interests, though it includes room for a cookbook, will chiefly appeal to his fans and to readers fascinated by superheroes and fantasy. Some of the intros reproduced could use introductions of their own, as it is disorienting trying to find a foothold into books one has never heard of (and few readers will be familiar with every single book). Nevertheless, the essays are intelligent and entertaining, and being none too long, can be read easily and quickly. Agent: Daniel Kirschen, ICM. (Jan.) c Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author goes his own way writing about some of his favorite books and comics.Chabon (Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces, 2018, etc.) eagerly returns to the beloved genres of his youth in this joyous collection covering nearly 20 years of introductions, prefaces, forewords, and afterwords to adventure tales, sci-fi, ghost stories, comic books, and his own books, all written in the "hope of bringing pleasure to the readerto some reader, somewhere." He confesses he read Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth at least five or six times. Though it didn't make him want to be a writerthat came later with Arthur Conan DoyleJuster's "world of wonders" still gives him a "tiny thrill of nostalgia and affection for the wonderful book." Stop "reading this nonsense," he chides, and go read the book. That advice reflects a common theme in this collection: Chabon, the fan, urging readers to read these stories. He firmly believes M.R. James' ghost story, "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad," is one of the "finest short stories ever written." He confesses that the "splendor and fragility" of Ray Bradbury's story "The Rocket Man," which Chabon first read when he was 10, was the "most important short story in my life as a writer." Bradbury "gave me my first everlasting lessons in literary style." Chabon waxes euphoric about the "remarkable artistic achievement" of Michael Moorcock's heroic fantasy, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, as he does about Howard Chaykin, the "craftsman, an artisan of pop," and his experiments in comic book art. There are two pieces about Chabon's abandoned, early "disaster," Fountain City, one on Summerland, and one on The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and discovering his need to write in "traditional, bourgeois narrative form." The author closes with a couple liner notes about Mark Ronson and the Pittsburgh "post-punk" band Carsickness.Eclectic, exuberant fandom from Chabon. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
