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Mar. 2nd, 2004 07:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jfbA couple of books I've enjoyed lately:
John Haskell's I Am Not Jackson Pollock says "Stories" on the cover, and I guess they are stories, but they feel more like essays, sort of. Haskell's usual M.O. is to write about a few moments in the life of a figure from history and/or art--say, Hedy Lamarr, or John Keats, or Laika the cosmonaut dog--with a detached tone but impossibly intimate knowledge of their thoughts and feelings. It's a fascinating trick, although during the longer piece near the end of the book my attention started to wander. Still, I'd recommend it, especially for the movie lovers. I really liked the piece about Janet Leigh's and Anthony Perkins's feelings in Psycho--or maybe those of their characters, a line he consistently blurs.
Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist is one of my favorite novels of the last decade, so I was eager to read
Colossus of New York: A City in 13 Parts. Like Haskell's book, it walks a line between fiction and essay, with a lot of little observations about New York or sometimes about city life in general. The most notable thing about it is narrative voice he's crafted, which flits from one anonymous perspective to the next every sentence or two. This paragraph from the chapter "Central Park" is not my favorite but is pretty typical:
John Haskell's I Am Not Jackson Pollock says "Stories" on the cover, and I guess they are stories, but they feel more like essays, sort of. Haskell's usual M.O. is to write about a few moments in the life of a figure from history and/or art--say, Hedy Lamarr, or John Keats, or Laika the cosmonaut dog--with a detached tone but impossibly intimate knowledge of their thoughts and feelings. It's a fascinating trick, although during the longer piece near the end of the book my attention started to wander. Still, I'd recommend it, especially for the movie lovers. I really liked the piece about Janet Leigh's and Anthony Perkins's feelings in Psycho--or maybe those of their characters, a line he consistently blurs.
Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist is one of my favorite novels of the last decade, so I was eager to read
Colossus of New York: A City in 13 Parts. Like Haskell's book, it walks a line between fiction and essay, with a lot of little observations about New York or sometimes about city life in general. The most notable thing about it is narrative voice he's crafted, which flits from one anonymous perspective to the next every sentence or two. This paragraph from the chapter "Central Park" is not my favorite but is pretty typical:
Empire of broken teeth, scraped knees and tiny bits of glass. He is the king of the playground thanks to his hormonal problem, stealing toys and cutting line at the slide. His mother pretends not to notice and consults the article in her purse about that new medication. Intrigue by the jungle gym: the twins in striped shirts plan a coup. Parents gossip on benches. See, it runs in the family. Rumor has it this is where she met her new husband; their kids got into a fight in the tree house and they looked into each other's eyes and just knew. Where's her bottle. What's that sound. The swing set squeaks, a gargoyle tuning instruments. Mayo gone translucent in the heat. Under low stone bridges trolls are invisible. He thought this path was the way out but instead it takes him farther in. Then the spectacular malevolence of a cloud. You can see it creeping across the meadow before it hits you. So cold and abrupt. Like a friend.It's a bit hard to follow, until you stop trying to follow and just sort of go with it.
