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Mar. 2nd, 2004 07:58 amA 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: ( Copyright violation. ) It's a bit hard to follow, until you stop trying to follow and just sort of go with it.
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: ( Copyright violation. ) It's a bit hard to follow, until you stop trying to follow and just sort of go with it.
