Liars and Saints

We found a house. It's at 67 Maplewood. This is where I imagine I will be for at least the next eighteen years. Maplewood, NJ, has a charming downtown with a functional bookstore; the new releases aren't immediately available, as they would be at the Strand, but if you wait a few days, then they're available. You purchase two hundred dollars in reading, and you get a free book. This is a store that feels no need to carry Anita Brookner--not one Brookner!--and it's also pretty skimpy in the Philip Roth department. But I'm coming. (Actually, I don't plan to complain about the Brookner or Roth issue.) Joshua now sleeps in a crib with a small central "nest." If you poke your tongue out at him, he will reciprocate, but he seems to need to open his mouth wide to get the tongue out, and the tongue will be visible for maybe half a second. Just a tiny slice of tongue. Joshua can also smile. The musical finale of "Transparent"--a widely-panned ...

Jill Soloway doesn't love Bruce Springsteen's "I'm on Fire." In her memoir, she objects to the song's message. I think Bruce Springsteen isn't saying the speaker is someone to emulate; I think Springsteen is simply describing a state of being. He isn't *endorsing* anything. A few ideas stand out. The idea of sleeping with the woman--the person addressed--is so transgressive, it's like stealing a "little girl" from her "daddy." Yikes! Unbearable desire is like having someone take a knife and "cut a six-inch valley" through the middle of your skull. The image of the skull inspires another thought: Unacknowledged lust is like having a freight train in your head. I like the drama and ambivalence in this song--the lust is neither a good nor a purely-bad thing--and I like all the sweat and the heat references. Mr. Springsteen has painted a compelling picture. I'd bet that that is all he wanted to do. "Bl...

(4) Gosh, it's difficult to read Jill Soloway's intermittently smart and thoughtful memoir, "She Wants It." It's difficult because Soloway seems so insufferable. I suppose the world would be a better place if we were all less judgmental. But Soloway abandons her kids on Thanksgiving so she can fly first-class to Paris with her new girlfriend (whom she'll soon dump). Later, she complains that her ex-husband (having recently assumed full Thanksgiving Parent Duties) didn't help with the shitty birthday party she threw together hastily for her younger son. The ex-husband seems like a child, as well--but that doesn't excuse Soloway. Everyone fails, all the time, but if you're writing a memoir, and you have an eagle-eyed editor, you should at least try to have a bit more candor and insight about the dimensions of your own failures. (3) At last: the book we've all been waiting for! "I'll Be There For You," an in-depth history of the ...