Liars and Saints

 "The Vulnerables" is an extraordinary novel about a woman at war with herself. The woman--Sigrid Nunez--is living alone through COVID in New York City. There are reasons for despair. Nunez recalls a quote from Stephen Hawking in 2017: "Humanity has 100 years left on this planet."  Nunez takes long walks through the semi-abandoned city, and one day, a stranger in a balaclava parks his bike in front of her. He pulls up the mask and coughs in her face; he rides away. On another day, Nunez visits a coffee shop she loves and chats with the barista who ranks at the top of her "favorites" list. She absentmindedly rests her hand on the counter, and the barista--enraged by the life of an "essential worker"--snaps at her. This takes her breath away. On still another occasion, she opens hate mail from a stranger who has read her first book, "A Feather on the Breath of God." The stranger has concluded (1) the novel is not a novel but a memoir, (2)...

 In some ways, this memoir features an unreliable narrator. Whenever a speaker is unerringly virtuous, and surrounded by fools, you have to feel suspicious. A skeptic may read this book and ask a question: "If Sarah Wynn-Williams finds Zuckerberg so repellent, why does she remain with the company for years, and years, and years?" (It's a question that SWW doesn't really answer.) A pivotal scene features SWW in a game of Settlers of Catan. Gradually, SWW realizes that her colleagues are deliberately modifying their strategies so that Mark Zuckerberg will win. SWW (heroically!) launches a protest. Everyone denies that she sees what she is seeing, and Zuckerberg, apparently one of the smarter people on the planet, seems startled and dismissive toward SWW. This is a "set piece moment"; it's like Sigrid Nunez attending an awkward dinner with Susan Sontag in "Sempre Susan." But does it pass the "smell" test? Does SWW's inability to doub...

 I have a few friends with literary aspirations, and the subject of writing is tricky. It's useful, because "shoptalk" can be fun. At the same time, there is always competitiveness and ego. (The writer Simon Rich captures the silliness of ego in "The Baby," a story about a novelist who discovers that his little fetus has enviable storytelling talent. The actual baby is the published novelist, not the emotionally mature fetus.) One friend has released various picture books, and I'm always excited for him, and also slightly miffed. (When Anne Lamott watched a colleague soar to new heights of success, she grew very tired. She grew impatient, saying "wonderful! wonderful! so wonderful!" while half-ignoring the voice in her iPhone.) Because of my own history, I'm drawn to "What Are You Going Through," a novel about a thorny literary friendship. It's essentially the story of Sigrid Nunez and Susan Sontag. Sontag discovers that she has f...

  "The Vulnerables" concerns a woman, Sigrid, who is looking back on her life. She feels some regret about never having started a family; she confesses, to the reader, that she has always suspected she cannot sustain a romantic relationship. "I tried dating someone wildly different from the last person, then another wildly different, and another, and nothing would stick." As a writer, Sigrid takes pleasure in contrarian thinking. For example, she has some questions about consent. She understands that, now, she should interrupt a romantic encounter to ask about each next step. "Can I put my hand here? And here? And here?" She doesn't dismiss the wisdom of this thinking. But what if there is loud music? What if my partner has asked to be tied up and whipped--and I mistake a "no" for a moan of pleasure? Sigrid goes on to wonder about "safe words." Why can't the word simply be "stop"? Because, in role-playing, "stop...

  A friend of mine was being treated in a local hospital that specializes in treating her particular type of cancer. I had come to visit this friend, this very dear old friend whom I had not seen in several years, and whom, given the gravity of her illness, I might not see again.... The new Sigrid Nunez novel concerns a writer facing two kinds of despair. In one corner, the writer's cancer-plagued friend (who seems to be Susan Sontag, or Sontag-adjacent) wants help with the process of committing suicide. In another corner, another friend (who seems to be Jonathan Franzen, or Franzen-adjacent) can't stop shouting about the coming apocalypse. One situation "comments on" the other. The Sontag character feels she is in a burning building and must jump; but maybe the burning is manageable, and maybe the pain of another day isn't something she fully wants to reject. Maybe suicide won't happen. And the Franzen character feels that life, now, is hollow and inexcusable...

I’m not wild about the novel that just won the NBA. The less said, the better. Instead, may I recommend “The Friend,” which won in the recent past, and which really deserved its win. “Your whole house smells of dog, says someone who comes to visit. I say I'll take care of it. Which I do by never inviting that person to visit again.” Almost the entirety of the novel is just that smart, and surprising, and funny. Also, it’s a great treat, over Thanksgiving, to rent certain curiosities that Film Forum is spotlighting. (If you can’t be AT Film Forum, you might as well re-create Film Forum in your own home.) The titles that interest me right now are: “Kind Hearts and Coronets” (Guinness) “Detective Story” (dir. Wyler) “Midnight” (script by Wilder) “Cape Fear” (the Robert Mitchum version) “Baby Face” (featuring Barbara Stanwyck) Enjoy!

Five great recent bits of journalism/criticism: (5) The Times piece on Ellen DeGeneres. Delightful. ED has some concerns about joke theft--but she does not acknowledge that her new idea, mocking the concept of "relatability," has been fertile ground, already, for Chelsea Peretti and Louis CK. (At the least. Interesting.) I love the analysis of ED at work--how she is relaxed and charismatic, at this point, and also not particularly "stretched." (You might sense some boredom.) I also love how the piece shows ED editing herself; at times, she has had a joke she has opted to suppress, so that she doesn't stomp on the sunny aura of the show. And then: To have ED wander onstage and say, "Fuck." Brilliant--because, as Tig Notaro observes, it's a joke that has been building on itself for at least fifteen years. Sometimes, you can pack a great deal into one word. I look forward to this special. (4) Emily Nussbaum, rounding up the year's best in TV...

* If it's a novel, keep it under 300 pages. Who wants to stay with a story for over 300 pages? This is why I can't read Russell Banks's "Affliction." How self-indulgent: To imagine the tale on your tongue requires so many stacks of paper! My old teacher, Amy Bloom, tried to write "medicine-ball prose." Very few sentences, but each sentence contained a great deal of mass (a great deal of meaning). To those who insist on stretching out over 400, or 500, pages, I'd say: Why not take a lesson from Chekhov and simply abandon the First Act? Act Two becomes Act One. Simple! Why can't I read Tana French's new novel? It's over 500 pages, and also, she's incapable of writing a sentence as clean as: "I was tired." Instead, it's always: "I was one-foot-in-the-grave tired, so tired I'd lost touch with reality, sleep-stunned, zombie state, can't-even-remember-my-name exhausted." Good grief. Who wants to read nons...

I see the sun has knocked you out. But let's not overdo it, eh. It's supposed to go up to ninety today. Maybe I should get you some water. And while I'm at it a nice tall glass of iced tea for myself. Oh, look at that. Butterflies. A whole swarm of them, floating like a small white cloud across the lawn. I don't think I've ever seen so many flying together like that, though it's not unusual to see them in pairs. Cabbage whites, I think. Too far to tell if there are black dots on the wings. They should watch out for you, o eater of insects. One snap of those jaws would take out most of them. But there they go, heading right for you, as if you were no more than a giant rock lying in the grass. They shower you like confetti, and you--not a twitch! Oh, what a sound. What could that gull have seen to make it cry out like that? The butterflies are in the air again, moving off, in the direction of the shore. I want to call your name, but the word dies in my...

During the 1980s, in California, a large number of Cambodian women went to their doctors with the same complaint: they could not see. The women were all war refugees. Before fleeing their homeland, they had witnessed the atrocities for which the Khmer Rouge, which had been in power from 1975 to 1979, was well known. Many of the women had been raped or tortured or otherwise brutalized. Most had seen family members murdered in front of them. One woman, who never again saw her husband and three children after soldiers came and took them away, said that she had lost her sight after having cried every day for four years. She was not the only one who appeared to have cried herself blind. Others suffered from blurred or partial vision, their eyes troubled by shadows and pains. The doctors who examined the women--about a hundred and fifty in all--found that their eyes were normal. Further tests showed that their brains were normal as well. If the women were telling the truth--and there were ...