Two Cheers for Javert

I’m not sure when it started, but in most of my books I like to note the “soundtrack” that accompanied their production–what I was listening to while writing in coffee shops and airports and my home office. Each one is a snapshot of a phase of my listening life, as well as a kind of…

Translations are a bit like music: you attach yourself to what you encountered in your youth. You reify what emerged when you were coming of age. You canonize what formed you. So if you first encountered Proust through battered paperback versions of Scott Moncrieff, you’ll be disposed to resist Lydia Davis’ masterful new translations. “Accuracy”…

It is the first day of summer, at least according to my own personal academic calendar. The college’s commencement was this past Saturday. My official duties have been discharged for the year. Too many writing obligations loom for the summer; so, of course, I’m procrastinating. The piles and piles of books on the floor beside…

No “bests.” No rankings. No claims to objectivity or trendsetting or reports from secret avant-garde gardens of literature.  Just some impressions looking back over a year in reading. (You can see a glimpse of some of my reading at GoodReads.) Novels that haunt me: 2016 was a pretty incredible year for fiction.  I won’t likely…