Professor ignores his own lectures

I have been a fan of Thomas C. Foster's "Professor" books since How to Read Literature Like a Professor, but he may have reached the limits of his expertise with How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor (2020).

Partly it's a matter of nonfiction being such a broad topic, including everything from biography, history, politics and science to newspapers, magazines and blogs. It's not easy being an authority on everything. Another problem is that Foster's book, being itself nonfiction, doesn't always conform to the author's guidance on what constitutes good nonfiction.

For example, Foster writes, "I have long counseled students of fiction to start doubting the narrator's veracity if they see the word 'I' on the first page. ... The same is true of nonfiction." I am probably not the only reader to check back at the beginning of his own book. His introduction begins with the word "I." His first chapter begins with the word "I'm." (Note that this blog post also begins with the word "I.")

More serious is the professor's lecturing on objectivity or, more accurately, the lack of objectivity. He offers a lot of good instruction on how to detect an author's particular slant and judge the accuracy of statements. But then Foster himself sometimes often fails the objectivity and accuracy tests. For example, he slams Fox News repeatedly, including by saying the network "does virtually no actual news gathering, relying much more on opinion shows ..." A more objective and accurate writer might also point out that other news networks, including CNN, MSNBC and Newsmax, also depend mostly on opinion shows. And the "virtually no actual news gathering" comment is just blatantly wrong.

Foster criticizes the "fake news" label popularized by President Trump, yet he is all aboard with the misinformation and disinformation terms employed more by those on the left. Many readers may find it hard to tell the difference, other than by the political views of those telling the untruths. The author favors cracking down on misinformation and disinformation, especially in the cyber world. The problem is that most fact-checkers, being themselves biased, also need fact-checkers. And what starts out as fact-checking can easily transform into censorship.

Foster shines in many of the chapters in this book, even if he stumbles in others.

A slave abroad

A seducible boy is what I am.

Tiller in My Year Abroad by Chang-Rae Lee

Novels aren't very interesting when what we expect to happen happens. That certainly isn't the case with My Year Abroad by Chang-Rae Lee (2021).

Tiller is a directionless college student looking forward to an opportunity to study abroad when he meets Pong, a Chinese-American chemist/businessman who discovers abilities in Tiller the young man had never realized he possessed. Pong, for example, owns a chain of frozen yogurt shops, and Tiller can, in a couple of sentences, describe each flavor colorfully and accurately predict its sales potential.

Pong offers to take Tiller along with him on a business trip to Asia as something of a protege. Never mind college, this seems like too good an opportunity to pass up. On the trip Tiller continues to discover unknown abilities in himself, such as a karaoke talent that is widely appreciated.

Then Pong abandons Tiller in China, promising to return soon. Yet he doesn't, and Tiller soon finds himself trapped in virtual slavery.

Lee, a Korean-American novelist who teaches at Princeton, tells what happens to Tiller after his Chinese experience in alternate chapters. He now lives with an older woman, Val, and her son, Victor Jr. Val is in the witness protection program after testifying against her husband. That's one thing that hangs over this makeshift family. The other is that Val is suicidal, and Tiller must always be alert for signs that her depression may be worsening. Does she really love Tiller or does she view him just as someone who will be willing to care for Victor Jr. after she's gone?

The two stories never really come together, forcing readers to draw their own conclusions. What does Tiller's year abroad have to do with his life with Val? Has he traded one form of enslavement for another? Are any of us really free?

The author writes with the wordy richness of literary notables with names like Updike, Bellow and Roth. This may not be the most rewarding story you will read this year, but it certainly does stay interesting. You never know what might happen next.

A worthless treasure

If you think it's challenging to steal a ring with incredible value and huge international significance, try giving it back.

Why Me? could have been the title of any of the 14 novels Donald E. Westlake wrote featuring his hard-luck thief John Dortmunder, but it's actually the one published in 1983. It's somebody else who originally steals the Byzantine Fire, a priceless gem coveted by the Greeks, Turks and several others. That night the stolen ring is stored in the safe of an ordinary jewelry store, but that just happens to be the night Dortmunder decides to break into that store. He spots the Byzantine Fire in the safe and thinks it's probably a fake, but he takes it anyway. Big mistake.

Dortmunder doesn't pay much attention to newspapers and TV news, so he is among the last people in New York City to hear about the museum theft. By then the police, the FBI and those various international groups have organized in pursuit of the Fire and whoever has it. Worse, because the cops are putting the heat on everyone in the city with a criminal record, Dortmunder's own usual partners in crime are cooperating in the hunt.

The Byzantine Fire may be the biggest score of Dortmunder's criminal career, yet it is worthless to him. He wants only to give it back without getting caught. But how?

Virtually every chapter in this novel — and there are 46 of them — is a comic masterpiece, and almost every character is uniquely hilarious.

The novel may be dated in some respects, yet it remains enormously fun to read.

A lively abode

May I just say that history is lively abode, full of surprises.

Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile

So much has been written about Winston Churchill, about World War II in general and about the Blitz in particular that you wouldn't think someone could write anything fresh and original about them. But this is Erik Larson and the book is The Splendid and the Vile (2020), so move to the edge of your seat.

Larson has a way of turning history into something that reads like a thriller, as he has done before with the sinking of the Lusitania and the Chicago World's Fair. Now he does it again with the Churchills and the Blitz. Winston, the new prime minister, shares the spotlight here with his wife, Clementine; his daughter, Mary, then in her late teens; and his playboy son, Randolph, with his huge gambling debts and numerous affairs.

Larson makes the war personal, and not just for the Churchills but also for various figures in the British government and and even for some of those on the German side and in the United States. Good fiction requires interesting detail, and Larson shows that the same is true with books of history. For example, Winston Churchill took two baths each day, conducting business with his secretaries and advisors while in the tub. Larson tells us that Churchill once met with President Franklin Roosevelt while entirely nude and out of his tub.

Larson turns his history into a love story, and in fact into multiple love stories, including Mary and her temporary sweetheart and Pamela Churchill (Randolph's wife) and William Averell Harriman, FDR's representative to London. Meanwhile, he gives us plenty of detail about the German bombing attacks.

One detail I found particularly interesting was that the London Blitz began by accident. Hitler ordered his pilots to bomb only military targets in England, but one dark night bombs were accidentally dropped over London. Churchill retaliated by bombing Berlin. Hitler, unaware of the accidental London bombing, retaliated by bombing London. From then on the bombing of cities became routine, right up to Hiroshima

In Erik Larson's hands, history certainly is a lively abode.

Book picture book

I can't say that Jane Mount's Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany (2018) makes particularly good reading or has much in the way of interesting information, but that's OK. It's a book about books, but it's mainly an art book about books, more a pleasure to leaf through than to read.

Mount says she kicked off her art career when, out of ideas, she started drawing the books on her own bookshelves. Then she moved on to the books on the shelves of friends, and soon she was in business. I am another of those people who love the sight of books on shelves. I spend a moment or two practically every day just admiring the spines of my own books. I can understand why readers would be willing to spend a few bucks for a Jane Mount painting of their favorite books.

And that is mostly what Bibliophile amounts to — paintings of books. True, she also includes paintings of striking bookstores and libraries, writers' pets and the rooms where famous writers did their writing, but mostly it's books. She divides them into two-page groupings: choice books of short stories, choice fantasy books, cult classics, choice picture books for kids, choice cookbooks, choice graphic novels, choice mysteries, choice nature books and so on.

She tosses in a few paragraphs about some of these books and their authors and adds lists of other books in these categories that aren't pictured. You may want to read Bibliophile with a notepad handy to take down all those books you may want to read — or even even to acquire just to decorate your own bookshelves.

Careful reading

"I believe young writers should be careful about what they read," Ellen Gilchrist says in The Writing Life.

Whatever our age and however we make our living, that is still probably good advice. Each of us can read only so many books in our lifetimes, and for most of us who are not blessed with speed-reading abilities, each book takes several hours to read. So we do need to be careful.

Robert Frost

Gilchrist herself says she starts each day by reading a Robert Frost poem and devotes her Sunday afternoons to reading Shakespeare plays with friends. Others of us have our own favorites. I know a man who begins each day by reading a psalm. I know others who read at least one thriller a week. If the thriller adds pleasure and stimulation to one's life, it may be as good a choice as Frost or Shakespeare. At least for that person.

I recently read about a woman who became a writer after reading some terribly written stories as a girl. You can get paid for writing this stuff, she realized. She knew she could tell better stories than that, and then she went out and proved it. So I guess that proves that even reading bad books can sometimes be worthwhile.

Last week I commented on books I read decades ago that I had totally forgotten about ("Forgotten books" June 29, 2022). Were they a waste of my time? In many cases, I'm sure they were. Yet I'm also sure many of them gave me momentary pleasure, insights or information, even if they did not impact me enough to stick in my memory. If only those experiences that affect us in a profound and/or memorable way are worthwhile, then most of our lives would be a waste of time. That's a discouraging thought.

I still agree with Gilchrist that we need to be careful about what we read, especially if we are writers and especially if we are growing old. Writers need the best examples of good writing implanted in their brains. Aging individuals need to finally attack all those books they've been saving for a rainy day or for a week at the beach. We are running out of time.

Living a fairy tale

It took me a couple of chapters to get in tune with the cutesiness of Fredrik Backman's My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry (2013), but once I did I loved it.

Elsa is a precocious almost-eight-year-old girl under the influence of her grandmother's fanciful stories, her own Harry Potter books and the Spider-Man comics she considers great literature. She believes she's living a fairy tale. When Granny dies she leaves Elsa a challenge — to find and deliver a series of letters to various people living in the same apartment building. Each letter is an apology for something Granny herself couldn't bring herself to apologize for while she was alive.

Granny was a difficult woman, to say the least. A surgeon, she had devoted her life to going to disaster areas around the world and helping wounded people, while all but ignoring her own daughter, Elsa's mother. She had a good heart, yet was always argumentative and insulting. Elsa was the only person who could get close to her and the person who loved her best.

Elsa's quest takes her into the lives of her neighbors, all of whom had some unexpected connection with Granny and many of whom were the models for characters in her fairy tales. And some of these people have also been given a challenge by Granny — to protect Elsa.

The little girl's life is as much a mess as that of any of the adults. Her parents have divorced and remarried. Her mother is pregnant, and Elsa fears her mother's love will be devoted only to her little brother or sister. Because she is so different from everyone else, she is bullied in school and always on the run, usually returning home with bruises.

Fairy tales have happy endings, and Backman doesn't disappoint. Read this with dry eyes. I dare you.