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Written by J. Peder Zane, McClatchy-Tribune
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Wednesday, 02 May 2007 |
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If I could burst through this page, I'd give you a copy of "With." Donald Harington's 2004 magical novel about a kidnapped girl who grows up in an Edenic (and haunted) patch of the Ozarks is one of the best books I've read since becoming The Raleigh News & Observer's book review editor in 1996.
On top of "With," I'd hand you "Cloud Atlas" (2004), David Mitchell's dystopic tour de force that tells six related stories, stretching from the 19th century to the distant future, in six different literary styles. Then I'd add "My Happy Life" (2002), Lydia Millet's quirky masterpiece, narrated by an abused and forgotten young woman who makes Candide seem like Chicken Little.
But wait, there's more - sublime nonfiction. First up is perhaps the very best book I've written about in the past decade: "Voices from Chernobyl" by Svetlana Alexievich, translated from the Russian by Keith Gessen (2005). A series of exquisite monologues constructed from interviews with survivors of the 1986 nuclear accident in the former Soviet Union, this heartbreaking book is so true that it suggests a kind of beauty.
"Gay Marriage" by Jonathan Rauch (2004) remains the most persuasive work yet in support of this ongoing struggle for civil rights and family values. And Ian Sansom's "The Truth About Babies" (2002), which reads like Friedrich Nietzsche by way of Henny Youngman, delivers hundreds of funny and biting lines in 236 A-Z entries - from Aging to Zero - about prereaders.
I mention these books because I'm feeling nostalgic. Next week will be my last as The N&O's book review editor. Then I'll happily become the paper's ideas columnist. My final books column will appear May 6.
At bottom, my new assignment will differ little from the old: I will seek out, listen and respond to interesting people who are trying to help us understand ourselves and the world around us. My orbit will expand to include not only authors but also scholars, musicians, filmmakers, dancers, actors, politicians and anyone else with something to say who will say it to me.
Just as I have not liked every book I've reviewed, I will not agree with everything these folks tell me. If I endorse or challenge their ideas, I'll tell you why. As a journalism professor once told me: My opinion is the least interesting thing I have to share with readers - how I arrived at that opinion is the most interesting (I hope).
But when disagreeing, finding fault or hurrahing, I will strive to be guided by this core conviction: that critics and columnists worth their newsprint are animated by generosity. This spirit has nothing to do with seeing people and their work in the best possible light, with giving breaks and cutting slack. That is dishonest and unfair to my subjects and my readers.
By generosity I mean paying attention. I mean treating subjects with dignity by taking them seriously. There are a lot of smart cookies who can teach us a thing or two about questions we've never asked and matters we've thought about long and hard.
In this respect, my line of work is a lot like tennis. In this match, however, the other guy is always serving. I try to read the spin on the ball and hit it back with authority. If we're at the top of our games, we make each other better players.
Still, the best moments come when the player across the net serves an ace. The happiest_and most generous_times in a critic's or columnist's life come when the best we can do is marvel at human beings operating at the height of their powers and then spread the good news of their accomplishments.
As I riffled through the hundreds of reviews I've written on these pages, the pieces that brought back the fondest memories were the ones in which I played the smallest part. The clever phrases dismissing a weak work faded with those forgettable books. The words that celebrated enduring achievements seemed to glisten in their light.
Thanks to Emma Donoghue for "The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits" (2002), your clever collection of stories about con artists and cult leaders, blind poets and doomed lovers; Ursule Molinaro for "Demons and Divas" (1999), your mythic stories of faith and belief; Haruki Murakami for "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" (1998), your earthshaking novel about a man's search for human connection; Richard Slotkin for "Abe" (2000), your fine portrait of the young Lincoln; and Thomas Pynchon for the Pynchonesque genius of "Against the Day" (2006). Thanks as well to Max Hayward for your 1999 translation of "Hope Against Hope," Nadezhda Mandelstam's impossible-to-overpraise memoir about life in Stalin's Russia, and to the Overlook Press for the 2003 reissue of Walter R. Brooks' lovely tales about Freddy the Pig.
It was a privilege to review "The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy" (1999), Nicholas Lemann's piercing history of modern America told through the rise of the Scholastic Aptitude Test; "Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil" (1998), Ron Rosenbaum's riveting nonfiction detective story and "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families" (1998), Philip Gourevitch's powerful account of the Rwandan genocide.
If I could burst through this page, I'd give you a copy of every one those literary aces. And I'd throw in the two best books I've read on books, "Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader" by Anne Fadiman and the 2001 reissue of Holbrook Jackson's indispensable "Anatomy of Bibliomania."
After all, I am a generous guy.
___
J. Peder Zane:
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