At Crawford Doyle, I was asked if I had read any grand novels lately. The question surprised me a little, because I try to make a point of buying fiction that promises to be grand, or even just plain engaging, right there at the bookshop. But how would one staffer keep up with that? I stopped thinking about the question and considered an answer. I couldn’t think of any novels that I’d read lately, aside from a few short things on the light side, including two or three by Ruth Rendell. But, as if to make the staffer sorry that she’d asked, I pulled out my iPhone and consulted Evernote. (I’ve been keeping track of my reading there since November.) The Golden Bowl bottomed the list. Between then and now, no, no grand novels. “Was she impressed?” Kathleen asked at dinner. “Not at all. But I was impressed.” Nearly thirty years into digital life, I couldn’t quite believe that I had all that information at my fingertips. Not just what I’d read, but all the passages that I thought worth copying out! Right there on my iPhone.

Returning to the question, I was there to pick up a novel that I’d asked them to order for me. It got a brief but favorable mention in The New Yorker, and I was pretty sure that Crawford Doyle wouldn’t have stocked it. (And if they had, tant mieux, but I was right.) This was ages ago. The book duly arrived and I was duly notified by phone message. More than two weeks passed; I called the shop yesterday to apologize for not having come round to get it. I didn’t say when I’d be in. I had this feeling that if I called today, as it then was, I just might, following some incomprehensible but familiar perversity, actually venture forth from the apartment to pick the book up tomorrow, which is what happened.

The novel is Famous Writers I Have Known, by James Magnuson — a new name to me. So far, it is keen and funny. I don’t know how keen and funny it would be if were not also a literary satire, and I have not yet taken the measure of the satire. But the tale has hooked me, and I would still be sitting in a nearby café, engrossed, sipping Calvados — but the waiter there takes good care of me and does not facilitate overservice. The impulse to linger passed, and I bundled up to go back out into the cold. Now that I am home, however, and sipping tea — oh, I almost forgot: the action takes place in Austin, Texas, so there is the possibility of Texan satire as well — I am going to sink into my cozy chair with it.

Right now.

***

Delicious! I cannot recommend this entertaining book highly enough. It banished our midwinter for a day. I read it within twelve hours, breaking for meals and a few chores. You can probably get through it faster, not that hurry is the thing.

Forget writing programs, forget Texas. Famous Writers I Have Known is a glorious con, with a con man to love. And, in creating Frankie Abandonato, the author proves himself every bit the sterling con man that a good novelist ought to be. I’m not going to try to write about it at this hour; I want only to type out two passages. They’re not far apart in the book, as it happens, but they do compass the range of the con. Emphasis supplied.

I hate it when people think they can take advantage of us writers. They think we’re naïve, that we have our heads in the clouds, that we’re so hungry for any crumb of praise they can treat us like children. (239)

*

“I’m not flattering you. You know that poem by Rilke?”

“Which one?”

“The one where he’s looking at a statue of Apollo? And the trick of it is that the headless torso is somehow scrutinizing him … And the last line is, ‘You must change your life’.” I stared at him, speechless. That didn’t sound like much of a poem to me. (244)

One wonderful thing that James Magnuson has done is to give us readers a view of literature that’s uninfected by chatter. This is what we look like to the secular world.

I’m sorry; there’s a third must-quote.

How far I had fallen. It had been just a few months before that I’d been sitting at a table, surrounded by adoring young women, discussing point of view.

I nearly w— my p—s.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 12th, 2014 at 12:09 am.