I've Been Reading Lately... Jan. 2022
A look at books by Sarah Bakewell, Jay McInerney, WH Auden and Charlie Chaplin
Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney (Vintage Contemporaries, 1984)
Originally written almost 30 years ago, Jay McInerney’s novel follows a young wannabe writer and Big Magazine fact-checker as he strolls through pre-Giuliani New York City It’s a messed up tale of privilege and drugs, back when the city was still grimy and people did coke while dancing to Elvis Costello. A good period piece, and one that makes me think of writers in Brooklyn, struggling to get it made and being young and foolish. Wish I had money to burn like the narrator does.
It’s fun for it’s little insights into the workings of a magazine that’s never named, but almost definitely the New Yorker, from it’s shadowy editor who slunks around but avoids confrontation to a writer who’s been holed up in his office for decades, working on the same story. They’re never given proper names, but they’re definitely Walliam Shawn and Joseph Mitchell. Makes me wonder who else was based on whom? But anyway, the scenes set inside the office, where the narrator fucks up the fact-checking on an important article, and the detailed minutiae what they check, is interesting.
Sure, it’s a little dated in aspects and the whole ending arc seems a little cliche, but it’s an enjoyable read and once it got going, I found it hard to put down. Did I mention it’s in second person? Seems weird but I barely noticed after a while.
My Autobiography - Charlie Chaplin (Penguin Classics, 2003)
Interesting, and more thoughtful than the typical memoir, Chaplin’s My Autobiography is a detailed look at what inspired the famous comedic actor, writer and director, but it’s a little sparse on the actual filmmaking parts. Which, ultimately, is actually pretty okay.
Sure, there’s not a lot about the films themselves - nothing, for example, on The Circus, and not much on, say, The Kid. But those films are discussed almost to death elsewhere, and if you want to find out who worked on what, what went into which film, there’s lots of other places you can find those. Chaplin wisely avoids rehashing the classics and instead gets into what interests him: why a certain gag works, how they come together to make a movie and where inspiration hits.
It’s not a dull read, and I’m glad I read it. It’s full of him reminiscing about his rough upbringing, pontificating on nuclear war, social reform and the nature of comedy, anecdotes about being on the road and rubbing shoulders with a who’s-who of early Hollywood. And best of all, it makes me want to revisit his films. All in all a good memoir, maybe not as good as Kurosawa’s, but better than most.
Lectures On Shakespeare - W.H. Auden (Princeton Classics, 2019)
In 1946, poet and critic W.H. Auden started a series of lectures on Shakespeare for New York’s The New School, a course he delivered for about one school year. In it he covers all of the plays, plus a concluding lecture to tie them all together. I wasn’t around back then, but I bet it was pretty exciting stuff in some circles.
Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to my expectations. In this series of lectures, Auden talks at length about the plays, name-drops everyone from Kierkegaard and Eliot, Freud and Tolstoy, and draws interesting connections between each play. Well, except Merry Wives of Windsor, which he basically skips over. It should be compelling stuff, but truth be told, I found myself lost in the weeds of its frequency allusions and references.
Perhaps it’d work better if I re-read each play before diving into each lecture, or maybe it’s because this work was reconstructed from notes taken by students. I’m not sure. I just know it left me feeling overwhelmed. I think it’s more for specialists and completists than for the layperson, but people who are deep into Shakespeare will find some stuff to chew on.
Slow Days, Fast Company - Eve Babitz (NYRB Classics, 2016)
Breezy and light, Babitz’s prose comes in like a dream and just has this wonderful knack for summing things up in a pithy sentence. Her second book takes you across the LA area: up into Orange County, down into the grape harvest and into Dodger Stadium, among other places. She tells of long nights with cocaine and a Virgina Woolf paperback for company, of photographers who can’t keep track of time and bad food. Babitz’s writing about food, either here or in Eve’s Hollywood, is underrated.
She makes the impossible look easy, like anyone could pick up a pen and write a memoir of sorts like this of their own. But it’s an illusion, it’s tricky to write at all, let alone this well. She died this past December. We lost her too soon.
How to Live: A Life of Montaigne In One Question and Twenty Attempts At An Answer - Sarah Bakewell (Vintage, 2011)
A well-researched and nicely-illustrated biography of Michel de Montaigne, a guy who was bookish, philosophical and all but invented the essay form as we know it today. Montaigne spent most of his life in modern-day France, served on the Bordeaux Parliament, was a mayor towards the end of his life and was known as something of a statesman, having made connections in the court of Henri III.
But these days, he’s known for the book he spent a large part of his life writing: The Essais, a series of essays probing everything from the New World, Ancient History and attitudes towards life. Montaigne took what he needed from classical philosophy and history, mixed it with his own attitudes and anecdotes he’d picked up on his travels and spun them all together into a unique form, something resembling autobiography. Which, at the time, was a new concept: only religious figures like St. Augustine had done something along these lines before, and there it was more a spiritual exercise than a personal history.
Bakewell’s book dives deep into what’s known about Montagine’s life - not a lot, sadly, but enough to sketch out a basic outline, be it through contemporary documents or Montagine’s own writings. There isn’t much about his personal life, as he barely mentions his wife or mother in his works and there isn’t really much documentation about either outside of him. She also charts the development of Montagine’s thought, which is tricky because it’s hard to place essays in a kind of historical order.
Where Bakewell shines, however, is in charting the growth and development of his influence and legacy. Thinkers all down the pike, from Pascal and Decartes to Woolf and Zweig have engaged with The Essais and reactions have varied from shock and dismissal to a profound influence and fandom (Zweig, for example, also wrote a biography of Montagine). It’s in these sections that Bakewell truly shines: as anyone who’s read her book about existentialist thinkers (2016’s In the Existentialist Cafe) knows, she’s got a knack for summarizing thought and comparing it to similarly minded people to tease out the differences and show them in contrast. She does it here skillfully, winding her story along a parallel track of his life and his posthumous influence. It’s hard not to come out of reading this with both a good sense of what makes him important, but also with a desire to re-engage with his works. Recommended.