Some reading recommendations
In no particular order
I find myself in the unusual position1 of recommending a celebrity memoir published two weeks ago, a celebrity memoir that is also a NYT bestseller, which means that I will shortly need to stew, salt, and eat a hat.
Pretty much everyone in publishing knows that the majority of celebrity and business memoirs are ghostwritten vanity projects. This can lead to comical situations, such as the headliner of a prominent book festival being interviewed about being an author before an adoring audience, when the smart money says he’s never written any of the books his name is emblazoned on. The better type of celebrity will give the ghostwriter a credit, which is what happened on books where you see:
CELEBRITY NAME
with Unfamiliar Name
I have a bit more respect for those.
While those outside of publishing have historically remained unaware of ghostwriting, it seems to be finally bubbling up into the public consciousness. Vulture had, last week, a tell-all from a poorly paid fiction ghostwriter (in the comments section, a nonfiction ghostwriter expresses horror at the pay), and John Boyne’s The Echo Chamber (2021) features a James Patterson type as one of its main characters.
Alexei Navalny’s Patriot is something else altogether, scratched out bit by bit in prison with difficulty during the hour or so per day in which he is permitted to write. Entire chapters are confiscated by prison guards, vanishing forever. A psychotic murderer who screams day and night is installed in the cell across from his, to keep him from sleeping. He mentions that his two agents are nervous about whether he will be able to complete the book under contract. (This is a good book to give to writers who complain about writing.)
Navalny is deeply erudite, and I would bet on his having read “The Power of the Powerless,” given how frequently he mentions Václav Havel, but he also quotes Rick and Morty. His prose is dense and beautiful, well-written or well-translated or most likely both, with the texture and weight of prose from previous decades. Patriot is also unbelievably funny for a book in which the protagonist dies on page 280 of 479. Navalny does not and cannot stop joking, which is wonderful, because his comedic instinct is perfect.2
The two times he transforms into a serious orator involve his concluding statements in the Yves Rocher trial in 2014 and then in the appeal for the same case, speaking directly to the judge, prosecutor, and other corrupt officials involved in the false accusations and trumped-up charges. From the first:
I understand perfectly that none of you will suddenly leap up and overturn that table, nor will you say, “I’ve had enough of all this!” Neither will the representatives of Yves Rocher stand up and say, “Navalny has convinced us with his eloquent words!” People are made differently. The human consciousness compensates for the feeling of guilt... It’s impossible for you to go home at the end of the day and say to your children or your husband, “You know, today I took part in the sentencing of someone who was clearly innocent. Now I feel really bad about it and will always feel bad.” We don’t do that, because we’re made differently. Either they say, “Alexei Anatolievich, you understand how it is,” or they say, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” Or they’ll say... “If he hadn’t attracted attention to himself, if he hadn’t waved his arms around, if he hadn’t got in people’s way, more than likely everything would have just gone away.”
Nevertheless, at this point in the proceedings it’s very important for me to address those who’ll watch or read my final words. It is, of course, quite useless.... We are fighting for the hearts and minds of those who simply stare at the table and shrug their shoulders. People who, when all they need to do is not do something vile, they go ahead and do it anyway….
Everything is built on lies, on constant lying, do you understand? And the more concrete proof of something that we present to you, the bigger the lies that we come up against....
Why do you put up with these lies? Why do you just stare at the table? I’m sorry if I’m dragging you into a philosophical discussion, but life’s too short to simply stare down at the table. I blinked and I’m almost forty years old.... And at some point we’ll realize that nothing we did had any meaning at all, so why did we just stare at the table and say nothing? The only moments in our lives that count for anything are those when we do the right thing, when we don’t have to look down at the table but can raise our heads and look each other in the eye. Nothing else matters….
Maybe this is going to sound naive, and I know it’s become the norm to laugh ironically and sneer at these words, but I call on absolutely everyone not to live by lies.3 There is no other way. There can be no other solution in our country today.4
Speaking at the end of the appeal:
Really, Your Honor, I’m not sure anymore what to talk about. Do you think, perhaps, we should talk about God?…
Recently someone wrote me… “Didn’t you say a while back in an interview that you believe in God, and it says in the Bible, ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be fulfilled.’ Well, that’s great. You’ve got it made!” and I thought, How about that! How well this person understands me….
That’s why, while of course I’m not particularly enjoying my present situation, I feel no regret about having returned here and what I’m doing. Because everything I did was right. On the contrary, I feel, well, a certain satisfaction. Because at a difficult moment I did as I was supposed to and didn’t fall short of that precept.5
The last paragraph of the book, of course, threw me across the room.
Since it’s generally churlish to reveal the last line or paragraph of a book, here’s the back cover instead:
Nobody will believe me when I say that prior to last month’s Nobel Prize announcement I was preparing to preface the next two recommendations with the observation that some of the best storytelling today is coming from South Korea.6 It is nonetheless true. And while it is risky to suggest works in progress that have not ended yet, I think both of these will be placed behind a paywall when complete, and both seem to be drawing close to their conclusions. Therefore, accepting no responsibility whatsoever for anyone’s lost sleep:
Muse on Fame is a beautifully illustrated meditation on the often irreconcilable demands of art and life. The artist-author demonstrates such extensive knowledge of the entertainment industry that I suspect direct film/TV production experience.7
The Greatest Estate Developer is the strangest adventure in civil engineering I have ever read. I am not entirely sure how a Korean manhwa manages to incorporate West Side Story, Pokemon, Spongebob, and F1 racing into a cohesive whole, but it does.
I advise against opening either if you are going to operate heavy machinery, conduct high-stakes negotiations, or drive long distances the next day. Thank me later.
I also found Schwalbe et al. 2024, “When Politics Trumps Truth: Political Concordance Versus Veracity as a Determinant of Believing, Sharing, and Recalling the News,” worth reading (it’s a very nicely designed study), along with the the November/December 2024 issue of Skeptical Inquirer, especially “Science Over Party,” which is sweetly, earnestly innocent.
News and such
Didn’t mention it before, but Jewel Box was also a finalist for the Washington State Book Award.
While Jewel Box didn’t win a World Fantasy Award, The Book of Witches, containing my story “Witchfires,” did. Congratulations to editor Jonathan Strahan and the other talented writers therein.
Anna A. Friedrich, reviewing for The Rabbit Room, calls Break, Blow, Burn, and Make “a delight—fresh, clear, energizing, convicting, practical, and winsome.”
In The Englewood Review of Books, Tommy Welty calls Break, Blow, Burn, and Make “deftly written” and praises its “clarity of thought, careful arguments, and precision of language.”
Editor Rich Horton writes: “Break, Blow, Burn & Make is beautifully written, boldly argued, blessedly inspiring.”
Last month I was down at Reed College as a Visiting Writer and was delighted by the faculty and students there. My thanks to all of them for their curiosity and graciousness.
I was recently inducted into my public high school’s Hall of Honor, which matters not one bit to anyone who didn’t go or teach or work there but delights me greatly.
If you asked me three months ago if I’d ever recommend either a celebrity memoir or a NYT bestseller, my answer would have been “Ha! Never!” You could have made a lot of money off of me if you had followed up with “Wanna bet?”
I was particularly amused by how, at one point, he lies down in his cell with an “ice cream” he’s concocted of sour cream and figs to watch himself be called a traitor and fascist on television.
With apologies to those who already know, this is a reference to Solzhenitsyn’s famous 1974 essay, “Live Not By Lies.” I’m not sure why it wasn’t annotated in the book.
Alexei Navalny, Patriot, trans. Arch Tait and Stephen Dalziel (NY: Knopf, 2024) 237-42.
Navalny 326-7.
Some terrible storytelling as well, but that’s always been the case, no matter where you look.
There’s an extremely brief but highly believable appearance of a screenwriter in the story.