Another Candidate

for nastiest review ever. Here's the first paragraph:

THIS book by the editor of The Threepenny Review is like a novel-writing kit: inside are a few rudimentary characters, plot lines in need of development, the choice of three possible eras and three writing styles, bags of banal banter, a small assortment of intellectual interjections and the bare bones of jokes. Not bothering to read the instructions, Wendy Lesser has excitedly dumped all this stuff straight out on to the page. She'll be painting by numbers next!

If you want a more salutary review experience, try Robert Pinsky on Joan Didion. Joan Didion is one of my secret passions. When I was finishing my undergraduate thesis, I read a Didion book a day (they're slim and I read fast). Her essays are the sine qua non of the form. My favorites are everyone else's favorites: "Goodbye to All That," "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream," "On Going Home," "On Keeping a Notebook," "John Wayne: A Love Song." I read the excerpt from The Year of Magical Thinking in the New York Times Magazine a few weeks ago (September 25--you can link to it if you have Times Select, the bane of stingy bloggers everywhere). I'm not quite sure what I thought of it. Her precision--technical and emotional--is dazzling, but the moves from individual to general, moves I suppose she has always made, irked me this time. I don't know if I'll read it. Probably.