A Light Snack

I spent a lot of time on the el yesterday riding all over Chicago, and there were lots of folks reading books. When you actually look at what people read, you realize that the reading habits of average folks range far beyond the coverage of newspaper book sections. In terms of what actually gets read, genre fiction certainly seems more popular than literary fiction. Here are the books people were reading on the red, purple, and brown lines yesterday.The Tristan Betrayal (a posthumous effort by Robert Ludlum that inspires PW to say "Perhaps it's time to let the master rest in peace.")Five Quarters of the Orange (Joanne Harris' follow-up to Johnny Depp-vehicle Chocolat)Dutch II (part 2 of a trilogy by Teri Woods - and put out by Teri Woods Publishing - that scores an Amazon ranking of 1,229)Devil in the White City (I think every resident of Chicago has read Erik Larson's account of murder at the World's Fair.)Great Expectations (I love it when I see people reading classic novels on the el - it can restore ones faith in society, I think)Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Jonathan Safran Foer is reaching the masses!)Hotel Pastis (Peter Mayle's "novel of Provence")Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen never goes out of style)Deception Point (The obligatory Dan Brown thriller - law requires that at least one Dan Brown novel be present in every train car and a dozen on every airplane.)Elantris (PW says: "[Brandon] Sanderson's outstanding fantasy debut, refreshingly complete unto itself and free of the usual genre cliches.")Lana: The Lady, the Legend, the Truth (Lana Turner never goes out of style either)We Thought You Would Be Prettier (Laurie Notaro's "true tales of the dorkiest girl alive" - ranked 1,446 on Amazon)

Last week, the internet buzzed about and puzzled over the newly unveiled cover of Jonathan Franzen's Purity, forthcoming in September. While Franzen is sure to grab many headlines in the months to come, we're also intrigued by Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies, which also sports a cover with a blue and white color scheme. Along with the cover above, we have the book's opening paragraphs below. Fates and Furies has so far been cryptically described as "an exhilarating novel about marriage, creativity, art, and perception," and, as you'll see, the book wastes no time, uh, introducing us to its protagonists. Two people were coming up the beach. She was fair and sharp in a green bikini, though it was May in Maine and cold. He was tall, vivid; a light flickered in him that caught the eye and held it. Their names were Lotto and Mathilde. For a minute they watched a tide pool full of spiny creatures that sent up curls of sand in vanishing. Then he took her face in his hands, kissed her pale lips. He could die right now of happiness. In a vision, he saw the sea rising up to suck them in, tonguing off their flesh and rolling their bones over its coral molars in the deep. If she were beside him, he thought, he would float out singing. Well, he was young, twenty-two, and they had been married that morning in secret. Extravagance, under the circumstances, could be forgiven. Her fingers down the back of his trunks seared his skin. She pushed him backward, walking him up a dune covered in beach-pea stalks, down again to where the wall of sand blocked the wind, where they felt warmer. Under the bikini top, her gooseflesh had taken on a lunar blue, and her nipples in the cold turned inward. On their knees, now, though the sand was rough and hurt. It didn’t matter. They were reduced to mouths and hands. He swept her legs to his hips, pressed her down, blanketed her with his heat until she stopped shivering, made a dune of his back. Her raw knees were raised to the sky. He longed for something wordless and potent: what? To wear her. He imagined living in her warmth forever. People in his life had fallen away from him one by one like dominoes; every movement pinned her further so that she could not abandon him. He imagined a lifetime of screwing on the beach until they were one of those ancient pairs speed-walking in the morning, skin like lacquered walnut meat. Even old, he would waltz her into the dunes and have his way with her sexy frail bird bones, the plastic hips, and the bionic knee. Drone lifeguards looming up in the sky, flashing their lights, booming Fornicators! Fornicators! to roust them guiltily out. This, for eternity. He closed his eyes and wished. Her eyelashes on his cheek, her thighs on his waist, the first consummation of this terrifying thing they’d done.

"The gizmo, the golden, deceptive, brass-filled gizmo, was gone at last.”  So reads the final sentence of Jim Thompson’s con-man sleaze-romp The Golden Gizmo, which I finished last week.  Though it ran under 200 pages, the story was crammed with double-crosses, faked deaths, and a massive talking dog.  There were shady gold dealers and exiled Nazis, a femme fatale and a hag of a wife.  I’d been mildly confused throughout, but the ending tied things up efficiently enough.  I had questions, but not many complaints.  After rereading the final line, I admired the cover image: a grainy photo of hundreds being shuffled.  I flipped to the last page and inspected books “Also Available From Jim Thompson.”  And with that, I had squeezed all that I could from The Golden Gizmo.  I returned it to its narrow gap on the shelf, scanning the books that I hadn’t yet read.  But I didn’t pick a new one, not just yet. In recent months, that moment of lingering, of browsing my own library, has become one of my favorite aspects of reading.  In the past, I’d immediately swap the book I’d just read for a new one, a literary chain-smoker.  But now I take my time—luxuriating in possibility, enjoying expectation, and pondering what’s next with a real, idle pleasure. And after finishing the Thompson book, my options seemed endless.  I’ve lately been in stockpile mode, picking up The Curious Case of Sidd Finch, Lush Life, and A Prayer For the City.  A friend had given me Lonesome Dove, The Bronx is Burning, and Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life.  There was The Punch, about Kermit Washington’s near-fatal swing at Rudy Tomjanovich during a 1977 NBA game.  And of course, the dozens of titles—by T.C. Boyle and Frank Herbert, Pete Dexter and Chris Elliot—that I’ve owned for years and have never quite gotten to.  From all of these, I happily chose nothing. Instead, I let my mind drift around the books’ edges, nourished by thoughts of what they would bring: Plimpton’s erudite humor, Price’s ordered chaos, Bissinger’s knowing outrage.  I could conjure T.C. Boyle’s dexterity and Pete Dexter’s toughness.  Though I denied myself the satisfaction of engagement, I also avoided disappointment: did I really need to read a 1,000-page western—or, for that matter, anything by Chris Elliot?  I don’t even really like westerns, and Get a Life was axed when I was still in Reebok Pumps.  Better, perhaps, to let those remain abstract and idealized. In this nebulous state, anticipation is also fed by jacket design.  The Punch looks especially awesome: the cover is spare, with bright orange type over a blown-out picture of the titular incident.  It’s violent, discomfiting, hard to ignore.  The book looks so good that, to be honest, I don’t want to spoil things by actually reading it—getting bogged down, as I suspect I will, in the minutiae of Carter-era neurology and Kermit’s deep regret.  Nonetheless, The Punch calls to me.  Knowing the sex won’t be as good as you’ve dreamed is no reason to keep your pants on. Post-Gizmo, I spent five days like this—weighing my options, considering my desires.  I caught up on my comic books and magazines, cleared out unread newspapers.  And then, with private fanfare, I walked upstairs for a book.  I’d recently bought And Here’s the Kicker, a collection of comedy interviews—but after glancing through it, I found I wasn’t in the mood.  Mamet’s Bambi vs. Godzilla was enticing, but something—maybe its candy-colored fight-night cover—pushed me past.  The Punch, too, would have to wait.  In the end, I picked Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life.  It looked breezy and smart, and had come highly recommended.  I took it down, laid in bed, and began to read.  It was wry and nostalgic, serious and absurd.  I’d made the right choice.  It even contained a line I found relevant to my dilatory new habit: “Most of us go about our duties of commerce and leisure in a state of perpetual longing.”  I thought about that.  My postponement of reading was a way to embellish that longing, to make it even more deliciously perpetual.  After thirty years, I’d found one more way to wring enjoyment from books—even as they sat on the shelf.

I was poking around Amazon today and I came across a listing for a new book by Pete Dexter called Paper Trails: True Stories of Confusion, Mindless Violence, and Forbidden Desires, a Surprising Number of Which Are Not About Marriage. I'm a fan of Dexter's (see my review of Train, my review of Brotherly Love, and my review of Paris Trout), so I'm excited to see he's got a new book, but what has me especially thrilled is that, if the subtitle is to be believed, the book is non-fiction. I had the chance to attend one of Dexter's signings once, and he rattled off story after story, many of them from his days as an old newspaper guy in Philadelphia; it was definitely one of the most entertaining readings I've ever been to. This new book is being put out by Ecco. If anyone knows anything else about the book (or can get me a copy), let me know.