Summer Reading: Looking at Winston Churchill in all the wrong places

FORTY WAYS OF LOOKING AT WINSTON CHURCHILL is a meta-biography making the point that there is no such thing as objectivity in the genre. If you've got that point, you can probably skip this book.

I was very much looking forward to Gretchen Rubin's Churchill project; a self-described fan, she compares popular ideas about Churchill (that he was depressed, for example) as they have been depicted in different accounts of his life, sometimes making the case for both of them in the same chapter. (For example, one chapter argues that Churchill was a great politician, adept at working with people to achieve his ends; the other argues that he was not very well liked and points out all the times he was ousted and/or lost elections.)

This book made me want to rush to the defense of the biographies Rubin suggests are faulty (none of which I have read, to be fair), but also to point the finger back toward Rubin. If all biographers are fallible, then Rubin's account also lacks perspective in some critical moments, even as she admits that she personally tends toward lionizing Churchill. One of FORTY WAYS' forty chapters (get it?) is just a list of some of Churchill's bon mots, proving that he did know how to turn a phrase, but not much about the quality of his work overall. One is just a factual timeline, another a list of important people Churchill knew, which is great if you want to view him as self-aggrandizing, I guess, but it's not exactly a primary source. More troubling is the chapter titled "Churchill's Imperialism," making the case that he was very invested in Britain as Empire and that that philosophy helped shape his politics. This chapter would be better titled, "Not That He Was Alone At The Time, But Churchill Was Pretty Racist."
It's not a worthless project by a long shot, but if you want to read a biography about biographies I recommend Rick Moody's THE BLACK VEIL. (Note: Rubin is best known for the book she wrote after FORTY WAYS and one I liked more, a little cult hit called THE HAPPINESS PROJECT.) I did get a good laugh out of the chapter on Churchill and sex (summary: he didn't seem that interested, which everyone found or finds weird and tries to find the root cause) and on the tidbit that to keep his estate paid between government positions, one of England's finest historical figures was reduced to writing freelance articles with titles like "Iced Water" and "Is There Life on the Moon?" Profligate hack Churchill -- now there's a biography I want to read.

Wallaceblogging: David, Jon and Jeff and everything after that

Today among other things I read "Just Kids," Evan Hughes' feature in New York magazine about (a little about) the relationships between David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen and most timely Jeffrey Eugenides (whose new novel THE MARRIAGE PLOT comes out this week) when they were young, frustrated, up-and-coming writers. Not a lot of its information is new or surprising, but it does provide some tidbits like Eugenides' firing from his publishing job that will further flavor the stew for people who enjoy things like this, and I am a person who enjoys things like this.

The Franzen/DFW friendship is fairly well trod particularly in the past year or two as Franzen has spoken and written about it (most notably in the New Yorker). I had no idea Eugenides was friends with them, although I appreciated the early reference to the road trip he took with fellow graduate of the best university ever Rick Moody after graduation. (Moody covers a little of this in his memoir THE BLACK VEIL, which somewhat addresses his literary ambitions before getting down to the business of linking his addictive history with the man he believes to have been his Puritan ancestor, as told about in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil.") Nor does it address, although I'm sure this will be discussed in some interview soon, what in the blue hay Eugenides has been doing for the past 9 years since MIDDLESEX came out, whether he lives in Europe now (I want to say it's Paris?)

I guess this is my disgruntled way of saying I wish the essay had been longer -- say at least the length of the Atlantic cover story on single women in the U.S. which I also read today (, is also worth a read,  could also be book-length etc.)

As to how it relates to THE MARRIAGE PLOT, I believe that was just a convenient temporal hook; although the book is about 20somethings with ambitions, they aren't writerly ones.

What draws me to these pieces, personally, is not just the temptation of some long-preserved literary gossip, the hiss of a jar lid being opened, the whiff of something musty and strange. The glimpses of these writers who were not all that noble and good to each other, nor easy on each others' work, nor frank about their jealousy for each other, are also nice... but not just that either. I think it's because of the coincidence as presented here of these authors all coming up at roughly the same amount of time and being friends, or friends of sorts, what you prefer.

I'm sure there were gaps in time and communication Hughes elided to make his portrait and I don't begrudge him doing so, to overcome the odds of having this kind of group persist over time and varying levels of success. It humanizes them and makes them figures of envy at the same time.

Also, whenever the city of Syracuse decides to start offering authors-who-lived-here-for-a-while tours I will be the first one standing next to the tour guide, expectantly. Or, road trip? I probably have at least two weeks before it starts to snow there.

Short Reviews Of Recent Memoirs

• Jason Mulgrew, EVERYTHING IS WRONG WITH ME: Where's the book by this dude's dad? Because that guy, as described here, should not be alive.
• Rick Moody, THE BLACK VEIL: "And to this day, I'm still addicted to italics." 
• Hilary Winston, MY BOYFRIEND WROTE A BOOK ABOUT ME: Better and funnier without him. (Eventually.)
• Caitlin Shetterly, MADE FOR YOU AND ME: "My husband, kid and I had to move back in with my mom which proves the American Dream has gone missing. But at least I didn't get fat!" 
• Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti, THE CHAIRS ARE WHERE THE PEOPLE GO: 100% pure mansplain. 

Bad reputations

I'm collecting links like a postmodern Collyer brother, so here are some quick hits:

• To the surprise of no one, Facebook isn't that thrilled about the new movie based on Ben Mezrich's book. (New York Times)
• In other adaptation news, "The Switch," the romantic comedy based on the Rick Moody Jeffrey Eugenides (see comments) story "The Baster," is tracking dismally and will probably finish 7th this weekend, behind a "Twilight" parody, "Eat Pray Love" and "Piranha 3-D." [Unrelated: I've been spelling 'piranha' wrong all this time?!] Jason Bateman, fire your agent. (Deadline.com)
• Jodi Picoult should not be startin' somethin' with the aforementioned Times about their rave review of FREEDOM. For one, her reviews in the Times have been complimentary enough; for another, Jennifer Weiner did this routine 6 weeks ago (and not wrongly) abotu Gary Shteyngart. Summer's for reruns? (NY Mag via DRA)
• Anyway, all the cool kids are already over FREEDOM and looking forward to Tom McCarthy's next book C, out Sept. 7. Here he is on technology, Futurism and James Joyce. (The Guardian)
• Where did "Chicago" come from? Bookslut-in-Chief Jessa Crispin investigates in the review of a new book called THE GIRLS OF MURDER CITY about the Second City in the 1930s. (The Smart Set)
• Finally, I walked by a bar on Friday whose awning read "The Tavern O. Henry Made Famous." Is it ever okay to grant a bar the endorsement of someone who eventually died of cirrhosis? Unfortunately, the claim that O. Henry wrote "The Gift of the Magi" in a bar booth in Gramercy Park is dubious and likely unprovable; on the other hand, there was a "Seinfeld" episode shot there. (Petestavern.com; Iamnotastalker.com)