Our favorite five bon mots:

5. "The story is told in a fluid, seemingly effort­less manner. Neither showy nor dull, the text has that feeling of giving you the right words in the right order with the right pacing," says Amy Krouse Rosenthal about Jon Agee's The Retired Kid. Chills, Amy.

4. In his review of Doreen Rappaport's Lady Liberty, James McMullan breaks out the big guns: "The book also provides several pages of facts about the statue and its history: important events, selected sources, an author’s note and an illustrator’s note. This added material seems totally appropriate for the smart, practical kid I can imagine poring over this volume." Don't push us too far, James. We don't want to hear this semiotics bullshit. Stick to the here and now.

3. Some of the best moments happen when the critic is forced to really tear into the author, as when John Green writes of Susan Beth Pfeffer's The Dead and the Gone, "Some of the plot seems more symbolically resonant than realistic — Alex, for instance, takes coats and shoes from dead people to trade for food, and it’s hard to imagine a shoe shortage in a mostly depopulated Manhattan." A shoe shortage is what he doesn't find believable. I hope he doesn't start reading The Retired Kid.

2. We feel for Becca Zerkin, who is given the heady task of reviewing alphabet books. Her opening line is "If only life were as tidy as an alphabet book." No words.

1.: The big prize has to go to children's book critic Leonard S. Marcus, author of Minders of Make-Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of American Children’s Literature. In his review of The Monster Who Ate Darkness, he summarizes the villain in the following fashion: "But to a small child the dark can be palpably real, a malleable and at times sinister medium, and the suggestion that a monster might exert a beneficial influence in a small child’s world is one that brims with possibilities." Amazing, Leonard. You may collect your prize.

We'd always thought, based on cursory flips through the Review and a few years of working in publishing, that putting an ad in the Times was mostly something mainstream publishers did in order to appease diva authors. Most of the ads have always seemed to us to be for books on tape and books selfpublished via iUniverse and for Bose speakers. So we had Intern Mary tally up the ads in three consecutive Reviews. And:
We were right.

None of this would matter much if Mabry's subject were merely a departing secretary of state. But it's plain, even from the jacket photo of a 9-year-old Rice posing outside the White House, that this is a book about a woman who just might become president. She certainly has the right profile for it: moderate on abortion and gay rights, firm on guns, a Californian, Rice could someday be the Schwarzenegger Republican the party is looking for. There is no doubt that she has the self-discipline and confidence. She has already come so far; who would bet against her going farther?

What's that? All of them? Oh.

Madame Secretary [NYT]

A fun game for poetry nerds: read the first line or sentence of a favorite poet's first book, and imagine it as a summary of the writer's entire career... Meghan O'Rourke, the culture editor of Slate, offers a terse contribution to the first-sentence genre in this, her debut collection: "My poor eye."

Fields Of Memory [NYT]

Arts & Leisure: There is an absolutely colossal Michiko Kakutani review of books by presidential candidates. This is the kind of story that runs every four years (like Dennis Kucinich) and Kakutani brings nothing new to the table, although she does limn the shit out sixteen different titles. We're left wondering why this is in A&L at all? Was it too long for Week In Review? Is the famous wall that keeps Kakutani out of the NYTBR really that impenetrable? Is this the new face of Scott Veale's A&L regime? Elsewhere: Ben Ratliff argues that rock reunions are actually good things, Terrence Rafferty appreciates Barbara Stanwyck, and noted homosexual Frank DeCaro considers "Maude." Also there is something about married architects.

The Magazine: Front of the book is typical. Michael Pollan is talking about food again. Terry Eagleton tolerates the Deborah Solomon treatment. Rob Walker consumes tattoos. There's another "How I fucked up, by a doctor" Diagnosis. Rob Corddry takes you through the apartment he rents in L.A. (Good call, Rob: We've seen "The Winner." You're gonna be back in New York real soon.) The Funny Pages surprises by actually being funny (Kevin Guilfoile, more please) but what is the deal with "Watergate Sue," the new cartoon fronting the section? Are they trying to make us nostalgic for the awful "La Maggie La Loca"? Because it's working. Michael Chabon goes on and on.

The magazine proper starts off with a Charles McGrath article on Martin and Kingsley Amis. Presumably it's tied to the domestic publication of Zachary Leader's (excellent, BTW) Life of Kingsley, but, like the Kakutani piece in Arts, do we really need another "Martin and Kingsley: The Parallels" piece? We get it. They were both writers. There are many similarities. But also? There are many differences! There's a big article on remittances: their effect on the economy and their effect on the families of those who must migrate to find work. Looks kind of serious. This is the broccoli that the magazine runs to justify the ice cream of the fashion spread. There are some pictures of birds in Rome. There's the fashion stuff, the food stuff, your real estate ad porn, and finally, Lives. A friend of ours has a joke that Lives is either about someone who has been molested or someone who is forced to deal with a traumatically ill relative (preferably a child), but that neglects the third option—clash of cultures—which the Magazine goes with this week. Here's the description: "A visit to Shanghai leads to an encounter, which establishes a connection, which reveals a divide," which causes us to close the issue.

Book Review: The most interesting section of the three, possibly because the Kakutani and Amis pieces were placed elsewhere. Liesl Schillinger—the hardest working woman in the review business, and one of the most disturbing!—takes a look at the journals of Leo Lerman, the writer and cultural tastemaker who has been forgotten by all but the "sun-seeking stems craning out of the thicket of magazine-world Manhattan." (Maybe a week's vacation is in order, Liesl.) Better, the Atul Gawande collection of medical essays, gets a rave. There's a review of a new biography of Dorothy Schiff, who owned the Post prior to Rupert Murdoch's first tenure. D.T. Max does not like Dana Vachon's Mergers & Acquisitions, noting that, "Socially the '00s may be the '80s all over again, but even so, no book purporting to bring us cultural news should be set in an M&A division in 2007." Which is true, finance is so not a part of the picture in contemporary New York. The back page essay is something about Russia and archives. Apparently, Russian President Putin does not much believe in openness. Rare book dealer David Bauman has a first American edition of Moby-Dick. And we're out.

So, all in all, not a lot there. We never thought we'd say this, but: Help us, Styles, you're our only hope! Enjoy your weekends, everyone. —balk

When I think about breasts—and as a DD-endowed editor of sex and parenting magazines currently breast-feeding a baby, that's quite often—I think about 'lactivist' organizations like La Leche League, dopey enterprises like 'Girls Gone Wild,' sublime celebrities like Dolly Parton and the blog-traffic-boosting potential of the red-carpet 'nip slip.'

Earlier: Is 'Stacked' Author Susan Seligson Padding Her, Uh, Resum

The Times tries to downplay things with some "if this is plagiarism, then Schott's got ten fewer testicles than Kaavya" examples:

Among several thematic similarities that readers commented on are references to a system of dog-earing pages either at the top or at the bottom depending on referential purpose and to travelers who rip previously read sections from paperbacks and discard them before boarding an airplane.

But the most striking resemblance occurs in the opening lines of each essay. Schott's begins: "I have to admit I was flattered when, returning to my hotel room on the shores of Lake Como, a beautiful Italian chambermaid took my hand. . . . Escorting me to the edge of the crisply made bed, the chambermaid pointed to a book on my bedside table. 'Does this belong to you?' she asked. I looked down to see a dog-eared copy of Evelyn Waugh's 'Vile Bodies' open spread-eagle, its cracked spine facing out. 'Yes,' I replied. 'Sir, that is no way to treat a book!' she declared, stalking out of the room."

Fadiman's essay begins: "When I was 11 and my brother was 13, our parents took us to Europe. At the H tel d'Angleterre in Copenhagen, as he had done virtually every night of his literate life, Kim left a book facedown on the bedside table. The next afternoon, he returned to find the book closed, a piece of paper inserted to mark the page, and the following note, signed by the chambermaid, resting on its cover:

"Sir, you must never do that to a book."

Questioned about the similarities, Schott, who has recently been contributing freelance work to The Times, said that he had never read Fadiman's essay before it was brought to his attention, also by a reader of the Book Review, and suggested that the thematic resemblances were a coincidental result of the narrowness of the topic. He maintains that the encounter with the Italian chambermaid took place as he described it, in 1989, when he was 15.

Had editors been aware of Fadiman's essay, the Book Review would not have published Schott's.

Corrections [NYT]

• Who will succeed Bill Keller as Times executive editor: Jill Abramson or Dean Baquet? Get set for the inevitable Hillary-Obama comparisons. Either way, oddly, the real job worth having seven years from now will be digital fella Jon Landman's. [WWD]
  
• Doesn't anyone want to make a deal with Google/YouTube? [MediaPost]
  
• Jeffrey Chodorow shelled out $80,000 for the ad denouncing Frank Bruni. That kind of money buys three steaks at the Kobe Club! [NYS]
  
• Ron Burkle to shed some of his Wild Oats. Hahaha, get it? [NYP]
  
• New chairman at Dow Jones. [E&P]
  
• Looks like Fox News' crappy right wing comedy show did about exactly as well as Comedy Central's crappy Sarah Silverman show. Our theory? People will watch pretty much anything. [CCInsider]
  
• Times Book Review not exactly busting its ass to find ladies and minorities. Maybe they could get a few reviews out of Baquet and Ambramson. [Harvard Crimson]
  

Levy: "Courtney Love the exhibitionist is so insistent upon upstaging Courtney Love the artist."
Nussbaum: "Self-indulgent isn't a strong enough word."
Notable quotables?
Levy: "a list of her goals from early adulthood: 'Make LP, Achieve LA visibility, 125 Toned Pounds—Heal, Cash flow very good—loose'"
Nussbaum: "There's a 1991 set of goals: 'achieve L.A. visibility,' '125 toned pounds,' 'write 3-4 new songs'"
More notable quotables?
Levy: "An altruistic urge that comes from the same part of Love that wrote (as a young woman already in Hole), 'I want to help the ugly, the disavowed, the disowned, the terminal'"
Nussbaum: "at least her heart is in the right place, as with her fevered pledge to help 'the ugly the disavowed the disowned the terminal'"
Tough-loving Love ending?
Levy: "But what would be really thrilling is to see her defy the feminine convention of self-loathing."
Nussbaum: "The slot Courtney Love filled nearly 20 years ago — the big-mouth punk lunatic feminist rocker, the bad girl as role model — is still open. But it's nice to know the original candidate hasn't stopped auditioning."

It kinda sounds like these two riot grrrls have a lot in common. Come on, ladies, kiss and make up! There's enough cake to go around.

'In 'Dirty Blonde,' Courtney Love Suffers at the Expense of her Art [NYMag]
Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love [NYTBR]
Earlier: 'New York' Catfight: Nussbaum v. Levy

The Emperor's Children
By Claire Messud
Reviewed by Meghan O'Rourke

Meghan O'Rourke went to Yale and writes for a "contrarian" publication and in this week's NYTBR, writes about Claire Messud who also went to Yale and wrote a book about a group of privileged New Yorkers who went to Brown who write for a "contrarian" publication.

To make matters more complicated, the "Up Front" column, penned by "The Editors," which we t ake to mean Sam Tanenhaus, Yale MA '78, explains how O'Rourke went to Yale, and wrote about Messud (who went to Yale) who wrote a book about Brown graduates.

And here's the icing on the cake that may just blow your mind: We went to Yale (and St. Ann's where Meghan O'Rourke went!) and write for a "contrarian" publication.

Yale graduate/St. Ann's-attender (we didn't graduate from there) writes about Yale/St. Ann's graduate writing about Yale graduate who wrote about Brown graduates. AND Yale graduate/St. Ann's-attender writes about "Up Front" column written by Yale graduate about a Yale/St. Ann's graduate writing about a Yale graduate who wrote about Brown graduates.

There you go.
Now you can send us a bag of burning poop.

Voyage Along the Horizon, Your Face Tomorrow
By Javier Marias
Reviewed by Wyatt Mason

This was one of the more alienating reviews we've seen in quite sometime. Almost as alienatingly pretentious as a class we heard about called "Re-reading Faulkner." Damn. Wyatt Mason might be a smartie, but there is no reason to write this first paragraph:

To judge the Spanish novelist and essayist Javier Mar as solely on the basis of "Voyage Along the Horizon" would be akin to imagining Flaubert only from "Salammbo" or Nabokov from "Transparent Things.

This is the like the obnoxious Jeff Bridges character in The Squid & the Whale who referred to A Tale of Two Cities as a "minor Dickens."

Mason then goes on to drop Proust, Italo Calvino, Agatha Christie (she doesn't really count, but we threw her in for good measure), Proust again, and uses the words Conradian, Jamesian and Melvillean in a row.

Remember, New York Times Book Review writers, your audience may have just finished reading "Come on and Do the Tuckermotion with Me." Be gentle with us.

Letters

Oh, come now re: the GUSHING letters to the editor about Joe Queenan's show-offy and dull backpage essay, "Why I Can't Stop Reading Books."

Saul Schachter of Sea Cliff, NY writes this whimsical little number:

I started reading Joe Queenan's essay, "Why I Can't Stop Starting Books" (Aug. 6), when about halfway through I switched over to the review of the Richard Hofstadter biography, which I didn't finish because I was attracted by "The Syringa Tree," Pamela Gien's novel of apartheid...

And so on.

Leni Grossman of Whitehouse Station, NJ cutesie-poo-ly writes:

Aging lady would like to meet Joe Queenan. Thick glasses but good measurements: 36 (books on my nightstand), 26 (books on the table next to my reading chair), 36 (books piled on the floor....

And so on.

And finally, Rochelle Clerkin of Hamilton Square, NJ, writes:

Thank you, thank you and thank you again, Joe Queenan. I thought I was the only one who kept the same unfinished, dog-eared volumes in strategic reading locations around my home for years at a time....

And so on.

We were trying to think of something snappy to say involving Saul Schacter, a Syringa tree, and Joe Queenan's feces, but we're reeling from the mental image of Leni and Joe, rolling lustily around in a pile of unread paperbacks. Yeek.

As a 30-year-old Ivy League graduate employed by a "contrarian" publication and editing a cultural section like the one Seeley eventually hires Marina to run, I squirmed when the character expresses delight at her new job. It's "not ditsy cultural," she tells Danielle, "like listings — he wants essays, serious but controversial essays on cultural issues. ... Like, is PEN really a worthwhile institution. ... Or a renegade appraisal of modern art, the New York art scene, is Matthew Barney a fraud, that kind of thing." (I once tried to assign exactly that piece. Touch .)

We've not yet read Children, but if it's as good as the buzz we've heard has it, we will. Particularly if the Seeley character wants all his headlines to be posed as questions.

The End of Irony [NYT]

Earlier: Does 'Slate' Ask Too Many Goddamn Questions?

Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon
By James Sullivan
Reviewed by Caroline Weber

Here's the review in a nutshell: Caroline Weber has Joe's Jeans that cost her at least $160. Jeans are important. Culturally. In case you forgot, Caroline Weber has Joe's Jeans.

Related: When will the denim bubble burst?

TBR: Inside the List
By Dwight Garner

We were tickled by Dwight Garner's little blurb about author Mark Childress's website, on which he apparently dumped a list of keywords in an attempt to fool search engines:

Mark Childress, Crazy in Alabama, novelist novelist novelist, Tender Tender Tender, Gone for Good Gone for Good, A World Made of Fire A World Made of Fire A World Made of Fire V for Victor V for Victor V for Victor Southern novelist Southern novelist Southern novelist Southern writers...

Ha! We just had to see these crazy shenanigans for ourselves, so we paid a deliberate visit to www.markchildress.com. Alas! Childress must have removed his list in shame after reading Garner's piece, cause it wasn't there.

Hey, there's no shame in that game! To wit: Gawker Gawker Gawker Paris Hilton Paris Hilton Hilton Family Sam Tanenhaus Tanenhaus Tanenhaus Lohan Desparate Housewives Blowjob Asian Teens Teens Teens Slut.

The Bedroom Secrets of Master Chefs
By Irvine Welsh
Reviewed by Robert Macfarlane

From the review's mild HED ("Pain Spotting"), harmless DEK ("Irvine Welsh's new novel is set in depressed Edinburgh") and informational PQ ("Welsh's fiction has won notoriety for hits episodes of sex, violence and self-abuse, and for its adventures in the Scottish demotic") one would never know that this was one of the nastiest reviews we've seen in our R-about-R tenure.

Writes Macfarlane of the newest novel from Welsh, who also penned "Trainspotting" and a slew of others:

Although it fails at every imaginable level — metaphysical, ethical, technical, thematic — it is at the stylistic level, the level of the sentence, that Welsh's novel is most wanting. The prose throughout is lazy, clich -ridden and exhaustingly repetitive.

He goes on, mercilessly:

Nor is this what George Orwell fondly called good bad writing. This is bad bad writing. There are tautologies (offices that are "unobtrusively tucked away"). There are mixed metaphors (the "bull of a man" whose frame was "going to seed"). There are mistakes — the use of the word "diligently" where "carefully" is meant. And there are unfortunate ambiguities, as when Welsh describes Kibby's erection as "poking through the material of his trousers." We must assume either that Welsh means "showing through," or that Kibby has an unusually sharp phallus.

OK, OK — we get it, but pray tell: What's wrong with an erection "poking through the material of his trousers"? An erection "showing through" does not sound that much better... sometimes penises really do poke and it's fine. Hell, we like it that way.

Essay: What I Did at Summer Writer's Camp
By Rachel Donadio

Backpage essays are generally like those kids in class who "talked most said least," but, hey, nothing wrong with a blowhard. This week's essay is no exception really. Though it didn't really say all that much, Donadio's piece on the phenomenon of the cushy artists' colony was amusing. There were quotes from fun folks like Michael Chabon, Jeffrey Eugenides and A.M. Homes and it made us want to go to a writers' colony and do not much of anything and maybe meet our husband and maybe have that husband be Jonathan Franzen. Oh, New York Times Book Review, always taunting us with false hopes!

Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts, and Nerve Took a Team to the Top
By Seth Mnookin
Reviewed by Charles McGrath

Former New York Times Book Review editor Charles McGrath takes on former New York Times Jayson Blair scandal writer-about-er Seth Mnookin's new Red Sox tome, "Feeding the Monster." McGrath thinks that it's excellently reported but not so stylishly written and is concerned that there's not enough Red Sox porn "to satisfy the true addict:"

What we mostly learn is that by the end everyone in the locker room was glad to see Nomar go, that Millar turned into a jerk and that Manny Ramirez's idea of a good joke is to stick his cellphone down his pants and take a picture. Millar, for one, was not impressed, remarking, 'Forty home runs and 140 R.B.I.'s, and with this penis!'

McGrath just said penis! Anyway, speaking of porn, here's a little New York Times porn taken from a parenthetical in the review:

(Journalistic ethics compel me to point out that The New York Times Company also owns a piece of the Red Sox, though the opportunities for conflict of interest have in fact been many fewer than Sox fans on the staff could have wished: no tickets, no hats — nothing.)

Juicy. Oh man oh man, are you as turned on as we are? No? Hey. We never promised you the high-class shit. Think of the above as a commercial for Asian escorts and us as Robin Byrd. Mmmm actually maybe
don't.

The Sound of No Hands Clapping
By Toby Young
Reviewed by Hugo Lindgren

Mr. Lindgren found himself in a bit of a moral dilemma when it came time to review Toby Young's second memoir, "The Sound of No Hands Clapping." He wondered if he should do what everyone else has done and "whip him like a rented mule" or "champion Young" and "anoint him the courageous voice of our generation." Perhaps if he did so, Lindgren muses,

I could score some excellent perks. For example, out of gratitude, Young might try to befriend me and ask me to help write his next Hollywood script (I've got great ideas!), or cast me in one of his plays, or, at the very least, take me to dinner on his restaurant-critic expense account next time I'm in London. Tempting.

In the end, however, Lindgren decides to tell the truth: There are some absorbing parts of the book, but "most of it is merely dull." He concludes the review, wondering: "Maybe I didn't like this book because, years ago at a party, Young spilled a drink on me and hit on the girl I was with. In which case, I'd have just one word for him: Gotcha." Someone's making the professional personal! Hey, does this mean that you will whip Young like a rented mule? And if so, can both of you be naked?

The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future
By Vali Nasr
Reviewed by Irshad Manji

Irhsad Manji may have written an interesting and well-informed review of Vali Nasr's overview of the current Muslim conflicts, but her lede is as annoying as can be. She writes:

In February, a group of Sunni Muslims bombed the Golden Mosque in Samarra, Iraq, one of Shiite Islam's holiest sites. Meanwhile, Muslims continued rioting over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Prompted by the week's violence, HBO's Bill Maher pulled a Rodney King and asked, 'Can't we all just get Allah?'

As a guest on his show that night, I howled offstage. But the joke fell flatter than my hair under a head scarf. Most of Maher's studio audience didn't get it.

Casually dropping that you were a guest on the Bill Maher show does not impress us. Who hasn't been a guest on the Bill Maher show? Our dog and gerbil have both been on it. Twice. Each.

Essay: Why I Can't Stop Starting Books
by Joe Queenan

We've read our fair share of mediocre back-page essays in the New York Times Book Review, but this week's, "Why I Can't Stop Starting Books" by Joe Queenan, seemed particularly mediocre. The premise of the essay, "but I am never reading fewer than 25 books," that Queen lays out for us at the beginning is merely a ruse that enables him to then list all 25 books and to preen over his abilities as a reader. He ends up coming to the conclusion that the reason he reads so many books at once is not, as his friends suggest, because he suffers from a short attention span. Instead, he writes, "I do not stop reading books
because I lose interest in them; if anything, I have too long an attention span, one that allows me to read dozens of books simultaneously without losing interest in any of them." Well, isn't that sweet.

There is an exciting experiment wherein Queenan tries his darndest not to start a new book, and "whittle down the number to a manageable 10 by July 15," but... Queenan is just so frickin intellectually curious
that he can't resist buying a book about the 1954 French catastrophe at Dien Bien Phu and the experiment fails.

At the end of the essay he buys another book he doesn't need:

"I'm already reading 25 other books, so why am I buying this one?" I asked a friend. "Do you think this is a disease?"

"Yes," interjected the cashier. "But it's a good disease to have."

"Yes," agreed Alexis. "But let's just hope it's not sexually transmitted... "

Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography
By David S. Brown
Reviewed by Sam Tanenhaus

"Wow, that's odd that there is a 800-million-word, four-full-pages-long review of the new Richard Hofstadter biography smack in the middle of the Book Review," we initially thought to ourselves upon doing a quick skim of this week's NYTBR. Then we thought, "Oh no, that's not odd, because it's by Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, and he can do whatever he wants." What's next? His freaking "Dear Diary" entries?

The Abortionist's Daughter
By Elisabeth Hyde
Reviewed by Danielle Trussoni

Generally when reviewers take issue with an author's curious use of metaphors we're right there with them ("Her eyes were like pomegranate seeds, spit out and then eaten again and then pooped out") but we're not sure we agree with Danielle Trussoni's claim that Elisabeth Hyde's "metaphors can veer out of control." Trussoni is a little concerned that "a police officer's perspiration problem is revealed when 'twin
pockets of sweat darkened her underarms, like Muppet mouths.'" But we, on the other hand, are not! We think that is genius and adorable and clever. Muppet mouths for president 2008.

The analogy may be slightly inapt, but we couldn't help remembering that story when we read the following letter in this weekend's Times Book Review:

To the Editor: I was entertained by Henry Alford's essay, "Chamber Plots" (July 23). For over 45 years now, my personal loo lit has been The New York Times Book Review.

To be fair, it isn't as if the Times hasn't already acknowledged this.

Expect the World [NYT]

Academy X
By Andrew Trees
Reviewed by Hugo Lindgren

First off, Hugo Lindgren, let's hang out! He wants there to be a Laguna Beach about New York City private school kids (us too!) and he's addicted to The O.C. (us three!). We also dig his style. While pondering why there is no reality show for the 79th and Park crowd, he asks, "are they not loving hard enough?" and he throws around compound words like, "sick-rich" and the Book Review equivalent of a Yo' Mama taunt, writing, "let's just say the book's schematic narrative could help teach a geometry class. The angles are that cleanly drawn." A little odd, though, that Lindgren, editorial director of New York Magazine, she who houses the New York private school-obsessed "Intelligencer" column, left out the juicy tidbit that Trees taught at Horace Mann and that "Academy X" is clearly based on said esteemed institution and that all hell broke loose a few months ago when the book first came on the scene and that Trees was called the"biggest self-righteous arrogant traitor" by a Riverdale board of trustee member. That said, we would still like to have an O.C. party with you. We'll bring the Tostitos.

Friendship: An Expos
By Joseph Epstein
Reviewed by Jennifer Senior

Reviewer Jennifer Senior came away from Joseph Epstein's expos of friendship not being very interested in his expos on friendship. We on the other hand, came away from Jennifer Senior's review of Epstein's expos on friendship feeling incredibly sorry for Epstein. Over and over again, Senior points out what a sad sack of potatoes Epstein is:

Repeatedly — oppressively, almost — Epstein says that he doesn't go in for the therapeutic, that he does not find sharing "manly," that he doesn't "wish to burden friends with such meager inner turmoil as I possess."

He's formal even when professing his goofiness — "He also encourages the madcap in me, which is very agreeable," he says of one friend — and dispassionate when discussing his sadness. "In a fortunate life," he says, "I have had only two serious (nonmedical) setbacks: I went through a divorce in my early 30's and I lost a son in his 28th year, when I was myself 53." Hearing a divorce described as a setback is common enough, but the death of a son is not; one reads on, expecting him to open up, to explain how his friendships bore this loss. Did they freeze? Intensify? Strain under the weight of his sadness? He never says. "A friend who is a psychiatrist, subsequently a good friend, once asked me, in the spirit of kindness, if I cared to talk to him about it," he writes. "I said no, thank you. The only one I care to talk to about it is God, though thus far he hasn't answered any of my queries on the subject."

Epstein, we'll be your friend! Let's hang out and watch The O.C. with Hugo Lindgren.

Uberpower: The Imperial Temptation of America
By Josef Joffe
Reviewed by Roger Cohen

"It" father about town, Josef - father of Jessica - Joffe, gets his "Uberpower" uber-schooled by the International Herald Trib's Roger Cohen. Cohen's lede sums up the review:

Josef Joffe, a thoughtful German worried by the United States he loves, has written a book with endless, irritating alliterations, cudgel-you-over-the-head repetitions and a belabored quest for the kind of journalistic hipness that speaks of the "real estate" of the Roman Empire. Beyond the fizzling attempts at verbal cleverness, however, lies an important reflection on a time when anti-Americanism is perhaps the world's most effervescent idea.

Annoying writer; good points. Get this guy a J-school professorship!

Essay: Misery Loves a Memoir
By Benjamin Kunkel

Oh Kunkatron, how we missed thee! BK returns to the NYTBR this week, penning an essay on the state of the memoir. According to Kunkel, it seems like only people who have chugged bottles of Robitussin while
being sexually molested by a pair of Siamese twins in the supply closet at Taco Bell who then went on to spend three years in a prison in Thailand before eventually defeating the odds and turning into Madeline Albright can write them these days. Thoreau types who write about ponds and sitting near them are no longer getting their memoirs published. Kunkel asks:

But where is the contemporary writer reporting honestly, ambitiously and without therapeutic cant or smug self-help recipes on his or her effort to live a proud and decent life? Contemporary memoirists have taught us mostly how to survive. They haven't begun to teach us how to live.

A rallying cry to those who have lived uneventful lives - quit sitting around watching "Instant Beauty Pageant" on the Style network and start writing your boring memoir. Kunkel will read it!

All in all, it's a fairly typical Pollitt performance. She seems to believe that, by virtue of writing about doing something pathetic, it becomes less pathetic. (HINT: It does not.) In any event, now that The Times has made it clear that writers are allowed to respond to their bad reviews in its pages, we look forward to Ms. Cox's forthcoming essay, "Thank You for Hating My Review."

Thank You for Hating My Book [NYT]
Woman of the Nation [NYT]
Webstalker, by Katha Pollitt [Wes Jones]