Books I Read April 10th, 2022

I kind of half-assed it this week and I couldn't really tell you why. It was hot? Anyway...

What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg – Schulberg's classic send-up/poison pen letter to his beloathed father tells the story of Sammy Glick, whose complete lack of morals and energetic self-promotion make him the perfect Hollywood functionary/archetype of capitalist ruin. It's the kind of book that's so influential it ends up seeming kind of obvious, but its effective and funny and sharp and worth its place in the canon.

The Dead Girls' Class Trip and Other Stories by Anna Seghers – A diverse collection of short fiction which, along with Transit and The Seventh Cross, firmly establish Seghers as a brilliant and original writer. The range here is really extraordinary – there are a few which are basically straight horror/fantasy that work beautifully, though the excellent eponymous and most of the rest are ruminations on the Holocaust/the collapse of civilization in Central Europe. Strong stuff.

A Thousand Deaths Plus One by Sergio Ramirez – Knowing nothing about Ramirez when I read Deaths of Our Fathers a few weeks back I was surprised to discover that he had been the VP of Nicaragua under the early Sandanistas. His work is complex, contradictory, unheroic and resolutely non-didactic. That his most recent book has been banned in Nicaragua, and Ramirez himself having fled his homeland, is more tragic though for more believable. Anyway, this, like Deaths of Our Fathers, is excellent if very different, a rumination on the nebulous boundaries of identity and the subtle repetitions which guide human existence. A peculiar, erudite, and lovely work.

Mr. Hire's Engagement by Simenon – It took me about 20 pages to realize I'd read this a couple of years back, but I kept going because its so mean and sad and fun. A harmless, pitiful, tragic fat man is destroyed by a world which reflexively if unfairly loathes him. Excellent.