One reason books haven’t been particularly disruptable might be that many of the people looking to “fix” things couldn’t actually articulate what was broken—whether through their failure to see the real problems facing the industry (namely, Amazon’s stranglehold), or their insistence that books are not particularly enjoyable as a medium. “It’s that arrogance, to come into a community you know nothing about, that you might have studied as you study for an MBA, and think that you can revolutionize anything,” says writer and longtime book-industry observer Maris Kreizman. “There were so many false problems that tech guys created that we didn’t actually have.”
In 2018, after Harold Bloom read a piece on Cormac McCarthy in my collection of critical essays, he emailed me a note that contained these lines: “I hope Cormac, whom I find personally benign, reads you on not being influenced by him. He might enjoy it.” That he might enjoy it was enough to let me know that Harold, usually made happy by my work, was not at all happy now. The phone call that followed was another lecture for me by a man I called Teacher and Mentor. This lecture consisted of the ways in which my own novel, called Hold the Dark—a book that couldn’t be reviewed without the name “Cormac McCarthy” rearing its divine head every other paragraph—assimilated Melville, Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor by way of McCarthy.
You see, I had forgotten the by way of part in my essay. Harold didn’t like to see any forgetting of this sloppy sort. He also didn’t approve of my contention that my novel owed more to Heart of Darkness directly than to any book by McCarthy indirectly. “Dear,” he said, “just whom do you think you’re reading when you read McCarthy? Conrad is there next to Melville.” And when I blundered into saying that the female character in my novel was another Medea, I had to find a chair and listen to all the ways I was wrong about Euripides.
On restaurant menus across New England, green crabs are showing up in everything from bouillabaisse and bisques to croquettes and crudo. The umami-packed crabs are harvested locally — often a big selling point for diners. What patrons may not realize, however, is that by indulging in green crab for dinner, they're also working to combat the growth of an invasive species.
“How to Love Your Daughter” is Hila Blum’s second novel and her U.S. debut, in a lively, vivid translation from the Hebrew by Daniella Zamir, and it is a stone-cold masterwork of psychological tension. Often its sentences are deceptively clear, as transparent and menacing as a swarm of jellyfish. Elsewhere, the tone swerves into humor, even goofiness. What links the two disparate registers, and all those in between, is an unerring authenticity: Every observation, gesture and piece of dialogue rings true.