A few years after the probes zipped past Titan, Kevin Zahnle, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, was mulling over the moon’s atmosphere when he found himself asking a deceptively simple question about how planets work: “Why is there air?”
Most scientists thought atmospheres around planets—and the odd moon like Titan—were a question of starting materials. If a growing planet gobbled up enough easily vaporized material, it would have an atmosphere. Otherwise, it wouldn’t. Scientists also knew that atmospheres cling to worlds because of gravity, and that the very smallest worlds lack the heft to hold onto air. But then observations of Mars suggested that, surprisingly, it too had lost substantial amounts of air.
Inside the shop, just behind the counter, is a large blown-up photo of a young man whose lower face, neck, shoulders, and chest are covered in thousands of bees. His dark eyes stare solemnly, his naked forehead exposed like a bare moon in a galaxy of bees. I can’t take my eyes off the photo. I want to meet this solemn man, a legend I’ve only read about. Mostly I want to be in the presence of somebody who can speak for bees. Not about bees—I’ve already met plenty of people who can do that. I want to meet the humans who can speak for them. I’ve heard they are in the mountains of Slovenia and in the Himalayas of Nepal. And also right here in downtown Oakland, California.
What Kitamura achieves in Audition is great not only because of the two competing narratives, but because of the interplay between them, and the questions they raise about which (or if both) are performances. How many realities can the narrator be separate from at once, and from how many does she know that she has removed herself?
A woman meets a man half her age at a sleek Manhattan restaurant for lunch. Is he her lover or her son? If the former, then you might expect her to wield the power, like the character of Mrs. Robinson in “The Graduate,” Mike Nichols’ 1967 film about a young man who has an affair with one of his parents’ friends. If the latter, then you might expect the young man, Xavier, to wield the power because youth outshines age and parents, for the most part, are willing to go to almost any length to make their kids happy.
In her latest novel, “Audition,” Katie Kitamura exploits all the tension and ambiguity inherent in that opening scene to craft a short, propulsive novel that suggests that at work and in life, we are constantly trying out roles and making it up as we go along. Or, to quote Shakespeare, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
Tim Bouverie has reverted to a traditional form to present the past afresh. His focus is not on the battlefield, nor on the Home Front, but on the relations between the allies who opposed Hitler. In the foreground are the leaders, especially Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, of course; but there are also walk-on parts for the foreign ministers, the ambassadors, the emissaries and others who participated in their discussions. This is a work of old-fashioned diplomatic history, which provides new perspectives on subjects that seemed familiar. One of its merits is to present the choices that faced the allied leaders as they appeared at the time, rather than with the benefit of hindsight.