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A writer is a kind of magician. Their job is to create living, three-dimensional people out of the ordinary stuff of ink and paper. This is no easy task, because readers can’t literally hear, touch, or observe a character. Everything that defines a human being in real life—the physical space they occupy, or how they smell, feel, and sound—is stripped away, replaced by description. But authors have one major, mystical advantage: They can show you what’s happening inside of someone’s brain.
First, here are four stories from The Atlantic’s Books section:
- The worst thing about the Black Dahlia case
- Half His Age isn’t at all what it seems.
- What does life after ambition actually look like?
- “Forbearance,” a poem by Maggie Millner
The novelist George Saunders makes great use of this asset in his new novel, Vigil. Its narrator, Jill, is a literal mind reader who pops into the heads of people on the edge of death. In Vigil, she watches over the expiring K. J. Boone, an oil magnate who spent his life degrading the Earth and denying the effects of climate change. Readers get to see Boone’s past and present, his brittle family relationships, and all of his self-serving internal narratives. In theory, we have access to everything that makes up this man—every unique facet of his psyche, every cruel word and deed, and, yes, every mitigating circumstance. Yet Saunders “seems unwilling to convey Boone’s more sympathetic attributes without some swift reminder that he’s a bastard,” Julius Taranto writes, with some disappointment, in his essay about the novel for The Atlantic. In the end, he argues, Boone is still rendered in 2-D.
Nonfiction writers also face the challenge of making a person rise out of a paragraph. This is especially interesting in the case of memoirists, who are trying to introduce readers to themselves—sometimes in service of, say, laying the groundwork for a political campaign. In his new book, Where We Keep the Light, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro “is doing what presumptive candidates for the highest office usually do when they write such a book,” my colleague Gal Beckerman writes. “He is laminating his narrative.” Shapiro is presenting a very particular version of himself: average Joe, leader, and, especially, religious man. The Jewish governor intentionally uses the universal word faith, Beckerman writes, as “a bridge between who he is and the people he is trying to reach.”
But is this Shapiro in full? Can his memoir authentically introduce him to America? Probably not: His book is more of a promotional vehicle than a look at the man’s honest soul. But Beckerman and Taranto’s critiques are interesting because of what they imply about more successful books. If Saunders and Shapiro both come short of creating a three-dimensional person, this reminds us that in the best works, the subtle alchemy of summoning succeeds. A writer really can bring a person to life.
George Saunders Brings Morality Back to Fiction
By Julius Taranto
The author’s work makes an excellent case that literature can explore virtue—even if his latest novel reveals its pitfalls.
What to Read
Rangikura, by Tayi Tibble
On a snowy day, you could curl up by the fire with something wholesome and cozy; you could perch by the window with something chilly and somber. Or you could crack open the New Zealand poet Tayi Tibble’s Rangikura, which is none of these things. Playful, forceful, and sexy, it radiates so much heat that choosing it for a holiday read is like fleeing south for the winter. (And in Tibble’s home country, December is summer.) That’s not to say it’s unserious: Tibble reflects on the relentless shame she used to feel about her gender and her Indigenous Māori heritage; she charts how she emerged from timidity like flowers peeking out from a melting blanket of ice. Rangikura is the result of her transformation, and it is a persuasive case for freedom, pleasure, and fun that honors the generations of women in her family who also celebrated, shouted, and danced. “I’m hotter than the sun,” she declares. “And my ancestors ride wit me / like dawgs. When I whistle / they run and run and run.” — Faith Hill
From our list: The best poetry for dark winter days
Out Next Week
Clutch, by Emily Nemens
Bernie for Burlington, by Dan Chiasson
The Copywriter, by Daniel Poppick
Your Weekend Read
The Accidental Winners of the War on Higher Ed
By Ian Bogost
I texted, emailed, telephoned, and Zoomed with friends in higher-education leadership. Current and former heads of both research universities and liberal-arts colleges confirmed my intuition: Well-resourced and prestigious small colleges are less exposed in almost every way to the crises that higher ed faces.
To dig deeper, I decided to embark on a fact-finding mission in the guise of a traditional college tour. In November, I went to visit four elite liberal-arts colleges—Amherst, Davidson, Smith, and Vassar—where I joined prospective students and their parents for their campus tours, sat in on classes, and spoke with undergraduates, professors, and administrators. Might schools such as these emerge as the accidental winners of the war on universities?
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