From “one” to “us” in two sentences.

Just when one had started mourning the demise of avant-garde and postmodern fiction, buried under the avalanche of historical novels, chick lit and just plain old traditional stories, here comes David Markson’s latest “novel,” “The Last Novel,” which is anything but a novel in any conventional sense of the term. Yet it manages to keep us enthralled during the length of its short 190-page span, and even moved to tears at the end.

Golly, is the word just used twice in the first sentence? Don’t they have editors at the New York Times Book Review? Reviewer Catherine Texier sure needs one.

I’m not sure why, but that first sentence is making me crazy. It’s an incredibly weak lede — an allegation from nowhere, attributed to no one (ok, to “one”), meant to set up this book as an antidote. Find a good quote about the death of postmodern fiction, or cite some publishing industry figure that demonstrates it. Use some language that doesn’t make me snore.

Then, from “one” to “us.” Gah. It makes my grammar gears grind and smoke.

This review of the new book/diary from Courtney Love is in this Sunday’s NYTBR . It begins:

There was a moment — let’s say 1989, since that’s when I discovered her — when Courtney Love seemed like the solution to every girl’s problems. A brazenly feminist punk rocker with big hips and a sloppy grin, she was the first female celebrity in a long time who wasn’t embarrassed to take up space.

Why, why, WHY do I care when reviewer Emily Nussbam discovered Courtney Love? No disrespect to Ms. Nussbaum, but I don’t. And I don’t see how any editor would let this lead a review.

Oh no, I went and googled her. And now I see the problem. Here’s a sampling of first sentences from her pieces at New York Magazine:

October 2, 2006: It’s a rainy September afternoon, the first day of the school year, and Cynthia Nixon offers me her umbrella.

July 24, 2006: Paul Giamatti and I are sitting on a stoop near Washington Square Park when two sweet little girls ask him for an autograph, having recognized the actor from his appearance in Big Fat Liar.

February 13, 2006: Maybe I’m just showing my demographic, but I wasn’t exactly jolted by the fact that the WB and UPN—those runty Davids of the network lineup—were joining forces, becoming one slightly larger David with a moderately heavier slingshot and a better lead-in for Veronica Mars.

November 14, 2005: Just before I left my apartment to meet Mary Gaitskill, I slipped off my engagement ring.

Enough! Ms. Nussbaum, who is probably a perfectly wonderful person, is in a writing rut. She can’t get herself out of her first sentences.

Someone, get that woman a blog.

Sunday’s New York Times Book Review will include their list of 100 notable books from 2005.

Fiction books (excluding poetry): 34
I have read: 1
I have in my to-be-read bookshelf: 1
Authors I’ve met whose book appears, but I do not own: 1

Obviously, I am a failure as a reader. At least I’m not the only one.

The fiction authors are overwhelming from (surprise!) New York, with jolly olde England following up a close second. This is my (approimate) writers’ residence tally:
NY: 7.5
England: 7
CA: 2.5
Australia: 2
MA: 2
1 each: CT, NJ, Washington DC, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, Japan, Ireland, Latin America, Albania
1/2 each: Maine and Florida

As an Angeleno, I am disturbed by the fact that the only LA writer splits his time with NY: Bret Easton Ellis. But I’m sure the LA Times list will be equally costally prejudiced.

Nonfiction books on the list by people employed by the NY Times: 7
(includes former executive editor Joseph Lelyveld’s memoir)

The cover review, entitled Hero and Heroin, was not, as LA-centric me thought, about Jerry Stahl’s I Fatty. In fact, it’s a balanced review of Brett Easton Ellis’ Lunar Park. Film critic AO Scott manages to avoid the likely me-n-Brett intro that I imagine almost anyone on the NY literary scene could write. Instead, he acknowledges hype and prejudice, gives the book a fair shake, and finds it good to ok.

In her review of The Prophet of Zongo Street, the debut short
story collection by Mohammed Naseehu Ali, Elizabeth Schmidt delivers a
spoiler, revealing the end of the final story and explaining how it
gives meaning to the whole. So if you’re interested, stop before the third column.

Ada Calhoun, who does the fiction round-up this week, can’t stand Man Camp by Adrienne Brodeur, which she calls "fantasy ficiton for wealthy, young, soulless Manhattan-dwelling women with Lady Chatterly tendencies." Nor can she stand Kingston By Starlight by Christopher John Farley, a  "goofy" gender-bending pirate novel: "the only thing one might empathize with in the course of reading this grog is the apostrophe key?  beaten to a pulp to yield ye-olde speak like ‘glitter’d,’ ‘weather’d'…." Maybe it’s just because I’m reading this before 7am, but I think she could have backed off the nastiness a bit and still made her point. She liked a few things, tho: The Hill Road by Patrick O’Keefe and Sky Burial by Xinran.

I would have appreciated a bigger dose of nastiness in Barbara Ehrenreich’s back-page essay that, ever so mildly, takes down biz-world self-help books like Who Moved My Cheese. (Full disclosure: I worked at a dot-com that went public the day the bubble burst; when, months later, it came apparent just how screwed we all were, we each were given our very own copy of Who Moved My Cheese and were instructed to read it very, very carefully).

For me, the surprisingly interesting book of the week is the nonfiction A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous. A diary of a 30-year-old woman living in the German capital as it fell to the Russian army, it is now out in a new translation. It chronicles the details of her days and her neighbors, including a series of brutal rapes by the liberating soldiers. Reviewer Joseph Kannon writes that, more than just a diary, it is "a work of literature, rich in character and perception."

Once again the NY Times is packed full of nonfiction reviews, which I’ve decided to skim, leaving a bare whisper of fiction to check out after removing their take on the latest Harry Potter (big, highly edible, no surprise).

Then, happy surprise, Elissa Schappell bitchslaps Tilly Bagshawe’s Adored. Sure, it’s easy to take down a slutty, flighty beach read. But for being not tawdry enough?

To my mind, books of this kind exist largely to provide teenage girls
with illicit, mostly faulty information that will completely warp their
ideas about what sex will be like. Really, I’ll hear waves crashing and
bands of angels singing hallelujah?

Meow! I’m not going to run out and buy Jackie Collins or Jacquelyn Susann, who she lauds for their "literary flows of sordid sex, suicide and drug orgies," but if I see The Stud in a thrift store I might now be tempted to bring it home.  In the meantime, I’ve added Schappel’s Use Me to my to-be-read pile.

One-time Pinky guest Neal Pollack has the back page of the NY Times Book Review today, where he tries to do away with his half-alter ego Neal Pollack once and for all. I imagine you would get sick of yourself, or the attention-grabbing, obnoxious, oversize version of yourself, after getting some of the negative response he has.

Me, I quite enjoyed Never Mind the Pollacks, which took the piss out of the punk canon and rock criticism. I don’t know if I got more of a kick out of his not-serious worshipping at The Altar of Iggy or the raw take on critics like Greil Marcus. I was still cranky about the ex-boyfriend who had kept a photo of one of his ex-girlfriends on our fridge for months after I moved in; months later, as we were visiting my family for a holiday during which my parents were decidedly un-charming, did the then-boyfriend happen to mention that his ex-girlfriend’s father happened to be Greil Marcus (brilliant/pretentious rock critic, one of the "idealistic friends" who helped Alice Waters open Chez Panisse). Which I could have forgiven if we never talked about music, or music criticism, but being as I was employed as a music journalist there had been, oh, only hundreds of times he could have mentioned it. Instead he saved it up for a moment when it could be wielded as a weapon, meant to make me and my family small by comparison. So I was cranky, and Neal Pollack let me snicker beside him, tasting revenge.

In any case, my own obnoxious, oversize ego aside, Neal Pollack can compose some clean, clever prose, and he hopes to  push the Pollack Persona into the shadows in time for the 2006 release of his next book.

Elsewhere in the review, Philip Caputo’s fictional story of aid workers in Sudan, Acts of Faith, is apparently a tome but has its high points: be tempted by hearing him read from it on the Times’ site. Lord Byron’s Novel by John Crowley gets a mixed review from Christopher Benfy.

In reviewing Imagined Cities by Robert Alter, Jed Perl can’t seem to crawl out of a quagmire of acadmic language: "city life offers modes of experience from which it is possible to forge analytical tools or stylistic principles." OK, take out the word "city." Is the sentence any less true? So if the point is about cities, what exactly is the point?

I am indeed cranky. Maybe the well-reviewed Linda Ellerbee (!) memoir Taking Big Bites will cheer me up.