“Life Writing” A Writing Life

Inside Story: A Novel finds 70 year old Martin Amis in reflective mode

Martin Amis 1995 photo by David Levenson

If any author is amply qualified to write an autobiographical novel, what is now referred to as “auto fiction,” that writer has to be Martin Amis. In a sense he was born to it. Writing fiction was for all intents and purposes the family business; with nearly 40 novels between them, plus assorted short stories and nonfiction, Martin and his father Kingsley (1922-1995) comprise the most accomplished (and perhaps only) father-and-son team in English literature. You want meta? Art and life commingling? Not only does Martin Amis himself briefly appear in his breakthrough novel Money (1984), when Kingsley encountered his son’s name in those pages, he hurled the volume across the room and never retrieved it.

In his memoir Experience (2000), Martin Amis examines his relationship with Kingsley (a mega-eccentric yet loving dad) in an often funny and ultimately moving series of scenes and anecdotes. In between he wrestles with a mid-life crisis mediated by the tabloid press and discovers that his first cousin, missing for decades, was the victim of a serial killer. What he only alludes to, presumably out of respect and discretion, is the breakup of his first marriage. Kingsley, on the other hand, sounds a pithy note when he reflects (in his Letters) on the breakup of his second marriage.

“Well, it’s all experience though it’s a pity there had to be so much of it.”

Twenty years on, Inside Story finds Martin Amis all the more experienced in the grim rituals and grinding inevitability of aging, loss and acceptance. And it’s no roman a clef. This time, for the most part, he names names: Journalist Christopher Hitchens (best friend), Nobel Prize winning author Saul Bellow (mentor), poet Philip Larkin (close family friend). The all-star cast inspires Amis’ most ardent and empathetic writing to date, with his verbal dexterity and killer-instinct wit fully intact.

During the Eighties, Martin Amis deflated blowhard masculinity in the aforementioned Money, and London Fields. From Money:

I hit a topless bar on Forty-Fourth. Ever check out one of those joints? I always expected some kind of mob frat house policed by half-clad chambermaids. It isn’t like that. They just have a few chicks in knickers dancing on a ramp behind the bar: you sit there while they strut their stuff. I kept the whiskies coming at $3.50 a pop, and sluiced the liquor around my upper west side. I also pressed the cold glass against my writhing cheek. This helps or seems to. It soothes.

Money‘s loutish narrator John Self did more to undermine the Time Square porn scene than Mayor Rudy Giuliani and generations of crusading clean-it-up reformers.

Martin Amis moved past these darkly comic novels onto more “serious” subjects (nuclear weapons, Nazi death camps, Stalin) in the Nineties and beyond, receiving widely mixed reviews for his efforts. In The Pregnant Widow (2010), he returned to his own history, re-examining the sexual escapades of the Seventies albeit from a far loftier perch than his down and dirty report-from-the-front Dead Babies (1978). Reading The Pregnant Widow as a freshly minted man of 52, I was flattened by this introduction.

As the fiftieth birthday approaches, you get the sense that your life is thinning out, and will continue to thin out, until it thins out into nothingness. And you sometimes say to yourself: that went a bit quick. In certain moods you may want to put it a bit more forcefully. As in: OY! THAT went a BIT FUCKING QUICK!!!…Then fifty comes and goes, and fifty one, and fifty two, and life thickens out again. Because there is an enormous and unsuspected presence within your being, like an undiscovered continent. This is the past.

Elsewhere in The Pregnant Widow, Amis recommends middle-age men reckon with their romantic past. In his case, well into middle age, at the heart of his new novel, past romance resurfaces in the character of Phoebe Phelps, and she’s nearly too much to reckon with. This is where Inside Story becomes traditionally fictional, though the author has suggested the irascible Ms Phelps is a composite of former real-life lovers. In any event, she’s a handful.

As a longtime fan of Martin Amis, I’ll argue that Inside Story is his best book. Whether or not one feels it fulfills the subtitle A Novel. But I’ll also admit that having read all his books may be necessary to feel this way, and it surely enriches the experience. To wit: when the dying Hitch announces from his hospital bed that he must segue to the “rethink parlor” or the brazen Phoebe describes how Philip Larkin will be able to retrospectively “structure a wank” around their encounter, both turns of phrase cf. Money, the Martin Amis oeuvre has satisfyingly come full circle. And when his wife Isabel Fonseca (called Elena in the book) consoles Martin after the disturbing reappearance of Phoebe late in his life, Inside Story offers something resembling optimism for the future.

“‘Well, if you do go crazy, I’ll stand by you. Up to a point.’ This is eminently reasonable, and loving. Probably the most one could expect, or hope for.”

Catholic Boy Pt 2

Our education was based on euphemism, attenuation and accommodation.

— Edoardo Albinati, The Catholic School.

      The peak of my academic career at St. Xavier occurred early on, two or three weeks into freshman year. Our first English assignment was an essay on Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Before handing back the graded papers, “Mr. Doral” (about half the teachers at St. X were laypeople, including two women) announced that he would read one exceptional effort aloud. Two sentences in, I registered first shock and then pure pleasure — the pride of recognition. (I wouldn’t feel this thrill again until, decades later, my son was introduced as the top-ranked student at his high school graduation.) My essay positioned the slave Jim as a better role model to Huck Finn, and a far wiser man, than any of the novel’s white authority figures. Soon but not soon enough, I gathered this obvious interpretation, not to mention the deep well of skepticism from which it sprang, would not be shared or countenanced by the vast majority of my instructors. Also, this was the first and last time during four years of high school that my nascent writing ability was recognized or acknowledged in any way. 

***

     Absorbed by twice-daily swimming practice plus homework, I barely registered the absence of women during freshman year. But the stultifying aroma of an all-male atmosphere seeped into my pores, spreading until it turned my stomach. In the spring of 1973, St. Xavier won the Ohio state swimming championship. In a school-wide PA announcement, I was acknowledged as a member of the winning 4 x 100 yard freestyle relay team and the only freshman on the varsity squad. Much to my confusion, right after this recognition crackled through the loudspeaker located next to the clock, our Spanish teacher sneered and mocked my achievement — out loud, in front of everybody. I neither expected nor desired an “atta boy” pat on the back. Yet it took a minute to comprehend why “Mr. Bilgerman” (also head baseball coach) was so contemptuous.   

      Swimming was widely regarded as a less-than-manly pursuit by participants in the “ball sports.” And Bilgerman’s baseball squads, as well as St. Xavier’s football and basketball teams for that matter, traditionally had never ranked high in the city league, let alone triumphed on the state level. All right then, he was jealous. Still, his unexpected and humiliating insult in the classroom seriously deflated my ego. He planted a seed of doubt, a sense of difference, in my developing self-awareness. There was a masculine standard, unspoken but understood, that I would never meet. 

***

      Forcing people to act contrary to their own natures is the ultimate proof of power. —ibid.

***

     My extracurricular interests  – science fiction, Kerouac’s On The Road, New Journalism, rock and roll above all else – bobbed up to the surface during sophomore year. I read and re-read Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. What attracted me to the story of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters was not only the drug experimentation and psychedelic music, but also Wolfe’s flashy, shape-shifting descriptive prose coupled with observant reporting. Around this time I encountered the rock critic Lester Bangs at the public library, writing about exotic creatures such as Lou Reed and Iggy Pop in Stereo Review. And at home I’d become mesmerized by Pauline Kael’s movie reviews in my parents’ copies of The New Yorker.   

       In English we studied poetry and drama while drilling vocabulary for the SAT test the following year. Two more formative sophomore memories: reading Sophocles’ Antigone between heats at a spring swimming meet, and voluntarily memorizing Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73. I was far from a gloomy death-obsessed teenager, yet the Bard’s wintry imagery struck me then, and strikes me now, as incomparably haunting and beautiful.

      That time of year thou mayst in me behold

      When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

      Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

      Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. 

      In history class that year, we read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. How on earth did that happen at conservative, 99% white St Xavier? While I can’t recall any accompanying discussion or explication, Malcolm’s clear-eyed tales of his (pre-conversion) ghetto wild life stayed with me forever.

     The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

Before or after Easter 1974, in lieu of a Spring Break, St. Xavier High School uncharacteristically decided to broaden the curriculum (and our growing minds) with a period of extracurricular programming devoted to “The Arts.” 

Predictably, it did not end well. A screening of The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter with Alan Arkin got interrupted just minutes into the movie, by a snickering student in the peanut gallery. The film was abruptly terminated and so was Arts Week. In the following years, we stuck to our regular pre-Easter program of study days, mid-term exams and a brief vacation.  

      Nobody else cared about finishing the movie, or Arts Week. My fellow students were mostly pissed about having to resume our routine. A few years later, however, I caught The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter at a campus film group; by then it seemed overwrought and corny, but gaining “closure” was satisfying.

       Long after I graduated, my father pointed out a guiding principle of my high school that was so obvious that I’d never noticed, or just took it for granted: St. X emphasized math and science at the expense of every other subject save religion. This was practical in the short term, but tragically short-sighted in my dad’s view, which was interesting coming from a chemical engineer and industrial salesman. As evidence, for two consecutive years at St. Xavier my history class consisted of a varsity athletic coach talking (and joking) about his World War II experience — every day. It wasn’t until college that I realized the liberal arts and social sciences were regarded as serious academic disciplines in the real world.

Catholic Boy: Part 1

       It became known as the Circeo massacre, one of Italy’s most infamous incidents in a decade lavish with violence. In 1975, two young women, Rosaria Lopez and Donatella Colasanti, were held prisoner by three young men. The girls were drugged, tortured and repeatedly raped. Lopez was drowned in a bathtub. Colasanti lived, but I find I cannot type out what she endured.

     The novelist Edoardo Albinati attended the same school as the killers. In “The Catholic School” — a 1,200-page slab of lament, accusation, exorcism — he anatomizes the world that produced them. His critique expands in widening concentric circles to indict their prestigious all-boys school, neighborhood and faith, the national cults of fascism and “familism.” Rape, torture, murder: These are not violations of society’s norms, according to Albinati, but their fulfillment.

— Sehgal, Parul: “A Prize-Winning Blend of Fact and Fiction Makes Itself at Home in the Minds of Killers” The New York Times Aug. 6, 2019

       Fifty pages into Edoardo Albinati’s epic novel, I hit pause and lost myself in a mild state of shock. And recognition. I attended an all-male Jesuit high school in the U.S. from 1972 through 1976. Though I’m one year younger than the Italian author, and nobody at my Catholic School committed a rape/murder (as far as I know), from the beginning this book triggered emotions, memories, insights that never let up over the next 1200 pages.

*

       I’ve often wondered if certain deeply unsuccessful or aborted experiences are at least as significant as those that are fully consummated, whether it was worthwhile to live through them as they were, rather than in a more fully achieved and yet unremarkable realization. 

— Edoardo Albinati The Catholic School 

*

      I enjoyed school at first, for a couple years. Learning to read was liberating, until my love of books became a liability. After attending first grade at the local public school, like all Catholic students in our Cincinnati, Ohio parish, I belatedly began second grade at St Vivian. The neighborhood parochial school on Winton Road sat virtually next door to the public Whittaker Elementary  — a distance of several hundred yards, at most. On a spiritual level, this gulf was vast, insurmountable. Or so the Ursuline nuns told us.      

      Maybe half the families in our middle-class suburban neighborhood were Catholic and the rest were Protestant. The Marx family, who lived at the end of our street and kept to themselves, were to my knowledge the only Jews in the immediate vicinity. They probably drove a few miles east to Amberley Village or Roselawn to attend Sabbath services; I don’t remember any obvious synagogues in the Finneytown/College Hill area. 

Mainline Protestant churches were plentiful, yet they barely registered in my youthful consciousness. These tasteful houses of worship – Presbyterian, Methodist and so on – could almost pass for Roman Catholic at least in terms of architecture and design (the absence of crucifixes was a “tell,” like the prominent Adam’s apple on an old-school drag queen). What I noticed, and found slightly puzzling, were the outposts of full-throated Baptist and strident smaller denominations, such as Central Baptist directly across Winton Road from St Vivian, the Church of God on Galbraith Road and the Northern Hills Bible Church on Kirkland Drive, just steps away from the house I lived in until the age of eight. The latter occupied a building that, unlike the cookie-cutter ranch houses surrounding it, resembled (and probably was) an old farmhouse predating the postwar suburban development. The other churches were squat brick school-like structures, offering messages of drive-by inspiration on changeable-letter outdoor signs. These illuminated billboards couldn’t be further in spirit from a solemn statue-encrusted Roman Catholic sanctuary; the local evangelical churches advertised Jesus Christ as if He was the seasonal strawberry pie at Frisch’s Big Boy. In my brief pre-teen juvenile delinquent phase, I fantasized about sneaking out on a Saturday night and rearranging those letters into an obscenity in time for the Sunday services. Of course I never did.

      During fourth grade, spanning the 1967-68 school year, I lost all enthusiasm for school in general and Catholic education in particular. Each year grew successively more difficult. My report cards annually displayed two dreaded checkmarks (denoting need for improvement), in conduct and penmanship. I could never quite figure out what I did wrong, apart from being a sloppy cursive writer; it wasn’t like I fought with other kids or seriously disrupted class. Talking “out of turn” — possibly code for asking inconvenient questions? — was often cited as my repeat offense. In fifth grade, I was assigned to the “advanced” (gifted) class. My placement there soon became a point of contention with the faculty and then, of course, my parents. Though I scored high on achievement and IQ tests, my grades were mercurial, inconsistent — all over the place. Some of this was my own fault, for instance I read a lot though rarely what we were assigned in class. Here my mom was an enabler as she regularly escorted me to the public library yet paid little or no attention to what I borrowed. (Wrongly, I assumed everybody’s mother read so deeply and widely in literary fiction; she devoured three or four novels per week.)

       Unlike the modern education system, where such a wide chasm between my potential-as-measured and actual achievement in the classroom might signal some learning difference or issue, in Catholic School during the Sixties and early Seventies my grades were attributed to a lack of effort. For this I got in trouble. I was punished. You’re so intelligent, why aren’t you trying? I never knew how to answer; I’m trying as hard as I can definitely didn’t cut it. Biannual parent-teacher conferences placed a continual strain on our basically happy home life.

By eighth grade, the impending prospect of high school offered an escape hatch. Continuing in the Catholic system was automatic as far as my father was concerned, and despite my accelerating interest in girls, the nearby boys-only Jesuit high school appealed because of its top-ranked swimming team. In fact, for several years, I’d been a member of an AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) team who practiced at this high school’s Olympic sized facility (donated by a wealthy alum). The coaches kept an eye on me.

      Academically, St. Xavier was a well-regarded college prep school, which made for a rare unity of purpose between me and my dad. There was a small matter of an entrance examination, though when the results were announced, it turned out I’d placed highly enough to receive a one semester scholarship. (Tuition for the 1972-73 school year was $600 if I remember correctly.) Before eighth grade began, I’d been drummed out of the advanced class, so my “St. X” scholarship drew a perplexed, almost resentful response from St Vivian’s faculty. No matter. In my mind, anyway — I was already gone.

*      

Did competitive swimming kept me out of serious trouble during adolescence? Well, not really. Put it this way: I would have sunk into deeper trouble earlier – way over my head – if I hadn’t been involved in athletics. Until the final semester of my senior year in high school, anyway, I managed to keep my head above water (so to speak.) On January 12, 1976 my penchant for mild adolescent misbehavior, and my semi-exalted social status as a student athlete collided. And then my life changed forever.

Truth or Dare?

 

 

TriStar Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

Desperation inspired me to answer a generic calling-all-college-grads type of ad, for a “junior management position in retail.” Since I’d worked for two years at a record store while obtaining my useless social science degree, for the first time in my post-college job quest I felt fully qualified. 

      This “unique opportunity” turned out to be a training program for branch managers at the newly christened and franchised American Savings Bank. Visualizing myself behind a desk, I imagined eight-hour days spent filling out forms while wearing the drab navy blue Brooks Brothers suit that my dad predicted I’d need to own. Pondering further, I decided that my proud status as a bohemian who didn’t care about money might just work in my favor. I could be trusted around large amounts of cash. And on a purely pragmatic level, I realized (or rationalized) working at a bank would be a steady job if nothing else. I was determined to gain a foothold in New York City. 

      The initial interview transpired in the back office of a mint-condition Midtown branch; the Grand Opening was weeks away. Thin carpets, brittle furniture and the thick scent of disinfectant filled the empty rooms. A stone-faced female interviewer, possibly not long out of college herself, questioned me by rote across an uncluttered desk. Perusing my resume, she expressed deep skepticism non-verbally, never directly asking why in the world I was applying for a banking position. I stressed my “extensive” retail experience and (mostly untested) people-management skills. Declaring my willingness to accept a spot at any branch that was reachable by subway cracked her stern demeanor. Hey, I meant what I said. Even if it meant commuting an hour each way to Jamaica, Queens where my great aunt lived during the Sixties. It was still New York City.

      The bank called back on the same day as my interview. Turned out there was a slight catch; a preliminary step was required before I could meet with the program director for branch managers. Every potential employee of the American Savings Bank, unsurprisingly when I thought about it, was required by law to undergo a polygraph examination. Conveniently, I was able to schedule a lie detector test for the next day.

      Nervously, I managed to board a train headed downtown. Surfacing near City Hall, I proceeded away from the Brooklyn Bridge and toward the monumental court buildings. Immediately I was lost, wandering on an anonymous side street. Just before panic set in, I spotted the Chambers Street sign at the other end of the block.  

     Walking the gauntlet of men (and women) in near-identical suits, I edged my way into the lobby of an aged office building. A noisy elevator ejected me into the waiting room of (let’s call it) Wall Street Security Inc. A paunchy middle-aged man with the Irish-American complexion familiar from my father’s side of the family – freckles and blondish red hair – stood up from behind a desk and abruptly stated my name as a question. “Mark Coleman?” Before I replied “yes” he turned away and started walking down the hall, assuming I’d tag along.     

      We wound up in a windowless room: unadorned brown walls, off-white acoustic tiles barely clinging to the ceiling. A deep silver metal suitcase lay open on a battered wooden desk. Without speaking, my nameless escort curtly nodded toward the two chairs facing the suitcase. My seat was the one that resembled the electric chair in a low-budget prison movie. 

      A cushion shaped like a toilet seat rested where I was meant to deposit my butt. White straps that resembled bandages with wires attached dangled from the chair’s arms and back. Settling in, I flashed back to an underground newspaper article from ten years before, when I was 13 and a wannabe hippie. The title was How To Scam The Man’s Lie Detector or something similar, anyway the specific tactic that came to mind here in 1981 was “tighten the muscles in your ass.” Sadly, the slack little pillow under me rendered this impossible – yes, I tried. Meanwhile my escort had settled into his chair and revved up the polygraph. Inside the silver suitcase was a worn console with dials, buttons and switches. On one side of the console sat a series of jacks with rubber tubing and wires attached; on top were needles poised to hop and skip across a looped roll of paper. He strapped a sort of straight-jacket across my midriff, and then fastened thin sensors the size of band-aids around the ring and index fingers of my right hand. An armband-sensor gripped my left bicep.

      In ten minutes we covered a mix of neutral queries culled from my resume, alternated with more pointed inquiries relating to theft and deceit. Replying was a breeze: aside from the rare five-dollar discrepancy in the cash register balance back at Discount Records, my record in regards to handling money was spotless. No, it was the inevitable questions about illegal drug use that put me on edge. Thinking fast on my feet, well on my seat to be literal about it, I decided to come clean on marijuana, guessing that a) weed was viewed as relatively benign (though illegal at this point in history) and b) if the polygraph worked at all any equivocation on my part would set the damn thing off like a smoke alarm. Since my limbs were so tightly bound, I mentally crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

      Remaining expressionless the entire time, my interrogator didn’t mention results when we finished. “The readout goes back to the bank and they’ll be in touch.” Unsure about how to conclude our encounter, on the way out I said “thanks” which seemed to catch him off guard as, for the first time that morning, he displayed a reaction approaching human emotion: his raised eyebrows said c’mon pal ya gotta be kidding me.

      Either inhaling occasionally didn’t matter, or the American Savings Bank was desperate for warm bodies. I was offered the job two days later.

*

Women with the most exotic New York accents imaginable staffed the receptionist’s desk at every place of business I entered during my virgin job search. Or so it seemed to my Midwestern ears. Right after accepting the training position at American Savings Bank, maybe a week into my odyssey, I belatedly checked in at the editorial offices of Sugar y Azucar magazine. Or in the words of the elaborately coiffed and manicured young woman who greeted me, “Shuga Ezookuh.” This was not a nutritional handbook, but a trade journal for manufacturers of refined sugar and suppliers such as my father’s employer, Western States Machine Company. In fact, my dad enjoyed a warm long-distance friendship with Sugar y Azucar publisher Richard Slimermeyer; they often met up at industry events, and with their wives, visited each other’s homes in Cincinnati and New Jersey. 

      Ushering me into his midtown Manhattan office, Dick emitted flushed-face warmth and aromatic joviality. The aftermath of a two-martini lunch, I presumed. After apologizing for not having an entry-level position to offer, he launched a rambling monologue about trade-magazine publishing and how the best thing about it was “doing business with a stand-up guy like your dad.” It almost felt like he was trying to get me to buy an ad. 

      The meeting was over in twenty minutes, short and ahem, sweet. Hanging around the office after we were finished, I was flummoxed by the minimalist layout: three adjacent cubicles where the editors labored, a separate room for the two-person art department, a tiny library in a converted closet, and Dick’s corner office. The atmosphere was quiet, almost hushed: not exactly a hectic newsroom. An attempt at conversing with the frosted-blonde receptionist quickly declined from polite to pointless. Rescue came when Barbara, the svelte middle-aged woman who’d been introduced as Senior Editor of Sugar y Azucar, called me over to her executive cubbyhole. She spoke in a mild English accent and her subdued sense of style stood in stark contrast to the receptionist. Barbara exuded a breath of worldliness decidedly at odds with our surroundings.

      “Mark, hold on a minute before you leave. Let me put you in touch with Luther Miller, my old boss at Railway Age. When I heard you talking to Dick just now, I remembered that Luther recently mentioned that Railway Age needs an associate editor. Reporting on the railroad business might not be what you’ve set out to do but you won’t find a better editor than Luther  – he’s an old newspaper man, a real pro, better known these days as the Dean of Railroad Journalists. He taught me everything I know.”

      At this point her current employer broadcast a suggestive chuckle, only to be silenced by a sharp glance.

      “Simmons and Boardman, the company that owns Railway Age, has been around forever,” she continued. “Railway Age is the oldest trade magazine in the country – since 1876! Honestly, the company needs some new blood. Almost everybody who works there is pushing retirement age. If you don’t mind, I’ll also put in a call to Bob Lewis, the publisher. In the meantime you can drop off your resume for Luther. Here’s the address.”

     If I didn’t mind! As I prostrated myself in thanks, Barbara waved me away while Dick fixed me with an inscrutable look and laughed. “We certainly can’t have YOU working in a bank.” I took it as a compliment.

     From my self-serving perspective, if Western States Machine Company wound up springing for an extra ad page as a quid pro quo for Dick’s effortless intervention on my behalf, it would be money well spent.   

      Barbara’s recommendation was all that Railway Age required. Or else Simmons-Boardman Publishing Co. was desperate for warm bodies too. Anyway, two days later, my interview with the brusque and obviously preoccupied editor-in-chief Luther Miller shot by in a perfunctory blur. I accepted the job on the spot, for $13,500 annually, in a dream of disbelief or perhaps a mild state of shock. My follow-up phone call to the American Savings Bank was awkward, though mercifully brief. With a few days left at the Chemist Club, I found a job in something resembling journalism! Now all I needed to find was a roof over my head.

My Year Of Reading Proust: 2018 In Books

Marcel Proust’s masterpiece À la recherche du temps perdu, translated as In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past, is a famously formidable novel. After reading the seven volumes over four months earlier this year, however, I’m here to dispute its reputation as being difficult.  Daunting? No doubt. A few pages into Swann’s Way, the first volume, I got hypnotized by the narrator’s voice – Marcel’s voice. The microscopic focus on his immediate surroundings flips and expands into a panoramic view of the outside world. I learned about art, architecture, literature, furniture design, botany, French history and politics at the turn of 20th Century, plus manners and mores of the upper classes, the Dreyfus Affair and so much more, without ever feeling like I was being lectured or instructed. Unlike, say, Thomas Pynchon or David Foster Wallace, Proust doesn’t digress, he weaves disparate threads into a subtle and elegant tapestry. And the dinner party scenes, between the social climbing and posing on display, are vastly amusing.

Since I’ve spent the last three years working on an autobiographical project about my early years in New York City, the following quote, from The Guermantes Way, has come to serve as both a guidepost and a warning sign.

Poets claim that we recapture for a moment the self we were long ago when we enter some house or garden in which we used to live in our youth. But these are most hazardous pilgrimages, which end as often in disappointment as in success. It is in ourselves that we should rather seek to find those fixed places, contemporaneous with different years.

Finishing the fifth volume of Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle spurred me on to In Search Of Lost Time. Reviewing the sixth and final volume of My Struggle in The New York Times Book Review, the great critic Daniel Mendelsohn nailed the difference, and similarity, between Knausgård and Proust.

It is for this reason that “My Struggle” in fact bears so little resemblance to the work that the author himself so frequently refers to as an inspiration, and to which his magnum opus has so eagerly been compared by reviewers: Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.” In that novel, the life of the narrator, its arc from childhood to middle age, climaxing in his becoming a writer, functions as a prism through which virtually every aspect of the lived reality of the author’s time — art, music, literature, sex, society, class, theater, technology, science, history, war, memory, philosophy — is refracted, in a way that enlarges you, gives you a heightened sense of the world itself, its contents and possibilities.

Knausgaard’s creation, for all its vastness and despite its serious intellectual aims and attainments, reduces the entire world to the size of the author.

Volume Six of My Struggle will be my first book in 2019. So I’ll get back to you.

2018 READING LIST

Roberto Bolaño The Savage Detectives
Karl Ove Knausgård  My Struggle Book One
Karl Ove Knausgård  My Struggle Book Two
Karl Ove Knausgård  My Struggle Book Three
Karl Ove Knausgård  My Struggle Book Four
Karl Ove Knausgård  My Struggle Book Five
Jan Wilem van der Wettering Outsider in Amsterdam
Jan Wilem van der Wettering The Rattle-Rat
Johann Theorin Echoes From The Dead
Martin Amis The Rub of Time
Tina Brown The Vanity Fair Diaries 1983-92
Zadie Smith Feel Free: Essays
Shiva Naipaul An Unfinished Journey
Joe Hagan Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine
Sigrid Rausing Mayhem: A Memoir
Ian Buruma A Tokyo Romance: A Memoir
Julian Barnes The Only Story
Marcel Proust Swann’s Way
Marcel Proust Within A Budding Grove
Marcel Proust The Guermantes Way
Marcel Proust Sodom & Gomorrah
Marcel Proust The Captive
Marcel Proust The Fugitive
Marcel Proust Time Regained
Kim Phillips-Fein Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis And The Rise of Austerity Politics
Jussi Adler-Olson The Keeper of Lost Causes
Jussi Adler-Olson The Absent One
John Darnielle Wolf In White Van
David Kertzer The Pope Who Would Be King: The Exile of Pius IX and the Emergence of Modern Europe
Lars Kepler The Sandman
Seymour Stein Siren Song: My Life In Music
Wayne Kramer The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the MC5, and My Life of Impossibilities
Barbara Tuchman The Guns of August
Haldor Laxness World Light
George Pelecanos The Man Who Came Uptown
Javier Cercas The Imposter
Emmanuel Carrère The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception
Dawn Powell The Locusts Have No King
Martin Gayford Modernists & Mavericks: Bacon, Freud, Hockney and the London Painters
Caroline Weber Proust’s Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-siècle Paris
Craig Brown 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret
Arnaldur Indriðason The Shadow District
Lisa Halliday  Asymmetry
Michael Connelly  Dark Sacred Night
Zachary Leader The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife 1965-2005