#FridayReads, August 2–Boris Kachka’s “Hothouse” & Lee Child’s “A Wanted Man”
FridayReads, Hothouse: The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America's Most Celebrated Publishing House, a rich chronicle focusing on Farrar, Straus & Giroux, its charismatic founder Roger Straus, and its talented editorial chief of many years Robert Giroux. Established soon after WWII, FSG has over the decades published dozens of notable authors including Czeslaw Milosz, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Grace Paley, Tom Wolfe, Susan Sontag, Abraham Joshua Heschel, John McPhee, Bernard Malamud, and Flannery O'Connor. Kachka holds his narrative to quite a fleet pace, touching on some books and authors only briefly, but always situating his protagonists in the cultural moment. I have always enjoyed reading in the realm of books on books and I couldn't be happier reading Hothouse. Kachka's book delivers great literary stories in spades.
I'm traveling this week and so happily succumbed to the purchase of an airport paperback, another terrific thriller by Lee Child, A Wanted Man, which places recurring series character Jack Reacher in a Nebraska winter trying to evade suspicion for several murders and disappearances even while trying to solve the case and convince FBI agent Julie Sorenson that he's not the culprit she and her agency bigs are pursuing. While Reacher is something of a brute when he needs to be, Child has an amazingly deft touch with great finesse as a storyteller.
Photo credit: Donna Turner
Philip — wouldn’t have figured you for a Reacher fan, somehow, but I am, too. Currently finishing Telegraph Avenue, though, and loving it even more than the previous Chabons. And thanks for the advance tip on the Gottlieb piece (my print NY’er will arrive Wednesday) — have raced through it and now don’t have to read Hothouse itself! Love to the family…
I was surprised when I found I liked the Reacher books, but there you go. Lee Child is a very good plotter, I think. I was traveling on planes this week to see Kyle’s family in St. Louis and so ripped through several books. The latest I’m in the middle of is Jayne Anne Phillips October novel, “Quiet Dell,” which I got at BEA. Quite good so far, based on a notorious crime from the 1930s. Best to your family, too.