Now It's Time to Say Goodbye...

Yes, Sam Tanenhaus started editing the NYTBR on the 12th, but the issue you've just read was done by then, waiting for the weekend. And Chip McGrath's last issue struck me as a bit...well, odd, really, in its organization. The first thing that struck me was the dozen pages separating the review of Neal Stephenson's The Confusion from that of A Pirate of Exquisite Mind, a biography of William Dampier, whose circumnavigational and scientific exploits are roughly contemporaneous with the fictional adventures of Jack Shaftoe--in fact, were it not for Stephenson's overwhelming interest in economics, one might easily imagine a major role for Dampier in his "Baroque Cycle." McGrath also chose to put a dozen pages between reviews of Simon Sebag Montefiore's new biography of Stalin and Aaron Hamburger's short story collection The View From Stalin's Head. The gap here is more understandable, as Hamburger's stories are mostly about gay Jewish American expats in Prague, not about Stalin at all...but then mightn't it make sense to review the two books in different issues to avoid any inadvertent mental conflation? (By the way, for another take on the Hamburger, see Jose Lambert's appraisal in last week's Forward.)

Ah well; anyone can be an armchair quarterback. Let's at least hope that Tanenhaus continues to solicit reviews from Choire Sicha, a recent addition to the Review's critical stable who hits his stride in a brilliant appreciation of Plum Sykes' Bergdorf Blondes, a novel which he believes "should inspire readers everywhere to rise up and rip one another limbless." (I'm in the middle of it, actually, having just put it aside as soon as The Confusion arrived late Friday, and I'm rather enjoying Sykes' wit, but more anon...)