This routine does not become at all monotonous; instead, quite exciting! As much as the characters are under duress to solve the case or catch the killer, so too is the audience, counting down the minutes. It’s a weird little meta-exercise. How will they catch the perp? There’s only nine minutes left before Undercover Boss! This formula is so formulaic because it’s oft-repeated, and it’s oft-repeated because it works.  Not just on television, but in books, movies, etc.

Donald Westlake was a crime writer. When he died in 2008, he had over one hundred publications to his name — some published in pseudonym — and some impressive awards. Wikipedia tells me that Westlake was named a “Grand Master” by the Mystery Writers of America; the same source calling that honor the “highest honor bestowed by the society.” (And, that information aside, award names don’t really get more honorable than “Grand Master,” do they?)

Insofar as Westlake is a crime writer, I am not a crime reader. It’s a full disclosure that I think is healthy and necessary, because it’s a genre unlike any other. A formula so simple and successful — simple in that Westlake and others publish so many books, successful in that they sell so many books.

So I’m saying that I’m not one of those people who devours crime fiction on a regular or even sporadic basis. Simultaneously, I’m saying that I’m familiar enough with the genre — and respectful enough, I should hope — that I won’t harshly judge The Comedy is Finished for issues that are totally and solely related to the genre (dun-dun-dun endings to each chapter, pieces fitting together too well, etc.). I will try to consider what it is readers hope to get out of reading a crime novel — excitement, surging heart rate, etc. — and how well Westlake does at that. But, then again, I won’t pen Westlake and his genre in some small, reductive territory that separates his literature from other types of literature. In other words, I won’t be a high-brow asshole and act like Westlake is any less a writer than Annie Proulx. Crime fiction is fiction, and should be reviewed as any other piece — with specific caveats, but none so large that they may dominate the review.

Maybe I’m trying to beat eggs with a pencil while walking a tightrope with my eyes closed; I don’t know.

The Comedy is Finished is something of a lost novel, a time capsule from the late seventies, never published but oddly complete. It tells the story of show-business veteran Koo Davis, a comedian kidnapped by a group of five post-Vietnam radicals looking to get their movement back on track. Davis’ status as an American icon — and a schmoozer of army officials, having been on many USO tours — makes him an attractive pawn for negotiation.

Davis is in the twilight of his career, worn down by constant travel and fast living. Despite this, his natural reaction to any and all challenges posed by the radicals — who call themselves the People’s Revolutionary Army — is a one-liner or some other “gag.” Naturally, this gives the book something of a light-hearted feel in the early going: five not-all-there hippies kidnap an old man game for humor and teasing. Though the PRA’s threats seem real — they want ten political prisoners released or they will kill Davis — they seem more likely to crumble under the pressure than to actually commit murder.

But Davis’ health soon deteriorates, and Westlake delves further into the individual personalities that make up the People’s Revolutionary Army. There’s Larry the Scholar, Liz the Object, Mark the Psycho, Peter the Leader, and Joyce the Mother. The more we learn about the PRA, the more dire Davis’ situation seems, as the five aren’t totally on the same page — all with differing hopes and dreams and methods — making it more likely that Davis might wind up on the shore, his flesh picked apart by birds.

The Comedy is Finished, unfortunately, goes off the rails from here. There are three main issues holding it back, all of which I hope to cover in some degree.

First, there is Westlake’s depiction of women in The Comedy is Finished. While Davis’ agent Lynsey Rayne is a competent, bold, whip-smart character at first — trading barbs with the FBI agent assigned to the case — her motives soon become clear: she cares so much for Davis because they went to bed a few times and she’s still lovesick. Davis’ estranged wife, meanwhile, is emotionally absent and largely cold. Joyce and Liz are generally airy: the former acting like some doting mother throughout, the latter walking around naked for the hell of it.

Sexual encounters with women, too, aren’t well-handled. When Liz — who, remember, walks around naked most of the time — wants to show Davis what the Movement is all about — why she feels it’s important to be an independent woman in an equal society — she lifts her dashika and masturbates in his presence, bringing herself to orgasm almost immediately. (The narration hams up the absurdity, Westlake likening the movement of Liz’s fingers to mechanics on a train set.) Later, when Liz is kinda-sorta sexually assaulted by a fellow member of the PRA, she is almost immediately (again) brought to orgasm. It seems this naked hippie might accomplish something if she didn’t sit around getting off all the time!

And, in general, the book is dominated by men with an excess of conviction. The women, on the other hand, have identities that revolve around these men. Lynsey wants to have Koo again; Davis’ wife is emotionally ruined because Koo left her; Liz wants to touch herself in front of men; Joyce wants to make men scotch broth.

Second, there is the plot point — it might be called a twist — halfway through, where Davis learns his relationship with one of his captors is, shall we say, personal. It’s a hollow-but-heartfelt development, one meant to show the quality of the human spirit or the power of love or some such thing. Instead, it seems gratuitous and cheap against the backdrop of a believable situation — the kidnapping of a Hollywood icon by some post-Vietnam rebels who feel their movement lagging in the era of Ford-Carter — a trick on Davis’ part to make his readers forget about the real political tumult in late-seventies America.

Third, Westlake loses — or intentionally pitches — a crucial aspect of the plot in the second half, that is Davis’ relationship with Washington. Though we learn the real reason (dun-dun-dun) Davis is kidnapped (see qualm two), the threads fall to the ground once Westlake lets us in on what’s really (dun-dun-dun) going on.

But as a work of crime fiction, The Comedy is Finished does the job. It is at times funny, other times sad, but mostly exciting. Despite my qualms, I couldn’t help but wonder where Westlake would take things, and if Davis would survive. Our hero is complex and troubled and not anywhere near perfect, but we still root for him. Westlake is also a very vibrant writer, crafting (mostly) complete characters whose motives seem clear and understandable.

Further, general complaints about The Comedy is Finished can be shrugged off as the inevitable gaps and holes in a posthumous publication. Were Westlake to see his work through, maybe he’d have a change of heart about the female characters, the plot twist, and the book’s second half.

Still, I like to think that a writer’s legacy — especially in unpublished works — is still subject to scrutiny after death. The reviewer-author contract may have a few more sentences in the fine print, but it’s still there. It’s still necessary for the reviewer to look at a work for what it is.

And what do I see? A crime novel that excites but offends. A time capsule in many ways: a story long lost, unearthed to the delight of many Westlake fans. Much of its content, however, might be better off collecting dust.

Beyond that, it’s been a week of post-birthday celebration, Valentinular celebration, and subsequent 50%-off-all-chocolate celebration. And, as ever, trying to ignore these awful new memes. As a general rule of thumb, if someone posts something on Facebook and captions it “LOL SO TRUE,” there’s a good chance it’s not not nearly as true or amusing as the offending FB friend has claimed. But maybe I’m just embittered by years of false lawling and trigger-shy from a history of rickrolls.

But here’s a link that’s NOT a song about never giving you up. Scholastic Parent & Child Magazine has announced (via a really cool interactive bookshelf interface) their list of the 100 Greatest Books for Kids. I’ve read 38 of them! How about yourselves? The choices are clearly the product of a well thought-out selection process that accounted for an even spread of ages, demographics, authors, genres, and eras, and made the sound decision to choose only the best of the best of beloved authors’ books so as not to inundate the list with multiple titles. It’s Friday; treat your adult  selves to the nostalgia party that is Scholastic.

Now, to fly to Washington, D.C. Three-day weekends FTW!

In the introduction to the American edition, Kwarteng, a Tory MP since 2010, explains the relevance of his subject to Americans whose interest in the British Empire itself might only be passing. Addressing the argument put forth by Niall Ferguson and others for Pax Americana—basically that in the absence of a civilizing power like the British Empire, America must use her resources to quiet the world’s most troubled areas—Kwarteng offers his general view of colonialism. Empires, he argues, “through their lack of foresight and the wide discretion they give administrators, lead to instability and the development of chronic problems.”

(Let’s set aside Ferguson’s blatant and awful moral relativism and [cultural] superiority complex, as any discussion of his power in pop-history makes me want to lobotomize myself.)

This “wide discretion” given to various colonial administrators is central to his argument, that the Empire itself cannot be viewed as a broad thing, that it was a flimsy and foundation-less structure built upon the whimsy of a few men—some of whom were bright and well suited to the task, some of whom lacked poise enough to tie their own shoes—and that this lack of order or purpose contributed to the issues faced by these territories after British departure.

In other words, these postcolonial growing pains are not accidental, but can be traced back.

Kwarteng argues this well. In a clever—and perhaps wholly unintentional—fashion, Kwarteng divides his book into six sections focusing on six different British colonial enterprises. In each, he briefly summarizes various moments of note. But there’s little correlation in each section; that is to say, what’s happening in Iraq seems totally apart from what’s happening in Kashmir. Though each part of the empire was united by dominion—and certain conditions, like financial constraints caused by economic troubles, for example—they were ruled by different men from different places, with different tastes and different motives.

While each section might stand to the reasoning of Kwarteng’s central argument about the futility of imperial endeavors, they are their own little selves—six chapters that stand on their own.

Additionally, Kwarteng supports his arguments with vigorous research—namely, character sketches. While his summary of Gertrude Bell’s “idealistic” view of the Arabs was incomplete and somewhat redundant, it served to draw a contrast between one prominent member of Britain’s colonial class and any other; that is to say, Bell’s input as to what to do in Iraq may have had some weight, but her thoughts and goals were far apart from the Britons more driven to reap the spoils of the area’s vast oil reserves.

Kwarteng’s prose is, at times, difficult and a little clunky. (Perhaps this is just my reaction, and the result of having read—predominantly over the months since graduation—American fiction in the age of Franzen.) At the end of “Rivals,” a chapter on Iraq, Kwarteng labors to ensure his reader understands the closeness between the installed rulers of Iraq and the British establishment, concluding his argument with an awkward, unnecessary repetition.

But on the whole, there is little to argue with in Ghosts of Empire. Kwarteng’s understanding of economic history—his focus at Cambridge—is apparent, as is his appreciation for his own heritage. Born to Ghanaian parents in London, Kwarteng has an appreciation for the documented (and undocumented) awfulness of life under a directionless, improvised regime. And as a Western politician particularly aware of the lack of stability in former colonial possessions like Sudan and Kashmir, Kwarteng’s unique perspective jumps off the page.

(And if I might close with something a little too political…)

This awareness on Kwarteng’s part is rich for this reviewer. Contrast Kwarteng with noted wart Dinesh D’Souza, who has made a career out of saying indefensibly awful things. (Blaming Abu Ghraib on liberal immodesty re: sex might not even make his top thirty worst statements.) It’s D’Souza’s view of Barack Obama that is especially intolerable. D’Souza—like many of his conservative friends—likes to harp on the fact that Obama’s father was Kenyan and, given that he was, must have resented his British rulers. (Who could blame him?!) This means that Obama, too, is anti-colonialist, which makes him anti-west, etc., etc.

But here is Kwarteng, himself an MP in Britain’s conservative party, writing a book about the facts of his own country’s history; taking issue—more often than not—with the Empire. Could you imagine such a thing in America? A book—written by a politician—critical of America’s past? Perish the thought.

None of this is to take focus away from Kwarteng’s serious, thoughtful scholarship. He has done the work that so many historians (and history students, like myself) fail to: perform tireless research, neatly construct an argument around this evidence, trim the supporting documentation so it is palatable, present it.

It sounds elementary. Of course, were it simple, Kwarteng’s debut wouldn’t have stood out so much. As someone more invested in thoughtful writing about Britain’s imperial follies, I’m hopeful his political career allows for future work of this sort.

I’m an idiot. And I tend to act as though I’m still somewhere between thirteen and fifteen, those landlocked years that featured only one benefit: being able to say pretty much whatever I wanted to non-psychopathic folks, those who wouldn’t dare punch a thirteen- or fourteen- or fifteen-year-old kid in the face because, really, that’d be kind of stupid.

So I spent these years sitting in the bleachers section at Wrigley Field during Cubs-White Sox games, extolling the Southside in victory or just occasional run-scoring, without fear that any of the drunken adults around me would stoop to commit the crime of assaulting a minor. Because, at the end of the day, I’m just a kid!

If my son or sons turn out remotely like this, I’ll send them to military school.

Anyways, so I’m saying all of this because–in my darkest times–I reveal a frightening weakness: I never crossed this bridge from the stage of too-smart impishness to full-scale, mature adulthood. I’m in asshole purgatory, more or less.

Working the traditional 8:30-5:00 requires some unremarkable schedule managing, especially since I prefer getting my haircut at one of those traditional, been-in-Somerville-since-before-1988 barber shops. The kind that have old guys sitting there–not even talking to anyone!–just reading the paper, passing the time, perhaps waiting for their favorite bar to open. Those places tend to have hours that more resemble your average workday, maybe open ’til about 5:30 or 6:00.

So on the days I want my haircut, it’s crucial that I duck out of work at 4:30, and have no hiccups (!!!) on my half-hour commute there. Because I’m a lame white Midwesterner, I’m hyper-respectful (or neurotic) of others’ schedules, and consider it rude to waltz in at 5:30 when the place closes at 6:00. What if I’m third in line?! What if they hurry the job or resent me for a) not making an appointment or b) seeming like a thoughtless turd?!

This week: hiccups abound. The T was running at its dependably miserable stop-go slowly pace. I forgot to grab cash from an ATM at lunch. (Crucial aspect of old-school barber shops: cash only.)

Scene: ATM vestibule. There are two ATMs. One in use, one not in use. There are two people in line behind the one ATM in use. Thinking (without looking, stupidly) that the folks are not queuing up behind the unoccupied ATM because it was merely cash only — while the other one was for deposits and such — I make my way up to it. The following:

LAST GUY IN LINE: (In sneering, heroic tone) Hey, there’s a line here.

ME: (Look at line behind other ATM, look at the ATM I’m standing in front of, look back at LAST GUY IN LINE)

LAST GUY IN LINE: (In sneering, heroic tone) We’re in line here. (Points to HELPLESS OLD LADY in front of him, who is either fumbling with her wallet or just farting around in general while looking at the ground.)

HELPLESS OLD LADY: (Shrug) (inaudible).

LAST GUY IN LINE is eventually waived forward to use the other ATM by HELPLESS OLD LADY. While I wait in line, I’m fuming, for no good reason whatsoever. Still, angry. When he gets his cash and exits–again, for no reason whatsoever–I give him a light, sarcastic applause. He turns around at the door and gives me the well-deserved, fucking really, guy?

So when I pop across the street to get my haircut, who else is there? LAST GUY IN LINE. Having probably done the exact same thing: duck out early from work, run to the ATM only to be greeted by HELPLESS OLD LADY, got combative with a guy in a too-sarcastic way. I escalated it with the completely immature applause–which wasn’t even clever. It’s clear that I’ve gone from too-smart to not-clever, which is a saddening realization. (In fact, my general immaturity–looking back–seems not unlike a certain old lady I saw on YouTube this week.)

Anyway, we laughed it off, got old-school shaves, had a sidecar after, and are now connected on LinkedIn®.

OK, so we laughed it off.

What are you guys reading this week?

Kwasi Kwarteng’s Ghosts of Empire: Britain’s Legacies in the Modern World
I’ve been dying to read some good history since I’ve been reviewing almost nothing but fiction of late. Kwarteng’s sophisticated, surprisingly easy-to-read chronicle of Britain’s colonial infrastructures–and their effect on the modern political landscapes of Nigeria, Iraq, and Kashmir (among other countries the Empire mangled)–fits the bill. Though he labors with the prose at times, Kwarteng (himself a Tory MP since 2010) approaches some ugly history with appropriate (but not Niall Ferguson-like) pragmatism: willing to call a spade a spade, but understanding the context of each situation. Full of revealing character sketches, Kwarteng’s work is part-academic (he did receive a PhD in economic history from Cambridge) and part-pop; enough of each to satisfy most folks interested in British history of the twentieth century.

You’ll see the review Tuesday!

It’s quite surprising to see such praise for a collection that offers few genuinely new stories—most of them appearing in various forms in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, or The New Yorker before 2011. Chabon, Franzen, Egan, et al. probably had no trouble blurbing pieces they had read over the course of a decade.

You’ll forgive me, I hope, for focusing so much on these blurbs—there’s a point here. The praise for Englander, I thought, might inoculate me to whatever true greatness exists in “What We Talk About…”

But that wasn’t the case here, not at all. And now that I’ve got that out, I feel comfortable enough to say that I agree with the capital-W Writers on the back cover: “What We Talk About…” is hilarious, brave, energetic, and downright original. Instead of rolling my eyes at the blurbs, I feel compelled to go down the list, putting check marks and page numbers where I agree. (Jonathan Lethem…hilarious, √, p. 162; McCann…provocative, √, p. 89.)

The title story might serve as an example of what’s good about every story in the book: layered tension, unrestrained wit, and a desire on the part of Englander to go one step further than the reader expects or even wishes.

As a not-so-subtle homage to Raymond Carver’s (and, sigh, Gordon Lish’s) masterpiece “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” “…Anne Frank” has the obvious similarities: two couples drinking vodka (Carver used gin) as the day passes, having a jocular conversation that eventually turns serious. And Englander even adapts Carver’s (and, sigh, Lish’s) best line: Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right. (I’ll let you read Englander’s version yourself.)

The story offers very much in the way of humor. Two Jewish couples, an ultra-orthodox pair visiting their secular friends in Florida, drink, smoke marijuana, and argue about culture–mainly Jewish culture, and its status as a culture: the ultra-orthodox husband (formerly Mark, and now Yerucham) offering that Judaism is a religion first and foremost, and must be respected as such. The secular husband, our narrator, is wary of what he perceives as ultra-orthodoxy–but not necessarily in some grave, serious way. He can be turned off by the righteousness of those who think they’re ultra-righteous, but also poke fun at the righteous by calling them by their secular names. It is a serious story with serious conversation that does not hide from its own earnestness; a highly entertaining and difficult-to-pull-off piece.

The earnestness is shed when the two couples begin to play the Anne Frank game–which, of course, I thought might actually be a game, but is really from Englander’s life (apparently “invented” by his sister). The gist of the game being: would X hide us or turn us in? An ultimate test of gentile character. But the four Jews–now sequestered in a pantry in Florida, tearing open food, praying that it’s Kosher–play the game with each other; husband wonders if wife would hide him and likewise.

The tension here is packed in layers, and absolutely enthralling. It is the ultimate compliment to be told that, yes, I believe you would risk everything by hiding me from the Nazis. It is the ultimate doubt of character to be told that, no, I believe you would turn me in to the Nazis, knowing full well what would happen, you would cower to protect yourself.

What more it must mean for Jews to wonder this about themselves–let alone ultra-orthodox Jews! And what it says about trust, or a lack of it, between husband and wife, if the latter thinks the former would not hide her. And what it says about love, or a lack of it.

When those four Jews from two completely different worlds sit down and talk about Anne Frank, what they really talk about is love.

There are misses in this collection, which is inevitable. “Sister Hills” was not my cup of tea. “The Reader” is an interesting try, but seems too much like a tribute to warrant placement here. “Peep Show” is surreal, but a little too delirious.

But then there’s “Camp Sundown,” a piece about old Survivors out for revenge that had me scrawling different variations of this is really messed up and is this really happening? and where is he taking this next? and oh, shit he took it there! in the margins. “How We Avenged the Blums” is dark and funny, but mostly dark.  “Free Fruit for Young Widows” poses an unanswerable ethical question, all the while crafting an interesting story around it.

There is a feeling had when reading these hits and misses, the feeling that Franzen, Egan, McCann, et al. are absolutely right. And gratitude. For being able to read something this powerful and funny and stark or read at all.

The old world seemed to have left us alone. No one had floated by in a boat, trying to sell us a canteen made from a sheep’s stomach. No Gypsies had passed through, rattling their wine bottles and singing their songs. Was it because we had succeeded? Because the new world was real? Perhaps. Or maybe it was because, day by day, there were fewer and fewer people left in the countryside. We had not seen the Official Gazette, which published thirty-two laws, thirty-one decrees and seventeen government resolutions against us. We did not see crosses drawn on all the doorways where Christians lived, while Jewish men were made to dig huge trenches in the cemetery. The world was emptied. Anyone who thought about it would have assumed we were long dead or on our way to death. We were forgotten and we were lost and, because of that, the world we made was allowed to go on.

No One Is Here Except All Of Us  is not a book for those who take much of anything for granted.

It’s a novel that stitches you to the heart of what matters within and without it. And when the threads of these prosaic, timeless characters tie you up and ensure you’re secured there, that What Matters floods and falls and the wind is kicked out of it. And if you want to end that story for the evening, if you would rather delight in the relief of the century that surrounds you — the one that hasn’t invited this horror to our door, at least not yet — closing the cover on Ramona Ausubel’s literally stunning debut won’t be enough. Because despite this book’s overarching theme of isolationism, its resulting effect on us as readers can only be the opposite: now that we’ve been told the story of 102 Zalischik Jews who sealed themselves off from the war-torn world with an airtight creation story and their collective imagination alone, we ourselves cannot extract it from what we know to be true. If isolation and belief in the warless New Genesis ever worked, for Zalischik or any other Elsewhere, then who’s to say those villagers are not still tucked someplace that war has never reached? Who’s to say the story isn’t powerful enough to sustain them? Does it change what history we know? And if all of this is true, has Ausubel extended a hand toward untouchable territories – and has that had any hand in their unraveling?

I know this is disorienting and perhaps hardly a review at all. But these are the thoughts you’ll have, too, after you drift through its pages. It’s not a book you can walk away from; the very manner in which Ausubel’s narrative assures the impermeability of memory, so too will you be unable to forget what you’ve found there.

They opened their dark mouths and like the pack that we were, we sounded our collective call. We are all here, our voices said. This is our home, our turf, our valley. We have peed all over it, slept all over it, dreamed all over it, renamed it….I howled and we howled and the dogs sang back to all of us.

It is impressive that none of these Zalischik villagers come off as ignorant, small-minded, or naive as they reinvent their world with utter conviction. It’s an earnest attempt to save everything they know from destruction, and they perform admirably, in the beginning. As a reader, I never once felt like I was reading a Holocaust narrative or a re-imagining of an Anne Frank-esque concealment — what’s been spun here has no comparable mold. We see the consequences early on, though, of how a world so imagined could fail. The unraveled edges grow larger as our 11-year-old narrator, Lena, is forced to trade families in order to give everyone in the village a chance at parenthood, especially those who were barren in the world that preceded them. Lena is passed around to fill the roles her village needs her to, a beacon of hope not unlike the Holy Ghost, and the strain to believe that this is how it always has been is a real strain, one that is felt.

What’s even more amazing about this book is how it continues to stretch farther and farther ahead of you. Every time something pivotal happens, a birth or death that must surely mean the end, it’s instead the beginning of a whole new section’s unfolding, and by the final pages you are so, so far from where you started. You are split and divided and carried down a river with many tributaries. With a deftness that suggests she’s been there, Ausubel enacts the Jewish community’s transition from element to enemy.

The starts slid along and the moon returned a new shape each night, and no one came looking for us. No one caught us or saved us. The days did not count themselves off but circled, dizzy and lost. It made sense to keep track of time only if there was a known end to the journey, which there was not…I let go of the idea of time, of progress, of beginnings and endings, and tried to pay attention only to one fact: we were alive, we were alive, we were alive.

Read it, won’t you? It will soon be everywhere — the exposure Ausubel’s skill deserves — and if you partake you’ll be part of something that’s never once proven impossible. You might, like me, and without thinking, rework your awareness of the history books to include something just like this. You might reconsider what you know about the names and places you were never taught. That’s everything that a work of historical fiction ought to do. We can just count ourselves lucky that our novelist has gone above and beyond that call of duty to bring us something that chills and remains.

It was boring, ultimately panned by the professor. By moving the scenes from Persia to the middle of North America, I’d done nothing but merely adapt the Troglodyte fable for a new time and people, without exploring less broad, more interesting questions.

Adaptations or retellings of old fables or stories or tales can go other ways, of course. Writers can explore the modern implications involved in the time-place shifting, or abandon the fable context altogether for awhile, using the adaptation more as a theme than a frame.

To wit: Colin Winnette’s Revelation, an adaptation of the biblical apocalypse tale. Except the main characters—Tom, Colin, and Marcus (the protagonist, of sorts), all of whom we follow from age ten to eighty—are less concerned with the kind of supernatural shit that’s going on all around them than with your regular human stuff. There are the fires and the locusts and the dead fish and the four horsemen, but there’s also the next cigarette, or a grueling breakup letter from a teenage girlfriend. There’s the end of the world, but there’s also the grueling feeling of getting old and being sore.

It’s an apocalypse, yes, but the most troubling aspect of it all might be watching your father slowly, somewhat bitterly go in an old folks’ home. And carrying your son across a parking lot full of locusts is just a time to feel proud like a regular father—not to reflect on why there are so many goddamn locusts everywhere.

Winnette has turned the concept of his work upside down; made the framing mechanism itself more of a theme. Rather than retell the apocalypse, he’s set it in the background and let his characters—in a strange, organic way—live and breathe like people who aren’t in the world they’re in.

I can’t say enough about how effective Winnette’s work is in this regard. Going in as a reader, you are well aware that you’re about to read an adaptation of the biblical apocalypse. And while Tom, Colin, and Marcus are horsing around like normal kids horse around, there are fires everywhere—but so what? They’re just trying to smoke a cigarette and waste time. The reader doesn’t know what the characters are feeling about this—especially in the early going when the narration is rather sparse (which lends to Revelation a sort of mystique)—and that’s kind of maddening.

But soon Revelation is less of an adaptation and more its own story; the apocalypse isn’t a frame for the story, just a theme within it. The characters’ worries consume the reader. Soon, the world of Revelation is no longer unimaginable—not because locusts and fires and the four horsemen become, like, foreseeable or something, but because we know we’re all going to mistreat people we love and take them for granted and have regrets and, of course, die.

It is in these moments that Winnette communicates something that’s true and almost insufferably so, facets of our existence that have become as basic as sun up and sun down. It’s powerful, and would be so much less so if Winnette didn’t have such champion restraint.

Of course, there are times when Revelation lags—mainly in the first seventy-five pages or so. But no work is without its faults.

And Winnette is new on the scene! Reading a “first work” so pleasurable is exciting. Armed with such talents—smooth language, a mature knack for plot development, the restraint to let a moment linger—Winnette will be heard from again. And soon.

In addition to digging into all of that, we’re trying to make our last-minute decisions on what books we should, respectively, give out on World Book Night.  (We’re running the gamut from Friday Night Lights to Oscar Wao at the moment. Any thoughts?) The deadline for requesting titles is February 1 — five days away — so don’t forget to sign up and participate in this amazing inaugural U.S. event.

Finally, a word on what we’re reading this weekend:

Ramona Ausubel’s No One is Here Except All Of Us, a haunting and beautiful debut about a tight-knit Jewish community that chooses to isolate itself as the horrors of World War II are made clear to them. Ausubel’s voice is so dense and narratively rich that readers can open to virtually any page and find passages that speak a heretofore unconsidered truth about love and the nature of war. Our review of this one is sure to carry mostly a tone of awe.

Other things that have our jaws dropping: how good Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was, and that we’ll now have to see advertisements that attach the words “Academy Award Nominee” to the name Jonah Hill.

I won’t beat around the bush.

The reason the world perked up and paid attention to Sinclair’s The Jungle in 1906 is the same reason that the world should now, 105 years later, snap to attention and read Katherine Stewart’s latest nonfiction book, The Good News Club: it awakens us to something we may previously have known nothing about, but which is under our noses every day, is active in our communities nonstop, and is potentially damaging to us all, and well into the future, too, if gone unnoticed. Stewart’s findings can’t afford to be ignored, for the same simple fact that made Sinclair’s expose crucial: whether the book calls you to action or not, you are inarguably worse off not knowing what’s detailed within it.

I had the occasion to read this book back in July 2011, for reasons I don’t think I’m allowed to detail here. At any rate, I read the then-confidential volume (concealed in a white paper cover) on the beach on the Fourth of July. I read about U.S. public schools caving, silently, to the demands of the Child Evangelism Fellowship, among other insidious religious groups that infiltrate America’s education programs and curricula with innocuous-sounding “Good News Clubs” and “Spirituality for Kids,” evangelist and scientologist organizations, respectively. I read about these groups’ systematic flouting of every restriction in place designed to keep them a separate entity from the classroom itself, and to uphold our nation’s separation of church and state. When you read these ugly findings on a sunny beach full of raucous children, an eeriness sets in: how many of them have had a Good News Club come through their town, encouraging them to “be a missionary every day,” and to consider any non-member of the club an irreparable sinner? How many have informed their fellow elementary classmates that they, the Others, are destined for fire and brimstone? Moreover, how many of the kids on that beach had been told as much by their classmates? After all, Stewart’s research estimates that 3,410 Good News Clubs alone are currently in operation at elementary schools around the country, to say nothing of the countless other groups that have found loophole after loophole to strong-arm their way into the schools.

If you think “strong-arming” is too forceful a term for what may at first sound like constructive (and rather secular) moral teachings, consider this quote from the founder and president of the Liberty Counsel:

Knock down all of the doors, all of the barriers, to all of the 65,000- plus elementary schools in the country and take the Gospel to this open mission field now! Not later! Now!

And really, verbiage is the least of our concerns when talking about the Good News Club.

Stewart has put herself on the front lines while researching this expose. Again, don’t be coerced by the docile religious front: this meant having to put herself in genuine danger more than once. When it was discovered at the Child Evangelism Fellowship convention (by many prodding questions and public accusations) that our correspondent was, in fact, Jewish (a claim she never directly “confessed” to be true), security guards and the director of the convention were dispatched immediately to Stewart’s hotel room. We’re talking about a literal fire-escape escape, people. And you can’t convince me that this is what God had in mind.

In their true form, these organizations are not only breaking down the doors to public schools — their ripest recruiting centers — they are also breaking down the generally accepted notion of elementary religion classes teaching children only the most vague and generic lessons in morality. But that is, of course, the guise the CEF chooses to operate under, and it is in this stealth that they’ve had their greatest advantage. Stewart’s own children, in fact, have been subject to the ruse, and so it is out of a genuine concern, alarm, and indignation that Stewart brings us The Good News Club. A parent’s very ability to raise their children with a given set of values or beliefs is being undermined daily by a group whose whole salvation is contingent upon the numbers game: recruit x amount of lost sheep, ascend x miles farther into Heaven. Parents and their children deserve better. And that’s why everyone has a stake in how this book is received, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

IS IT LEGAL?? No—not for adults. But it is completely legal for students! It is a God-given loophole!
—from the Life Book Movement, a division of Gideon’s International whose stated mission is to “saturate 91,957 high schools with God’s word” through peer-to-peer evangelism.

By the way, as a disclaimer, I consider myself a strongly religious person. I’m not some oddly jaded atheist out to deny children the option of discovering the God that suits them best, if any. And neither, notably, is Katherine Stewart. The point, ultimately, is far simpler: no child should tell their classmates that they’re going to Hell and be rewarded for that accusation. No child should trouble themselves thinking in terms of the End Times, a philosophy that leaves very little motivation for personal growth down here on Earth. No child should be a blind recruiter for what they themselves couldn’t possibly yet understand, and no organized group of adults should capitalize on that precise lack of understanding for their own gain. Swap out God in that equation for any other concept, and you risk nothing less than incarceration. So why, with some angels and Mylar balloons stuck to it, does that brand of manipulation go so unnoticed? Celebrated, even?

It’s time we ask ourselves why. And the real Good News is that Stewart has begun the conversation. Keep talking.

The Art of Fielding is once again in the media focus, getting its UK pub this week. If you’re wondering how British outlets would receive a book about baseball—which I was and kind of still am—the Financial Times’ review is an indication that it’s a bit puzzling, the FT turning to former Major League Baseball shortstop Ron Darling for a test-of-authenticity sort of review, a write-up that seems focused on how much Harbach nails the baseball experience; artfulness not being Darling’s concern, naturally.

Other British reviewers, however, seem captivated by the book itself, not concerned with the fact that it’s about a game that has no footing in their culture. Nat Segnit, writing for The Independent:

As Affenlight jokes to Owen, reading is “a dangerous pastime”, inimical at some level to the cognitive blank of true sporting genius. At its best, when its pattern-making responds more organically to the characters’ realities, The Art of Fielding is very good indeed. In an early, game, we learn that the Harpooners’ “aged scoreboard” is missing a letter: “WESTISH 6 VI ITOR 2″. Four hundred pages later, when the Harpooners are competing against swanky Amherst in the nationals, it’s noted that one of the opposing team’s cheerleaders has failed to show up, so that their “oversize purple T-shirts… spelled out A-M-H-E-R-T in white letters.” Again, the missing S, for Skrimshander, the Harpooners’ absent hero: it’s a lovely, subtle, moving touch.

Another batch of Art of Fielding reviews means more opportunities for newspapers to run clumsy baseball metaphors in the subheads, The Telegraph calling it a “home run” and the FT referring to it as “pitch perfect.” Well done, chaps.

In other news, we’ll be posting a review of Katherine Stewart’s forthcoming The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children on Tuesday. Don’t worry, we’re not getting too political.