Currently reading: an 80s classic and more

Jay McInerny, Bright Lights Big City
You approach this one with some trepidation. Somewhere in the back of your head, you have the idea that you don't like the author, possibly by association: he didn't like DFW, right? (He wrote a pretty favorable review of Infinite Jest, so that's not it.) Maybe he was too nice to DFW? He might've been part of that clique of overrated writers from Bennington, who wrote ponderous tomes of dubious quality, like American Psycho or The Secret History? (He was not.) Maybe you remember him from your parents' bookshelves, and associate him with fads of the 80s? In any event, you know his book is about a writer (strike one) in NYC (strike two) who does a lot of coke (strike three) in the 80s (strike four. What sport are we playing?). And you will refrain from saying anything about the author's weird narrative conceit, which reminds you unfavorably of novels of that period (The Mezzanine) that try too hard to be clever. You know it's going to be a big book, and a slog, but you figure you should be open to trying new things.

What you find is not a big book, but a small one. You expect bombast but it's a fairly reasonable catalogue of actual human emotions. The parts that seem overwrought--the drugs, the poor treatment of women--come to have an explanation in the twist, and the twist feels earned and, for once, as though it provides a sort of reasoning for the personal dissolution taking place in the book. The novel indulges in some misogyny but, unusually, lets the women involved have some amount of agency and dignity. You find it to be a hard book to hate, and leave yourself open to the possibility it might even be a book you love.

Hilary Leitcher, Temporary
As a reader I have begun to come around to the idea that the success of a novel depends on whether it does the thing it sets out to do. I have lately been putting whether I like said novel to the side as a relatively uninteresting question--I should probably write on this at some point. I Who Have Never Known Men was not a novel I particularly liked but largely because it seemed to need to violate its own rules to keep the plot moving along--it perhaps somewhat lacked the courage of its convictions. Temporary sticks to its guns: there's little to no explanation of the process by which one becomes a Temporary and the metaphysical turn that comes late when it becomes clear what it means to be allowed to become Permanent moves it perhaps into fairy tale or myth. It's not an unpleasant read, playing out like a longer version of a Cesar Aira conceit, though I will confess to being somewhat unclear at the end about What It All Meant; but perhaps, like a Cesar Aira story, the narrative is itself its own justification for being.