Laith

Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone— while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?"

It's not Gene Wolfe, it's Job, the whole damn thing is Job. But Job had his fortunes returned twofold, and Hadrian's story ends in a significant reversal of the old parable. It's tough to complain or criticize this ending, largely because the events of this last entry have been foreshadowed across the entire series, but it still managed to leave a nasty aftertaste in my mouth.

I think maybe I pinned my hopes a little too high, I really thought this final arc would mirror Gene Wolfe's influence, one where salvation is not guaranteed but earned-instead we get a repetition of classic Dogma. I hate to say it, but all this series amounts to is bible stories in space, half a retelling of the resurrection and half a surface level examination of Theological Determinism vs. Free Will- particularly the interpretation of Aquinas. At least the battles across hyperspace were cool.

Notably absent from this christian hotpot is any discussion of Hell and eternity. I thought we'd get there, but we didn't. This really put me in mind of Borges, who wrote of the four cycles, the four archetypes of story: The siege, The return, The quest and The sacrifice and that all versions amount to just one story- a destiny fulfilled through repetition and variation.

I'll still buy the box set.

This is a detective novel, but the detective has Tourette's Syndrome. It's as insane to read as it is to describe, and I mean that in the best possible way. He's ticcing in the middle of interrogations, in the middle of moments where he needs to be discrete, even in his own internal monologue, it's pure chaos.

When I frame it like that, it sounds like some sort of sophomoric writing challenge: first to write a book with a character with Tourette's and have it make any sense linguistically, and second to have that character then skulk though the shadows like he's Philip Marlowe. But it's not like that at all, it's a solid read, astoundingly so; I was skeptical at first, but as I read on it became less and less about the Tourette's and entirely about Lionel's compulsion to solve the mystery of his Boss's murder. Rather than detracting from the experience, Lionel's tics, compulsions, and general paranoia come to shape the increasingly manic and spiraling narrative.

In fact, Lionel steals the whole show; I'd say the book is less a tale of mystery and intrigue (which it certainly is chock-full of) and more an incredibly sympathetic and thoughtful character study of an orphan finding his family. As much as I love a good ol' fashion mystery-thriller, there's so much more to Motherless Brooklyn than its mystery subplot, it's truly a work of literary and linguistic genius, human in all the right places and utterly captivating.

I think I'll play this review close to the chest, if you're not interested in this book by now, feel free to skip it, but I can safely say that I've never read anything like this before and I doubt I ever will again. I'll have to find a copy for my shelf.

I'll keep this short. I don't think you're supposed to like this book, and if you find yourself relating to any of its characters, especially if you're in your 30s, that should be a wake-up call. Time to move to Alaska and start a new life.

Reading this book is like anesthetizing yourself, like peering into Nietzsche's abyss, it erodes you. I'd say that I hated it completely, but I deeply appreciate the craft and quality. It takes real skill to make something so souless, the fact that I couldn't put it down until its pointless conclusion is another point in its favor.

Apparently, this resonated with 80s kids- it was a bestseller and the beach read of 1985, its cover peeking out from the BOGG bag of the chicest of the chic (maybe they didn't have BOGG bags back then). I find that fact and image to be a perfect encapsulation of what the book is, it's a time capsule - something from the malformed youth for the malformed youth.

It does exactly what it was intended to do- a total commitment to concept, and I like the book for that artistic commitment, I just didn't like its actual substance.

*Disclaimer: This book was written by a good friend of mine. I purchased my own copy at full price and while I was asked to read the book, this review was not solicited in any way. That said, my star rating is going to be pinned at a 5 regardless of quality- not because I can't bear to be critical of a friend's work but because of the nature of Amazon's recommendation algorithm, so feel free to disregard it. Excepting the rating this review will contain my honest and unfiltered opinion of the book. _____

Every year thousands of would-be lawyers across the country face a rude awakening- they enter law school dreaming of Atticus Finch/Mike Ross and dramatic legal battles only to realize that the overwhelming majority of lawyers will never see the inside of a court room. Something you learn on the first night of law school is that the case books suck to read. Shocking I know, but those massive tomes are crammed with case law and commentary that you are expected to internalize. They're textbooks, and they're just a taster of how minutiae obsessed the legal field can be. Mercifully this is NOT a legal textbook, Matt walks us through the variety of cases and courts that he worked during his time at the State and Federal prosecutors table. Unlike the casebooks, American Justice is in the vein of those much cherished legal dramas; cataloging his time pursuing carjackers, delinquent fathers, and violent fraud rings Matt paints a picture of what it's like to actually fight in court.

Don't get the impression that you need some type of legal training to appreciate this book, this should be broadly understood by most of its readers. In typical litigator fashion the author has boiled away the jargon and left only the most necessary legal terms. Matt clearly subscribes to the economy of words, as he takes great pains to explain any potentially foreign concept in plain English. What remains are a series of very interesting anecdotes of various criminal prosecutions pared down to the juiciest details. If you've ever wondered how a prosecution actually goes down, what a prosecutor actually thinks beyond just legal theory, then this is the candid peek behind the curtain you were looking for.

There is a point buried behind the anecdotes, a consistent criticism of the often-times nonsensical nature of courtroom politics. Matt describes his cases as not only as adversarial between prosecutor and defendant but as a battle between the lawyers and the law itself, highlighting issues he's observed that undercut the pursuit of justice. These are systemic issues that no one lawyer can address on their own ranging from gaps in sentencing guidelines to full blown legal loopholes that can derail an otherwise air-tight case.

It's not without flaws. The prose though coherent and concise reads in the style of a legal brief, without embellishment or characterization. I think that each case anecdote would have benefited had they been presented in a more narrative forward style. My main criticism with the book follows along similar lines, the whole thing is just a bit too brief- the cases themselves, but also the connective tissue that joins them. I felt that this was building towards a point, possibly about legal reform, but I can't say definitively because we never truly get there.

If the worst thing I can say about a book is that it's too short- it must be pretty good. That's the case for American Justice, it's interesting and easy to understand, and brevity isn't all bad because you can read this in 3-4 hours.

PS: Wasn't sure where in the review to include this, but there's humor and personal anecdotes in here. Knowing the author's sense of humor I definitely got a few laughs from the dry wit and occasional interjection. Great Job Matt!

This is my second reading, and I really never thought I'd open this book again. When I first cracked this in college my feelings were typical of the general reception to the book: I found it excessive in its violence and sadism, nihilistic to a fault; the only apparent goal seemed to be to shock the reader. In fact I don't think I made it past chapter 42 (Girl) in my first reading, I know I put it down thinking that what I was reading was truly appalling and that 41 chapters and the movie had driven the point home well enough. This book is just as appalling the second time through, but- and maybe because my sense for this stuff has been dulled by I Was Dora Suarez or maybe it's my increased exposure to rich white assholes- I found myself looking past the smokescreen of insanity and violence and realizing just how prophetically reflective this book is.

Given the popularity and fidelity of the film adaptation I doubt that I need to tell anyone what American Psycho is about; Patrick Bateman is a part of the zeitgeist, for better or worse. That said it's not difficult to summarize the book, it's the diary of a crazed yuppie serial murder; a sensory experience rather than a traditional story-a manic episode of a novel. In fact, based on interviews with Ellis that's precisely the intention with which he sat down to write what was initially conceptualized as a continuation of his prior works (Less than Zero and Rules of Attraction).

I won't quote directly but Ellis held firm to a belief that the only remaining frontier in literature was sensationalism for the sake of sensationalism. So he sought to craft a story which evoked in the reader extreme feelings, sought to provide otherwise inaccessible experiences that would addict and alienate. This is lost on anyone who wasn't 20ish in the early 80's but Ellis was a rock star, authors could be rock stars- back then you see, people used to read. His two prior books were supremely popular with the MTV generation- his first an instant bestseller and quickly adapted for film, his second getting the same treatment. Since Ellis was eighteen he'd been thrust into the limelight, his name on NYC guest-lists second only to Andy Warhol, his evenings out recounted to him secondhand by the tabloids. It's from the isolating, surreal, and indulgent cocaine-fueled lifestyle of success and celebrity that Ellis was living where we get the seeds of Patrick Bateman.

If I were to judge this book based solely off of intention and execution then I would have to give it full marks. It was one of the most banned books of all time, sold shrink wrapped in Australia- from a perspective of shock and awe this book is a tour de force. But obviously that's not the sole criteria on which anyone would judge a book; a novel is judged on the quality of its world and narrative not just its sensory effects. This kind of judgement based on sensation was/is typically reserved exclusively for pieces in a visual medium, which begs the obvious question, are we to take this plainly repulsive and horrifying thing that Ellis made and treat it as a piece of art? This is the lens through which most people digest this book, as piece of concept art, a discourse of aesthetics.

That discourse is a surface level one, one that could be had with any other piece of transgressive lit. But, American Psycho captured the public's attention like nothing that came before. Unlike Crash or Naked Lunch, books which garnered immense critical praise and eventual cult popularity, Psycho ascended past cult status and into the mainstream almost immediately and its popularity has endured since- Why? Why is it that this specific piece of literature has shifted into mainstream awareness when all the other equally good-equally sensationalist pieces are just cult obscura in the modern day?

The simplest answer is that AP is shallow and accessible on its surface- this is a book about a consumerist serial killer in the 80s. Consumerism bad, Bateman bad, 80s bad, world is bad. It's not just a reflection on and of the culture of the time, it's also made for that self same culture- a kind of cultural Ouroboros. You don't even have to read through the whole thing to get yourself there, the themes may as well be printed on the dust jacket they're so loud. The magic of American Pyscho isn't in the portrayal of white collar douche-bags, for me it's what's subtly buried beneath the noise.

In many ways, despite its immediate popularity, this is a book that's waited for the current moment to unfold itself. What is Patrick Bateman if not the archetype of the modern conservative operator? It was lost on me in the initial reading but the exchange on politics in the first chapter is eerily close to what you'd hear at CPAC:

But we can’t ignore our social needs either. We have to stop people from abusing the welfare system. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights while also promoting equal rights for women but change the abortion laws to protect the right to life yet still somehow maintain women’s freedom of choice. We also have to control the influx of illegal immigrants. We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values and curb graphic sex and violence on TV, in movies, in popular music, everywhere. Most importantly we have to promote general social concern and less materialism in young people.

Bateman is plainly echoing the classic circular talking points that had already worn themselves out at the time of AP's publishing. The reader knows Bateman doesn't give a single care about anything he's talking about, he's saying what he says because he believes it to be the "correct" answer. Deep down at the core of Patrick Bateman is an all consuming void, he's an automaton in the thrall of his cyrenaic pursuits. His politics like his person are the mask by which he disguises his contempt for humanity and lust for power/control/violence.

There's also his incredibly coincidental obsession with Donald Trump, the man he views as paragon and benchmark. Is it coincidence? Ellis was likely in the first wave of NY socialites put off by Don's gaudy mien and rapacity, who better to symbolize the kind of person Bateman is than the Barron and his golden toilet. The fact that Ellis's icon of social rot became the President and pseudo-deity of the corrupt and malformed can't be coincidence. Ellis knew where we were going, I think he saw what American society valued and sought to paint its portrait. Like a modern day Stańczyk sat in his chair, Ellis presents us with truth dressed as the absurd, animals in clean and pressed Armani suits- something for us to ogle and gasp at, to mock and reference and laugh at- though he's the only person not laughing, the ever ironic Jester.

This is a completely different book from what I first read, though I think the point remains the same. American Psycho is a looking glass into a part of reality that is just not accessible from the normal vantage- it's nihilistic and insane, but that's the rub, the world is the same way, and just like Bateman the very worst of it hides in plain sight. This is fascinating and horrible, if you make it past the blood and gore you'll walk away with plenty to think about.

I nearly abandoned The Secret History after its opening pages. This isn't my genre, but the pacing felt glacial, the setup endless, and I found myself questioning whether Donna Tartt’s literary darling deserved the praise it has continued to receive. Had I truly dropped this book where I wanted to, it would have been entirely my loss. What emerges after the first 1/4 is a novel that envelops you so completely that the fictional world becomes more vivid than your actual surroundings.

The story follows Richard Papen, a working-class California transplant who becomes obsessed with an elite group of classics students at the prestigious Hampden College in Vermont. Under the exclusive tutelage of the charismatic Professor Julian Morrow, students Henry Winter, Bunny Corcoran, Francis Abernathy, and twins Charles and Camilla Macaulay have formed their own insular circle which Richard seeks desperately to join. But these students aren't all that they appear to be, and the story opens on their murder of Bunny. The novel unfolds backwards from this revelation.

The atmosphere is what everyone comments on, and for good reason, it’s so complete that Hampden College functions as its own character, brought to life through Tartt’s masterful voice. This isn’t accidental. The Hampden of the novel is the Bennington of reality, where Tartt attended college, and it’s astounding how much of that real place saturates these pages. From the campus rendering to the characters themselves, Tartt has created a time capsule. Through interviews with Tartt’s classmates and contemporaries, we learn that many of her central characters—Bunny, Henry, and especially the enigmatic Julian—are based on real people who dressed, talked, and embodied the very personas that populate her fiction.

(I didn't know any of this off the top of my head either, I have to plug the "Once upon a time... at Bennington" podcast, it's over 15 hours of interviews and discussion of Donna Tartt and the rest of the literary brat pack who attended Bennington during the 80s. If you loved the book I highly recommend this podcast)

This preservation extends beyond simple character work into something more profound. Tartt was documenting a campus that was genuinely atypical: Bennington had no tests or grades, and their professors weren’t just teachers but actual practitioners of their arts. The mythical culture of collegiate excess, of cafe-culture elites rubbing shoulders with the working class, it's a lived experience that Tartt brings completely to life, one that echoes in other works of the era, ironically best observed in "Animal House" - one that doesn’t exist anymore, nor in the specific case of Hampden did it ever exist outside of Bennington. It's into this novel atmosphere that Tartt injects an Oxfordian air into her classics students (one the originals truly did possess) that had already ceased to exist by the time she was writing, creating a vision of intellectual campus life that has fundamentally changed our cultural perception of what college should be and look like.

This cultural impact became especially pronounced during the COVID lock-down, when The Secret History experienced a remarkable resurgence in popularity. An entire generation of incoming freshmen, forced to remain indoors and learn online, absorbed Tartt’s mythological Hampden into their psyche. Her scholarly atmosphere tinged with youthful excess became the imagery of their college daydream, possibly reinforcing the educational priority and purpose of higher education. Whether this influence proves positive or negative remains to be seen, if the Hampden vibe is what students now crave it's up to them to cultivate it. The expectations Hampden sets are certainly unrealistic, colleges are not the free-wheeling intellectual cradles we all wished them to be, but a few disappointed freshmen doesn’t constitute a educational crisis. Honestly, knowing as much as I do about the real Bennington of the 1980s makes me long for such a place — a college designed for people whom the standard scholastic mold simply didn’t fit.

The Secret History continues to have its moment in the sun, inspiring hordes of imitators in what we now call “dark academia.” Recent works like M.L. Rio’s "If We Were Villains", R.F. Kuang’s "Babel", and Olivie Blake’s "The Atlas Six" all bear Tartt’s influence to some degree, a testament to the enduring power of her vision.

The book’s literary merit is also undeniable. Say what you will about Donna Tartt, but you must admit she’s a gifted writer. Her prose is simply untouchable. Consider lines like “Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it,” or her luminous descriptions of Vermont: “The mountains looked lavender in the setting sun, and the snow looked lavender, too, piled up in great soft slopes and drifts.” She demonstrates remarkable skill in blending registers, classical allusions flowing seamlessly into contemporary dialogue and observation.

More sophisticated still is her adoption of the tragic structure of The Bacchae, modernizing it by adapting its themes not just as part of the narrative but mirrored right down to the anachronism of her characters. These Oxfordian students ensconced within a facsimile of the most non-traditional college of its time create multiple layers of temporal displacement that mirror the classical tragic form.

Does this book break one of my biggest rules with its terribly slow opening? Yes, in fact it loses a whole star for it. But here’s my final advice: stopping before page 170 would be doing all the hard labor for none of the reward. Take that slow opening in bits and chunks, don’t try to power through it in marathon sessions. I’ve come to realize that the job of those deliberate early pages is to lure you into the universe, to have you inhabit Hampden alongside these characters. Once that world has you in its grip, you’ll understand why this book has shaped a generation’s vision of what collegiate life can be, even if such a place exists now only in our collective imagination.

Book Club for July (In September) _______

I realize I forgot to review this, and its been a little while since I read it so this review will be short. If you've read Joe Abercrombie before then you should just implicitly trust him to deliver a solid fantasy romp. This is his twist on the fantasy comedy genre, so really it's a much more vulgar Colour of Magic with the blood and gore turned up several notches.

I did enjoy the premise-though its less imaginative than Discworld. We join Brother Diaz, the newly appointed head of "The Temple of the Holy Expediency", which is a fancy name given to an order of monsters and blasphemers the church finds too useful just to execute- think vampires, werewolves, elves, you name it. We join brother Diaz and his gang on their first mission for the pope, to restore the recently rediscovered princess Alexia to the throne of Troy. This does take place in a fictionalized Europe but they're basically working for the Catholic church, it's not 1:1 but it's close, the politics of this different religion pretty much follow reality.

I don't have much more to say- most of the charm is in meeting the quirky cast so I won't expound. This book was good, the dialogue in particular is always a strength of Abercrombie's, and this is no exception. The character work is also extremely solid for a self contained story, there's depth and backstory for each of the "Devils". If you're in the mood for something on the lighter side but doesn't throw the stakes out the window I think you'll enjoy this. I think this is too well done just for 3 stars but personally this didn't grab me in the way 4 or 5 star books do: 3.5/5.