Laila Lalami in the Chron
Laila Lalami continues to garner reviews in major outlets. Today Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits is reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle. Last time I checked at Moorish Girl, I think she’s in the Big Apple this weekend, reading at Cornelia Street Cafe and the Astor Place B&N. Last weekend she got a review in Newsday; hats off to her and her publisher, Algonquin.
I spent some quality time in the Elliot Bay Bookstore during a monsoon yesterday; I like the way they organize fiction into one large organic space with Jennifer Weiner next to David Foster Wallace and everyone except mysteries shelved together. A new release of William Kotzwinkle’s The Fan Man caught my eye. It’s only the greatest novel of the Twentieth Century. I can’t remember if Commodore Schmuck makes an appearance, wherein he is betrayed at the Bay of Crabs. When this book was released, Mr. President was defending the skies over Alabama. That’s old. That’s before The Partridge Family for the historians out there. But, after I Dream of Jeannie. In other words, a cultural sweet spot. I trace the decline and fall of western civilization to the Partridges, laying a heavy burden on their doorstep. Why? It marked the end of plausible deniablity. Ozzie and Harriet carried off miscommunication in a suburban Utopia marred only by acoustic riffs; the Partridges blew the doors off that construct and then Nixon resigned. What followed? The Disco era. Studio 54. Stagflation. Four hundred and fifty movies starring Patti Duke and/or Lindsey Wagner. Overdevelopment in Southern California, the completion of the Long Island Expressway, beach erosion, John Travolta’s First Comeback, scandal among the Royals, Greenmail, Madonna, and eventually, if not inexorably, widespread obesity. The Partridges!
Gotta go. That theme song is in my head.