"A Guardian Angel Recalls" by Willem Frederik Hermans, Translated by David Colmer (1971, 2021)

Admission: I didn't choose this book because it was about people dealing with the first few days of unexpected war; I chose it because the unusual title was written in my exact same style. That said, the plot keeps a striking number of balls in the air, too many for me to even attempt to list here. But there are bombs, and heartbreaks, and World War II, and trials, and interlopers, and 6-year-old girls accidentally getting hit by cars, and angels and devils and modernist paintings—a steady stream of complications all held together quite well by the internal moral dilemmas of Burt Alberegt, an unextraordinary public prosecutor who's just trying to do the right thing for the right reasons, all while our narrator, his assured guardian angel (and unwitting accomplice to a manslaughter cover-up) hovers nearby. It could easily become didactic, but doesn't. And it could easily become farcical and satiric, and almost does early on, but as winding and frenzied and coincidental as the journey becomes, war just seems to put a heavy damper on any hilarity. It's a book that definitely sticks with you, and it's a book that's difficult to set aside for too long, but something holds it back. Maybe, by never quite going in the direction you think it's going to go, in the end, that ethos stops the novel from truly ascending. Like a driver who insists they're going to reach their destination by only making left turns, eventually novel fun becomes routine. At least that's my guess for now. Three stars.

"Actual Minds, Possible Worlds" by Jerome Bruner (1986)

I frequently re-read these things and go back in and edit the shit out of them so keep in mind this review may change. But I was directed here by Maria Popova. You know, the longtime, yellow-tinged "inspiration porn" queen of the creative Internet? She told me that this was a deeply insightful inquiry into the narrative arts by a reknowned psychologist. What I found was, someone who spent nine chapters out of 10 laddering, in excruciating detail, a proof leading up to a psychological point, only, after hours of torturous logic, to finally arrive at the psychological point: when people read things, they combine what they already understand with newly presented information and then use this entwined knowledge in order to form new thoughts. OH, GEEZ, THANKS A LOT, EINSTEIN. Maybe next you'd like to explain to me why exactly human beings enjoy eating tasty food, or why human beings try to avoid experiencing pain, citing a whole bunch of meticulously researched studies. A rare, genuine: No stars.

Sidenote: I'm beginning to think Maria Popova doesn't actually read the books that she promotes.

"A Curtain of Green and Other Stories" by Eudora Welty (1941)

Welty is one of those writers where every story I've seen of hers, in collegiate fiction anthologies, came from this, her first book. And while those excerpted stories are great, you can also already see why her literary standing would sort of peter out. Unlike other older writers I've read recently, the bulk of this feels very much of its time, it doesn't quite transcend it. Maybe it's the tendency towards overwrought description, maybe it's the "young writer" character choices: old people, deaf mutes, freaks, slow people, hitchhikers, traveling salesmen, and adolescents, all similarly "flat"; maybe it's the overreliance on narrative obliqueness, an overreliance on simile—honestly, I can't pinpoint why it all feels so dusty to me. Stories that feel more like character sketches? That end with unexplained deaths? Too many sensitive characters who have unusually vivid daydreams? Comedy that's a tad too broad and drama that's a tad too serious? Pulp irony that might be nothing more than actual pulp? Before TV, there used to be a divide between "pop short stories" and "serious literature," and this kind of feels like it's trying to bridge that divide—it's not "Criminal Minds" and it's not "The Wire", it's more like "NYPD Blue". And who wants to watch NYPD Blue over the other two? The "complete trash" show and the "prestige serial" show are both great. Two stars.

"A Swim in a Pond in the Rain" by George Saunders (2021)

You know how there's this huge gulf between the kinds of stories "literature people" like and the kinds of stories "non-literature people" like? How you can't understand why anyone could possibly think, say, Rachel Cusk's "Outline Trilogy" is required reading when Emily Giffin at least writes books that actually make me feel joy? Well, I'm no George Saunders fan but I'd say this does a pretty good job of at least trying to bridge that gap. Three stars.

"A Rhetoric of Irony" by Wayne C. Booth (1974)

(1) I read this very slowly. Turns out, there's only so much irony one person can handle in one sitting; (2) If you have no interest in literature then you’ll probably feel intense hatred if you attempted to read this; (3) But if you did, you'd find the writing style surprisingly enjoyable, even as he never bothers to dumb things down; (4) I suppose if you wanted a lengthy defense of why irony isn't necessarily the insouciant societal cancer it's often made out to be, this would be the place to turn; (5) You might even be surprised to stumble upon existential discussions of meaninglessness and knowledge and truth and human communion and, briefly, even God; (6) Have you ever thought of irony as frighteningly powerful? Well I didn't, until I read this; (7) One of his main attacks is on the notion that works of literature mean whatever one perceives them as meaning (which I understand to be part of postmodernism and multiculturalism,) which particularly triggered me because I feel my formal English instruction was dominated by that philosophy, and I do not now believe it served anyone's brains well; (8) Can I assure you that you'll feel enriched and rejuvenated upon completing the book? No. I find right now that I just wish all thinking would stop: my eyes hurt. Three stars.