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Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory . Roy Blount, Jr. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. And Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English. John McWhorter. Gotham. New books on the English language and the history thereof appear with some frequency every year. (Our friend Nathan Bierma has tracked many of them in recent years.) In 2008 I particularly enjoyed Roy Blount's splendid bedside book (brief entries, alphabetically arranged) and John McWhorter's short narrative (conversational, but not in the dumbed-down style of many contemporaries). Both books wittily exhibit a delight in and a mastery of the language that is their subject Both make a very skillful job look easy.
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The Butt . Will Self. Bloomsbury USA. It would be petty to ignore a really good book because the publisher failed to send a review copy. Obviously SOME publications got the book— they were able to dispatch it to reviewers who produced uncomprehending or patronizing notices. It would be silly to brood about the tepid reception of Will Self's novel. Still, I find it galling. Self is uneven—from book to book, within books, within paragraphs—and he can be simply nasty. But this phantasmagoric satire, set in a fictitious land that has aspects of Australia and Iraq and other disparate places, is so bracing, so loaded with verbal energy, so inventive in its engagement with all matter of human folly, so gloriously excessive, it stands head and above the usual run of novels. Like many good satiric books, it leaves you with a strange mixture of exhilaration and bleakness.
The General of the Dead Army . Ismail Kadare. Arcade. Kadare's first novel, published in Albania in 1963, first appeared in English translation in 1971 (U.S. publication, 1972). That was a translation of the French translation of Kadare's original. This new edition is a revised version of that 1971 translation-of-a-translation, based on the definitive version of the novel in the bilingual Albanian-French edition of Kadare's complete works. Got that? (For a helpful account of the byzantine history of Kadare in translation, see David Bellos' essay "The Englishing of Ismail Kadare: Notes of a Retranslator.") More than twenty years after Italy invaded Albania (in April 1939), an Italian general is sent to Albania to recover the bodies of Italian soldiers who died there during World War II. The project, which seems fairly straightforward if challenging, becomes nightmarish. While this early book is heavy-handed in comparison to Kadare's later work, it is still absorbing. In part the fascination lies in the Albanian setting, in part in Kadare's sensibility. A paperback edition is due in February from Vintage. Also due in February, from Canongate U.S.: The Siege, Kadare's novel about a Christian citadel in Albania besieged by Ottoman forces, newly "retranslated" by David Bellos.
The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Literature of Pedestrianism . Geoff Nicholson. Riverhead. Here again I will quote from "Wrapping Up 2008" in the December issue of First Things: "I have a weakness for writers with interesting, well-stocked minds who don't seem to be in a rush to get anywhere in particular. The late, late hours, when the house is quiet, seem best for such unhurried reading. Geoff Nicholson is a satiric novelist distinguished by sardonic wit, a scabrous imagination, and raffish charm. A Brit who 'divides his time between Los Angeles and London,' he has given us The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Literature of Pedestrianism. Don't be deceived by the winking subtitle. There is not much history, science, or philosophy in this book, but it is none the worse for that. The Lost Art of Walking is a ramble, and you never know where the next chapter will wander." This is the latest in a cluster of books about walking published in the last few years, and Nicholson's is the most entertaining of the lot. "Alas, on matters of faith Nicholson is tone-deaf. His skepticism is genial, but there are many missed opportunities." Yes, and there's still room for more good walking books.
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