This week's edition of Reading About Reading is more late than Intern Alexis' period, but that's not gonna stop her from getting down to business with the Times Book Review in which Bernard-Henri L vy fights back while Jay McInerney's latest effort is flogged into submission. Add to that a light slapping of Siro Hustvedt, and you've got a gleefully angsty review. After the jump, Alexis wallows in the negativity.

Letters

Go figure: Bernard-Henri L vy was not as thrilled with Garrison Keillor's review of his book, "American Vertigo," as we were. In his letter to the editor, he acknowledges that Keillor's deliciously cruel review was amusing and "well done" but "this kind of performance, with its dizzying wit, may end up by missing the point altogether. And my fear in this case is that your readers, lending a trusting ear to their nationally known storyteller-turned-critic, might remain utterly unaware of the basic questions that constitute the modest heart of my inquiry " He ends his letter on a rather amazing note:

now that he's had his fun, it is these questions that I would love to finally take up with the herald of Lake Wobegon. At a time and place of his convenience. That is, on the turf and in front of the public of his choosing. But face to face, this time. On equal ground. He may consider this an invitation.

Did BHL just challenge Garrison Keiller to a duel? We sort of think so. Might we be so bold as to suggest a dance-off instead? Or, heaven help us, a motherfuckin' walk-off!


The Good Life
 By Jay McInerney
Reviewed by Paul Gray

Paul Gray was not so taken with McInerney's latest novel, "The Good Life," in which he tackles 9/11. Gray writes: "With a little additional time for reflection, McInerney might have conceived a more resonant fictional use of the literal horrors in Lower Manhattan.
Instead, he's turned them into a Hitchcockian MacGuffin, a crowd-gathering catalyst to draw attention to the novel's real subject, an oddly listless and unappealing adulterous affair." What seems to particularly irk Gray is all of McInerney's fancy brand dropping. The main character Luke, drops the fancy left and right:

While he phones his widowed mother in Tennessee, Luke swivels in his Bank of England chair. When he needs to know the time, he checks his Rolex Yachtmaster. On a tryst to Nantucket with Corrine, Luke ventures out for supplies clad in L. L. Bean lace-up boots and a Barbour coat.
He smokes, now that 9/11 has got him like Corrine and many others in the novel started again, Marlboro Lights, which he fires up with a Bic. Getting dressed for a pre-Christmas lunch at '21,' Luke selects 'a bird's-eye suit from Dunhill; a spread-collared shirt with red, white and green stripes that he thought of as his Christmas shirt, and a solid red Charvet tie.' Unfortunately, that Dunhill suit is as empty as the novel it's wrapped in.

This image was lost some time after publication.

Before we even read this review, we looked at its accompanying illustration, noted Jay McInerney's sad, puppy dog eyes, furrowed brow and droopy, droopy jowls, and knew McInerney was in for nothing good. We were right.


A Plea for Erros: Essays
 By Siri Hustvedt
Reviewed by Ada Calhoun

Following Gray's takedown of McInerney, we were ready for some more negativity. So we were pleased to stumble upon Ada Calhoun's skewering of Siri Hustvedt's new collection of essays. According to Calhoun, Hustvedt — aka Mrs. Paul Auster — has "constructed a fortress out of pride, and these essays offer glimpses into her life, writing and indomitable sense of self-worth." Yikes! Calhoun continues: "She name-checks Saussure, Lacan and the linguist mile Benveniste, for goodness' sake, on 'the polarity of person and nonperson.' Other themes include private versus public and the relationship between 'words and things.' She even trots out linguistics majors' all-time favorite disorder, aphasia. It's all very 'Wittgenstein for Dummies.'"

Good point, Calhoun, but we sort of love aphasia too... Sometimes when we're really drunk and stumbly and uncouth, we pretend it's aphasia. So we kind of get where Hustvedt's coming from. Bottom's up and all that!