This week’s Brieflier Noted included “By Nightfall,” by Michael Cunningham; “The Killer of Little Shepherds,” by Douglas Starr; “Foreign Bodies,” by Cynthia Ozick; and “How to Live,” by Sarah Bakewell.
The selection from the “By Nightfall” review intrigued me: “Cunningham’s latest novel seems almost like a dare: can Auguste Rodin, Daisy Buchanan, Damien Hirst, Gustav von Aschenbach, and the rock band Styx all fit in a slim novel that spans only five days and unfolds almost entirely in Manhattan? As it turns out, absolutely.” I borrowed an extra copy of the book from the office and finished it this afternoon, and I might buy it for about a dozen people this Christmas, because God, Michael Cunningham is good:
There is the glamour of self-destruction, imperishable, gem-hard, like some cursed ancient talisman that cannot be destroyed by any known means. Still, still, the ones who go down can seem as if they’re more complicatedly, more dangerously, attuned to the sadness and, yes, the impossible grandeur. They’re romantic, goddamn them; we just can’t get it up in quite the same way for the sober and sensible, the dogged achievers, for all the good they do. We don’t adore them with the exquisite disdain we can bring to the addicts and the miscreants.