Bright Lights, Big City

Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney is the literary equivalent of a Cocteau Twins song. It's a cocaine-fueled binge through New York in the early eighties, where everyone wears sweet outfits and the women are rated on their statuesque, art-deco "cheekbones." It's hazy and decadent and fun. The protagonist--"you" in the novel's strange second-person point of view--is a fact checker at a magazine exactly like the New Yorker who parties all night to get over his wife's departure and, we later learn, other personal tragedies. Apparently there's a Michael J. Fox movie based on the novel, and I'd like to see it. The book mostly held up, though the last thirty pages veered toward the maudlin, then back again, as though flirting with, but not totally committing to, a Hollywood ending. 

McInerney is a member of the literary "brat pack," the small group of writers that led gaudy, precocious lives in the 1980's. The only other brat packer I've read is Bret Easton Ellis. I found Ellis's Less Than Zero well written but nauseating in its subject matter, and I probably won't go back to him. Still, something about early summer makes me want to crank up a synthesizer-laden dance track, drive around at night under neon lights, and come home to a good brat pack novel. 

Killers of the Summer Moon

Killers of the Summer Moon by David Grann is a suspenseful, absorbing true story of the Osage killings of the 1920's. Until Grann wrote this book, this event was mostly forgotten to history. It tells  of how the Osage Tribe in Oklahoma secured mineral rights to their own land just before an oil boom, subsequently becoming some of the richest people in the world. Within a few years of the boom, many of the tribe began to be killed. The book charts the quest for justice, and seems to reach its conclusion two-thirds of the way through, but the last third is the best, and saddest, and most compelling read. 

A combination of racism, lax state law, and an almost nonexistent federal government allowed the violent plunder to last as long as it did. Grann credits the FBI with mostly stopping the killings (though he's quick to applaud specific agents, not the director, J. Edgar Hoover), along with the desperate actions of the Osage. As the book drew to a close, my overwhelming feeling was of sadness. Killers of the Summer Moon is an exciting detective story, and then subtly, and rightly, transitions into a longer meditation on the injustices of this piece of American history. It's sobering. While the book does its best, and is fantastically researched, in all likelihood, some questions will never be answered about the Osage killings.

Braving the Wilderness

Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown was loaned to me by a staff member at my school. I intended to politely thumb through it and ended up reading the whole thing. It's a fast-paced nonfiction text that I suppose would fall under the "self-help" genre, but it's probably a bit more than that. The "wilderness" in the title is the fraught cultural environment that we all inhabit during these social-media-driven times. It's hard not to like Brown. She's a big-hearted Texan researcher with a complicated background, and she authentically  desires human kinship and understanding. Her book reads like a TED Talk, and sometimes New-Age feel goodery, but I liked the message.

The reason the staff member loaned me Braving the Wilderness was that one of the chapters ("People Are Hard to Hate Close Up. Move In.") reminded her of a graduation speech I gave a few years ago. In my speech, I discussed how true dialogue only happens face-to-face, never on social media. Brown agrees. As I scroll through my Bookface feed, I am constantly bombarded by second-person, straw-man, if-then attacks. (A recent meme berated "me" for not supporting queer people of color, and thus promoting rainbow capitalism and police brutality.) This hostility is one of the great problems of our times, and if Brené Brown wants to use her growing cultural influence to promote peace and harmony, then more power to her.