I have been forbidden by wise advisors to go public with the precise subject of my next book. In fact, I doubt the wise advisors would be happy with me even dropping a suggestive hint about it here and there. Let’s just call it The Mystery Project. Still, I’m the kind of guy who can’t help talking about his obsessions. How can I blog without touching here an there about what’s so very much on my mind?
Answer: Keep the mystery to myself, and talk about everything else. The Mystery Project’s era is the Second World War. Plenty to say about that one! It is a singular story, almost novelistic in structure. I dream about it. I think about it all the time. Its principle figures have taken up residence in my mind. They have moved in, put their feet up on the table, and are planning to stay.
So get ready for a post or two about World War II. And about writing history.
I expect good things for and from The Mystery Project, and as it happens I am not alone. It is under contract to a major publisher, with an editor so distinguished that I get a little dizzy whenever I think about it.
And I am behind, damn it!
I’VE BEEN READING AND SEEING:
Well, let’s see.
I am almost finished with the autobiography of the great German literary critic, Marcel Reich-Ranicki: The Author of Himself. It is a mark of the literary provincialism of our era that this is the only English translation of Reich-Ranicki currently in print. This book was a major European bestseller, (600,000 of the German original in print), and has been made into an important motion picture. Yet this curiously titled translation of Mein Leben confronts the American public in an overpriced university press edition—a sure sign that even Reich-Ranicki’s American admirers expect zilch in sales on this side of the Atlantic.
How many Americans have heard of Reich-Ranicki? I myself have not exactly been hiding under a literary rock for the last forty years; yet I myself had never heard of this extraordinary man until I bumped into his name being justly praised by my favorite current critic in the English language, Clive James.
More on Mein Leben when I’m done.
What else?
Two days ago, I was at the Whitney to see two shows: “Off the Wall,” on the performance art of the seventies. And “Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield,” very, very interestingly curated by the artist Robert Gober.
Maybe more on that too!
Meanwhile, happy summer swelter!