unheimlich

Were I a betting man or one burdened with belief, I might find the last week unsettling. Looking for a diversion from the twin tons of Witz and Karamazov, I picked up a pair of novels by Alan Furst at the library. The following day Levi Stahl posted upon one of them, Spies of the Balkans and referenced in comparison the other, Dark Star.

That was odd.

I wound up reading The Keep by Jennifer Egan. I must impart that I truly loathed the novel, its use of Wilkie Collins and the decision to populate its pages with entitled immature folks reminiscent of Clair Messud's The Emperor's Children and Richard Price's Lush Life. There was even a prompt to post something pissy about grad school hep cats in contemporary literature but such has thankfully exhausted itself before landing on the page.

Keith Nearing spends most of his days in Pregnant Widow absorbed in the trajectory of the English novel from Richardson to Eliot. Amis uses such to illustrate the evolution of behavioral codes not just during the sexual revolution but as on ongoing process. Ms. Egan's effort to recall the mechanics of the Gothic novel fails miserably.