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That’s Gonna Leave a Mark

A round of slow claps for Katy Waldman for boldly entering the Frey (I’ll see myself out) with a review of Next to Heaven that declares “James Frey’s new cancelled-guy sex novel is as bad as it sounds.”

Though Frey’s 2006 downfall was the result of fabricating parts of A Million Little Pieces, Waldman notes that “he appears to identify with the #MeToo malcontents and to have adopted the gender politics and postures of that tribe.” Charming. The plot centers on a swingers’ party among a group of people who are even more bored than they are wealthy, whom Waldman describes as “a swarm of status signifiers stuffed ungrammatically into a Burberry trench coat.” Yikes. And while she gives him credit for writing that is occasionally “endearingly excitable,” she also clocks Frey’s fondness for single-sentence paragraphs that “suggest that he’s experiencing a kind of cognitive paper jam.” The hits start coming and they don’t stop coming. Sometimes a thoroughly negative review is a real public service, and this one just might be the headline of the year.

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Listen Up

Over at The Guardian, Fiona Sturges highlights the 10 best audiobooks for summer listening, with a refreshing range of older titles, recent releases, and genre variation. I rarely revisit books, but Tom Lake and James were both stellar when I read them in print, and the possibility of experiencing them through audio performance is pretty compelling.