Posted by: Nick DiMartino
Dang it, I don’t think either one of these is going to work. I’ve been reading two new non-fiction books this weekend, hoping I’d find our group’s book for December, and neither one quite fills the bill.
I had high hopes for Daniel L. Everett’s Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, as my last two blogs must have made quite clear, but halfway through yesterday I developed serious doubts. There continued to be only two great narrative sequences, near the beginning of the book. The family then fades to the background, and the rest of the book has continued to be anthropology with hearty doses of linguistics. Too hearty. The Piraha people couldn’t be more interesting – they have no concept of a supreme or creator god, they don’t have words for numbers or colors, and anger is the cardinal sin – but Everett is way more interested in linguistic patterns than I suspect any member of our reading group will be.
As a consequence, I’ve spent most of today with Russell Banks giving me a tour of racism in this country in his first book of essays, Dreaming Up America. It’s a lovely book, nicely made, gorgeous cover, and the essays are thought-provoking, with a sprinkling of little insights – the first immigrants to dream of returning to their homeland and not assimilating were the Cubans, for instance. I don’t have any problem choosing a superb collection of essays for our discussion book – that worked excellently with Laura Kipnis’ funny, provocative Against Love.
But ultimately Banks’ essays are only okay. I’m not exhilarated from reading them. They’re liberal and literate and quite lovely, but not engaging enough to be special.
The search goes on.
