Book report for May 2025

Life has no regard whatsoever for literary endeavors, ambitious production schedules, word-count goals, or good intentions. There has been a paucity of missives, a dearth of Joggles, in the last several weeks. The doctor is aware of this situation and the proper authorities have been notified. That simmering sound you hear is essays in progress on how economies thwart the thinking life, how management anxiety produces a mania for measurement, and a short list of those with whom Dr Essai would like to spend a few hours in a coffee shop. The TJM staff heads to Iceland in two weeks, so everyone has been put on double shifts. Your thirst shall be slaked, this is our vow.

Meanwhile, sentences were ingested, pages were turned, books were read last month.

Completed

• Who I Am, Pete Townsend. Uneven memoir by the great guitarist, songwriter, and founding member of The Who. Townsend possesses one of the keener minds in rock ’n’ roll and he writes well. The book could be 100 pages shorter, but if you grew up with the band, as I did, there’s a lot here. Townsend does not gloss over the tawdry episodes of his life—whatever you do, do not marry him—but in the end is kind to his bandmates, and if nothing else, the book is a fascinating chronicle of his extraordinary ambition.
• Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life, Zena Hitz. Thoughtful meditation on and bracing defense of cultivating an inner life through reading, contemplation, and retreat from the witless pressure to do only what is deemed of practical use and profit. Hitz is the rare scholar who writes well, and she has little regard for what universities have become, which spoke to me. There will be more about her book and ideas in a forthcoming letter.

In progress

• The Great American Essays 2003, Anne Fadiman (ed.)
• Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr, John Crowley
• Dust and Light: On the Art of Fact in Fiction, Andrea Barrett

Purchased

• The Book, Keith Houston