Forty-one False Starts
by Janet Malcolm (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27)
Journalists who profile artists often forget that making things is hard work, said Pamela Erens in TheMillions.com. Not New Yorker contributor Janet Malcolm. In this collection of profiles of various painters, photographers, and authors, process always matters more than personality. It’s a “very refreshing” approach, even after Malcolm discovers that J.D. Salinger, Diane Arbus, and several other legends all apparently believed that they never created work as great as they’d hoped to.
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The Ordinary Acrobat
by Duncan Wall (Knopf, $27)
Duncan Wall was a circus skeptic before he became an aficionado, said Elizabeth McCracken in The Washington Post. In this “lovely” new book, the young lecturer at the National Circus School of Montreal covers an “astonishing” amount of circus history while recounting how a kid bored by circus acts eventually chose to learn acrobatics, juggling, and clowning. Those first-person chapters lack drama, but Wall is terrific at explaining why each act is an art, a way to get audiences dreaming.
Daily Rituals
by Mason Currey (Knopf, $25)
Gertrude Stein stared at cows. Igor Stravinsky did headstands. In this “lean, engaging volume,” former blogger Mason Currey surveys the work habits of history’s great creative minds and shows us there’s no right way to get one’s juices flowing, said John Wilwol in NPR.org. There’s “something reassuring” about watching so many heroes battling the challenges of the daily grind. But while none discovered a way that anyone could produce good work, “all greats have their way.”A Grand Complication
A Grand Complication
by Stacy Perman (Atria, $26)
Relentless one-upmanship sometimes has its benefits, said Robert H. Frank in The New York Times. In the 1920s, automobile magnate James Ward Packard and Wall Street scion Henry Graves Jr. drove the art of watchmaking to new heights by commissioning what were then the two most elaborate personal timepieces ever made. In Stacy Perman’s “artfully told” account, the contest’s wastefulness remains ever in sight, but so too does the salve such battles provide for the psyches of the super-rich.
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”