Lucy Ellmann and Jack Green's _Fire the Bastards!_

ODDLY ENOUGH, I had always assumed that Lucy Ellmann was likely not related to the twentieth century's greatest literary biographer, Richard Ellmann, until I decided to take the plunge with Ducks, Newburyport and found this on p. 4:

[...] what we loved best was going to the Big Building, where Daddy worked, because sometimes you got a free pencil, the fact that we loved climbing on the big rock outside, the fact that I don't know if somebody dragged the thing there or it was just there when they built the university and they couldn't get rid of it, the fact that the paint was interestingly chipped and you could see how many layers it had, blue, red, white, yellow, green[...]

What I instantly saw in my mind's eye was the big seven- or eight-foot tall rock situated outside University Hall on the Northwestern University campus, which was in fact painted every time a sorority or fraternity or other campus organization decided to advertise themselves. I saw that rock every day all the time I was in grad school. Seeing the rock in my mind's eye, I remembered that yes, Ellmann had taught there, years before I got there as it happens, but I wondered if Lucy Ellmann might actually be the daughter of Richard and recalling her own childhood in Evanston, Illinois. Turns out, yes, she is.

Not that the rest of the book is all that autobiographical, for all I know. Lucy Ellmann is not married to an engineering professor in Ohio, nor does she have a home baking business, nor did she teach Ohio state history as an adjunct. But whenever the narrative turns to her parents, I think, hmm, is that her father? Her mother?

Ducks, Newburyport is thus far (I'm on p. 162) living up to its notices. It's really good. But I also found myself wondering about those notices as I skimmed them in the fron pages of the book. Do hard-working book reviewers--or for that matter, members of juries of prestigious prizes--really have time to read through these 1000-page experimental novels before deadline? Or do they have to, you know, skim, dip, guess?

If you can find a copy, Jack Green's Fire the Bastards! is still illuminating. Green recounts being fascinating by William Gaddis's daunting debut novel, The Recognitions, looking up some reviews, and realizing that most of the reviewers, whether dismissive, neutral, or politely praising, had not actually read much of the book at all, relying instead on publicity info provided by the publisher.

There are a lot fewer newspaper book reviewers (and a lot fewer newspapers) than in Green's day, but you wonder how many of the people doing online reviewing or sharing opinions on Goodreads or blogs like this one actually read the book in question.

Tell you what, though--the opening pages of Ducks, Newburyport also includes, right alongside the snippets from Los Angeles Review of Books and Cosmopolitan, blurbs from the owners of independent bookstores. You know what? Those people I trust. God bless them.