My review of Lee Martin’s “Such a Life” is in the Star Tribune this week.
“Such a Life” strikes these father-son themes throughout the collection, with some essays branching out to other topics — the difficulty of eating vegan meals in the South, or the complications of having a neighbor with deeply different political convictions — but always circling back to the relationship between fathers and sons.
My review is up at the Star Tribune. (And if you live in Minneapolis, you can read it in the newspaper.)
I’m not sure where I come down on the argument at hand here, but the book stimulated some good thinking and discussions about it all. And yes, D’Agata comes off as a self-righteous prick, but I’m not sure that diminishes his argument at all - and anyway, he must have agreed to have this book come forward, which is to his credit.
Further reading:
http://brevity.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/in-fairness-to-john-dagata/
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/02/the-art-of-fact-checking.html#ixzz1lvQfjUOF
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/books/review/the-lifespan-of-a-fact-by-john-dagata-and-jim-fingal.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/magazine/the-fact-checker-versus-the-fabulist.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
