Jeffrey Eugenides won a Pulitzer Prize with his clever novel, Middlesex, in 2002. The Marriage Plot is a different kind of a novel based on Eugenides’ experience attending Brown University in the early 1980s. Eugenide’s main characters, the moody Madeleine Hanna who loves to read and wants to get a Ph.D. in English, Mitchell Grammaticus who is deeply into religion, and the troubled, brilliant science major, Leonard Bankhead, are funny and tragic. Mitchell loves Madeline, but Madeline loves Leonard. And Leonard has “issues.” Diane and I listened to all 14 hours of The Marriage Plot. The excellent narrator, David Pittu, kept us interested even when the story seemed to sag. I could have done with less focus on Mitchell’s trip to Greece and India. Although there is a marriage plot here, the novel has an incomplete feel to it. Hopefully, Eugenides will write a sequel to tie up the loose ends. But if college life in the 1980s pushes your nostalgia button, The Marriage Plot is for you. GRADE: B
THE MARRIAGE PLOT By Jeffrey Eugenides [Unabridged Audio Book]
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John Sutherland’s massive The Lives of the Novelists is a browsers delight! From the 17th Century and Daniel DeFoe to the 20th Century and Fredrick Pohl (yes, a science fiction writer made the list!) you’ll find hours of entertainment and enlightenment in these pages. Yes, the lists are quirky. Many canonical novelists aren’t included and some surprising authors are. Sutherland includes information that you might not be familiar with. For instance, did you know Edgar Allan Poe spent the last hours of his life delusional, walking the streets of Baltimore wearing someone else’s clothes, calling out for “Reynolds”? The major writers are here: Jane Austen, Henry James, James Joyce, Stephen King, etc. But it’s the quirky picks that create much of the fun. If you’d like to take a look at the list of 294 novelists, just click 
Multimillionaire author Reid Hoffman, co-founder and chairman of LinkedIn, shares his views on how to be successful in the 21st Century. Hoffman says in the 20th Century, your career resembled an escalator: you went to college, got a job, moved up the food chain until you could retire and enjoy the rest of your life. Today, educated young workers can’t find jobs, Baby Boomers who would like to retire stay in their jobs because the economic uncertainty, and workers in the middle fear for the next wave of lay-offs or “restructurings.” The big take-away I learned from this book is the importance of networking in the job market. More than ever, it’s who you know. Of course, Hoffman just happens to operate a web site that facilitates job networking. So, yes, you could consider The Start-Up of You as a long commercial, but Hoffman provides plenty of other information about transforming yourself into a start-up company of one to make the book worthwhile. There’s plenty of job strategies to ponder here no matter what you do for a living. GRADE: B+
Patti Abbott mentioned John Cheever’s wicked novel, Falconer, a few weeks ago. It had been decades since I read it so I dug it out of basement bins and reread it. John Cheever made his reputation by writing some of the best short stories ever written. But, occasionally, Cheever turned to writing sophisticated novels. Falconer draws on Cheever’s own experience at teaching in a prison. There are some obvious Crime & Punishment parallels yet Cheever manages to engage the reader in a life that remains tethered to evens in childhood. Cheever remains the best sociologist of dysfunctional middle-class families in America. Yet his story in Falconer swims in Black Humor and cerebral writing. If you find you enjoyed Falconer, I’d further recommend Cheever’s underrated novel, Bullet Park which is even edgier. 
Yes, I’m a huge Rachel Maddow fan so it should not surprise you to learn that I dropped everything and furiously read Drift. Rachel Maddow is concerned that over the decades American military power has become a political tool shrouded in secrecy. Rachel worries about the “privatization” of many former functions of the military (started by Defense Secretary and later Vice-President Dick Cheney). She finds the massive growth of military contractors disturbing. The volunteer armed forces further distances war from the average American. The state of perpetual war (aka, “the war on terrorism”) has become a permanent feature of our culture. You might not agree with all of Rachel’s arguments, but no matter what your politics you’ll find the current state of American military power troubling. I found Rachel’s analysis compelling. GRADE: A
Graham Greene’s Travels With My Aunt might be Greene’s drollest novels. This movie version, starring Maggie Smith, captures the cleverness of the book but adds some spice of its own. Maggie Smith, after her 1970 Oscar win for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, takes on a completely different role in the outlandish Aunt Augusta. Directed with panache by George Cukor, with the adroit Alec McCowen as Maggie Smith’s bewildered nephew Henry, the screwball Travels with My Aunt will delight you with its madcap machinations. GRADE: A
I was a big fan of Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply so I had great expectations for Chaon’s latest short story collection, Stay Awake. And, mostly, those expectations were fulfilled. Chaon writes about guys whose girl friends get drunk and fall out of trees. Then, at the hospital, the girl friend (perhaps under the influence of Happy Drugs) admits she’s married. But, there’s more to the story. In fact, after you finish a Dan Chaon story, you’ll be thinking about it for awhile because there’s always more to his stories. My only quibble is a story titled “Thinking of You in Your Time of Sorrow” which is written in the second person. I dislike stories written in the second person because the technique distances me from the story. There are plenty of strong stories in this collection that will stay with you for a long time. Dan Chaon is one of finest practitioners of the art of the short story. Stay Awake proves it. GRADE: A-
After much delay, Mad Men returns to AMC with a new 2-hour episode tonight at 9 P.M. EDT. Check your local listings for the time in your area. I’ve been a fan of Mad Men from the beginning. I’ve even persuaded some of my students in my ADVERTISING classes to watch Mad Men and see how advertising was done in the 1960s. Mad Men surprises its viewers with deft plot-twists and startling behaviors by the remarkable cast of characters. Although Jon Hamm as Don Draper gets most of the attention, I love the women in this program: Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), Betty Francis (née Hofstadt, formerly Draper) (January Jones), and Joan Harris (née Holloway) (Christina Hendricks). They could be the best cast of women on TV. If you haven’t been watching Mad Men you’re missing one of the best series ever.