Men, Women, and Other Anticlimaxes

Elegant, provocative, with turns of phrases to warm the cockles of any logophile's heart, Broyard's lyrical essays riff on a wide range of topics--from confronting middle age by holding one's own against a couple of young toughs, to learning how to appreciate a garden's geometry, to knowing what to wear when an Al Pacino film makes it to the local movie-house. Even the most prosaic subjects (fireplaces, for instance) are foils to be ruminated upon, their parts leading the reader on a meditation with one of the most engaging observers and interpreters of suburban life. Broyard's is a joyful, amused take, with dashes of irony, self-deprecation and humor. It is a gentler view of life in the exurbs than, say, Richard Yates's magnificent and shocking "Revolutionary Road," or John Cheever's dismal aspects. Broyard, who spent the post-war (that's WWII) years sowing bachelor's oats in New York City, became a family man, working at home as a book critic, among other things, in Connecticut during the '70s. What E.B. White, another Manhattan ex-pat, did for Vermont farm life, Broyard does for the upper reaches of Fairfield County. And he does it all in the space of a few pages--there are 50 essays, all but two originally published in The New York Times, each one a jewel, a "bon mot." Nietzsche and Freud, St. Augustine and Thoreau are quoted as easily as Broyard's mailman, plumber, electrician and handyman--who, by the way, are as wise as any of the so-called great thinkers. There's no affectation, and the tone is so conversational that the reader has the impression he is holding his own, in very good company, without any effort whatsoever. He feels elevated, complete, in touch with the reason he reached for a book in the first place. It's a rare gift.

Each of Broyard's lyrical articles touches on numerous philosophical or emotive topics, often using the vehicle of his daily life experiences. Broyard writes to hold the reader close, like he and the reader are both in on this giant unspoken joke -- poetic and exaggerated, serious and not really serious-- and he writes definitely with intelligence, without sounding arrogant. He writes with a mix of humor, melancholy, poignancy, inspiration, curiosity, and humanity, and the complexities in his writing and ideas persist throughout all his articles. The reader will have a fun time sensing the tones in Broyard's passages. If nothing else, readers will pick up from his essays many useful words that they never knew existed. I can say that these essays truly inspired in me an appreciation for literary nonfiction. Check out the book at a library first, if you don't want to spend money on it yet.