—J. H. H. Weiler, New York University School of Law; Co-Editor-in-Chief, I·CON
Here, again, is my pick of “Good Reads” from the books I read in 2024. I want to remind you, as I do every year, that these are not “book reviews”, which also explains the relative paucity of law books or books about the law. Many excellent ones have come my way this year, as in previous years, but an excellent law book is not always, in fact rarely is, a “good read” in the sense intended here: curl up on the sofa and enjoy a very good read, maybe even as a respite from an excellent law book. I should also point out that some of these “good reads” are not necessarily literary masterpieces—and yet, still, they are very good reads.
You may note the new title to the series. Given my peripatetic life and persona, I am regularly asked: Where are you truly from? Where is your Home? Hogar? Heimat? Bayit? Casa? Maison? Dom? My my, the enduring power of territoriality as a signifier. Maybe a better question would be: Where do you feel mostly “at home”? Here my answer is easy: my Patria is The Book, the quintessential Wandering (and Wondering) Jew—at home everywhere and nowhere.
My own reading habits are eclectic—so I hope there is something for everyone—as a Christmas gift or even a gift to oneself.
1. Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers (Simon & Schuster, 1981)
2. Anthony Horowitz, The Word is Murder (Century, 2017)
In both of these books a murder takes place, though you could hardly imagine two books more different in approach and style than these. Yet, each is masterly in its respective genre and both are a guarantee of an exceedingly good and “satisfying” read. I put “satisfying” in scare quotes because The Comfort of Strangers will leave you pensive, even troubled. Its ending might be described as a “dark catharsis”. It is a catharsis in that all threads are brought together and, from a literary perspective, done in a masterly manner. But it is not a catharsis in the sense of the satisfaction that is oftentimes associated with the concept.
I write about them together since by happenstance I read them one after the other and I recommend that you do the same; it is almost discombobulating to realize how differently we might react to, and think of, a murder. I hesitated whether to mention murder in the McEwan book for fear of a spoiler. But should you read it, you will realize that I have spoiled nothing.
I have been a devoted McEwan reader since his first novel, The Cement Garden, published in 1978 when he was in his early thirties and I was twenty-seven. I have not stopped reading him since. I thought that I had read his entire oeuvre but discovered this year that I had missed this, his second novel, published three years after the first. McEwan needs no introduction—if you have not read him yet, surely you have seen one of the movies based on his books, such as Atonement. He has justly won all manner of prizes and I would not be surprised if he is awarded a Nobel at some point. He certainly deserves it. The Comfort of Strangers is as good a harbinger as any of his subsequent writings, the work of a mature author; you would never guess that it was written by a man in his twenties. Set in Venice, it has all the features one expects—a profound and nuanced study of human relations (woman and man), indeed of the human condition itself, a typical McEwanesque darkness and a slow build-up of menace. It is one of those books that you do not put down—entranced as you are by the combination of character development, a slow but captivating plot and an almost poetic writing style. Maybe I should add that it is not long, all of 127 pages. Yet it is not a novella—it is decidedly a short novel with brief but well-developed characters, which underlies his mastery.
Horowitz is a totally different story—an intended double entendre. One way to describe this part of his work, and I am not the first to do so, is as a latter-day Agatha Christie. Do not let this put you off! If you are at all attracted to the Whodunit genre, you will not find better. The setting is classic—the body on the floor (so to speak) very early on, and then the slow detection. Daniel Hawthorne is the Mrs. Marple of the narrative, but I can say without hesitation that the study of his character—alongside the unfolding Whodunit—is more fascinating and richer than Christie’s Marple. The social context is contemporary and not the stuffy Upstairs Downstairs Victorianism that has lost much of its appeal. I wrote above “… this part of his work”. There are plenty of movies and TV series based on Horowitz’s work, or part of his work, but special mention should be given to his Young Adult detective stories—a favorite with my grandchildren. If you are searching for a Christmas present for youngsters and are determined to avoid anything that has a whiff of electronics or digital in it, this might be a good choice. For their parents you will not go wrong with The Word is Murder.
3. Daryl J. Levinson, Law for the Leviathan (Oxford University Press, 2024)
This is a serious law book or, rather, a book about the law. It is a very good read since Levinson writes beautifully—you will never struggle with this not-too-long text.
It starts, as expected, by putting the state at the center in the Hobbesian tradition and then looks at the various legal/political attempts to tame this Leviathan. Not exactly an original theme, you may be thinking. In some respects, it is Levinson v. Hobbes—though some have questioned whether he truly manages to extricate himself from the alleged Hobbesian stranglehold on the way we think of the state. But here comes the twist, he examines side by side and interconnectedly constitutional law and international law. This I have not seen done better. The constitutionalists will surely learn from the international dimension, and vice versa. But even readers like myself, who like to think of themselves as both constitutionalists and internationalists, will repeatedly gain little and big insights—both in agreement and disagreement. There will be plenty that you might not agree with (usually of the “what about this, and you didn’t consider that” type reaction) but even there, it will force you to think afresh about themes you considered familiar. One reason I favor this type of book—slowly becoming something of an endangered species—is the boldness of attempting a broad historico-conceptual synthetic oeuvre. This is one of the reasons it was easy to recommend it as a “good read”. It tells a story and it tells it very well.
4. Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion (transl. Tanya Leslie, Seven Stories Press, 2003)
This is a book that only Annie Ernaux, with her remarkable life and remarkably honest and at times painful oeuvre, could “get away” with. If it were, say, written by a man it would receive the justified contempt that the movie What a Woman Wants received: a better title for the film would have been “What a Man Wants a Woman to Want”.
Since I only read Simple Passion this year, I looked up the reviews the book received (and continues to receive, given the renewed interest in Ernaux after winning the Nobel Prize). There is almost invariably an apologetic streak: why the book is admirable despite a certain resistance.
The reason for this is obvious and will leap at you from the very first page of this very short work. It is a compelling narrative—apparently with an autobiographical foundation—of an infatuation (for want of a better word), both emotional and sexual, of a single woman with a married man and their ensuing two-year affair. Central to the narrative is the asymmetry of the relationship. The object of the desire and passion (the man) most certainly does not share the same emotional attachment nor possibly the same depth of personality.
This is one reason why the narrative is so compelling. The narrator is a mature person, sophisticated, experienced, and utterly aware of this circumstance. That is why I hesitated to use the word “infatuation”, which is typically associated with naiveté. The narrator is anything but naïve. This self-awareness is crucial: the way she negotiates with herself this asymmetry is both profound and moving.
The second reason why the narrative is so compelling is the incredibly rich and nuanced way in which the passion and desire are expressed—from both a psychological and, of course, literary perspective. This book is more than a “good read”—it will stay with you: an unparalleled insight into the human condition.
There is a movie based on the book. A decent movie, but do yourself a favor and read the book before you watch it.
5. Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Perilous Futures: On Carl Schmitt’s Late Writings (Cornell University Press, 2018)
Yet another book on that repulsive lifelong Nazi and Jew-hater, Carl Schmitt, you might be wondering. Well, yes it is. This book is not only informative and insightful, but is also a very good read in the manner in which it is written. Schmitt’s later writings are less known to those who are not Schmitt scholars, perhaps with the exception of The Nomos of the Earth. For example, the notorious post-War and posthumous Glossarium has, to my knowledge, only been translated into Spanish. It is hugely relevant to the debate between those who claim that it is possible to disconnect Schmitt the person from Schmitt the scholar and those who claim that his odious political and ideological commitments are inseparable from his supposedly detached jurisprudential stance. Or another example: His original Political Theology was mostly a treatise on politics from which it was very difficult to glean any serious theological engagement or insight. In his later Political Theology II (which I came to only after reading Hohendahl), the theological is very much in evidence and, to my mind, revealed in its poverty. He simply cannot get rid of the “Political”. That institutionalized religion has a huge political dimension is practically self-evident. But it is hopelessly reductive to make that the Alpha and Omega of theology. If you do not want to march through Schmitt’s writings, Hohendahl does a more than creditable job, since he offers both a Critical and critical perspective. Of particular interest is his engagement with the use made by scholars, Left and Right, of the later (geopolitical) Schmitt, arguing that oftentimes contemporary Schmittianism has very little to do with what Schmitt actually wrote and argued.
So, not exactly the kind of book that you might choose to curl up with on the sofa in front of a fire on a lazy Sunday afternoon, but one from which you will learn and become wiser. And, it is eminently readable.
6. Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time (Jonathan Cape, 2016)
I cannot say that I am as assiduous a reader of Barnes as I am of Ian McEwan. This is not a quality judgment, just a matter of personal taste.
You know the difference between history fictionalized (e.g., Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall on the life and times of Thomas Cromwell) and fiction historicized (e.g, any number of books by Robert Harris, such as Pompeii, Conclave, and many others). The Noise of Time is a fictionalized biography of the life and times of Dmitri Shostakovich. It is a small masterpiece written by a great master. The literary artifact is breathtaking with the explicit voice of the author and the fictionalized voice of the protagonist, Shostakovich, enmeshed with each other to great and credible effect.
The story of Shostakovich raises, naturally enough, the issue of “collaboration” with, and “resistance” to, an oppressive regime. I am unaware of any work that manages so well to warn against facile judgmental opinions in such cases. Barnes writes about his subject with admirable empathy, and when empathy turns to sympathy it seems natural and justified. This alone should be an antidote to your possible gut reaction: “I am not interested in Shostakovich, never listened to his music, why should I read this?” And the added little bonus—it will be an incentive to discover or rediscover Shostakovich’s wonderful music. Very good read.
7. Shaked Bashan, Ani Rotza et Zeh Romanti (Betzalel Publishing, undated)
This recommendation is, I fear, only for readers of Hebrew. Shaked Bashan has a regular “column” in the Israeli daily Haaretz, the most serious of Israeli newspapers with a clear liberal orientation which, as one might expect, enrages many. In it, for several years now, she has presented brief conversations/testimonials with women of different ages, mostly in their twenties, about their romantic and sexual lives. She accompanies these with her own illustrations—where men and women are always depicted in similar style—her trademark. This book is a collection of these conversations. I assure you, though oftentimes explicit, there is absolutely nothing prurient or voyeuristic about the narratives. Each column on its own is riveting, but here is a clear case of the whole being considerably greater than the sum of the parts. The conversations are, at times, painfully honest, at times hilarious, bringing out the inner world of her interlocutors and their generation. There is absolutely no condescension and the underlying integrity explains its power. It offers a slice of life that has the great virtue of being both eminently local and yet universal. A compelling read.
8. Marta Soniewicka, After God—The Normative Power of the Will from the Nietzschean Perspective (Dia-Logos, Peter Lang, 2017)
How can a book with the subtitle The Normative Power of the Will from the Nietzschean Perspective make it into the 10 good reads? It may be an excellent book (it is), but curl up on the sofa with it? Well … there is no one reading this post who is unaware of Nietzsche. No one. And everyone can cite at least one of his famous aphorisms, most commonly “God is dead” (few remember the continuation—“God remains dead; and we have killed Him.” And here, for good measure, is another discomforting one: “Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.” This surely means that everyone reading this post is a slave—when is the last time you, scholars, had two-thirds of your day for yourself?)
Slave or Free Person, when is the last time, if ever, you have actually sat down and read Nietzsche, unless you are a professional philosopher? Perhaps a few snippets in some undergraduate philosophy survey course? Nietzsche is deceptive. At one level he appears easy to read: lapidary style, his love of memorable aphorisms—it is certainly not Hegel or Heidegger. But if you have slogged your way through his writings, can you actually sit back and give an account of Nietzschean philosophy? And even if you are one of the gifted and have managed this task, is it the early Nietzsche, mid Nietzsche, or late Nietzsche? You give up and are happy to revert to a few appealing or appalling aphorisms.
Enter Soniewicka. I include her in my Good Reads this year for two reasons. First, she takes you by the hand and slowly, clearly, with continuous references and citations to the sources, walks you through Nietzsche. There is a caveat: it is indeed not a book to curl up with, starting, say, on Sunday morning and putting it down on Sunday night. Take it like a very good grappa, sip by sip. Savor the taste, slosh it round your mind. Come back a couple of days later for another little sip until the bottle is empty. Do it this way and you will discover that it is a very good read. But the book does not just walk you through Nietzsche. Its great intellectual achievement is in how Soniewicka restructures his thought and conceptualizes it in original ways. This is so much more than a “guide to Nietzsche”, and so much more than the title promises. It is as much Soniewicka as it is Nietzsche. And yet she manages to do this with self-effacing humility and without the conceit of quite a few post-modernists who often wish to give the impression that they are more important than the book they are “deconstructing”.
The second reason—this is decidedly Nietzsche for legal scholars. Soniewicka has distilled from his thick brew essential insights (e.g. in Chapters 3 and 4, but not only there) and lessons on normativity in general, on duty, on legal obligation, on agency and agents, and more. At times I even thought, not being a Nietzsche scholar myself, that the Soniewicka distillation was as good as the Nietzschean brew from which it was distilled. (I have a hunch that Soniewicka would consider this a sacrilege). And yes, it is fluent, entirely comprehensible and eminently readable. Does all this mean you need not read Nietzsche? No, but when you do read him, it will all carry a lot more meaning beyond the inimitable Nietzschean flashes.
A good read; sip by sip, reach for the bottle.
9. Arthur Schnitzler, Night Games and other Stories and Novellas (transl. Margret Schaefer, Ivan R. Dee, 2003)
I am a huge devotee of the novella form, less common in the Anglo-American world of letters, and possibly at its most remarkable in the Mitteleuropa of yesteryear: think Joseph Roth, Stefan Zweig, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, and co. And yet I had never read Schnitzler before. The novella is a form unto itself—it is not a long short story nor is it a short novel. I find the form itself addictive (so addictive, I even tried my hand at one: Der Fall Steinmann (Piper, 2000)—though surely not in the same class). If you follow my recommendation and curl up with Night Games—a very good read—you will possibly share my surprise as to why Schnitzler has not become canonical in the way these other household names are. Like all of the great novella authors of his time, his novellas and stories strongly give the flavor of the period in which they were written (early 20th century) and yet, they seem both timeless and universal. What distinguishes him is his concentration on “beating hearts”—romantic relationships, marriages—without a scintilla of romanticism. His construction of situations, of emotions, of ambiguities and deceptions is second to none. They make for a compelling and sobering reading. Start with the very short story The Widower and you will be hooked.
10. Dorianne Laux, Only As the Day Is Long (W. W. Norton & Company, 2019)
The Poetess I wish to recommend is Dorianne Laux—I read her for the first time this year. This book is a selection of her poems covering, it seems, a long period of her life. The mixture is wonderful: formal sonnets and poetic narrative. They are also very personal and inevitably, in family relations (notably with her mother), both painful and tender at the same time.
Here is a snippet from “Second Chances” referring to an obviously beloved niece.
What are the chances a raindrop
From last night’s storm caught
in the upturned cup of an autumn leaf
will fall from this tree I pass under
and land on the tip of my lit cigarette,
snuffing it out?
….
Dear men,
whom I have not met,
when you meet her on the street
wearing the wounds that won’t heal
and she offers you the only thing
she has left, what are the chances
you’ll take pity on her fallen body?
Time and its passage is a theme she returns to again and again. Here is a snippet from “Evening”:
Moonlight pours down
without mercy, no matter
how many have perished
beneath the trees
The river rolls on.
There will always be
Silence, no matter
how long someone
has wept against
the side of a house
bare forearms pressed
to the shingles.
Even if you are not a regular poetry reader, it is hard to imagine that you will not be moved and touched by Laux’s poetic power.
If you are interested in previous Good Reads recommendations, see here.
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