SUNDAY, AUGUST 10, 2014 • T HE BULLETIN F 5
ma ica ina e oa un "The MagIcIan's Land" by Lev Grossman(Viking, 401 pgs., $27.95)
ing "Harry Potter." And so, too, is Grossman, who has
and then translate the pas-
sage back into English using
declared his fondness for the rules he has just made up.
An enjoyable'Bridge' from Nixon toReagan
i'I 0
Peter Pevensie.
"The Magician's Land" finds Quentin out of his 20s and at loose ends, having been ban-
"sparring with other books" The reading-comprehension in his writing. His characters question vanishes even as he ished at the end of the second New York Times News Service are steeped in stories such as reads it, and all around him, book, "The Magician King," Toward the end of "The "The Lord of the Rings" and students are vanishing, too, from Fillory, where he at least Magician's Land," the final its many near and distant rel- whisked off the premises for got to be king for a while. He volume of Lev Grossman's atives. They are familiar to the failing, midtest. takes a dubious magical heist wonderful trilogy for grown- point of self -consciousness, T he first book t a kes u s job with some unsavory charups, Julia and Quentin, both as are so many millennials, through Quentin's years at acters in New Jersey, mourns 30-ish, visit a magic garden with the works of J.K. Rowl- Brakebills, where the students the loss of his girlfriend, Alice, whose plants are expressions ing. How should they refer have sex, get drunk, go off the who is something more horrio f h u man e m otions. T h e to nonmagical people, they rails, talk trash and learn that ble than dead (and also more garden is in Fillory, the Nar- wonder: Civilians'? Muggles? "even the simplest spell had horriblethan avampire, forthe nia-like world that appeared Mundanes? to be modified and tweaked record); and sets about casting in a series of books that they and inflected to agree with the a spell alluded to in the book's loved as children and that, The story so far time of day, the phase of the title. There are some thrilling "The Magicians," the first moon, the intention and pur- digressive set pieces involvthrillingly, turned out actually to exist. book in the series, opens when poseand precise circumstanc- ing the strange adventures of "This is a feeling that you a young man named Quentin es of its casting, and a hun- other characters, a specialty had, Quentin," Julia explains, Coldwater — like Harry Pot- dred other factors." They also of Grossman's. Meanwhile, in pointing out a delicate little ter (but not really like Harry dabblein esotericand danger- Fillory, time is folding into itshrub struggling for Potter at all) — dis- ous magic in scenes that evoke self; the end is near. life. "This is how c overs a w o r l d the lusciously overheated atGrossman is u sually a you felt when you of magic in and mosphere of Tartt's "Secret subtle, sophisticated writer, i Ey ggISSINA N around our own, History." Then they graduate, though, for some reason, he were 8 years old, and you opened and learns he has and the action for the rest of seems to have altered his tone one of the Fillory a great talent as the series switches back and in parts of "The Magician's books for the first a magician. An forth among Brakebills; the Land," using too much narratime, and you felt o versmart, o v e r - world outside, which carries tion with too much broish lanawe and joy and achieving Brooklyn some pretty heavy magic of its guage. A Fillorian monster is a hope and longing high school senior, own; and the world of Fillory, "scary-looking bastard"; some all at once." Quentin shows up which they find to be far dark- other creatures are "uncanny By Sarah Lyall
Out here in the
for his Princeton in-
er and more complicated than
terview at an alum- they had thought. nus' house, only to find the college admis- Whimsy and darkness sions process even more unIn Grossman's prodigious has lately been the subject of pleasant than he supposed. imagination, Fillory, like maga spicy literary debate over The i nt e r viewer has ic itself, is equal parts whimsy what reading is for, pleasure dropped dead. One of the and darkness, coziness and or i n tellectual e n richment, paramedics who arrives on danger, populated by the wonand whether this should be the scene does not appear to drous and the weird. It is (this a binary question at alL The be a real paramedic. An enve- is one of its whimsical traits) issue, roughly, is if it is possi- lope with Quentin's name on flat and held up by a giant ble to be a serious citizen and it seems to contain a lost book stack of turtles, with turtles still admire purportedly non- from the Fillory series. And all the way down, allowing serious books: young adult then Quentin is sucked into Grossman to perform the neat novels, fantasy, genre fiction, a hidden portal leading from trick of alluding to both Dr. books with compulsively in- Brooklyn to Brakebills Col- Seuss and Bertrand Russell in teresting plots. Even Donna lege for Magical Pedagogy, the one fell swoop. Tartt's Pulitzer Prize-winning boarding school that is like, If you loved "The Chroninovel "The Goldfinch" has but not really like, Hogwarts. cles of Narnia" as a child, and been drawn in, pronounced The Brakebills students are particularly if your love was by the critic James Wood to freakishly intelligent and the later contaminated by the rebe too childishly and smooth- school excitingly rigorous. In alization that C.S. Lewis had l y entertaining — m o r e one of many terrific scenes sneaked a stern religious alleKrispy Kreme, perhaps, than in a series full of them, Quen- gory into his box of delights, mille-feuille. tin takes an entrance exam you will be pleased by how "The rapture with w h i ch requiring him, among other Grossman has made the real thisnovel hasbeen received," things, to invent a new lan- Fillory diverge from the twee Wood told Vanity Fair, "is guage, translate a passage fictional one, revealing it to further proof of t h e i n fan- from "The Tempest" into it, ex- be nuanced,morally complex tilization of our literary cul- plain its grammar and orthog- and nasty in a way that, to be ture: a world in which adults raphy, describe "the made-up frank, might have benefited go around reading 'Harry geography and culture and Narnia. Let's put it this way: Potter.'" society of the made-up coun- Martin Chatwin, one of the Oh, dear.I am the sort of try where his made-up lan- children in the Fillory stories, adult who goes around read- guage was so fluently spoken" is a piece of work and he is no
er things, "Bridge" describes Reagan's role in the start
by Rick Perlstein (Simon &
timent" away from feeling bad about America.
Schuster856 pgs., $3750)
of a "shift in national sen-
But it was only the start:
What's dismaying, for me to report and doubtless for
By Jeffrey Burke Newsday
I t says a lo t
a bout t h e
readers to learn, is that Rea-
quality of Rick Perlstein's material and storytelling that morethan 700 pages into his latest cinder block
gan didn't just lose the nomination in 1976; he loses it
of ink and tree, I could still
near the top of page 794 in "Bridge." And that meansat least one more tome to go.
keenly relish yet another
Meanwhile, there's much
to enjoy here. Perlstein bequoting columnist Charles gins with what he calls
tasty fact, another aside: Bartlett on
t h e 1 976 Re- "this opera's overture," Op-
publican convention, Perlstein identifies Bartlett as
the man who "once set up Jacqueline Bouvier's blind date with Senator John F.
Kennedy." "The Invisible Bridge"
IASII:IAN'~ LAND
r eal world, t h e yearning of some readers to experience that same heady feeling
"The Invisible BrIdge: The Fall of NIxon and the RIse of Reagan"
eration Homecoming, a sad melange of public relations and patriotism that had re-
turning POWs serve one last time as distractions from the Vietnam debacle.
is the third beefy volume
Then it's on to a thorough review of Watergate and an
in Perlstein's chronicle of
extraordinary dissection of
meddling in world affairs (e.g., the election of 2000). Readers of Grossman's mesmerizing trilogy might experience the same kind of withdrawal upon finishing "The M agician's
the presidential campaigns Its 810 pages of text (before leading up to and through notes, bibliography and in- the Republican convention dex) join 520 on Barry Gold- in Kansas City, Missouri. water's failed 1964 c amPercolating through the paign ("Before the Storm," narrative is a biography of 2001) and almost 750 on Reagan, from Depression Richard Nixon's comeback boyhood to football aspirain '68 and big win in '72 tions at Eureka College; B ("Nixonland," 2008). movies and unionizing in With "Bridge," Perlstein Hollywood ("I tried to go looks at the punishing de- to bed with every starlet in cline that quickly followed Hollywood and damn near for Nixon. Vietnam, Water- succeeded"); honing his orgate, the Arab oil embargo, atory as a flack for General the Ford pardon and other Electric; and then his tenure traumas raised questions as governor of California, about America's greatness. battling campus militants If the '60s were marked and cheerleading for small by sharp political and gen- government. Soon the Ronerational polarization, the ald is a national phenom. next few years were notable Historians and academfor national self-doubt and ics may dispute Perlstein's suspicion of Washington. It analysis. (Many of them was into this miasma that should envy his clear and Ronald Reagan strode so sinewy prose.) Conservapurposefully, with his pre- tives may shriek over his ternaturally blithe response undisguisedly liberal bent to everything: the "perfor- ("running against Ronald mance of blitheness in the Reagan for anything must face of what others called have been excruciating for chaos was fundamental to those who wished to honor who Ronald Reagan was," truth"). Honest readers of
Land." Short of wishing that
Perlstein writes, and "why
a fourth book could suddenly appear by magic, there's not
he made so many others feel he tells a great tale, in every so good." Among many oth- sense.
postwar U.S. conservatism.
as hell." But this is a quibble.
If the Narnia books were like catnip for a certain kind of
kid, these books are like crack for a certain kind of adult. By the end, after some truly
wondrous scenes that have to do with the dawn (and the end) of existence, ricocheting back and forth between the extraordinary and the quotidian, you feel that breathless,
stay-up-all-night, thrumming excitement that you, too, experienced as a child, and that
you felt all over again when you first opened up "The Magicians" and fell headlong into Grossman's world. Brakebills graduates can have a hard time adjusting to life outside, though some distract themselves by lazily
all stripes will concede that
Reuni ing art and science "Colliding Worlds" by Arthur I. Miller (W.W. Norton4 Company, 352pgs.)
ar and Google. Inventors and engineers make up a large share of his subjects, among them Neri By Jascha Hoffman Oxm an, who is using her New York Times News Service know ledge of bone formation Scientists are logical, mak- todesign better buildings from ing observations and running concrete, and David Edwards, experiments, then building t he founder of Le Laboratoire t heories that explain the data. i n P aris, who has come up A rtists are emotional, work- w i t h methods for inhaling ing in solitude and by intu- f o od and beverages and transition. Or so we are mitting odors using told. cellphones. "Colliding In M iller is a t h i s Worlds," historian liveliest on the field of "bio-art," which and p h ilosopher A rthur I . Mi l l e r uses living tissue argues that artists as raw material, the and scientists have , ' ,, L =f P I 8 8 s ubject of a London a lways had t h e gallery show he cusame mission: to rated in 2011. It is "fathom the reality hard to resist a tiny beyond appearanc~~ggg I. Hii ' "g gold-plated pair of es, the world inviswings grown from ible to ou r e yes." pig stem cells, or a And he argues that after drift- t r ansgenic rabbit that glows ing apart during the Enlight- green with jellyfish protein.
' g6'" "0
enment, the t wi n
b r anches
Then there are those who
encouraging curator than as a critic. But he does let some
cynicism in, as when he relays complaints from scientists at CERN, home to the world's
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largest particle physics laboratory, that "almost nothing was
discussed or explained" when German artist Julius von Bis-
marck, known for bullwhipping statues and stones, was brought in as part of CERN's acclaimed artist-in-residence
program. The book brims with an underdog mentality, as the author explains how the est ablishment ar t w o r l d h a s turned a cold shoulder to science-driven artists. The tide
seems to be turning, as wideeyed futurism goes mainstream and everyone wants to
,ei i
do a TED talk. When it comes to the fu-
ture, Miller holds a utopian vision that includes young people "working with computers made of not-yet-invented materials" and "producing
of understanding have been expen'ment on their own bodcoming back together over the ies. A French artist had cow theories that generate images l ast century, a reunification b o n es inserted at her temples. that can be manipulated like that is accelerating in the dig- Anot her, aftera transfusion equations." Tech gurus seem ital age. of horse blood, said she felt to agree that a discipline-blurMiller's encyclopedic survey "the emotionalism of an her- ring digital renaissance is begins at the dawn of the 20th bivore." And then, in a class of underway. Some researchers century, when physicists as hi s o wn, there is Stelarc, the counter that real science will well as painters were testing Austr alian artist who coaxed continue to demand ultrasperadicalnew models of space his own cells to grow in the cialization rather than skillful and time. In the vein of his pre- shape of a human ear grafted dabbling. vious book "Einstein, Picasso," onto his left arm. Miller's grasp of the scene Miller shows how the discovQuestions o f a t t r i bution is impressive, and he has "an ery of q uantum mechan- t endto come up. (Should Ste- intuitive feel for the beauty i cs inspired a generation of l a r c s hare credit w it h h i s of the unseen," as biographer avant-garde artists, including surgeon'?) "My c o lleagues Walter Isaacson puts it in a Picasso, Kandinsky and Dali, are s ometimes miffed on my dust-jacket blurb. At t i m es, who said, "It is with pi-mesons behal f that I am not listed as his profiles can feel scattered, and the most gelatinous and the c o-creator," confided Da- without the kind of sustained i ndeterminate neutrinos that I v i d W einberg, an astronomer story or argument that usualwant to paint the beauty of the who advised on a chandelier- ly holds a book of this length angels and of reality." like sculpture with hundreds together. S tarting in the 1980s, Miller of gl ass orbs that The New A good approach, I found, is began to spend time with art- York Times called "the entire to browse the book as if it were ists who have found their muse universe on a dimmer switch." a Who's Who of science-drivin science, and he has watched B u t h e was quick to add that en artists — marveling at a as the scene grew. He knows the w ork was seen by more profusion of art that is, just as the field like few others, inter- people "in one day in Madrid the author warns, "sometimes v iewing many of the artists for t h a nhave ever read my Astro- beautiful, sometimes disturbhours at a stretch and visiting physical Journal articles." ing, sometimes subversive, m useums, galleries, media labs O ne gets the sense that Mill- sometimes downright crazy, and corporate behemoths Pix- er is more comfortable as an but always interesting."
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