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Neil Young, Joe Paterno, Salman Rushdie, David Foster Wallace, et al: fall (and late summer) biographies and memoirs run the gamut

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The names up there in the headline aren’t likely to appear in close proximity very often, but Fall 2012 is no ordinary season. It’s hard to recall, in this reader’s lifetime, a book crop quite so deep and varied, and tomes by and about the four above can stand as representative of the non-fiction division.

Joe Posnanski’s biography of the late disgraced Penn State football coach has actually been out for a while now, and initial reviews seem to confirm the worst fears: that the ramifications of the Jerry Sandusky case and Paterno’s enabling part in it–developments that came to light after Posnanski had committed to the project–have rendered any thoughts of a conventional biography absurd, and that Posnanski, in attempting one, has put himself in a very shaky position. As Posnanski’s former Sports Illustrated colleague Jeff Pearlman has written, “…there is no possible way, one month removed from a report that details Joe Paterno’s knowledge  of a pedophile roaming the Penn State campus (and his refusal to do anything about it, when he clearly could/should have), a proper biography can be released. No. Possible. Way.” I’ll get my own thoughts on the book into this blog once I’ve read it, but trepidation is certainly the word. Posnanski has an awful lot to overcome.

David Foster Wallace gets his first posthumous life-story treatment from D.T. Max in Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story. Wallace’s literary standing and personal mystique show every sign of growing indefinitely; suicides can have that effect, leaving behind as they do the perpetual sense of a story unfinished, compounded in this case by the overwhelming temptation, however appropriate or inappropriate it might be, to find clues to the writer’s deep discontent in his work. It’s highly unlikely that Max’s book will be the last of its kind, but as the first out of the blocks it’s going to get intense attention.

Neil Young, for all his rust-never-sleeps disinclination to stand still artistically, has never been shy about archiving and re-contextualizing his classic work, from Decade to the Buffalo Springfield box to the mammoth Archives project. Now, for the first time, his historian’s impulse takes book form with the imminent appearance of Waging Heavy Peace. This one’s a biggie, folks, potentially right up there with Dylan’s Chronicles Vol 1 and Keith Richards’ Life. You can practically hear the collective heart palpitations  of the worldwide fraternity Kevin Chong has called Neil Young Nation, and I am among their number. Watch this space in the weeks to come for reactions.

Salman Rushdie’s Joseph Anton takes its title from the security code name (a conflation of Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov) used by Rushdie while in hiding from the Satanic Verses-precipitated fatwa declared by Ayatollah Khomeini. A lot of fine journalism and essays have been written on this subject (one of the best being by Rushdie’s good friend Graham Swift in his collection Making an Elephant) but, especially with a story as unique and individual as this one, there’s nothing quite like an inside perspective. At 600+ pages it sure looks like Rushdie won’t leave many stones unturned.

The big fiction names are of course being rolled out too, with Alice Munro, Rawi Hage, and M.G. Vassanji among the Canadians with new books imminent. Two novels by writers who are emblematically English in their distinct ways–Zadie Smith’s NW and Martin Amis’s Lionel Asbo: State of England, are among those I’ll be reviewing in the Gazette, the latter in next Saturday’s edition. And I haven’t even mentioned Chinua Achebe and Richard Russo. It’s all far more than a single humble blogger could hope to encompass, so for two of the most useful roundups, see Quill & Quire and The Millions.

Ian McGillis



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