Good morning. First up, Christopher Caldwell reviews Serotonin in Commentary: “Certain basic things that important novelists do, Houellebecq does not. Great novels usually concern the relationships, institutions, and ideals out of which the ‘bourgeois’ social order is knit together—marriages, schools, jobs, piety, patriotism. But in our time, relationships fail to take root. Institutions fall apart. The visible social order seems not to be the real one. Many novelists limit their vision to those narrow precincts where the world still makes sense (or can be made to make sense) in the way it did to Balzac or Flaubert. Often these are contexts in which a set of rules has been bureaucratically imposed, or grandfathered in: a SEAL team in bestselling fiction, a university literature department in more arty work. Houellebecq is up to something different. He places his characters in front of specific, vivid, contemporary challenges, often humiliating and often mediated by technology . . . The Outsider is Everyman. Houellebecq’s reputation as a visionary rests on his depiction of what we have instead of the old bourgeois social order.”

Terry Teachout writes about memory and the experience of time during his wife’s illness: “It struck me the other day that ever since Mrs. T went into the hospital, our life has come to resemble Groundhog Day, an endless succession of repeat performances. In my case, I get up in the morning and spend the day writing or running errands. Unless I have a show to see, I then pick up something enticing for Mrs. T to eat and head for the hospital, where we hold hands, watch a movie or two, and talk about nothing in particular. Then I go home and go to bed, and the next day I do it all over again. I am, like Bill Murray, stuck on hold, the only difference being that I know what has happened to me—and that, sooner or later, it will end.”

A painting previously credited to the “Studio of Rembrandt” now said to be a Rembrandt through and through. “Two years ago, the painting was sent to New York University for conservation and cleaning. There, conservators began removing layers of overpainting and dark, thick varnish that had been added over centuries — and they began to suspect Rembrandt himself was responsible for the original, delicate brushwork underneath.”

“When the Southern novelist Gordon, herself a recent convert to the faith, reads two unpublished novels in manuscript, she is totally taken aback. Most American Catholic literature of the age was more notable for its piety than its technique. The American literary landscape, as Gordon saw it, seemed securely dominated by a desiccated, sterile Protestantism that had found classic expression in Henry James, but had now lapsed into what she and Senator Eugene McCarthy denounced as a largely ‘homosexual’ culture of decadence. But there, at her writing desk, she reviews the work of two young Catholic novelists—one a recent convert and one reared in the faith—and is astonished at the soundness of the ‘technique.’ Amid the dead land, there is new life, but not just that; it strikes her as coming from a totally unanticipated source.” The novels were by Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy.

Bill McMorris goes vegan: “You must be wealthy to free yourself of animal exploitation. Not only do the groceries cost more, but the heating bill skyrockets too. For some reason, abstaining from meat and eggs and dairy left me perpetually freezing. I couldn’t throw on long underwear and a coat without contributing to the abuse of sheep. Moral superiority and smugness are a good source of heat, but I found that my best bet was to jack up the thermostat to 80 and worry about the gas bill later . . . Reports of veganism’s growing numbers are misleading. Most people who adopt a vegan diet do so temporarily. It is an effective weight loss tool; as I discovered, it takes only three days to lose all interest in eating.”

Essay of the Day:

In Electric Lit, Kristopher Jansma tells the story of how J. D. Salinger’s story “Hapworth 16, 1924” was nearly published as a novella in 1997. At the time, it would have been Salinger’s first book in over 30 years and may have led him to follow up with more works. As far we know, he never considered publishing anything during his lifetime again:

“In November of 1996, Orchises Press, a tiny independent publisher in Alexandria, Virginia known mostly for putting out small books of poetry, quietly began to tell booksellers that early the following year it would be publishing the first new book by JD Salinger since 1963. The book had an odd title, Hapworth 16, 1924, and would mark the first break in the reclusive author’s decades-long silence. Curious Salinger fans soon were even able to preorder the book on a new bookselling website, Amazon.com.

“There was no official release date set, but it was said to be expected in April. But as April arrived, a notice went up on Amazon.com saying that the publication was delayed indefinitely. In the end the book was never published, and neither was anything else by J.D. Salinger, even after his death thirteen years later, in 2010.

“What was Hapworth 16, 1924, and why had it almost–and then not–been published? Only recently have readers finally begun to get some answers. The saga of Salinger’s missing book spans decades, involves a 20,000 word New Yorker story about summer camp, former New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani, billionaire Jeff Bezos, and a man named Roger Lathbury who dreamed of bringing his favorite author out of hiding.”

Read the rest.

Photo: Villnöß at night

Receive Prufrock in your inbox every weekday morning. Subscribe here.