Barkan's Briefly Noted, Vol. 2

Quick book reviews of new(ish) releases

One of my ongoing drum-banging exercises is that more people, especially on Substack, should review books. I’ve been slowly, between my other commitments, trying to do this myself, and I’ve hoped to roll out an interesting interview series with authors to keep coverage going here as much as I can. Newspapers used to review books and they don’t do it very much now because most of them have slashed their arts sections or gone out of business altogether. Magazines that used to regularly write on books don’t anymore—and if they do, they prefer soft focus coverage on a writer who has already received a large amount of press. Half of the thrill of writing on books is discovering a writer who isn’t wildly famous and touting said writer to the world. Pitchfork writers used to do this for bands, and it was a healthier time when the incentives were geared toward hunting out new talent. Of course, book reviews must be critical too—they need to be honest. Otherwise, the culture slowly withers.

Last year, I launched the Barkan’s Briefly Noted series and I’ve been meaning to follow up with another. I hope to do more soon. Do you have a book that’s been released over the last year or so and do you want me to write about it? Get in touch. You can reply to this email.

Just City: Growing Up on the Upper West Side When Housing Was a Human Right by Jennifer Baum (Fordham University Press)

Jennifer Baum’s memoir, Just City, tells two stories: how housing in New York City used to account for the working-class and what it was like to come of age, in the city, in the 1960s and 1970s. Baum grew up in RNA House, a middle-income Mitchell-Lama co-op on the Upper West Side; the building, which still stands today, is a brutalist structure that might not seem particularly significant. But RNA House was one of many subsidized, postwar developments designed to ensure the non-wealthy could comfortably raise families in the five boroughs. Baum’s parents bought their three-bedroom apartment for $3,800 in the late 1960s—this, adjusted for inflation, is only about $36,000 today—and never had to worry about onerous rent hikes or eviction notices. The Upper West Side, as Baum reminds readers, was far from idyllic in this era, with rising crime and dilapidated infrastructure, but it was multiracial and fairly egalitarian—at least by the standards of the hyper-gentrification that was on the horizon. Baum, who came from a Jewish family, befriended Black neighbors, and all of them attended local public schools until she enrolled, with some misgivings, in Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School. Baum, a filmmaker and writer by trade, writes well on housing policy—how local and the federal governments once prioritized subsidized and public housing construction until, during the neoliberal era, they no longer did—but my favorite parts of the memoir were her personal reflections on being a child and teenager in a very different New York. She does not idealize the dangers of the 70s—the threat of robbery and murder, the potential for chaos in a night out. But there was a liberatory aspect to being a child then that she captures well, and one I think today’s surveillance-obsessed parents should keep in mind. Baum was free to roam the city, strike up friendships, attend concerts, fall into and out of trouble, and grow up into a fully-functioning adult without neurotic and overbearing supervision. Children then were not infantilized. In a far more sanitized, safer New York, parents seem more terrified than ever. There are aspects of the Old Days we never want to return to, but Baum’s memoir is a reminder of the social democracy that was lost in New York and the cultural dynamism that came with such far-reaching policy.

The Hermit by Katerina Grishakova (Heresy Press)

Andy Sylvain is a 50-year-old bond trader who is something of a Master of the Universe. He’s exceedingly successful and wealthy; he may be freshly divorced, but he’s still got his six-bedroom colonial in Westchester and a young girlfriend. Though Andy should be entitled to a victory lap or three, he’s “still hustling” because that is what he does—he ceaselessly accumulates, working toward an end that, as his life progresses, begins to feel nebulous. The Hermit is the sort of novel that will draw comparisons to The Bonfire of the Vanities, but Grishakova writes with even more precision than Tom Wolfe about the realm of Manhattan finance. This is a novel where we are told Andy enters 350 basis points, or 3.5 percent over a 3-month LIBOR index. The Hermit is more sober and less exuberant than anything produced by Wolfe, and that fits for a 2010s-era finance world that is fully computerized and arguably darker, with greed so sanctified. If The Hermit never coheres quite as I’d like—the title is a giveaway of where Andy is headed—I admire the dexterity and keen eye Grishakova shows, and her ability to deftly craft a social novel that captures fraught, and always intriguing, class dynamics.

The Authenticity Industries: Keeping It “Real” in Media, Culture & Politics by Michael Serazio (Stanford University Press)

Serazio, a journalist and associate professor of communication at Boston College, sets out to answer a question we think we know but never explain very well—what is authenticity anyway? When we talk about it—in politics, television, and the broader culture—what exactly do we mean? The Authenticity Industries makes a study of what has become, for Americans in particular, a deep and perpetual obsession. He begins with Jean Jacques-Rousseau, who romanticized the language and mechanisms of self-actualization without “editing” or outside interference. Authenticity isn’t supposed to try, even though the modern kind—in reality TV, in politics—is plainly orchestrated. The true self calculates backstage. Serazio takes a tour of the political realm, from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Donald Trump, two politicians who are diametrically opposed but similarly hailed (by their own camps) for their authenticity. AOC is authentic because she’ll livestream everyday life, including the assembly of her Ikea furniture; Trump wins authenticity points because his language seems so unmediated, so stream-of-consciousness, like your raging uncle at a backyard barbecue. On reality TV, as Serazio explains, authenticity has always meant uninhibited self-revelations. On social media, influencers must appease corporate overlords (racking up sponsorships) while staying “true” somehow to the persona they’ve crafted. In a world of screens, with everything so mediated and fake, we feel this nostalgic pull toward the “authentic.” Capitalism brought market logic to any and all facets of culture. The Authenticity Industries is a lively, analytical exploration of these worlds, and a skillful merger of reportage and academic analysis.