Read: "My Pilgrim's Progress," by George W.S. Trow (1998)

Why: Enjoyed his book "Within the Context of No Context," and found this on the shelf.

It's a collection of essays on 20th century culture

Takeaway: This book was mainly dictated, not written, and it is kind of fun to read for that reason alone. The language is very precise but there's a looseness of expression that makes the words fly by.

While reading this book, though, see if you don't start thinking about your own smart friends, and how they might have deeper things to say. Trow's main theme is that the WASP context in which he grew up, as a kid born during World War II, is gone -- that our culture, which we used to create ourselves, has taken on its own life, and we're now separate from it. He's speaking as a representative of the culture-creating class of 1950; his main qualification for writing this book seems to be his family background and the books he can remember reading as he speaks into his tape recorder, feeling around for something specific to say about his vague sense that things have changed. It feels like a long phone call. There's one eye-glazing section where he reads the headlines of a 1950 New York Times directly onto the page. You know he thinks it's significant, but it just seems corny, casting around for something to hook an idea onto. In the end maybe that's why I wasn't as pleased with this book as I was with "Within the Context of No Context." The insights seem like chitchat (like, "To me, John O'Hara was the greatest chronicler of the 1920s"). It gave me an idea for a business, though, which would be to record everyone's thoughts on modern society and type them up for $25 a page.