Solo: An American Dreamer in Europe

Solo: An American Dreamer in Europe by Wright Morris, a memoir of spending part of 1932 and 1933 in Austria, Italy, and France. Not on the whole as rewarding as his other memoirs Will's Boy and A Cloak of Light, but interesting enough. Adolphe and Le Cahier Rouge by Benjamin Constant. The former a devastating short novel, the latter a memoir, a portrait of the artist as a young twerp. (The things we boomers would say if something comparable had been published by a millenial!) Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff, a novel read for a book club. The less said, the better. Autobiography by Henry James. Very slow going, but rewarding, a mind at work. My Promised Land by Avi Shalets. A history of Israel and the Zionist project by an Israeli journalist. It covers a lot of ground that most Americans (I infer from my book club) don't know. It seemed to me that it could have been maybe 15% shorter, and that David Remnick should have impounded Shalets's thesaurus.…