I read The Sentence last year, and sometimes a book is so bad it lingers, and festers. I’m also frequently reminded of it on Instagram. My IG algorithm is almost exclusively books–-pictures of books, bookstores and booksellers, book quotes, and in general the book aesthetic. There is a burgeoning niche internet book culture, aptly named Bookstagram.
This corner of IG latches on to certain books, mostly YA, and other Game of Thrones adjacent fantasy. All usually targeted towards younger or new1 readers. It’s a benign corner, but often grating because the books that catch on often do so for reasons beyond understanding. The Sentence was a bookstagram hit.
It was everywhere. I first learned about the book on NPR. It was positively reviewed by Maureen Corrigan, book reviewer for Fresh Air. Over the years I’ve come to realize what many2 already have, Maureen Corrigan likes bad books.
Corrigan is a professor at Georgetown University, something we’re reminded of each time she’s introduced. That’s the most important part here. If she were merely a book reviewer from such-and-such magazine or website this would all be more of a moot point, and I would put more blame on Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air.
It remains one of the more baffling anomalies of my life that someone with such a seemingly prestigious position—professor of literary criticism at Georgetown University—can consistently recommend some of the worst books every year. I often wonder if Corrigan’s students share this sentiment, and if there are any secret Georgetown literary societies built around Corrigan’s love for bad books.
Let’s be clear, I’m not talking about books that leave you feeling ambivalent, or the take it or leave it variety. These aren’t mediocre books, or simply over-hyped books—I’m talking about objectively bad books. A few years ago she praised the book, August Snow, by Stephen Mack Jones. It was billed as a compelling mystery & thriller. It sounded like a book my mom might like, and after considering Corrigan’s review, I bought it. I decided to read it first. Not only was this book the worst book I read that year, it’s one of the worst books I’ve read in years.
I didn’t give the book to my mom, and I didn’t want it in my house. I put it in one of those little neighborhood libraries. And you should know I didn’t feel great doing that either.
What I know now that I didn’t know then is that Maureen Corrigan enjoys overly-sentimental, intensely saccharine stories delivered in a manner that viewers of the television show This is Us will fawn over. Books that make you roll your eyes, books that read like shitty network television shows with cheesy and hackneyed dialogue. Books with ham-fisted prescriptive lessons complete with the now what did we all learn moments you find in after-school specials. I imagine Maureen Corrigan browsing the book aisle at the grocery store to pick her next book.
You might ask why I continue reading the books Corrigan recommends, and that’s a great question. Equal parts fealty to NPR, and masochism, I suppose. I’ve also found commiserating over things you hate is sort of the backbone of the Internet.
Then I tell myself she can’t exclusively recommend bad books, she’s bound to eventually stumble onto a great one. There has to be some spillover of books we both enjoy and those are the ones I don’t want to miss. I treat book blurbs as sacred, and NPR has recommended countless great books, and the oddity of Maureen Corrigan is hard to square. So I keep coming back. Even now her latest rave review of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is staring me down, and I know I’ll end up reading it.
Now, The Sentence.
The Sentence is a book by Louise Erdrich3. And to be fair to Maureen Corrigan, this book was pushed on multiple fronts. My local bookstore promoted the hell out of this book, my IG targeted ads zeroed in on this book, and alas, even The New York Times Review of Books called The Sentence “strange, enchanting, and funny”. That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement by the NYT’s, but it is an abdication of its literary obligation.
I know why this happened.
The book centers around a haunted bookstore. Not just that though, The Sentence reads like a tribute to the publishing of books, the selling of books, the discussing of books, and finally the reading of books. It’s not hard to imagine why so many professional critics became hypnotized by their own self-importance with this book.
The Sentence is a pleasant and above-average book for about the first hundred pages or so. Bookish, and endearing. Centered around a lovely little bookstore, lots of books and authors I love are casually referenced, and that has its charms. I love Murakami4, Denis Johnson, Rachel Kushner, and Lily King as much as the next person. But this book fails to do anything with that aforementioned good taste. Multiple times throughout this book I wished I was reading a book by any of those authors instead. One explanation is that during the pandemic Louise Erdrich read some great books and wanted an excuse to mention them.
Covid-19 takes center stage near the halfway point of the book, and from that point on The Sentence reads like an extended blogpost via a fictional narrative. Incorporating real news stories into the narrative is one of the hardest things a piece of fiction can do. It’s not impossible, and when it’s done well it can feel revelatory. Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet comes to mind. Smith’s first volume of the quartet, Autumn, I consider to be a contemporary masterpiece, and that’s a word I try to use as sparingly as possible. Smith employed subtlety, and dexterity around the real-world-issues she injected into her fiction, in her case Brexit, and the rise of Populism. Smith deftly weaves these issues into her story so that they feel additive, never forced. She doesn’t distract you with them.
Louise Erdrich incorporates the pandemic, White Appropriation, the decimation of Native identity, the murder of George Floyd, and the ensuing protests into The Sentence. No small task. These are incredibly relevant topics to explore, but when you blend them into a novel it has to be done delicately. The Sentence uses more of a hammer. There is a particular line in this book about George Floyd that left me stunned. I wish there was a better and more biting word than cringe I could use.
Long stretches of The Sentence move beyond cringey and into the realm of parody, but without the intent. It becomes lazy, and cliche. Melodrama. Emotion is expected, but none is earned. Beneath this review I’m going to give three sentences from this book, two I liked and the last I found so abhorrent I hesitated to even replicate it here. If you take anything from this book it’s probably that Denis Johnson is great.
“November supposedly renders thin the veil.”
“We stayed up watching familiar places burn.”
“Those little restaurants had great soup, too bad George Floyd won’t taste any.”5
- I initially used the word ‘stagnated’ instead of ‘new’. This felt mean, so I changed it. I try not to be a book snob whenever I can. But if you’re over 20 years old and your favorite author is still Stephen King—you have stagnated
- reddit has a group for everyone
- winner of almost every literary award you can name
- obsessed, really
- this is an actual sentence written by a Pulitzer prize winning author
3 responses to “Road to Erudition”
1. Great post. I loved it. I can’t believe “Those little restaurants had great soup, too bad George Floyd won’t taste any,” was actually written, published, and the book was still widely received. I could believe it if I read the book, but I won’t read the book, because I don’t read much and the book sounds awful.
2. Would you please consider writing reviews of book critics and their reviews?
3. I can never remember the spelling of Terry Gross’ name but I am always at Scrabble-level confidence, so I looked it up to fact check / gotcha you, but you were correct and I am petty.
Would you have spelled it Groce?
I’d read that as “Gro-chee”, similar to how I’d pronounce Jim Croce’s surname. So, I’d probably spell it, “Grose”. Really, though, I probably just never thought about how it should be spelled, I just thought no one would be named gross.