Danny Kapilian (yes, Danny really looks like that, and there is always a swirling field of colored light surrounding him) and Judy Lieff (watch the trailer) gave us two books last month, Rick Perlstein's Nixonland and Joseph O'Neill's Netherland.
I started with Nixonland, which made me constantly angry, and was maybe 150 pages into it when S. Palin announced her resignation. Being immersed in what I was, I couldn't think of that move as anything other than the kick-off of her presidential campaign. Later that morning I tried reading more of Nixonland, flopped on the sand and mud by one of the Orient backwaters, and I just couldn't do it: just too much nastiness for too beautiful a place. More later.
And so I picked up Netherland, which I'll finish later this morning. Not funny. Fits on the same bookshelf as DeLillo's Falling Man. I'm at a point in the book where Hans has returned to London and is speaking about the differences in the London / English and the New York / American perception of September, 2001 and, more generally, life. Maybe those differences are mirrored by the NYT review of Netherland, above, and this Guardian review. Or maybe O'Neill's opinions are what the Guardian bloke all snarky.
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