CJ Hauser’s “oddball-brilliant” second
book is “for my money, the summer’s
best novel so far,” said Lily Meyer in
NPR.org. Her tale of two estranged half-
siblings who reunite on a Florida island
where their scientist father died while
chasing a crackpot theory blossoms into
an engaging family portrait, “a spirited
defense of the maligned Millennial
generation,” and “an innovative work of
climate fiction.” Elsa and Nolan, won-
dering how their dad drowned, embed
with a fringe community on the island
whose members believe a small duck
that nests there is proof that evolution
has begun playing backward—and that
Elsa and Nolan’s generation is further
evidence. From that “wonderfully cock-
eyed” premise, a poignant tale emerges,
said Anna Mundow in The Wall Street
Journal. Elsa and Nolan both feel that
their lives have gone wrong, and they
are prone to looking backward to iden-
tify the moment they veered off track.
Hauser, while poking fun at their histri-
onics, allows them space to grow. “In
this eccentric portrait of dented hearts
and wacko science, her aim is unerring.”(^22) ARTS
Review of reviews: Books
Until recently, this book’s title wouldn’t have
made sense to anyone, said Katy Steinmetz
in Time. The word “because” has for centu-
ries been followed in most speech by either
a full clause or a preposition. One day, how-
ever, the bland little conjunction “suddenly
began bursting with new life,” empowering
any of us to answer a question about climate
change with the phrase “because science”
or a question about why we’re sleepy with
“because burrito.” As the title of Gretchen
McCulloch’s engaging new book indicates,
all credit for this and many other startling
locutions belongs to the internet. If lan-
guage’s evolution interests you at all, you’ll
devour her lively survey of internet-speak.
To McCulloch, the internet era isn’t turn-
ing us all into tramplers of language’s finer
points; “on the contrary, it’s making us more
creative in our writing than ever before.”
In the summer of
1969, a concert
unfolded that was
so unprecedented,
it “permanently
altered the landscape
of popular music,”
said James Gaddy
in Bloomberg.com.
OK, maybe you can
think of others, but
Time critic Richard
Zoglin is here to
convince us that Elvis Presley’s comeback
performance in Las Vegas was a great pop-
culture moment—one that transformed the
city and should have cemented Presley’s
reputation as a showman. Of course, the
initial 50-show run transformed the Elvis
of more distant memories into “the sequin-
jumpsuited hunka hunka burning love we
know today.” But in those early Vegas
shows, Presley was also energetic, full-
voiced, thin, and in complete command of
a bombastic band of 60 musicians. Almost
single -handedly, he transformed Sin City into
Amer i ca’s capital of family-friendly spectacle.
Book of the week
“McCulloch is doing important work here,”
said Cory Doctorow in BoingBoing.net.
The internet has been a dream come true
for her and her fellow linguists, because it
allows detailed study of informal English as
it evolves, and the fluidity of the language
has always been central to its global success.
People who’ve spent their lives communicat-
ing on the internet have developed a new
lexicon. They express frustration through
“keysmash”—the gobbledygook that results
when you run your fingers randomly across
the keyboard—and they signal friendly
intent through exclamation points. Various
moods are expressed through other typo-
logical tricks—ALL CAPS convey shouting,
for example, and a tilde signals sarcasm.
“Especially interesting is the chapter on
emoji.” To McCulloch, those graphic sym-
bols comprise not a new language but a
variation on such older modes of communi-
cation as hand and facial gestures.
One of the themes of Because Internet is
how fluid internet language can be, said
Jennifer Szalai in The New York Times.
“Lol” is still shorthand for “laughing out
loud,” but over time it has acquired new
layers of meaning: It can defuse tension,
gently mock the recipient, or even express
apprehension. McCulloch is such a win-
some writer that you’ll want to join her in
celebrating internet speech’s protean nature
and how its subtle rules can create a sense
of community. But a language whose codes
are accessible only to an in-group excludes
many people, too, and you don’t have to
spend much time on Twitter or Reddit
to notice how much hatred is expressed
through coded language. McCulloch prefers
to be optimistic, promising that the exciting
world of internet speech welcomes anyone
and everyone. “I hope she’s right.”
Because Internet:
Understanding the New Rules
of Language
by Gretchen McCulloch
(Riverhead, $26)
Novel of the week
Family of Origin
by CJ Hauser (Doubleday, $27)
Elvis in Vegas: How the King
Reinvented the Las Vegas Show
by Richard Zoglin (Simon & Schuster, $28)
Zoglin’s book isn’t all Elvis, said Michael
Lindgren in Newsday. “At least half of it
is taken up by a breezy history of Vegas in
its Rat Pack glory years,” the era that was
in twilight when Elvis arrived. But here too
Zoglin urges a rethink of Vegas, arguing that
the city nurtured innovative dance choreog-
raphy and that Buddy Hackett and Shecky
Greene were once comedy revolutionaries.
“This is outstanding pop-culture history,”
and it only gets better when Zoglin makes
his case for circa-1969 Elvis, a 34-year-old
seeking to build on the momentum of a
standout 1968 TV performance. Not that
Zoglin claims Elvis’ Vegas show was high art.
He calls it “schmaltz raised to the sublime.”
The good vibes didn’t last, of course, said
Eddie Dean in The Wall Street Journal.
Though Elvis headlined more than 600
sold-out Vegas shows, his growing depen-
dence on drugs precipitated a decline that
culminated in his fatal heart attack in 1977,
when he was just 42. Vegas clearly got more
from the alliance: Elvis impersonators still
crowd the city’s streets today; more impor-
tantly, big-name performers still follow his
lead with their own late-career Vegas shows.
But maybe Zoglin oversells that legacy.
“Making the Strip safe for aging, Botoxed
rock geezers may be one of Presley’s more
dubious achievements.”
Your new vocabulary, for at least another week
Ge
tty