Smooth jazz
October 10th, 2005
Bryan Burrough really hated Simon Winchester’s latest book, A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906:
WHAT does it mean to write popular history? Must the author spend long years sifting through libraries and obscure collections to unearth new and tantalizing facts about his subject? Do readers in search of an absorbing yarn really care what information is new or where the book’s information comes from? And what role should the author play? Humorless academic? Simple reporter? Or modish raconteur?
[…]
This is history as it might be written by Austin Powers. “Crack” is a book that bears the faint whiff of smoking jacket and brandy, as if the author had curled up in some leatherbound study with a few dozen previous books and his memories and banged out this one between puffs of pipe smoke. It appears to be partly the product of a residency Winchester accepted at San Jose State University, a period that seems to have given him plenty of time to sample sublime pinot noir and thumb through earthquake books. Among the sources thanked in the acknowledgments is a history-savvy waiter at a restaurant on Nob Hill. To be fair, Winchester did do independent travel for his research; in Alaska, he finds not only fault lines and caribous but Champagne, “a long bath,” Halibut Bay oysters, freshly caught salmon, wine “crisp and cold” and a barmate smoking Gitanes. “It seemed like heaven,” he says.
[…]
To be fair, Burrough does admit later in his review that his beef with Winchester’s book may derive in part from that subtitle: judging by Burrough’s account, Winchester’s book is more concerned with the effects of the quake on the local geology than on the political economy of the State, let alone the Union. That obviously wasn’t what this particular reviewer wanted from Winchester’s book, though I think it’s also safe to say that Burrough just took exception to Winchester’s authorial voice.
I quite enjoyed Winchester’s last book, Krakatoa, another summary in layman’s terms of what happened when nature did something spectacular and destructive, leavened with a smattering of social history but making no real attempt to bring the historical characters to life. I don’t think I’ll rush out to read this latest book but I might just give it a look when it appears in paperback.