ATTENTION

May 14, 2018
In this debut nonfiction collection, novelist Cohen (Moving Kings) muses on a variety of subjects, including politics, linguistics, history, and religion. Though the opening essay—a lament on the shallow state of societal discourse in a world crowded with distractions—is a bit stale, Cohen picks up steam in the second selection, an excoriating look at his native Atlantic City’s economic decline as an extended metaphor for President Trump’s failings, both personal and professional. In book reviews and literary essays, Cohen gives careful consideration to the work of Jonathan Franzen, Gordon Lish, and Thomas Pynchon, among others. A fascinating piece on German-Jewish fencer Helene Mayer, who competed for Germany at the 1936 Olympics, is filled with gems of historical insight, such as how European Jews had long used fencing as a “formal, relatively nonviolent way to respond to anti-Semitic provocations.” Cohen can be pretentious or obtuse, particularly in the random diary entries sprinkled throughout: “Avoid imagination,” he instructs, since “it is merely the plagiarism of your inexperience or ignorance.” At its best, Cohen’s work evokes comparisons to Gore Vidal in tone and purview, but the author lacks consistency.

June 15, 2018
Cohen (Moving Kings, 2017, etc.), selected as a Granta Best Young American Novelist, has been turning out big, daunting novels, and this collection of his journalistic pieces rivals them in scope and density.As he writes in a short preface, people today are way too distracted: "We're becoming too disparate, too dissociated--searching for porn one moment, searching for genocide the next--leaving behind stray data that cohere only in the mnemotech of our surveillance." It's time to pay attention, and reading these often challenging and acute essays is a start. Cohen opens with a nostalgic piece on the demise of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which felt like the "death of jazz, or the death of the blues." Then, it's off to Atlantic City, where he once had a summer job in a casino, and a "cotton-candy-haired clown who crashed the AC party late and left it early and ugly"--Donald Trump. Next up is a piece critical of Bernie Sanders, soon followed by one on a favorite writer of Cohen's, Thomas Pynchon, and news of a new book by him. Then Cohen discusses the "deliriously acquisitive music of John Zorn," Aretha Franklin ("like Annie Oakley, she could hit anything"), Beyoncé, and Glenn Greenwald's "decent" Edward Snowden, who "excoriated the surveillance state." Throughout the collection, Cohen displays impressive range. He's equally comfortable discussing philosophy, politics, German metaphysics, Anna Kavan, Georges Perec, Mario Vargas Llosa, the internet, and Google--not to mention creating an abecedarium honoring Paris' rogue English-language publisher Obelisk. Jewishness, so prevalent in Cohen's fiction, is generously represented here as well. Sometimes overly stylistically pyrotechnic, the author refuses to wear his learning lightly, which occasionally stifles and snuffs out the good stuff.Some readers will find Cohen's writing too disparate and snarky, but for those comfortable with the Vollmann/Gass/Eggers school of writing, these essays are the cat's meow.

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Starred review from August 1, 2018
Cohen's (Moving Kings, 2016) massive nonfiction debut collects the fiction writer and journalist's essays, memoirs, reportage, and reviews. The pieces are often as off-kilter and thought-provoking as his novels and cover a dizzying array of topics, including politics, history, music, literature, and Jewish identity, sometimes all in one essay. It's a Circle laments the final days of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and highlights historical links between the circus and politics, including parallels to Trump's rise to power. Cohen eulogizes underappreciated heroes, including Thomas Pynchon and John Zorn, and critiques such cultural icons as Bernie Sanders and Gordon Lish. Lip Service compares Aretha's and Beyonc�'s respective presidential inauguration performances, then turns into a sharp criticism of Obama's national security policies. One of the more compelling works is Me, U, Baku, Quba, which recounts Cohen's surreal quest to find the elusive Mountain Jews in Azerbaijan. Attention, a wry meditation on living in the age of distraction, fills the final 150 pages. Paradoxically or, perhaps, to prove its point, the book's central premise may be lost on readers who find the sprawling collection too challenging to keep them interested. But fans of David Foster Wallace and William T. Vollmann will revel in Cohen's playful erudition, versatility, and dark humor. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)