Category: Pop

The Summer Friend, by Charles McGrath (Knopf, 227 pages)

For people of a certain socioeconomic class, “summer” has long been more of a verb than a noun. To summer at the Cape or in Newport, or even spend a month at some Dirty Dancing type resort, was a privilege far removed from going somewhere with the kids for a week or two.

In his memoir The Summer Friend, Charles McGrath acknowledges the class divide in our experience of summer, writing, “In this country, the idea of vacations … didn’t come along until the nineteenth century, and it was initially embraced by people who didn’t work all that hard to begin with. … Working people didn’t get time off, and farmers, in particular, were busiest during the hot summer months.”

So thank the rich if you enjoy summer because the season as we know it began with the wealthy embarking for their “camps” in the Adirondacks and “cottages” in Newport to escape the heat of the South and cities. Of course, summer activities were quite different then, because in the 1800s swimming and sunning weren’t popular activities: “What people mostly did was stroll around and wait for the next meal, sort of like people in rest homes,” McGrath drolly observes.

Not so McGrath, a former editor for The New Yorker and The New York Times, whose remembrance of summer is much more action-packed and includes a friend, also named Chip, who hailed from New Hampshire.

That friendship, cut short by metastasized prostate cancer, is ostensibly the subject of this slim, often elegant memoir. However, the seasonal friendship, though it spanned decades, didn’t provide enough material to fill a book, and a more accurate title would have been “My Summer House,” filled as the book is with McGrath’s reflections on his own summers, both as a child and as a parent. (He’s the father of New Yorker writer Ben McGrath, who also published a memoir about a doomed friendship this year; it’s called Riverman.)

McGrath’s summer friend was Chip Gillespie, a New Hampshire native whose father taught (and was briefly the headmaster) at Phillips Exeter Academy. The men met — at a square dance — because McGrath and his wife had decided they wanted to spend their summers as they did in childhood, decamping to a primitive cottage for an extended period of time instead of flying the family to a Disney resort or some exotic locale.

As it turned out, both the McGraths and the Gillespies had young children of the same gender and age, and as so often happens, the need for children’s playmates helped to facilitate the parents’ friendship, as did the natural gregagriousness of Chip and his wife, Gay. (McGrath would say at Gillespie’s funeral that, “of his many abilities, Chip’s greatest talent was for friendship.”)

The Gillespies had the McGraths over for dinner the following night, and there was soon after a playdate for their daughters from which Chip Gillespie arrived on the water in a sailboat to pick his daughter up by towing her across the channel to their house. “Who knew you could do that with a sailboat, and how could you not want to be friends with the guy who thought of it?” McGrath writes.

It’s not that McGrath wasn’t accomplished in his own right, but Gillespie, an architect five years older, seemed to have the more interesting life, and McGrath came to be something of a fanboy. Gillespie was the instigator behind the pair’s more daring adventures, such as jumping off bridges at night and skinny-dipping with their wives, and it was Gillespie who taught his city friend how to trap lobsters, and to illegally obtain fireworks from Phantom Fireworks in Seabrook.

Unlike the McGraths, the Gillespies lived in the unidentified beach town in Massachusetts, year-round; they “made summering into something like an occupation,” McGrath writes. There was a built-in imbalance to their friendship since McGrath was there on vacation while Gillespie was still working; the Gillespie family vacationed in Canada.

But the two took to hanging out together when Gillespie wasn’t working, and while it appears they didn’t talk much, they participated in the storied rites of affluent male-bonding: playing golf, sailing, checking scores on ESPN, and performing random chores like sanding their boats and hauling trash to the dump. There was an easy camaraderie between the men, and they picked up the friendship easily when the McGraths came to town. Then Gillespie got sick.

Diagnosed with prostate cancer, he fought it off for a few years, but the cancer spread catastrophically, to the point of destroying his hip and eventually claiming his life. It appears that Gillespie worked to hide the extent of his illness from his friend, or maybe they just weren’t that close after all. For a significant friendship, the men seemed to not talk much, at least not about significant stuff, and this is passed off as being common among men. “Call it cowardice if you want, but my sense was that he didn’t want to talk about death or friendship either. I thought it was enough that we were just there in the same room,” McGrath wrote.

At the end, though, McGrath expresses his profound regret at what was not said; when he finally gets around to expressing how he feels about Gillespie and their friendship, it’s in a letter delivered in the final months of Gillespie’s life, and McGrath admits that it was too little, too late. “This book is what I should have given him,” he confesses.

Few people lose friends or family without pangs of guilt and regret, so in this, The Summer Friend is a cautionary tale. It is also a fine summer musing, though mostly for people of a certain age and class. Your cousin from Boston may not care much for it, but your grandfather from Newport definitely will. B

Book Notes

People in the U.K. forgave Americans for stealing the sitcom The Office, the actor Benedict Cumberbatch and even the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. But they still haven’t gotten over how we took over the Man Booker Prize.

The most prestigious literary award in the U.K., the Booker Prize honors the best fiction written or translated into English and it was only opened to American authors in 2014. It didn’t take long for Americans to win: Paul Beatty won in 2016 for The Sellout and George Saunders in 2017 for Lincoln in the Bardo, leading critics to grouse that Americans had “colonized” the award and should be excluded again. That hasn’t happened, and this year’s longlist will likely renew the complaining: six of the 13 novels on the list are from the U.S.

And one, Nightcrawling (Knopf, 271 pages), has the distinction of the youngest author ever to be nominated for the prize. Leila Mottley is now 20 and started writing the novel when she was 16. (Last month, we gave it an “A.”)

If you’re playing at home (highly advised), here are the other American books to read, or at least skim, before the 2022 winner is announced on Oct. 17:

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout (Random House, 256 pages) is about “a grief-stricken woman who helps her ex-husband investigate his family past,” according to NPR.

Booth by Karen Joy Fowler is a fictionalized story about the family of the man who killed Abraham Lincoln (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 480 pages).

Trust (Riverhead, 416 pages) by Hernan Diaz is about New York tycoons during the 1920s and ’30s. A New York Times review called it “ intricate, cunning and constantly surprising.

After Sappho (Liveright, 288 pages) by Selby Wynn Schwartz is a publisher’s dream, an award nominee before it’s even been released. Scheduled for January, it’s been described as “speculative biography” tying together the lives of diverse artists such as Virginia Woolf and Romaine Brooks and imagining them as queer trailblazers.

The Trees by Percival Everett (Graywolf, 288 pages) is a thriller/mystery about racism and lynching set in rural Mississippi. Given the subject matter, it’s a nod to the author’s skill that some of the reviews mention that it’s often witty.

Finally, shoutout to the Irish author Claire Keegan, whose Small Things Like These is the shortest book nominated in Man Booker history, coming in at 116 pages.

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Book Events

Author events

• KATHLEEN BAILEY and SHEILA BAILEY present their book New Hampshire War Monuments: The Stories Behind the Stones at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Aug. 11, at 6:30 p.m.

• R.A. SALVATORE presents Glacier’s Edge at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Friday, Aug. 12, at 6:30 p.m.

• E.B. BARTLES will sign and discuss (with Sy Montgomery) her book Good Grief: On Loving Pets Here and Hereafter at the Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough (12 Depot Square; 924-3543, toadbooks.com) on Saturday, Aug. 13, at 11 a.m.

• CASEY SHERMAN presents Helltown at the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, bookerymht.com, 836-6600) on Sunday, Aug. 14, at 1:30 p.m. Free event; register at www.bookerymht.com/our-events.

• VIRGINA CHAMLEE presents Big Thrift Energy: The Art and Thrill of Finding Vintage Treasuresat Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Monday, Aug. 15, at 6:30 p.m.

• TOM MOORE Andy’s Summer Playhouse (582 Isaac Frye Highway in Wilton; 654-2613, andyssummerplayhouse.org) and Toadstool Bookshop will present an event with Tom Moore, one of the authors of the book Grease, Tell Me More, Tell Me More: Stories from the Broadway Phenomenon That Started It All on Friday, Aug. 19, at 5 p.m. at Andy’s Summer Playhouse. See andyssummerplayhouse.org/grease to RSVP to the event.

Poetry

• OPEN MIC POETRY hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com), starting with a reading by poet Sam DeFlitch, on Wednesday, July 20, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Newcomers encouraged. Free.

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

Writers groups

• MERRIMACK VALLEY WRITERS’ GROUP All published and unpublished local writers who are interested in sharing their work with other writers and giving and receiving constructive feedback are invited to join. The group meets regularly Email pembrokenhtownlibrary@gmail.com.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. 844 Elm St., Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email bookclub@belknapmill.org.

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email information@nashualibrary.org or visit nashualibrary.org.

Language

• FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES

Offered remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week session with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.

An Immense World, by Ed Yong (Random House, 359 pages)

In the 17th century, the French philosopher and priest Nicolas Malebranche wrote: “animals eat without pleasure, cry without pain, grow without knowing it: they desire nothing, fear nothing, know nothing.”

That hasn’t aged well.

While the sentiment may have been useful for vivisectionists throughout the ages, what’s not self-evidently wrong in the statement has been proven false by research over the past few decades. As for “knowing nothing,” that nonsense is grandly refuted in Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Ed Yong’s second book, An Immense World.

Animals may not know how to build bridges or perform cardiac surgery, but they possess extraordinary abilities that humans lack, some of which we now well understand (like echolocation), others that we still can’t. Yong walks us through the ongoing research into animals’ capabilities while trying to make sense of their “umwelt” — their “perceptual world.”

“Umwelt” is a German word coined by a biologist in 1909 to describe what it’s like for a spider to be a spider, for a bird to be a bird. It’s impossible to fully understand animals’ perception of their world, but a genre of scientists called sensory biologists are trying. And their research is fascinating, once you push past wondering why tax dollars are going to pay for their experiments. Thankfully, much of this research is going on in other countries.

For example, there is the scientist who studied insects called treehoppers in a Panama forest and listened to the communication of a family by clipping microphones onto a plant and listening with headphones. Without the headphones, he could hear nothing. But headphones allowed him to eavesdrop in the treehopper world, where the insects were making sounds similar to cows mooing. “The sound was deep, resonant, and unlike anything you’d expect from an insect. As the babies settled down and returned to their mother, their cacophony of vibrational moos turned into a synchronized chorus.”

In anecdotes like this, An Immense World seems a sequel to Yong’s first book, 2016’s I Contain Multitudes, in which he explored the microbes that populate the human body. The takeaway from both is that for all our abilities, for all the wonders of the human eye and ear, we are oblivious to much of what is going on around us (and inside us). When we take the time to learn and pay attention, there is as much reason for awe as there is when we contemplate the night sky.

Yong tantalizingly suggests that learning about animals’ seemingly miraculous senses can help us to make better use of our own. Like the oft-quoted aphorism that humans only make use of a fraction of our brain power, it appears that much of our sensory power goes unused.

Yong visits a California man, blinded by cancer in infancy, who naturally learned to echolocate like a bat. He navigates by making a clicking sound and following the echoes. This doesn’t just allow him to walk and bike down streets, but also to do things sighted people can’t do. For example, when Yong accompanies the man on a walk, he asks if someone had parked on their lawn at a house they passed. The car was half on concrete, half on grass. The man was able to perceive this without seeing, just from decades of practicing echolocation. He is blind, but inhabits a rich sensory world that sighted people don’t access; that is his umwelt.

Similarly, animals inhabit worlds that may not be as expansive as ours in some ways, but they are attuned to scents, sensations, chemicals and magnetic and electrical fields we don’t perceive.

As Yong travels the world interviewing scientists who work with animals ranging from manatees to electric fish to rattlesnakes, he explains their extraordinary abilities in largely accessible language (although there are passages in which an advanced degree would help).

He devotes a chapter to the subject that is most controversial in the general population: how animals experience pain. Pain, as Yong describes it, is “the unwanted sense,” and it is a difficult subject for modern scientists to explore, since most of them reject the ancient belief that animals are fundamentally oblivious to it. There is still wide disagreement about to what degree animals experience pain, and whether this is reason enough to stop eating lobster.

What most people call pain is actually two different experiences, Yong explains. The first is nociception, which is our response to painful stimuli, such as touching a hot stove or an electrified fence. Our sense of touch apprehends danger and we pull back instinctively. The pain that follows is a different thing. Some scientists have argued that all animals’ reactions to painful stimuli is nociception, that they can’t suffer as we do. Not everything that is alive has consciousness, which is believed to require a nervous system. And some creatures exhibit behavior in which they do seem oblivious to what we would think of as excruciating pain: say, the male praying mantis that mates with a female that is devouring him.

But research has shown that a wide range of animals subjected to pain will choose painkillers that are offered to them. This is true of even zebrafish. And animals who respond to injury by licking and grooming will stop when given painkillers. But Yong offers no clear answers, like the scientist who tells him, “I’m often asked if crabs and lobsters feel pain, and after 15 years of research, the answer is maybe.”

Yong is more definitive when it comes to what our response should be to new knowledge about how animals’ lives are governed by senses of which we are largely unaware. For example, we now know that the migratory patterns of birds and butterflies are affected by artificial light, that sea turtle hatchlings (which have a 1 in 10,000 shot of enduring to maturity) die because they are drawn to house lights and bonfires when these eclipse the moonlight, which would normally guide them to sea.

The fluttering of moths around a lightbulb can be fatal to them; many die of exhaustion. The “Tribute of Light” that New York City installs each year to commemorate 9/11 can be seen for 60 miles and disrupts the migration of thousands of songbirds, so much so that when too many confused birds start circulating the light, it’s shut off for 20 minutes to allow them to, as your GPS would say, recalculate.

Animals evolve and adapt and many will eventually adjust to modernity if they don’t go extinct. The pandemic showed us, however, that nature can quickly bounce back once humans change their behavior. The first step in doing so is knowledge.

An Immense World is a lackluster title; not so the book. Others have dabbled in this topic, such as primatologist Frans de Waal in 2016’s Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? Yong, who seems incapable of covering a topic superficially, does it better than most. A

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Book Events

Author events

• LAURIE STONE presents Streaming Now: Postcards from the Thing That Is Happening at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Aug. 4, at 6:30 p.m.

• MARIANNE WILLIAMSON presents The Politics of Love at the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, bookerymht.com, 836-6600) on Wednesday, Aug. 10, at 7 p.m. Free event; register at www.bookerymht.com/our-events.

• KATHLEEN BAILEY and SHEILA BAILEY present their book New Hampshire War Monuments: The Stories Behind the Stones at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Aug. 11, at 6:30 p.m.

• R.A. SALVATORE presents Glacier’s Edge at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Friday, Aug. 12, at 6:30 p.m.

• CASEY SHERMAN presents Helltown at the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, bookerymht.com, 836-6600) on Sunday, Aug. 14, at 1:30 p.m. Free event; register at www.bookerymht.com/our-events.

Poetry

• OPEN MIC POETRY hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com), starting with a reading by poet Sam DeFlitch, on Wednesday, July 20, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Newcomers encouraged. Free.

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

Writers groups

• MERRIMACK VALLEY WRITERS’ GROUP All published and unpublished local writers who are interested in sharing their work with other writers and giving and receiving constructive feedback are invited to join. The group meets regularly Email pembrokenhtownlibrary@gmail.com.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. 844 Elm St., Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email bookclub@belknapmill.org.

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email information@nashualibrary.org or visit nashualibrary.org.

Language

• FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES

Offered remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week session with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.