Kindle. Inevitable after reading his latest. This is a collection of nine short stories, mini-portraits, tenuously linked, of blokes in various states of unsuccess. None go anywhere spectacular or surprising; the devices are entirely Chekhovian, so you know the attractive and not the unattractive ladies are the bit players, the youth tend to vacuous hedonism, a delimited scope of action is just a space for the exhibition of cowardice, the luxe lifestyle models an absence of imagination and creativity, nasty is just an ineffectual stuffed-shirt pose, death nothing but inchoate terror and incomprehension. One focuses on muscle-bound security, prefiguring Anora (2024). The prose is effective and clearly Szalay knows his Europe. Again, all to what end? Man is more than this, even under ironic duress.
Dwight Garner at the time. Szalay is good on the status markers and food. Goodreads. And so on.
