Maybe the People Would Be the Times

One of the preeminent writers of our times is back with this sublime collection of essays from his magazine work...get it.

Excellent essays by Luc Sante.

The first book by Luc Sante that I read was "The Factory of Facts" and it remains my favorite after recently rereading it . Part of the reason is , that I ,like him , have a background of migration , but mainly I treasure that book because of Sante's unexpected perspectives on the " Things in Life". And those "Things" are manifold as proven once again in his new book , a collection of articles written for a variety of magazines or from his blog. It seems that Sante has read every book and magazine since the Sumerian stone tablets , looked at every photograph since the Daguerreotype, and listened to every song since the invention of the vinyl record . The wonder of his recent book is that he has something new or unusual to say about all those books , magazines , films .On occasion he does that by using Difficult Words , but there is always enough humor and insight to forgive him for that. I will remain grateful to him for discovering Richard Stark's Parker novels, reminding me of the slackness of Papa Michigan and General Smiley , when I too tried to move to their rhythm on a square foot tile , even though that was a long time and a few islands away. If only the French would know about it.

Each successive book or piece of writing by Luc Sante is a fresh beginning. His writing evolves, is unpredictable, he finds a novel way of expressing himself each time. And he never fails to astound. One day he raps like a brilliant stoner on music, another he's an archaeologist of urban decadence, then he's a scientist exploring French cinema, and after that he'll deliver a savvy treatise on... you name it.