The latest from Brooke Allen, a longtime Vineyard visitor, is an eclectic collection of essays and reviews she has published in the past 30 years. Troubled deeply by waning literacy in the internet age, Allen here engages in a rear-guard effort to keep alive the contributions and life stories of important writers who risk being forgotten.
“Good Bones” (2025, Tivoli Books) is the result. The subjects of these essays, she writes, “are just a few of the thousands of literary artists who have given aesthetic and intellectual sustenance to many readers over many years … a few beautiful relics, the sacred bones of a literary culture being ground into dust by technology and AI and other distractions.” Gloomy.
But one is compelled to read, largely because of the power of her writing. A critic’s critic — not to mention a critic of many other critics — Allen adventures into the weeds at times, but emerges with something fascinating. And she’s not shy about sharing her opinions, whether mainstream or controversial.
Her subjects range in time from the mid–19th century to the start of the 21st. To most of us, especially outside of Sweden, the name August Strindberg (1849–1912) rings only a faint bell. Best known as a playwright in his day, this eccentric polymath “produced 60 plays, three books of poetry, 18 novels, nine works of autobiography, 10,000 letters, and a considerable corpus of journalism.”
While we’re on eccentricity, next up is George Sand, born Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, daughter of a former prostitute and an aristocrat, in 1804. Best known to many only as Chopin’s lover, she cut a wide swath through Parisian society and many, many men. A productive writer, she is best known as a narcissist who lived life as a performance. Allen blends context and detail to bring her subject, and post-Revolutionary France, alive and into focus.
Allen writes about 20 other authors in “Good Bones,” some of them more familiar — Oscar Wilde, W. Somerset Maugham, Eudora Welty, Ogden Nash, Anthony Powell — than others. The last few — Anne Tyler, Richard Burton, John Updike, Truman Capote — feel almost current. All of them had warts (except Updike, in Allen’s view), both as writers and individuals, and Allen uses their idiosyncrasies to help explain why and how they wrote, why they still matter. As with any collection, the length and tone of the essays vary.
The author of several books, Allen has taught literature at Bennington College and the history of thought at Bennington’s prison program. “The history of thought” sounds abstract enough to risk devolving into something almost incomprehensible, but that is very unlikely in the hands of someone as well-read and as devoted to intellectual inquiry as Allen. Her classrooms, at both sites, must have been lively.
At its heart, “Good Bones” is an homage to the novel, the form that has dominated literature for 200 years or so. We’d be lost without it, Allen believes, and she’s concerned about its future. Our numbers may be dwindling, but there are still plenty of us who won’t shy away from a 500-page novel, if it’s well-crafted. It’s also reassuring that so many good young writers, especially women, are emerging all the time. And good on Brooke Allen for reminding us of the origins and early days of the form, while also honoring its pioneers, some of whom have disappeared, thanks to the inescapable distractions, even addictions, that have kidnapped us in this crazy contemporary world.
Brooke Allen will be part of a panel discussion about book reviewing, and will be signing books, at Islanders Write on Thursday, July 16, at 9:30 am. Go to slanderswrite.com for more information.