3/03

Attempting to circumvent his writer's block, Tom, an ex-heroin user who is now a sober father teaching creative writing at NYU during the first days of George W. Bush's war on Iraq (the title indicating March 2003), sets out to pen "a commonplace" book "in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to with or without arrangement." And so he does, attempting to unravel "the unintelligible substance of what his life feels like" by focusing on random individuals on the street, subway, or bus, and setting down his descriptions and observations in his notepad—occasionally crafting imaginary lives for these strangers. Wachtel's use of the notebook form only serves to provide a desperately needed alibi for a sluggish, hybrid work which alternates between short declarative sentences inspired by Chekhov's Notebooks, raw television images, uninspired poetry, ideas about pop culture icons, and finally his commentary about the Iraq War which in 2010 arrives with a been-there-done-that thud. The end result is a jumbled literary mixture that nevertheless manages some pointed insights into the art—and inherent difficulties—of crafting a novel. (June)