The City at Three P.M.: Writing, Reading, and Traveling

LaSalle, a fiction writer (What I Found Out About Her) and professor of creative writing at the University of Texas, merges literary biography and travel writing, as well as literary criticism and autobiography, in this fresh, insightful collection of nine essays. LaSalle’s method is to travel to and explore the cities in which authors he admires produced their work. The author-city pairings covered include Jorge Luis Borges and Buenos Aires, Gustave Flaubert and Tunis, and Malcolm Lowry and Mexico City. In each piece, LaSalle shows himself to be a smart and open writer with a restless intellect and infectious passion for travel and literature. He discusses a wide range of past and current writers, never lacking for opinions, both negative—he thinks Richard Ford is “a predictable writer”—and admiring, as he is toward Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. A strong sense of place is present throughout, whether LaSalle is in a restaurant in Tunis or a metro station in Los Angeles. The autobiographical passages can border on the self-absorbed, but this tendency is easily offset by LaSalle’s honesty and enthusiasm. (Dec.)