Grieving guard finds solace amid the art
‘All the Beauty in the World,” by Patrick Bringley (Simon & Schuster)
When his older brother died of cancer at age 26, Patrick Bringley’s life was upended. Not even two years younger, Bringley quit his “high-flying desk job” at the New Yorker magazine and in a profound act of mourning, went to work as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum – “the most straight-forward job I could think of in the most beautiful place I knew.” Yes, a guard. Proud member of DC 37 Local 1503. Bringley, who had fond memories of his first trip to the Met at age 11, back when visitors still wore brightly colored tin admission pins, ended up staying 10 years, long enough for the museum to work its magic and bring him back from the brink.
His reflections on that decade form the spine of his hauntingly beautiful memoir, “All the Beauty in the World.” Elegant in its simplicity and dedicated to his brother, Tom, Bringley explores the way that great works of art can function as a balm for the soul, not unlike the immersive experience of travel to a foreign land. “You dissolve almost … You walk the streets alive to the exotic details, but even an ordinary pigeon flapping its wings is oddly vivid. There is a poetry about it, and as long as you glide through watchfully, the spell won’t break.” In front of Vermeer’s “Maid Asleep,” he perceives “a grandeur and holiness” in its intimate setting. Standing amid what one visitor calls the “Jesus pictures,” he is transfixed by a 14th century crucifixion, using it as “a kind of machine to aid in necessary and painful reflection” about suffering. As time goes by, his discovers that his broken heart has started to heal.
In some respects, Bringley’s debut is a classic workplace memoir, filled with stories about the Met’s collections, his fellow guards and some of the millions of visitors who have traipsed up the institution’s iconic stone steps overlooking 82nd Street and Fifth Avenue. Most of his insider stories are sweet and funny, including the tidbit that guards back in 2008 received an $80 annual “hose allowance” for socks. But Bringley’s primary interest is in the miracle of art, whether painting, sculpture or his own vocation, writing. His intuition that the Met — a place of “soundless beauty” — would be a better place than a trendy magazine to pursue his craft turned out to be right. The humble union job gave him the time and space he needed to produce a work of art as luminous as the old masters paintings that comforted him in his grief.
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“The Donut Legion,” by Joe R. Lansdale (Mulholland)
Charlie Garner, a former private detective turned novelist, was staring through his telescope at the rural East Texas sky late one night when he received an unexpected visit from his ex-wife, Meg.
Or did he?
A storm had left the ground soft, perfect for leaving footprints and tire tracks, but in the morning there was no sign that she had ever been there. Had it been a dream? A hallucination? An apparition?
Charlie was still in love with Meg, who’d left him to marry another man, and what she’d come to tell him — if he hadn’t imagined it — was disturbing. She thought her husband had been murdered, and she wanted him to look into it.
As the plot of Joe R. Lansdale’s “The Donut Legion” gets rolling, Charlie is shaken but uncertain that there is anything to it at first. But soon, he learns that both Meg and her husband have disappeared, leaving all of their possessions behind.
Charlie’s suspicions turn to The Saucer People, a cult that had persuaded hundreds of gullible Texans to surrender their worldly goods and wait for flying saucers to carry them to paradise. The group was also known as The Donut Legion because it was laundering money through a string of local donut shops.
Meg, it turns out, had been working in one of those shops, and her husband had been seduced by the cult. As Charlie, assisted by his private-eye brother and the brother’s formidable lawyer girlfriend, investigate, they uncover damning secrets about the cult leaders and about the horrors they have planned. Before long, Charlie and his friends are in danger as the bodies start to pile up.
As usual, Lansdale’s prose is tight, he has laced his highly entertaining story with sly humor, and he has populated it with a cast of quirky characters. This time, they include a brutish, 7-foot-tall arsonist, a cantankerous sheriff, a loveable police dog named Tag, and a cowboy-hat-wearing chimpanzee who rips people’s arms off.
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NEW YORK: Ling Ma’s sharp and surreal “Bliss Montage” and Beverly Gage’s sweeping biography of the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, “G-Man,” were among the winners Thursday night of the National Book Critics Circle awards.
Ma’s story collection won the prize for fiction, with the judges praising her “sometimes startling” portraits of racism and xenophobia, and her gift for pulling readers “into a world where everything has been called into question.” Last week, “Bliss Montage” received the Story Prize for outstanding short fiction.
Gage, whose book earlier in the day was honored by the New-York Historical Society, won Thursday night for best biography. “G-Man” has been widely praised as a thorough and nuanced take on one of the country’s most polarizing figures, and was cited by the critics circle for weaving together Hoover’s life and the “paradoxical national story involving American anxieties over security, masculinity, and race.”
Other works awarded by the NBCC included Isaac Butler’s “The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act” for nonfiction, Hua Hsu’s “Stay True” for memoir, Cynthia Cruz’s “Hotel Oblivion” for poetry and Timothy Bewes’ “Free Indirect” for criticism. Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov’s “Grey Bees,” translated by Boris Dralyuk, won for best translated book, and Morgan Talty’s “Night of the Living Rez” was named best debut work.
Honorary awards were presented to former US poet laureate Joy Harjo for lifetime achievement, and Jennifer Wilson for excellence in reviewing. The Toni Morrison Achievement Award, for “institutions that have made lasting and meaningful contributions to book culture,” was given to San Francisco’s City Lights bookstore. Barbara Hoffert, an editor at Library Journal and former NBCC president and board member, received the critics circle’s Service Award. (AP)