Gore Vidal can wear because he's so querulous; he's best taken in small doses. E. B. White is always welcome because of his gentleness and quirky curiosity.
For me, a successful collection of essays has the same attractiveness as having dinner with an engaging companion. In this collection, Brad Leithauser proves consistently companionable. His approach is intelligent, informal and refreshingly lacking in ego.
The author of three novels and three collections of poems, Mr. Leithauser also produces first-rate criticism, consistently informed and thoughtful. Several of the pieces are models of structure.
In particular, his essay on H. G. Wells, "A Peculiarly Dark Utopian," impresses. He notes that Wells always maintained he was a mediocre thinker and writer, and proceeds to show that Wells was not. "His novels continue to attract a readership whose diversity is almost unparalleled in our century," Mr. Leithauser writes. "What other modern writer could boast of having won the loyalties of children, science fiction buffs, and exacting literary aristocrats like Borges and Nabokov?"
Though he keeps the proper detachment in evaluating Wells, Mr. Leithauser has a sense for the nonliterary as well. He writes with approval that "However harshly one views Wells's later work, there is something bracing in the picture of this vigorous old man who was forever --ing off a new manuscript to his publishers."
As the Wells essay indicates, Mr. Leithauser is keenly interested in science, and the men and women who work in it. He writes that at one time he aspired to be a physicist, and throughout this book he seems intent on finding science and art compatible.
Two of his pieces have to do with chess. "The Space of One Breath," which first appeared in the New Yorker, is a longish piece about computer chess that, while well-reported and well-written, lost this casual observer of the game.
In "Kasparov Beats Deep Thought," he returns to the world of computer chess, this time focusing on some matches that Gary Kasparov, then the world champion, had played with a computer called Deep Thought. Here, while intrigued by the possibilities of a chess-playing computer, he's really drawn to the people involved.
He writes sympathetically of the two programmers who acknowledge their machine is no match for Kasparov. He finds the champion engaging and enigmatic:
"Clearly proud of his openness, Kasparov relishes the chance to speak out broadly, and confesses that a future in politics 'may be inevitable.' All the more curious then is his unwillingness to entertain hypothetical questions about his chess career. When I ask what he might have become if chess had never been invented, he counters with 'But it was.' "
Mr. Leithauser's literary criticism includes pieces on Italo Calvino, Flannery O'Connor, Salman Rushdie and Thomas Pynchon, as well as three essays on ghost stories. He's not especially attracted to realism in fiction, observing, "In truth, I fail to see how any serious artist, whether a middling or a major talent, can avoid becoming something of a mystic."
But he's no cheerleader. He likes Mr. Pynchon's sensibility, but in a review of the author's "Vineland" he systematically disassembles the novel till he concludes, "For all its dark moments, the book is closer to farce than tragedy, and to herald it as some sort of weighty masterwork is to place a king's crown on the head of a jester."
The "Places" mentioned in this book's title refers to the several travel pieces. They are among the best in the collection. He seems to like places that are very different and perhaps a little strange -- Iceland and Japan in particular. Here is his take on Iceland:
"If the forbidding climate and landscape have fostered a sense of proficiency, they have probably also contributed to a welcome, complementary humility. In a country whose internal roads are sometimes snow-blocked until June or July, no one rises far above the weather."
The final piece in this book, "The Book of My Life," is a gem. It's an extended appreciation of the Icelandic writer Halldor Laxness and of his most famous novel, "Independent People," and is a perceptive, slightly off-center and good-humored essay. Mr. Leithauser says that he once had 20 copies of the novel, and that fact alone makes him someone I'd want to break bread with.
Mr. Warren's reviews appear Mondays in The Sun.
BOOK REVIEW
Title: "Penchants & Places: Essays and Criticism"
Author: Brad Leithauser
Publisher: Knopf
Length, price: 291 pages, $25