Hello, Smarty—It's Your BookWag!

The Book Squad Hits ‘Delete’ on Phony “Storytelling.” Plus Great Reads From David Levithan, Michael Thomas, Xenobe Purvis, Scott Anderson, Ella Berman — and More...

Indie of the Week. In Nashville, pull up a chair at Ann Patchett’s Parnassus Books, where you can linger over a good read and make friends with the shop’s friendly dogs. (Photo: Parnassus Books)

Dear Wags,

We shudder at how storytelling has been flogged into meaninglessness. Once a human gift, now it’s a marketing slogan, a corporate mantra, a technical directive. Streamers, studios, book editors, ad shillers—everyone waves it like a hall pass for mediocrity. We may not know how to build, govern, or behave, but we can sure “story‑tell.”

There’s another, older phrase: telling stories. Don’t like the data? Replace it. Don’t like reality? Rewrite it. Life, politics, suffering—smoothed over in favor of a preferred narrative. That’s how a republic of storytellers becomes an empire of dishonesty.

When did delusion become our national pastime? America—a rootless, restless, fame‑ and money‑obsessed place, forever reinventing itself—was bound to attract liars. We refuse endings without triumph, and when desperate, we double down on fantasy. The reckoning always looms, but we push our luck until the jig is up.

Today’s politics, moral panics, and social contagions test our appetite for truth. Do we really want leaders who’ll level with us? Technical skill is nothing next to the knack for deception. Still, what sets us apart isn’t spinning a yarn—it’s adapting to reality. At our best, we’re not merely good storytellers, but citizens who can handle the truth.

Yours Ever,

M.V. Fenwick

---

---

Songs for Other People’s Weddings by David Levithan with songs by Jens Lekman

Don’t take this the wrong way, but every five minutes we wonder if literature is dead. Caution and commercialism seem to have strangled it. Fearful publishers, prim little book clubs, officious sensitivity readers, readers with the attention spans of gnats—not to mention writers moaning about the death of literature—make books feel less like pleasure and more like homework we won’t miss.

But wait! Here comes David Levithan with an ingenious, charming story of J, a Swedish singer‑songwriter who’s famous only in a few hip coffee bars. He pays the bills as a wedding singer with a twist: every couple gets an original song. Romance, however, is not his forte—his girlfriend V has decamped from Scandinavia to New York, and when he follows her there for another wedding gig, he finds she’s moved on. J keeps playing ceremonies, penning bespoke odes for strangers while nursing his own broken heart.

His quixotic tour through other people’s happiest days becomes a poetic quest, powered by the hope of winning V back. Levithan, best known for his YA novels, teams here with Jens Lekman—a real‑life Swedish indie musician and part‑time wedding singer (both J and Lekman have written a song called “If You Ever Need a Stranger [to Sing at Your Wedding]”). The book pairs its tender, wry plot with original songs that Lekman has also recorded. The result is a sly, romantic meditation on love—how we find it, how we lose it, and why we keep chasing it anyway.

—Sally Albright

---

The Broken King by Michael Thomas

In 2007, Michael Thomas won global acclaim for his debut novel, Man Gone Down. What followed was a brutal echo of that title—mental anguish over the loss of his father and the legacy of a violent childhood led him to check into a psychiatric hospital. In this memoir, he lays bare what drove him to the brink and how he fought his way back, framing his life’s journey through the people who shaped it: his brilliant but wayward father, his deeply troubled older brother, and the two sons he raised while building a future in Brooklyn.

Raised in the Boston suburbs, Thomas threads together the Red Sox, race, and the fractures of American masculinity. But the memoir’s most searing episode is his account of being raped at age seven, a trauma that leaves even this masterful writer grasping for words. The rawness of his confession and the fierce will to save himself will stay with you long after the last page.

—Frank Bascombe