Palace of Books

To anyone as well- and widely-read as Grenier (The Difficulty of Being a Dog), the mind itself is a "palace of books," and Grenier opens the door to his in this wide-ranging, impressively erudite, deceptively slender volume. In the tradition of Montaigne's Essays, Grenier thumbs with confident ease through centuries of monumental art and literature as he meditates on crime stories; last words; waiting as the human condition; suicide as a philosophical act; love "with its secret altars hidden deep within the heart"; and the inscrutable private lives of authors. Flaubert, Faulkner, Conrad, Beckett, and Camus might share the same page%E2%80%94or Sartre, Foucault, Barthes, and Descartes nestle in the same line%E2%80%94as Grenier probes the questions that captivate him: the function of literature; the character of the short story; and the compulsion to write. While the answers have been offered before%E2%80%94authors want to "show a psychological truth," fiction "allows us to seek and to find the truth about people and about the world"%E2%80%94but the enjoyment is in the virtuoso movement of Grenier's thought. Kaplan's translation captures the wry humor and elegant poise of prose that, like a fine wine or expensive cigar, should be allowed to linger on the tongue. (Oct.)