The City at 3PM:  Writing, Reading, and Traveling, Peter LaSalle, 2015

LaSalle, a late sixties graduate of Harvard and a long time creative writing professor at UT, Austin, has an ‘Epstein-like concept” which he has followed over the years and which he compiles in this volume from various magazine articles— visiting the sites of favorite books and authors and reading the book while there!  He’s in Buenos Aires with Borges, Cuernavaca with Malcolm Lowery, Tunis with Flaubert, Rio with Machado de Assis, Los Angeles with Nathanael West.  These essays range from 1971 to 2009 and vary in quality.  The best are engaging and fascinating; the worst are boring and amateur.  He overdoes the use of ‘asides’ in long parenthetically enclosed thoughts which feel more and more like laziness and inability to express himself clearly in the text.  Overall, an interesting but failed execution of a great concept that really appeals to me.

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