{"id":29381,"date":"2021-11-22T12:45:10","date_gmt":"2021-11-22T16:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=29381"},"modified":"2021-11-26T12:49:19","modified_gmt":"2021-11-26T16:49:19","slug":"greg-jackson-the-hollow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2021\/11\/22\/greg-jackson-the-hollow\/","title":{"rendered":"Greg Jackson: “The Hollow”"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/span><\/div>

“The Hollow”<\/strong><\/span>
\nby Greg Jackson<\/span>
\nfrom the November 29, 2021 issue of\u00a0The\u00a0<\/i>New<\/i>\u00a0Yorker<\/i><\/span><\/p><\/h3><\/div>

\"\"G<\/span>reg Jackson has had two stories in\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em>, and I liked both so I’m excited to see he’s back with “The Hollow.” Here is the rather lengthy opening paragraph:<\/p>\n

\n

Jonah Valente had been an object of amusement to Jack and his college classmates, and presumably he had gone on being one to other people ever since. An awkward, intense, muscle-bound young man, the sort you could imagine crashing through a wall accidentally, he had had the dim, muddled quality of students recruited to play football at the school, who either didn\u2019t measure up academically or didn\u2019t believe they did. Valente\u2019s claim to fame, what had made him a figure<\/em> on campus\u2014one of that subset of maybe fifty classmates who, possessing some extravagance of character, defined the larger composite character by which the student body understood itself\u2014came from his having abruptly quit football during sophomore year to take up painting, a passion he had developed apparently out of the blue and with a single-minded earnestness that embarrassed his more sophisticated classmates, who knew to disguise their sincerity. When Valente left the football team, changed his major, and began hanging out with a group of druggy slackers who loitered around the Visual Arts department like sun-drunk flies, the school paper ran a feature on his unusual transformation and he acquired the nickname Beaux Arts. This got shortened to B.A., and then Baa, Balente, Ballantino, the Baleen Whale, simply the Whale, and, by a different route altogether, Picasso. A year later, after spending the summer in Florence on a painting scholarship, Valente got kicked out of school. According to rumors at the time, his expulsion had to do with drugs, but Valente maintained among his friends that it was the school\u2019s way of punishing him for quitting football. Jack had no basis for judgment. Nor did he really care. You knew very little about your classmates in the end, their real lives and disappointments and hopes, and what you did know was mostly hearsay, and often dubious and even somewhat fantastical.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

With Thanksgiving week, I haven’t had a chance to look at this at all, but I hope it’s a great one! I look forward to hearing any thoughts you all might have!<\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/div><\/div><\/span>

Please consider purchasing through Bookshop.org<\/h2><\/span>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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