Culture
Each NHL team’s biggest concern a month into the 2024-25 regular season
We’re just over a month into the NHL regular season, and for some teams, the high hopes and optimism of the preseason have faded away for one reason or another.
The Athletic asked its NHL staff this week for each team’s biggest concern at this point. The responses covered the full spectrum, from goaltending and lack of offense to bad defense, injuries and more. Here’s what they said.
Their offense is still bottom tier: The Ducks have scored only one or two goals in six of their 10 games. They’ve avoided being shut out but their 2.2 goals per game ranks 31st, putting them above only the equally punchless New York Islanders. Several of their top offensive players are struggling. Mason McTavish and Cutter Gauthier have yet to score. Frank Vatrano and Trevor Zegras each have one empty net goal. It hasn’t helped that their power play is just 4-for-31, but they’re also being decisively outshot by an average of nine. The offense would really be inept if Troy Terry, Leo Carlsson and Ryan Strome didn’t have 12 of their 22 goals. Lukas Dostal’s tremendous goaltending is keeping them afloat. — Eric Stephens
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Five-on-five offense: Through 11 games, the Bruins have scored only 16 five-on-five goals. David Pastrnak has just one. Brad Marchand, Charlie Coyle, Pavel Zacha and Morgan Geekie, all of whom started the season in the top six, have zero. It would be one thing if the Bruins had high-end goaltending like they did for the past three seasons. Jeremy Swayman, without Linus Ullmark, is still finding his game. — Fluto Shinzawa
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Secondary scoring: Heading into Friday night, the Sabres had only two power-play goals this season and had only one goal total from second-liners Dylan Cozens and Jack Quinn. Of Buffalo’s 24 five-on-five goals, 11 have come with Tage Thompson on the ice. Lindy Ruff tried mixing up the second and third lines this week in an effort to get more from players like Cozens and Quinn. The second line and power play are the key to getting more consistent offense. — Matthew Fairburn
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Are young players still progressing? This should be the No. 1 priority for the Flames. Connor Zary is near the top of the Flames’ leaderboard in points. That’s good. Dustin Wolf has lost his last two starts after winning his first three. That’s less good. The shine of Martin Pospisil as a center has already worn off. That’s also less good, but at least he’s playing with Zary again. Matthew Coronato doesn’t have a regular spot in the lineup. The Flames crashing down to Earth after a hot start was expected. It’s all about the youth continuing to push themselves forward. — Julian McKenzie
Goaltending: The Hurricanes’ goaltending has been good — entering Friday’s games, Carolina had allowed the second-fewest goals in the league at 2.33 per game — but that doesn’t mean there isn’t cause for concern. Frederik Andersen missed Monday’s game in Vancouver, leading to Spencer Martin being recalled. Andersen was later announced to be out week to week with a lower-body injury. Andersen (3-1-0, .941 save percentage, 1.48 goals-against average) had a better GAA and save percentage than Pyotr Kochetkov (4-1-0, .891, 2.61) in October, and the Hurricanes are thin after Martin should another injury occur. The position is surely on the minds of the coaching staff and front office. — Cory Lavalette
Goal scoring: There’s no doubt the Blackhawks are a better team than a season ago, but the offense remains an area of concern. They just don’t have a ton of depth scoring. They could especially use more five-on-five scoring from Tyler Bertuzzi, Taylor Hall, Philipp Kurashev, Ilya Mikheyev and Teuvo Teräväinen. Those five players combined for four goals in five-on-five play through the first 11 games. — Scott Powers
Goaltending: Colorado’s .858 save percentage ranks last in the NHL, and it’s without a doubt the biggest contributor to the disappointing start to the season. The Avalanche haven’t been bad defensively by most metrics, allowing the 10th-fewest expected goals per 60 minutes, but all three goalies have struggled. Alexandar Georgiev’s minus-9.42 GSAx ranks 71st out of the 71 goalies to play this season, more than three goals worse than the next goalie. He should progress back to being near the league average, but it needs to happen quickly before the Avalanche lose too much ground in an incredibly competitive Central Division. — Jesse Granger
Paper-thin depth: The Blue Jackets’ 5-4-1 start is solid enough just at face value. But considering the players they’ve lost to injuries — captain Boone Jenner, Kent Johnson, Dmitri Voronkov and defenseman Erik Gudbranson — they’ve patched lines together and continued to play well. However, they can’t possibly suffer that many injuries and expect to compete. Right? Right? — Aaron Portzline
Wyatt Johnston has one goal and four assists in nine games this season. (Jerome Miron / Imagn Images)
Wyatt Johnston’s lack of scoring: It’s all relative, right? The Stars don’t have a whole lot to be concerned about. They’re 7-3-0, Jake Oettinger is in top form, Matt Duchene is having a turn-back-the-clock season. But this was supposed to be the year Johnston took that final step into superstardom. Instead, he has one goal and four assists in 10 games, he has some of the worst possession numbers on the team and is on the third line while Logan Stankoven takes over on the top line. The Stars were still outscoring opponents 6-3 at five-on-five (heading into Friday) with Johnston on the ice; it’s hardly a crisis. But if the Stars are going to make another Stanley Cup run this season, Johnston has to be a big part of it. — Mark Lazerus
A lack of offensive zone time: There are a lot of concerns accompanying Detroit’s 4-5-1 start, but this is the one that sums them all up best. Detroit just hasn’t spent enough time in its opponent’s end. According to data from NHL EDGE, the Red Wings have played just 37.3 percent of the time in the offensive zone, the lowest percentage in the league. That stat is likely a symptom of multiple issues, including getting hemmed into their own zone too often and flaws with the team’s forecheck, but it sums up Detroit’s offensive woes accurately. The Red Wings knew they lost a lot of offense this summer and that it would be hard to replace, but they’re not even really giving themselves a chance to do so. — Max Bultman
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Connor McDavid’s injury: The Oilers got off to a good start in their first full game without McDavid, who’s expected out of the lineup for two to three weeks with a lower-body injury. They recorded a season-high five goals in a victory over the Nashville Predators on Thursday. But that’s just one game and it was against Nashville. They always beat Nashville. The Oilers won just once in five tries last season with McDavid sidelined due to injury, and they’ll be in tough until he returns. Even with the Music City result, the Oilers still have just five wins in their first 11 games. A slide this month could cost them the Pacific Division crown they’re coveting. — Daniel Nugent-Bowman
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The third pair: Everything is going about as well as could be expected for the defending champs, starting with Aleksander Barkov’s return to the lineup, but they’re going to need to figure out how to proceed with their bottom defensive pairing. There are three possible combinations of Adam Boqvist, Nate Schmidt and Uvis Balinskis, and none have been good — Florida has been outscored 10-1 with them on the ice. — Sean Gentille
Quinton Byfield is without a goal over the first 11 contests. (Jason Parkhurst / Imagn Images)
Quinton Byfield’s slow start: Byfield is without a goal over the first 11 contests. He’s chipped in five assists, but it’s not the kind of beginning he or the Kings imagined after the sides agreed on a five-year extension worth $31.25 million. His advanced metrics aren’t bad, and the Kings haven’t done him any favors by committing to return him to his natural position at center and abandoning that just five games in. It’s possible that he bounces between the middle and the wing, which may not be great for maintaining consistency or chemistry with his linemates. The worry with him offensively is that he’s had a tendency to fall into lengthy scoring droughts. Even in his breakout last season, the 22-year-old went 19 games without a goal before he scored his 20th in the regular-season finale. — Eric Stephens
Jared Spurgeon’s health: One big reason the Wild were confident this season would be better than last was the return of the captain after he was limited to 16 games last season due to shoulder, hip and back injuries. But after season-ending hip and back surgeries, Spurgeon was sidelined after his second game and missed six in a row before returning Tuesday in Pittsburgh. The team has said the discomfort is “part of the healing process.” Spurgeon said they took “different routes” medically to get him back in the lineup, but he couldn’t say he was confident this would not be a season-long issue. The good news is the Wild went 4-1-1 without him. — Michael Russo
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A lack of maturity: When you are the second-youngest team in the NHL, with the youngest blue line, a lack of maturity probably should not be a concern. It should be expected. But despite their youth, the Canadiens have elevated internal expectations, and that means recognizing game situations and just how badly things can go wrong when your reads are off. Basic notions like playing a deep game, defensive coverage on faceoffs or defensive zone play in general have been problems at various points already this season. Perhaps it’s a sign this team is not yet mature enough to execute relatively simple concepts, but if the Canadiens hope to be mildly competitive this season, they will need to mature in a hurry. — Arpon Basu
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Nashville Predators
No. 2 center: Defensive zone coverage deserves a nod, as well. Though the Preds have rebounded well from losing their first five games, they are still forcing Juuse Saros to deal with too many Grade-A chances. But just as Saros, the power play and other aspects of the Preds’ game are progressing, that will, too. There’s no clear answer on No. 2 center, which is part of why Andrew Brunette has done so much shuffling with his top two lines. The answer is likely on another roster right now. — Joe Rexrode
Ondřej Palát’s struggles: The Devils are off to a solid start, and their forward group has been good. Palát, however, is off to a slow start. Entering Friday, he had the worst expected-goals-for percentage among Devils forwards, according to Natural Stat Trick, and was averaging his lowest ice time per game since his rookie season. — Peter Baugh
New York Islanders
Goals: When you get shut out four times in your first 10 games, there can be no other concern that tops this one. The Islanders haven’t been a goal-scoring juggernaut for a long time, but this season’s futility is a new low — and they’ve been shut out by very mediocre teams (Red Wings, Ducks, Blue Jackets) to make it even worse. — Arthur Staple
The Rangers could use a Mika Zibanejad resurgence. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
Mika Zibanejad’s struggles: Zibanejad had seven points in nine games through Thursday, which on the surface is a respectable total. But he was also a minus-3, and coach Peter Laviolette lowered his ice time from past seasons. His underlying numbers have suffered, too. The Rangers had only 41 percent of the expected goals share with him on the ice at five-on-five, according to Natural Stat Trick, and were getting out-chanced with him on the ice. Center play is vital for playoff teams, and the Rangers could use a Zibanejad resurgence. — Peter Baugh
The defense: The Sens defense has had good moments like an 8-1 domination over the St. Louis Blues. But they’ve still allowed three goals or more in the majority of games. The Senators have also adjusted to life without Artem Zub, who normally plays alongside Jake Sanderson, and are making the most of their Jacob Bernard-Docker—Tyler Kleven pair. But if the Sens want to compete, they will still need an extra defender. — Julian McKenzie
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Five-on-five scoring: Through their first 11 games, the Flyers have managed only 16 goals at five-on-five — and five of those came in a single game, a win over Minnesota on Oct. 26. Part of that is because they have looked much too disjointed all over the ice at times and have too often been hemmed in their own zone. But players like Morgan Frost (zero five-on-five goals), Matvei Michkov (zero), Travis Konecny (zero), Owen Tippett (1), Tyson Foerster (1) and Joel Farabee (1) have still had plenty of opportunities to do more damage and haven’t. — Kevin Kurz
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Erik Karlsson’s offensive production: Never an own-zone marvel, Karlsson has consistently created chances at a historic rate for defensemen. That is not the case this season, as his paltry point total reflects an ineffectiveness offensively that is very outside the norm. Karlsson is in Pittsburgh to be a prolific offensive force. But he had only one goal and seven points through 12 games, and he hasn’t driven play the way he has in previous seasons. Perhaps an upper-body injury that kept him from participating in training camp remains an issue, or at least it didn’t afford him the time he needed to get game-ready. Whatever the cause, Karlsson’s poor offensive start is one of the big reasons the Penguins began 3-7-1 and look nowhere close to competing for the playoffs. — Rob Rossi
Will Smith’s early struggles: Eight games. No points. It was weighing on the 19-year-old rookie, who also was scratched from three other contests as part of the team’s load management plan for him over the first half of the season. It looked like the former Boston College star was having trouble with the speed and size of the NHL game as he had minimal impact. Thursday night saw the pressure valve pop. Smith scored his first goal (and his first point) when he beat Chicago goalie Petr Mrázek in the first period and then added another successful wrist shot in the second that would be the winning goal in a 3-2 victory. The big night should be a confidence jolt for the No. 4 pick in the 2023 draft, who is expected to be a big part of San Jose’s future. — Eric Stephens
Make it TWO goals for Will Smith 🔥 pic.twitter.com/bNOm0OpaH8
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) November 1, 2024
Backup goaltending: The Kraken have played well in the first month, but despite some promising signs, they are still chugging along at roughly a .500 point percentage. They’re one of only two Pacific Division teams in the black by goal differential and their underlying profile looks consistent with that of a playoff team, but they’ve been held back by porous depth goaltending performances in October. Philipp Grubauer is sporting an .881 save percentage across his four starts, and the Kraken have won just one of those four games. It’s early yet and the samples are small, but for a team like Seattle, you need to be at least at a .500 point percentage in games your backup goaltender plays if you’re going to be a playoff team. In the first month of the season, Seattle’s depth goaltending prevented it from consolidating a more auspicious start. — Thomas Drance
St. Louis Blues
Robert Thomas’ injury: Thomas suffered a fractured ankle Oct. 22 and will be re-evaluated in late November. Any club that loses its No. 1 center will miss him, but the Blues were already thin at the position. They’ve forced winger Pavel Buchnevich into the role, which hasn’t worked as they hoped. The offense (2.7 goals per game, tied for 24th in the league) and power play (16.7 percent, 21st) are struggling. As a result, the team has played a lot of catch-up hockey, trailing by two goals or more in seven of its 11 games. Thomas can’t get back soon enough. — Jeremy Rutherford
Depth support: Depth was always going to be a weakness in Tampa Bay. Cap casualties have depleted the bottom six and third pair, and management hasn’t found cost-effective options to adequately replace what the Lightning lost. Outside of Nick Paul, the bottom six is pretty much a black hole for offense. While the team’s strategy is built around its elite core, and with Ryan McDonagh back, plus Brandon Hagel and Anthony Cirelli clicking, the supporting cast got a major boost. But the bottom of the lineup seriously lacks. — Shayna Goldman
The power play: On one hand, this is surprising. On the other, it’s not surprising at all. The surprising aspect: The Leafs have had one of the league’s top regular-season power plays for years and still boast all the same familiar parts of it. Strong starts have been the norm for the five-pack of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, John Tavares and Morgan Rielly. That same unit, of course, struggled mightily in second halves year after year and, more damagingly, in the postseason. The Leafs, with first-year coach Craig Berube, opted to keep that top group intact to start the season. That’s changed recently, with Berube pivoting to two balanced units. Whether that makes a difference in the long run (if the Leafs even stick with it) is very much TBD. — Jonas Siegel
Where did the offense go? After a terrific 3-0 start where the team piled up goals and brought the Salt Lake City crowd to its feet, it has been a tough go for the Utahns. They have only two wins in their last eight games, a stretch during which they’re 29th in the NHL in goals scored. Even with their two big losses on defense — Sean Durzi and John Marino are both out with long-term injuries — they’ve managed to play OK in their own end, but the power play has been misfiring and top prospect Josh Doan was sent down to Tucson. Utah especially needs more from Logan Cooley, Barrett Hayton and Lawson Crouse, who have combined for just six points during this funk. — James Mirtle
The power play: Vancouver’s core group has high-end skill and it’s consistently combined on the power play to manufacture goals at about a 22 percent clip over the past several seasons — which is very good, but not elite. For whatever reason through the first month of the season, however, the power play is struggling enormously to get set up and generate shot attempts. Though the conversion rate is just below average — buoyed by a two-goal outburst against the Blackhawks in mid-October — Vancouver’s power play isn’t passing the eye test and its underlying footprint is league-worst. The Canucks, for example, are the only team in the NHL generating shot attempts at a rate south of 80 attempts per hour. And they’re in the mid-70s. They’re also generating shots at a league-worst rate. If that continues, the club will need to get lucky or shoot at an incredibly efficient clip to produce at even an average rate with the man advantage. Even if the Canucks have the skill level to pull that off, it’s a very tough way to live. — Thomas Drance
Performance on the road: The difference between how the Golden Knights have performed inside the friendly confines of T-Mobile Arena compared to on the road has been stark. Vegas is a perfect 7-0-0 at home but has yet to win in four contests as the visitor. Part of that could be competition, as all four opponents on the road were playoff teams a year ago. It could also be a result of the lineup not being quite as deep as it once was. Vegas’ top line of Jack Eichel, Mark Stone and Ivan Barbashev has dominated, but on the road, it’s tougher for coach Bruce Cassidy to get favorable matchups. — Jesse Granger
The power play: It feels like picking nits given how good the Caps look overall, but there’s some work to be done with the man advantage. They’re 30th in percentage, which is rough, but it might be as simple as getting a bounce or two because they’re generating chances. As a team, they’re at 9.35 expected goals per 60, ninth in the league. In other words, the process isn’t broken. — Sean Gentille
The Jets are special teams merchants: Last year’s Jets would have loved a power play this good: an NHL-best 45.2 percent behemoth that has looked dangerous from every position on the ice. Kyle Connor is on fire, tied for the power-play goals lead with four, and Cole Perfetti has three from the second unit. The problem is that this year’s Jets are not as good at even strength as last year’s team. The 10-1-0 record deserves plaudits, but Winnipeg has outscored its opponents only 27-20 at five-on-five. Those numbers are top-10 as opposed to best in the league like the Jets were last season. Keep working on that through a grueling November schedule and this team will be a contender. — Murat Ates
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(Top photo of Connor McDavid and Erik Karlsson: Curtis Comeau / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Let’s memorize a poem! Not because it’s good for us or because we think we should, but because it’s fun, a mental challenge with a solid aesthetic reward. You can amuse yourself, impress your friends and maybe discover that your way of thinking about the world — or even, as you’ll see, the universe — has shifted a bit.
Over the next five days, we’ll look closely at a great poem by one of our favorite poets, and we’ll have games, readings and lots of encouragement to help you learn it by heart. Some of you know how this works: Last year more Times readers than we could count memorized a jaunty 18-line recap of an all-night ferry ride. (If you missed that adventure, it’s not too late to embark. The ticket is still valid.)
This time, we’re training our telescopes on W.H. Auden’s “The More Loving One” — a clever, compact meditation on love, disappointment and the night sky.
Here’s the first of its four stanzas, read for us by Matthew McConaughey:
The More Loving One
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
Matthew McConaughey, actor and poet
In four short lines we get a brisk, cynical tour of the universe: hell and the heavens, people and animals, coldness and cruelty. Commonplace observations — that the stars are distant; that life can be dangerous — are wound into a charming, provocative insight. The tone is conversational, mixing decorum and mild profanity in a manner that makes it a pleasure to keep reading.
Here’s Tracy K. Smith, a former U.S. poet laureate, with the second stanza:
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Tracy K. Smith, poet
These lines abruptly shift the focus from astronomy to love, from the universal to the personal. Imagine how it would feel if the stars had massive, unrequited crushes on us! The speaker, couching his skepticism in a coy, hypothetical question, seems certain that we wouldn’t like this at all.
This certainty leads him to a remarkable confession, a moment of startling vulnerability. The poem’s title, “The More Loving One,” is restated with sweet, disarming frankness. Our friend is wearing his heart on his well-tailored sleeve.
The poem could end right there: two stanzas, point and counterpoint, about how we appreciate the stars in spite of their indifference because we would rather love than be loved.
But the third stanza takes it all back. Here’s Alison Bechdel reading it:
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Alison Bechdel, graphic novelist
The speaker downgrades his foolish devotion to qualified admiration. No sooner has he established himself as “the more loving one” than he gives us — and perhaps himself — reason to doubt his ardor. He likes the stars fine, he guesses, but not so much as to think about them when they aren’t around.
The fourth and final stanza, read by Yiyun Li, takes this disenchantment even further:
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
Yiyun Li, author
Wounded defiance gives way to a more rueful, resigned state of mind. If the universe were to snuff out its lights entirely, the speaker reckons he would find beauty in the void. A starless sky would make him just as happy.
Though perhaps, like so many spurned lovers before and after, he protests a little too much. Every fan of popular music knows that a song about how you don’t care that your baby left you is usually saying the opposite.
The last line puts a brave face on heartbreak.
So there you have it. In just 16 lines, this poem manages to be somber and funny, transparent and elusive. But there’s more to it than that. There is, for one thing, a voice — a thinking, feeling person behind those lines.
When he wrote “The More Loving One,” in the 1950s, Wystan Hugh Auden was among the most beloved writers in the English-speaking world. Before this week is over there will be more to say about Auden, but like most poets he would have preferred that we give our primary attention to the poem.
Its structure is straightforward and ingenious. Each of the four stanzas is virtually a poem unto itself — a complete thought expressed in one or two sentences tied up in a neat pair of couplets. Every quatrain is a concise, witty observation: what literary scholars call an epigram.
This makes the work of memorization seem less daunting. We can take “The More Loving One” one epigram at a time, marvelling at how the four add up to something stranger, deeper and more complex than might first appear.
So let’s go back to the beginning and try to memorize that insouciant, knowing first stanza. Below you’ll find a game we made to get you started. Give it a shot, and come back tomorrow for more!
Play a game to learn it by heart. Need more practice? Listen to Ada Limón, Matthew McConaughey, W.H. Auden and others recite our poem.
Question 1/6
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.
Your first task: Learn the first four lines!
Let’s start with the first couplet. Fill in the rhyming words.
Monday
Love, the cosmos and everything in between, all in 16 lines.
Tuesday (Available tomorrow)
What’s love got to do with it?
Wednesday (Available April 22)
How to write about love? Be a little heartsick (and the best poet of your time).
Thursday (Available April 23)
Are we alone in the universe? Does it matter?
Friday (Available April 24)
You did it! You’re a star.
Ready for another round? Try your hand at the 2025 Poetry Challenge.
Edited by Gregory Cowles, Alicia DeSantis and Nick Donofrio. Additional editing by Emily Eakin,
Joumana Khatib, Emma Lumeij and Miguel Salazar. Design and development by Umi Syam. Additional
game design by Eden Weingart. Video editing by Meg Felling. Photo editing by Erica Ackerberg.
Illustration art direction by Tala Safie.
Illustrations by Daniel Barreto.
Text and audio recording of “The More Loving One,” by W.H. Auden, copyright © by the Estate of
W.H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Photograph accompanying Auden recording
from Imagno/Getty Images.
Literature
‘Romola’ (1863) by George Eliot
Who knew that there’s a major George Eliot novel that neither I nor any of my friends had ever heard of?
“Romola” was Eliot’s fourth novel, published between “The Mill on the Floss” (1860) and “Middlemarch” (1870-71). If my friends and I didn’t get this particular memo, and “Romola” is familiar to every Eliot fan but us, please skip the following.
“Romola” isn’t some fluky misfire better left unmentioned in light of Eliot’s greater work. It’s her only historical novel, set in Florence during the Italian Renaissance. It embraces big subjects like power, religion, art and social upheaval, but it’s not dry or overly intellectual. Its central character is a gifted, freethinking young woman named Romola, who enters a marriage so disastrous as to make Anna Karenina’s look relatively good.
It probably matters that many of Eliot’s other books have been adapted into movies or TV series, with actors like Hugh Dancy, Ben Kingsley, Emily Watson and Rufus Sewell. The BBC may be doing even more than we thought to keep classic literature alive. (In 1924, “Romola” was made into a silent movie starring Lillian Gish. It doesn’t seem to have made much difference.)
Anthony Trollope, among others, loved “Romola.” He did, however, warn Eliot against aiming over her readers’ heads, which may help explain its obscurity.
All I can say, really, is that it’s a mystery why some great books stay with us and others don’t.
‘Quiet Dell’ (2013) by Jayne Anne Phillips
This was an Oprah Book of the Week, which probably disqualifies it from B-side status, but it’s not nearly as well known as Phillips’s debut story collection, “Black Tickets” (1979), or her most recent novel, “Night Watch” (2023), which won her a long-overdue Pulitzer Prize.
Phillips has no parallel in her use of potent, stylized language to shine a light into the darkest of corners. In “Quiet Dell,” her only true-crime novel, she’s at the height of her powers, which are particularly apparent when she aims her language laser at horrific events that actually occurred. Her gift for transforming skeevy little lives into what I can only call “Blade Runner” mythology is consistently stunning.
Consider this passage from the opening chapter of “Quiet Dell”:
“Up high the bells are ringing for everyone alive. There are silver and gold and glass bells you can see through, and sleigh bells a hundred years old. My grandmother said there was a whisper for each one dead that year, and a feather drifting for each one waiting to be born.”
The book is full of language like that — and of complex, often chillingly perverse characters. It’s a dark, underrecognized beauty.
‘Solaris’ (1961) by Stanislaw Lem
You could argue that, in America, at least, the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem didn’t produce any A-side novels. You could just as easily argue that that makes all his novels both A-side and B-side.
It’s science fiction. All right?
I love science and speculative fiction, but I know a lot of literary types who take pride in their utter lack of interest in it. I always urge those people to read “Solaris,” which might change their opinions about a vast number of popular books they dismiss as trivial. As far as I know, no one has yet taken me up on that.
“Solaris” involves the crew of a space station continuing the study of an aquatic planet that has long defied analysis by the astrophysicists of Earth. Part of what sets the book apart from a lot of other science-fiction novels is Lem’s respect for enigma. He doesn’t offer contrived explanations in an attempt to seduce readers into suspending disbelief. The crew members start to experience … manifestations? … drawn from their lives and memories. If the planet has any intentions, however, they remain mysterious. All anyone can tell is that their desires and their fears, some of which are summoned from their subconsciousness, are being received and reflected back to them so vividly that it becomes difficult to tell the real from the projected. “Solaris” has the peculiar distinction of having been made into not one but two bad movies. Read the book instead.
‘Fox 8’ (2013) by George Saunders
If one of the most significant living American writers had become hypervisible with his 2017 novel, “Lincoln in the Bardo,” we’d go back and read his earlier work, wouldn’t we? Yes, and we may very well have already done so with the story collections “Tenth of December” (2013) and “Pastoralia” (2000). But what if we hadn’t yet read Saunders’s 2013 novella, “Fox 8,” about an unusually intelligent fox who, by listening to a family from outside their windows at night, has learned to understand, and write, in fox-English?: “One day, walking neer one of your Yuman houses, smelling all the interest with snout, I herd, from inside, the most amazing sound. Turns out, what that sound is, was: the Yuman voice, making werds. They sounded grate! They sounded like prety music! I listened to those music werds until the sun went down.”
Once Saunders became more visible to more of us, we’d want to read a book that ventures into the consciousness of a different species (novels tend to be about human beings), that maps the differences and the overlaps in human and animal consciousness, explores the effects of language on consciousness and is great fun.
We’d all have read it by now — right?
‘Between the Acts’ (1941) by Virginia Woolf
You could argue that Woolf didn’t have any B-sides, and yet it’s hard to deny that more people have read “Mrs. Dalloway” (1925) and “To the Lighthouse” (1927) than have read “The Voyage Out” (1915) or “Monday or Tuesday” (1921). Those, along with “Orlando” (1928) and “The Waves” (1931), are Woolf’s most prominent novels.
Four momentous novels is a considerable number for any writer, even a great one. That said, “Between the Acts,” her last novel, really should be considered the fifth of her significant books. The phrase “embarrassment of riches” comes to mind.
Five great novels by the same author is a lot for any reader to take on. Our reading time is finite. We won’t live long enough to read all the important books, no matter how old we get to be. I don’t expect many readers to be as devoted to Woolf as are the cohort of us who consider her to have been some sort of dark saint of literature and will snatch up any relic we can find. Fanatics like me will have read “Between the Acts” as well as “The Voyage Out,” “Monday or Tuesday” and “Flush” (1933), the story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel. Speaking for myself, I don’t blame anyone who hasn’t gotten to those.
I merely want to add “Between the Acts” to the A-side, lest anyone who’s either new to Woolf or a tourist in Woolf-landia fail to rank it along with the other four contenders.
As briefly as possible: It focuses on an annual village pageant that attempts to convey all of English history in a single evening. The pageant itself interweaves subtly, brilliantly, with the lives of the villagers playing the parts.
It’s one of Woolf’s most lusciously lyrical novels. And it’s a crash course, of sorts, in her genius for conjuring worlds in which the molehill matters as much as the mountain, never mind their differences in size.
It’s also the most accessible of her greatest books. It could work for some as an entry point, in more or less the way William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” (1930) can be the starter book before you go on to “The Sound and the Fury” (1929) or “Absalom, Absalom!” (1936).
As noted, there’s too much for us to read. We do the best we can.
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Literature
‘Prayer’ (1985) by Galway Kinnell
Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.
“I typically say Kinnell’s words at the start of my day, as I’m pedaling a traffic-laden path to my office,” says Major Jackson, 57, the author of six books of poetry, including “Razzle Dazzle” (2023). “The poem encourages a calm acceptance of the day’s events but also wants us to embrace the misapprehension and oblivion of life, to avoid probing too deeply for answers to inscrutable questions. I admire what Kinnell does with only 14 words; the repetition of ‘what,’ ‘that’ and ‘is’ would seem to limit the poem’s sentiment but, paradoxically, the poem opens widely to contain all manner of human experience. The three ‘is’es in the middle line give it a symmetry that makes its message feel part of a natural order, and even more convincing. Thanks to the skillful punctuation, pauses and staccato rhythm, a tonal quality of interior reflection emerges. Much like a haiku, it continues after its last words, lingering like the last note played on a piano that slowly fades.”
“Just as I was entering young adulthood, probably slow to claim romantic feelings, a girlfriend copied out a poem by Pablo Neruda and slipped it into an envelope with red lipstick kisses all over it. In turn, I recited this poem. It took me the remainder of that winter to memorize its lines,” says Jackson. “The poem captures the pitch of longing that defines love at its most intense. The speaker in Shakespeare’s most famous sonnet believes the poem creates the beloved, ‘So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.’ (Sonnet 18). In Rilke’s expressive declarations of yearning, the beloved remains elusive. Wherever the speaker looks or travels, she marks his world by her absence. I find this deeply moving.”
“Clifton faced many obstacles, including cancer, a kidney transplant and the loss of her husband and two of her children. Through it all, she crafted a long career as a pre-eminent American poet,” says Jackson. “Her poem ‘won’t you celebrate with me’ is a war cry, an invitation to share in her victories against life’s persistent challenges. The poem is meaningful to all who have had to stare down death in a hospital or had to bereave the passing of close relations. But, even for those who have yet to mourn life’s vicissitudes, the poem is instructive in cultivating resilience and a persevering attitude. I keep coming back to the image of the speaker’s hands and the spirit of steadying oneself in the face of unspeakable storms. She asks in a perfectly attuned gorgeously metrical line, ‘what did i see to be except myself?’”
‘Sonnet 94’ (1609) by William Shakespeare
They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmovèd, cold, and to temptation slow,
They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces
And husband nature’s riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die;
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity.
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
“It’s one of the moments of Western consciousness,” says Frederick Seidel, 90, the author of more than a dozen collections of poetry, including “So What” (2024). “Shakespeare knows and says what he knows.”
“It trombones magnificent, unbearable sorrow,” says Seidel.
“It’s smartass and bitter and bright,” says Seidel.
These interviews have been edited and condensed.
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