This isn't widely remembered today, but for about fifteen years Patti Smith was nearly as reclusive as J. D. Salinger. First she helped invent punk rock and released four superb albums in the 1970s, then she disappeared to marry fellow musician Fred "Sonic" Smith and live quietly as a mother and wife on the shores of Lake St. Clair in Michigan.

Faced with the chance to write for the New York Times Book Review, many critics opt to play it straight and stick close to the work at hand, and there's nothing wrong with that. Wyatt Mason praises The Skating Rink, the latest translated novel by Roberto Bolano, in this weekend's issue, and hits all the usual points: placing the new work in career context, outlining the plot, reaching in conclusion for language that transmits some of the excitement of the work itself.

1. Author J. G. Ballard has died.

I didn't go for Joseph O'Neill's novel Netherlands last year, but he hits an assignment to review The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 1: 1929-1940 on the cover of the New York Times Book Review out of the park this weekend, and I'll read Joseph O'Neill on Beckett any time. His baroque, fitful language is clearly meant to echo that of the master himself:

I recently wondered what I would think about Jonathan Littell's big new novel The Kindly Ones, an intentionally repulsive exploration of the genocidal Nazi personality that won big awards in France and has now been published, with high expectations, in an English translation. At this point, I've consumed so many articles about the book that I may not need to read it at all.

One of the best things critics can do is complete the thoughts we struggle to formulate ourselves when we read new books. I balked at buying James Wood's literary study How Fiction Works recently after reading several pages in a bookstore, sensing that I might find the air too rarefied. After reading Walter Kirn's consideration of the book on the cover of this week's New York Times Book Review, I feel better about this tough decision.

Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan