Supreme Literary Form

For Bookforum Craig Seligman elucidates the pleasures of reading first novels.

Some of us change a lot as we grow older, and some of us look not all that different from the way we did in high school. So it is with style. When we read first novels, we’re moved by some of the same things that move us when we see photographs of friends in their youth; the pictures of those who haven’t changed much are as fascinating as the ones of those who have. Our pleasure in these early books may be partly academic, but if it is it’s academic in the best sense of that much-abused word.