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Christopher R. Beha

The Index of Self-Destructive Acts Hardcover – May 5, 2020

by Christopher Beha (Author)

4.4 389 ratings

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“Beha tackles finance, faith, war, entitlement, and no end of self-destructive acts. I greatly admired both the writing and the ambition.” ―Ann Patchett

A New York Times Editors’ Choice
Longlisted for the National Book Award
Finalist for the Gotham Book Prize and the 2022 Joyce Carol Oates Prize
A Best Book of the Year at Kirkus, The Christian Science Monitor, Library Journal, and BuzzFeed

What makes a life, Sam Waxworth sometimes wondered―self or circumstance?

On the day Sam Waxworth arrives in New York to write for the Interviewer, a street-corner preacher declares that the world is coming to an end. A data journalist and recent media celebrity―he correctly forecast every outcome of the 2008 election―Sam knows a few things about predicting the future. But when projection meets reality, life gets complicated.

His first assignment for the Interviewer is a profile of disgraced political columnist Frank Doyle, known to Sam for the sentimental works of baseball lore that first sparked his love of the game. When Sam meets Frank at Citi Field for the Mets’ home opener, he finds himself unexpectedly ushered into Doyle’s crumbling family empire. Kit, the matriarch, lost her investment bank to the financial crisis; Eddie, their son, hasn’t been the same since his second combat tour in Iraq; Eddie’s best friend from childhood, the fantastically successful hedge funder Justin Price, is starting to see cracks in his spotless public image. And then there’s Frank’s daughter, Margo, with whom Sam becomes involved―just as his wife, Lucy, arrives from Wisconsin. While their lives seem inextricable, none of them know how close they are to losing everything, including each other.

Sweeping in scope yet meticulous in its construction, The Index of Self-Destructive Acts is a remarkable family portrait and a masterful evocation of New York City and its institutions. Over the course of a single baseball season, Christopher Beha traces the passing of the torch from the old establishment to the new meritocracy, exploring how each generation’s failure helped land us where we are today. Whether or not the world is ending, Beha’s characters are all headed to apocalypses of their own making.

Print length

528 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Tin House Books
Publication date

May 5, 2020
Dimensions

6 x 1.7 x 8.8 inches
ISBN-10

1947793829
ISBN-13

978-1947793828
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From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An impressive performance."
― The New York Times Book Review

"Absorbing and satisfying."
― The Wall Street Journal

"From politics to baseball to mortality and sexuality. . . . a work that gains momentum as it sweeps along, with an eloquent final page."
― Don DeLillo, Amazon Book Review

"A satisfying, ambitious, absorbing novel about the ways big and small that we destroy ourselves."
― Roxane Gay

"Flawlessly constructed."
― Library Journal, Best Books of the Year

"Cleverly written with poetic overtones."
― The Christian Science Monitor, Best Books of the Year

"This is a big novel of big ideas. Beha tackles finance, faith, war, entitlement, and no end of self-destructive acts. I greatly admired both the writing and the ambition."
― Ann Patchett, Parnassus Books

"A masterful interplay of big, fraught themes of privilege, race, wealth, and ethics."
― Buzzfeed, Best Books of the Year

"A crafty plot and nimble sentences. . . . Just knowing it awaits you is almost as fun as reading it."
― Vulture

"Beha does what only [Graham] Greene and a handful of other novelists have been able to accomplish: make God, belief, and doubt the stuff of serious fiction―even down to the probing dialogue of his characters."
― The Millions

"Beha writes with persuasive authority, all the more impressive because he seems to do it without the slightest strain."
― National Review

"A big, sympathetic book about the follies and failings of elite New Yorkers. . . . Beha creates a supple context in which to explore a series of intersecting efforts to find or regain footing and meaning in life."
― Financial Times

"Expansive, detailed, and even slightly buoyant. . . . Lovely and satisfying."
― Washington Examiner

"Thought-provoking. . . . Chris Beha is a great writer with an eye for detail."
― Catholic World Report

"Beha’s marvelous new novel is about, and more often than not exemplifies, pretty much everything good that New York City has lost in the past few bad years: wit, liberalism, journalism, and the dignity of self-destruction."
― Joshua Cohen, author of Attention: Dispatches from a Land of Distraction

"Beha is a sneaky-great plot-maker and thinker; by the time he wraps up this compassionate twenty-first-century tale of ambitious people looking for somewhere to place their faith―religion, statistics, love, money, country―you can see the clouds starting to gather into the moral Category 5 we’re currently enduring."
― Jonathan Dee, author of The Locals

"Ranging effortlessly from baseball statistics to insider trading, and from street-corner prophecy to Romantic Poetry, Beha finds the nuance and humanity in every subject he takes up. The Index of Self-Destructive Acts is that increasingly rare thing: a big, ambitious novel that boldly explores contemporary life in all of its complexities and contradictions."
― Andrew Martin, author of Cool for America

"Christopher Beha’s seductive-complex The Index of Self-Destructive Acts operates like a minute repeater, tiny hammers hitting separate gongs, producing multiple distinct tones but, ultimately, telling one time. And the time that Beha is telling is one that we know, but we haven’t heard it told quite like this. Balancing multiple plots and characters with seamlessness and intrigue, The Index is bound to become a must-read of our time."
― Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women

"A book’s worth of thoughtful essays folded into a kick-ass novel."
― Nell Zink, author of Doxology

"A significant novel, beautifully crafted and deeply felt. Beha creates a high bonfire of our era’s vanities. His work reminds me of the great Robert Stone and Theodore Dreiser. This is a novel to savour."
― Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon

"[The novel’s] breadth, ambition, and command are refreshing. An admirably big-picture, multivalent family saga."
― Kirkus, Starred Review

"Gripping. . . . Filled with stunning acts of hubris and betrayal."
― Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Christopher Beha is the editor of Harper’s Magazine. He is the author of two previous novels, What Happened to Sophie Wilder and Arts & Entertainments, and a memoir, The Whole Five Feet. His writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, and the London Review of Books. He lives in New York City with his wife and family.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07Y211FVV
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tin House Books; First American Edition (May 5, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 528 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1947793829
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1947793828
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.6 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.7 x 8.8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #297,054 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,963 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
- #5,134 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- #16,146 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.4 389 ratings

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4.4 out of 5

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Louise D. Somes

A modern classic

Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2023

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As other reviewers have said, this novel is a modern classic. Metaphors abound, particularly about baseball and life.
The first half deals with baseball, religion, race relations and marriage. The second half deals with finance, religion again and relationships.
There is much tragedy as characters make wrong decisions. There is some redemption but not all.
I never quite learned who the main character was, as chapters are devoted to each character.
I struggled with the first half of the book, but towards the last third, I could not put it down.
The characters are realistic and human with human failures.

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John S. Wieben

A Modern American Classic

Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2020

Verified Purchase

Last night I finished Christopher Beha’s long novel, The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, which takes its title from The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. Perhaps timing is everything, even in the world of publishing, and this book, released on May 5, came into the world in the middle of the pandemic shutdown, which is the only reason I can think of why it isn’t getting the attention it deserves.

The Index of Self-Destructive Acts is a modern American classic. In the few reviews I’ve read its been compared to Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of Vanities. However, this is a much better book than Bonfire, which has long faded from memory, leaving only an impression of overwrought people caught in a melodramatic vision of NYC. A better comparison would be to Jonathan Franzen’s memorable book, The Corrections. And as much as I liked The Corrections, this book and the characters who inhabit its pages will likely be with me much longer, and will resonate more profoundly in my memory.

This book is the story of New York City in the years just after the Great Recession, and it’s also the story of the Doyle family, and the the people who are drawn into their seemingly charmed circle. With their homes on the Upper East Side and in the Hamptons, the Doyle’s world comes slowly and inevitably undone over the course of the books 517 pages.
But even at that length, which I admit drew me to this book in the first place, since I have an affinity for long books, The Index of Self-Destructive Acts is not overlong, if only because at the end you’re still not finished with the seven main characters, even as their lives came undone in ways that are entirely believable, and yet no less tragic for that.

But this is more than a story of the lives of its characters, it is a book of ideas and argument, combining the worlds of baseball, statistical analysis, politics, finance, 21st century journalism, academic politics, and varieties of religious experience.

It’s a rare novel that can artfully combine discussions of Bill James’s statistical analysis of baseball, and the poetry of William Wordsworth, and yet Mr Beha manages it without coming off as precious or pretentious—by no means an easy feat for any writer. And in the end, it is Mr. Beha’s sympathy for each of his characters that will linger in your memory of their world.

If you can find the time to give to it, you’ll find yourself easily drawn into the world of each of these interesting and understandably flawed people as they try to make their way in a world where good intentions go tragically awry, and lives are undone by the fragile decency of people and their incrementally self-destructive acts.

40 people found this helpful

Helpful

Timothy Haugh

Huge Potential Wasted

Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2020

Verified Purchase

When I first started reading this, I thought it was going to be one of the great books. A Midwestern boy (Sam Waxworth) who became successful with sports/political analytics comes to NYC for a new job that he hopes is going to take him and his wife Lucy into the stratosphere. There he meets the family of disgraced columnist Frank Doyle: wife Kit (retired financier); son Eddie (ex-soldier); daughter Margot (college student); and family friend Justin Price. The characters are each well-created and every single one of them gets a turn at being out guide through the story.

Then, as I got further in, I realized that everything I needed to know about this novel was right there in the title. Every single character was going to have a serious fall because of a self-destructive act. I won’t spoil anything by outlining every character’s downward arc but, needless to say, the book became simply the experience of watching a multi-car trainwreck unfold in slow motion. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately, Mr. Beha wasn’t quite up to the task of making it interesting.

I fell in love with the idea, actually. Drawn from the analytics that have made Sam’s name, the index of self-destructive acts is the measure of the things a pitcher does on his own to cause his own downfall—wild pitches, balks, etc. It’s a clever metaphor brought up early on in the novel to foreshadow what was to come. Mr. Beha ruins it, however, by making every single major character a victim of it. Instead of creating something that feels like real life, the reader feels manipulated, especially since the self-destructive acts are, for the most part, obvious and “topical” (racism, insider trading, etc.).

It’s too bad because this novel ends up feeling like a good idea wasted. Mr. Beha clearly has some skills as the story was initially very engaging and his prose, except for a couple of painfully poor set pieces late in the novel, very readable. It just feels like he got so enamored of his clever idea that he let it take over, instead of letting his characters run the show and become real people.

25 people found this helpful

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