BOOKS IN BRIEF Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris (Little, Brown, 123 pp., $14.95). Here are some instructions for reading “Holidays on Ice”: Rip out pages 45 through 123 and use them as coasters while you read the remaining essay. Actually, the other five pieces in David Sedaris’s collection are mildly amusing; the best of them is “Dinah, the Christmas Whore,” an apparently true memoir of his sister’s most successful holiday idea: bringing home a prostitute to be interviewed by the weird Sedaris family. But “SantaLand Diaries,” a memoir of working as an elf to Santa in Macy’s department store, is what’s kept “Holidays on Ice” in print since 1997. It’s the funniest Christmas writing ever done: “The woman in charge of costuming assigned us our outfits and gave us a lecture on keeping things clean. . . . ‘And don’t tell me, “I don’t wear underpants, I’m a dancer.” You’re not a dancer. If you were a real dancer you wouldn’t be here. You’re an elf and you’re going to wear panties like an elf.'” Sedaris describes office politics among costumed midgets, elf hierarchy in the competitive extraction of coins from wishing wells, and the assembly-line similarity of adults’ witticisms to Santa. “SantaLand Diaries” deals in closely observed incidents, simply related–not sentimental reflections, obvious mockeries, or creaky profundities. “The afflicted came to visit Santa,” Sedaris observes, and Santa “made it a point to grab each child’s hand and ask what they wanted for Christmas. He did this until he came to a child who had no hands. This made him self-conscious, so he started placing a hand on the child’s knee until he came to a child with no legs. After that he decided to simply nod his head and chuckle.” Real wit is rare, especially about Christmas. Here it is. –Michael Long A Visit to Vanity Fair: Moral Essays on the Present Age by Alan Jacobs (Brazos, 173 pp., $18.99). Asked once for an author’s description to go with an essay he’d written, Alan Jacobs suggested: “Jacobs is an associate professor of English at Wheaton College, and isn’t it a scandal he’s not a full professor yet?” Well, he’s a full professor now, and the scandal is that he’s not yet known as one of America’s best essayists. He’s got the whole package of skills: quick comedy, high seriousness, wide learning, and an easy, rapid prose. He’s also got religion, which may explain why he isn’t better known, for mainstream American publishing grants little room to old-fashioned Christian sensibility. That’s a shame, for the essays collected in “A Visit to Vanity Fair” show just what Jacobs can do with that sensibility. His topics range from C.S. Lewis to Bob Dylan to the evangelical practice of seeking advice by letting the Bible fall open at random verses. Worth particular notice are “Blinded by the Light,” Jacobs’s cover story for The Weekly Standard about the spirituality books that dominate the bestseller list, and “A Bible Fit for Children,” a simultaneously comic and profound account of children’s Bibles that is one of the best essays anyone’s produced in the last decade. A first-rate collection. –Richard Datchery Making Harvard Modern: The Rise of America’s University by Morton Keller and Phyllis Keller (Oxford University Press, 640 pp., $35). This is a fascinating and engaging account of the rise of Harvard since 1933. Unfortunately, it doesn’t address the most important perplexities posed by the idea of a “modern university.” While Morton and Phyllis Keller have much to say about, for example, Harvard’s astonishing financial success, they have little to say about the quality of education that one receives today at the school. Problems such as grade inflation and political correctness receive fewer than a handful of pages. Most important, “Making Harvard Modern” does not raise in a serious manner the question of the true educational purpose of a university. Of course, the question of the purpose of our universities isn’t much raised by anyone these days–even at Harvard. –Steve Lenzner
