- Heidi Benson has a definitive report on the LATBR‘s current state: The Book Review will lose four pages and merge with an eight-page opinion section. It could launch as soon as this month. These are unsettling developments to say the least.
- Much to my regret, I was too fried this weekend to attend Wondercon. (I plan to do penance by vigorously reporting at the forthcoming APE.) But Newsarama has a definitive roundup.
- A new installment of The Quarterly Conversation is up, with Dan Green tackling Orhan Pamuk and Scott Esposito raving about Ngugi wa Thiong’o.
- Is Jonathan Lethem competing with Chris Ware in the “I am insignificant!” department? (via Sarah
- Dan Wickett has returned from AWP and he’s offering a farrago of reports right now.
- Stepping in for Mr. Sarvas this week is Joshua Ferris.
- Anastasia Sky: 84 year old first-time novelist.
- Something a bit worthwhile in the NYTBR: Russell Banks on Kundera.
- Giles Foden responds to the whole “Martin Amis as Britain’s greatest living author” controversy, revealing that Amanda Ross, responsible for picking such questionable titles as a Robbie Williams biography for the Richard & Judy Book Club, hates the word “literary.” Well, I’m not fond of anti-intellectuals who are more fond of bullshit labels than a book’s innards, but you don’t hear me complaining.
- Patrick Leigh Fermor is learning to type at 92.
- An interview with Scott McCloud. (via LHB)
- Russian journalist Ivan Safronov plunged to his death from his apartment building. This makes him the 14th journalist to die under mysterious circumstances under Putin.
- Laura Miller on Un Lun Dun. I have enjoyed Miller’s reviews in the past. But I’m troubled by her Malcolm Jones-like pronouncement, “I’d never been able to get past the first chapter or so of the books I’ve tried.” Again, I must ask if today’s book reviewers are lazier than previous generations. It’s one thing if a critic didn’t care for a book, but if a critic is being paid to review something, is it not a critic’s obligation to remark only upon books that she has read? These revelations reflect badly on the reviewer and badly on the pub. Miller dismisses Miéville’s style in these earlier as “half-baked” and “callow,” but it seems to me that if she didn’t read Perdido Street Station and The Scar in full, then Miller’s modifiers are best applied to her own review, particularly since this idle speculation comes with no supportive examples.
- In the UK, Jane Austen is more popular than Jesus. (via Quill & Quire)
- Bruce Sterling on the dot-green boom.
- Me too!
- Linda Richards on Travels in the Scriptorium.
- I’m not very impressed with the new Arcade Fire album, but I need to give it at least two more listens before offering a definitive assessment.
- Mis lit? This is preposterous. Is there someone holding a gun to the Independent‘s editors demanding more trend pieces?
Month / March 2007
Why Do the Smaller Airports Understand Free Wi-Fi?
The Most Misunderstood Band of 1986
See also “The Race” and “Vicious Games.”
BSS #99: Tayari Jones
Author: Tayari Jones
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Caught in the act of untelling.
Subjects Discussed: Drawing from personal experience, Atlanta, accessible metaphors, writing and throwing away many pages, conversational vs. literary tone, “This is not what Dr. King died for,” the West End neighborhood and half-gentrified neighborhood, class segregation, Aria’s naivety, antediluvian word processing machines, the racial divide in bookstores and literary readings, labeling in the publishing industry, achieving literary respectability while being labeled, The Bigamist’s Daughters, and omniscient narration.
EXCERPT FROM SHOW:
Jones: No one ever believes my position on this. I think actually, as strange as it’s going to sound, the bookstores that tend to have the African-American section tend to carry more African-American titles than bookstores that don’t have these sections. For example, there’s a bookstore in DC, Kramer Books. You know, they pride themselves on shelving everything together. And they have hardly any books by people of color there. And with no section. There’s no way of keeping them honest. They don’t know what they have. And though they can feel very progressive about their shelving, my book isn’t in there.
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BSS #98: Charlie Huston
Author: Charlie Huston
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Contemplating the socialist qualities of the sun.
Subjects Discussed: Dialogue vs. description, the influence of acting upon fiction writing, Raymond Chandler, dashes vs. quotation marks, Huston house style, Cormac McCarthy, one-word-one-period dialogue, indicative gestures, drinking and smoking, setting the vampire rules, unintentionally ripping off Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, the beginnings of the Joe Pitt series, verisimilitude vs. heightened reality, the book reviewing climate, critical opposition to genre and series novels, Stephen King, parallels between Moon Knight and Joe Pitt, cruelty to animals, and getting New York details right while living in Los Angeles.
EXCERPT FROM SHOW:
Huston: When I was writing my first novel, Caught Stealing, I was writing it without any expectation or drive toward getting it published. It was while I was still an actor, but not employed. And I needed to stay busy creatively. And so I started writing something that I thought would be a short story, and it grew and grew and grew. But I wasn’t thinking about anyone else reading it, let alone having it published. I didn’t care about form. I didn’t care about format. Which is why a lot of the style has evolved through the books.
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