The Ed Critics
“Do you often speak so authoritatively on subjects you know so little about?” — June 22, 2005
“If you’re going to raise consiciousness, you’ve got to post something that actually wakes people up, not something so tired.” — March 8, 2006
“That’s priceless, Ed. You calling us smug. Read your own post’s title, man.” — April 12, 2006
“Why not indeed but you seem more interested in tripping through the pages of your own well-ordered mind than through the pages of literature, however defined. Your piece should more properly be called In Praise of Me and My Expensive Education–Willeford seems like a sidebar to the main story here, you.” — August 9, 2006
“As a writer, Ed seems to rarely consider audience. He’s got his vision of how things should be, how people should think, even how they should behave and his M.O. over and over is to either get them to move them towards him, or, if they refuse to do so, dismiss them. It’s hard to fault Ed for being Ed.” — March 19, 2007
“This is the most smug and self-serving ‘apology’ I have ever seen. You are a bad interviewer not because you ‘fail to connect’ (please), but because you feel it necessary to showcase yourself in your interviews.” — May 4, 2007
“What the Ed critics don’t seem to realize about Ed is that in Ed’s world, art exists only in relation to Ed, not the world at large. He’s on record saying that he takes art, ‘personally’ that something he thinks is bad ‘offends him.”” — June 18, 2007
“This is not to say that Ed is a bad person. The flipside of the same attitude is that he’s likely deeply caring and loyal to those he holds close, the kind of person who is willing to sacrifice himself for a friend. Unlike most of us, he also probably doesn’t feel envy when a friend has success, even the kind of success he wishes for, because he views their success as a positive indicator of his own good sense. It is a form of narcissism, but a good form. (Narcissism isn’t a de facto bad thing, but simply a personality descriptor in the same way, ’shy’ would be. In fact narcissism to some degree is almost a pre-requisite for personal success and emotional well-being.)” — July 18, 2007
“Will you listen to yourself? How on Earth does ‘2006′ somehow make ‘a few years ago’ not sloppy? And yet you still bluster on in full attack mode.” — November 11, 2007
“One explanation might be that your perceptions, judgments, and writings are thoroughly distorted by an apparent emotional immaturity. But again, that’s for each individual reader to decide. Peace out.” — November 17, 2007
“Seems to me we’re back to the same grievance-and-jealousy axe-grinding we always saw at Return of the Reluctant.” — February 7, 2008
“I don’t know if you realize it, but you’re abusive pretty much all the time now. I used to be a regular reader of The Return of the Reluctant and have, regrettably, only been popping in here occasionally, and the change is remarkable.” — July 22, 2008
Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
