Orhan Pamuk is not pleased with “being secure.” Accordingly, Pamuk has spent much of his spare time combing through the DSM-IV for ways to be insecure. In addition to isolating a large chunk of his friends by revealing TMI at cafe sitdowns, Pamuk has adopted an awkward gait, hunched shoulders, and has started to pen confessional essays similar to Jonathan Franzen’s.
Clive Cussler inflating book sales? The next thing you know, he’ll inflate his literary worth!
Be sure to drop by the Litblog Co-Op this week for discussion on Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s The Wizard of the Crow, which also made my top ten books of 2006.
Poet John Hewitt is set to become a “Statue of Liberty man.” But the more important question, still unanswered, is whether Hewitt was a breast man or an ass man.
Norman Mailer: “I’m not as interested in fights as I once was. I used to enjoy a fight. Now I look at (a fight) as something that’s going to use up a lot of the little working time I probably have left. I don’t want to get to the point where I’m frantic about the working time.” Well, then how will the old man get out all that aggression so that he can feed his ego? Cross-stitching? Bocce?
Revolutionary Road: the movie? I don’t know about this. With Sam “I’m About As Subtle as CG Petals” Mendes at the helm, I can’t see Richard Yates’ classic novel being given the hard realism treatment it deserves. (via Matthew Tiffany)
To those who have asked me to respond to the Gavin Newsom scandal, I truly could not care less. I’m more concerned with, say, affordable housing, the homeless, the social impact of Proposition F, MUNI’s failures, and at least four thousand other issues pertaining to San Francisco. And I’m appalled at how I have been asked nearly every day during the past week to engage or joke on the matter, when what happened is between the involved parties and is frankly none of my business. And for those who might impute that I’m a Gavin apologist, I should also note that I voted for Matt Gonzalez, not Gavin, in the last election.
Hitch on One Hundred Years: “For this reader, the most arresting episode in the Macondo saga was the epidemic of insomnia that afflicted the tribe.”
The EsquireNapkin Project features contributions by A.M. Homes, Jonathan Ames, Aimee Bender, Andrew Sean Greer, and many more authors.
James Gibbons on Paul Auster: “Novelists, of course, are not obliged to occupy themselves with a fine-grained depiction of external reality, so in remarking on the abstract terrain of Auster’s books I mean primarily to underscore how anomalous his success is. Simply put, neither American writers nor American readers tend to go in for the kind of fiction that Auster has made his specialty, and it’s unsurprising that Auster enjoys not just wide readership but also prestige internationally, particularly in France, that well exceeds his critical reputation in the United States.” (via The Publishing Spot)
Jeff VanderMeer opines that BSG is beginning to suck. I agree. And yet when Annalee Newitz boldly put forth this proposition late last year, she was greeted by a torrent of denouncements from mad fanboys. The question is when this artistic declivity will be recognized by the more rabid BSG viewers. I don’t know whether to give up on the show or hope that it will get better. I keep watching, but only when I am suffering from insomnia or my brain power has depleted to near zero. Ron Moore has not written a single episode this season other than the two-hour premiere, and I suspect that he’s abdicated on his duties. Do we really need a BSG spinoff? I’d rather see attentions directed towards one good show instead of two substandard ones.
It’s Stephen Graham Jones Week at the LBC. Look for copious discussion, prolific guest posts from the author and a podcast interview conducted by the divine Ms. Kellogg.
Speaking of which, Pinky’s Paperhaus uncovers this remarkable blog, which tells of an MFA student who suffered a stroke in her early thirties and had to drop out. The blog is a fascinating portrayal of someone trying to read and write (in short, operate in this grand realm of literature that many of us take for granted) with short-term memory problems, among other things. Also from Carolyn: this call for entries for Hot Metal Bridge.
The San Francisco Chronicle gets to the AMS news almost a month after everybody else has mulled over it. There isn’t much in the way of new information, but there are quotes from McSweeney’s Eli Horowitz, among other people. (And, no, Ms. DeBare, while you were taking a nap, there were more than rumors circulating through the blogs. Wake up and smell the media convergence.)
Jeff VanderMeer has just announced another new project. By my count, that makes 43 books published in 2007 which will carry the “Jeff VanderMeer” sobriquet.
M. John Harrison on worldbuilding: “Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.”
Norma Khouri: victim? Next thing you know, someone will be making the case for James Frey.
The Florida Times-Union is convinced that high-school authors are getting a taste of the literary life. But until these kids do their damnedest to shop for cheap groceries, attempt to persuade their supers that the rent is coming (really!) in a few days, and spend countless hours of their writing time trying to track down a promised royalty check from a deadbeat publisher, I don’t think it can be declared that they are “getting a taste.”
I don’t understand why the New York Times is astonished to learn that black people listen to indie rock. I don’t see a feature article devoted to all the Caucasians who’ve listened to Jedi Mind Tricks and Blade Icewood. Should one’s race dictate one’s cultural tastes? I guess we’ll all have to register with the appropriate government body before we do something dangerous, like consider a work of art without factoring in the artist’s race or ethnicity.
I’m not sure if Daniel Green is familiar with Smoke, the fighter in Mortal Kombat who was fond of ripping hearts out of his opponents. But this post on Malcolm Jones suggests some familiarity with the phrase “Finish him!”
I don’t know if this violates any conditions of confidentiality, but Mary Ann Gwinn spills the beans on the NBCC Awards process.
When in doubt, Ms. Miller, throw caution to the wind and go. It’s nice to have one’s preconceived notions challenged and even changed.
Auden’s literary executor Edward Mendelson is profiled at Bookforum. (via Jenny D, who shares my desire to visit Iceland one day)
Apparently, there’s a nutbar trying to off writers in Turkey. He killed Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and threatened Orhan Pamuk in a courtroom. Perhaps the only way to calm this guy is to get him a blog so he can type out his snarky aggressions like the rest of us.
You know, I’ve been text-messaging “That’s totally book!” well ahead of the hipsters, which is to say as of fifteen minutes ago. I’m just too lazy to hit the number keys one additional time for C and L.
The Brits, it seems, are prevaricators when it comes to literature. 40% of Brits lie about reading classics. 10% of men fibbed to their dates about reading a heavyweight novel. Even more criminally, The Da Vinci Code is the book that these folks are lying about reading. If you’re going to lie about literature, the least you could do is up the auctorial standard. I’m happy to tell you in all candor that I’ve never read Dan Brown, have no intention of reading Dan Brown, and would sooner be stabbed in the chest with a sharp icepick than read Dan Brown. (That last sentence alone should demonstrate that one can find a conversational starter within truth.) (RELATED:Maxine has uncoveredthe full list.)
“Neck and shoulder massage!” Really, there’s no need for delicacy on this point. We’re all adults here. Should I now refer to other activities as “horizontal biological engineering tests?” Orwell would have had a field day with these euphemisms.
New letters from Anne Frank’s father have been discovered. The letters were written shortly before the Franks went into hiding. (via Michelle Richmond)
Why, oh why books like this? What next? A sex manual penned by Ron Howard? A new Showtime television series called Joanie REALLY Loves Chachi, featuring a bukkake-flecked Erin Moran satisfying everyone at the Leopard Lodge? (via Rarely Likable)
Now that the Little House books have hit their 75th anniversary, the publisher has seen fit to replace Garth Williams’ illustrations with photos. And who will be in these photos? It appears that waif-like anorexic teens now represent the great American frontier, although I’m unclear of the association between binge eating and hunting and fishing. “We wanted to convey the fact that these are action-packed,” says Tara Weikum, who is shepherding this preposterous overhaul. Should not the action be self-evident in the text? (via Haggis
Hugh Grant, novelist? Hugh Grant, father? I suspect someone’s having a midlife crisis. Well, at least he can draw from personal experience on the first point.
Seattle Times: “That was appropriate, because her songwriting made the show feel as much like a literary event as a musical one.” You say this like it’s a bad thing!
Jay McInerney: “Well, there was a time when I would have said, “my work.” But now the kids are first; my work is second.” Actually, let’s be honest here: wasn’t there a time in which cocaine came first?
Scott has some good advice for writers who also blog: slow down. I agree. If you’re blogging and writing more big league things, then it’s of great help to have a regular routine in which you take a great deal of time to craft your sentences. There’s often a misconception, promulgated by some of the dinosaurs who work on West 43rd Street, that bloggers can only write fast. Speaking for myself (and not accounting for revisions I do), it takes me anywhere from two to six hours to turn out 1,000 words of fiction or a review, whereas a blog post of the same length often takes me as little as 20 minutes. There are advantages and disadvantages with the two speeds. There are times when it’s necessary to labor over a sentence (and this process is often akin to watching ketchup pour slowly onto a patty). But there are other times when I’m probably fussing too much over it. I agree with Scott that if you want to be a serious writer, you need to stay in shape. Blogging alone doesn’t necessarily cut the mustard.
From the Sexy Scott: “However, I do wonder what my reading experience would have been like had I not consumed so much extra information before, during, and after my reading of the book. What would it have been like had I just plucked the paperback off the shelf and began on my own, unencumbered either by the massive hype that still surrounds the book or the copious exegetical efforts that exist online in their more lovable and amateur forms or in the more codified, professionally respectable versions available through either your seriously stocked research library or a good handy access to Jstor or Academic Search Elite or whathaveyou.” I don’t know if this is as much as a problem as Scott suggests it is, because a reader can willingly ostracize himself from all hype and reviews if she really wants to, but it is an issue worth thinking about.
A week ago, I started to write an elaborate parody of Zadie Smith’sessay that, due to tenuous Wi-Fi conditions, was lost to the ether, but thankfully Dan Green expresses some of my feelings about Smith’s opinions on style. There’s a great difference between style that reflects a writer’s consciousness and style that reflects a character’s (or a world’s) consciousness (or, as Dan puts it, a “writer’s particular way of living with language”). Are we so immersed within the cult of personality that even smart writers like Smith can no longer discern the difference?
John Mellencamp insists that he didn’t sell out. Right. Next thing you know, he’ll be telling us that Phil Collins-era Genesis and Huey Lewis and the News were the edgiest bands to came out of the 80s. (via Silliman)
Man, another death. Burmese poet Tin Moe has passed on.