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The 10 Most Recent Dispatches
- The Bat Segundo Show: Agnieszka Holland
- The Bat Segundo Show: Stephen Fry
- The Bat Segundo Show: Deborah Scroggins
- Komen for the Cowards: Betraying Breast Cancer
- The Bat Segundo Show: Susan Cain
- Forgotten Writers: Dorothy Uhnak
- Dwight Garner’s Revisionist Ignorance: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- Forgotten Writers: The Novels of John P. Marquand
- The Situation in American Waffles
- The Bat Segundo Show: Elliot Perlman
Modern Library Reading Challenge
On January 10, 2011, Managing Editor Edward Champion pledged to read the top 100 fiction books from #100 to #1. Read about his progress as he makes his way through the Modern Library canon!
84. The Death of the Heart (January 6, 2012)
85. Lord Jim (November 30, 2011)
86. Ragtime (October 30, 2011)
Books To Jump Up and Down Over
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (Bat Segundo interview with Murphy)
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (Bat Segundo interview with McClear)
Yates, Richard Archive
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Review: Revolutionary Road
Posted on December 25, 2008 | 1 CommentIn Blake Bailey’s A Tragic Honesty, an excellent Richard Yates biography, Bailey depicts Yates’s efforts to adapt William Styron’s Lie Down in Darkness for director John Frankenheimer. The film, as... -
Someone invited me to this thing called “Good Reads.”
Posted on May 19, 2007 | 4 CommentsMy profile is here. I reviewed my own book, EEEEE EEE EEEE. I reviewed almost every book I like. They link to places like Amazon to buy books from. You... -
The Bat Segundo Show #49
Posted on July 10, 2006 | No CommentsAuthor: Dave King Condition of Mr. Segundo: Unknown, replaced temporarily by a shady documentary producer fulfilling a contractual obligation. Subjects Discussed: Modeling, painting, making a transition to writing, ambition, disabilities,... -
Another Tragic Biography?
Posted on June 10, 2005 | 4 CommentsBlake Bailey, the author of the Richard Yates A Tragic Honesty who inspired a drinking game here earlier in the year, has a new John Cheever biography coming out. The... -
The Blake Bailey Drinking Game
Posted on February 12, 2005 | 2 CommentsIt was Le Haggis that got me reading much of the Richard Yates’ catalog after the books languished in one of my bookpiles for several months. About the least that... -
Product Placement in Fiction
Posted on January 14, 2005 | 3 CommentsI’m not completely against describing products and cultural minutiae in fiction, but I have a distinct problem with the way Tricia Sullivan does it in Maul. This fascinating novel, an...