- Crazy day. Thus, brief summations.
- Inflate your numbers much, publishers?
- Apparently, DHS digs Death Cab for Cutie.
- This 75-year-old woman hammered the point home. Good on her. (via the Other Reluctant)
- Chris Pine will play Kirk in the forthcoming Star Trek movie. Who?
- Mailer’s in poor health.
- No surprise. Tanenhaus and company have demonstrated themselves as incompetent editors, failing to confirm a pivotal plot point against the book. (I can tell you that other publications I’ve written for are far more arduous about this basic journalistic practice, even when I’m in the personal habit of making the fact checker/editor’s life a little easier by providing page numbers for all quotes.)
- The Existence Machine quibbles with Pinker.
- Why aren’t there more women in the music scene? (via Kevin Smokler)
- Can you believe a book review?
- Another controversial Jerry Fodor article — this time on natural selection.
- It seems that all the big boys are coming out to review the Michaelis book: next at bat is John Updike. (via The Millions)
Drive-By Roundup
– October 18, 2007Posted in: Roundup
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. (
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. (
>Why aren’t there more women in the music scene?
That was four years ago. It’s all better now.
In re: that Siegel review in the Post. I like what David Markson did in his last (most recent, knock on wood) book, inserting passages designed to trap the inattentive reviewer. Maybe Jack Green can write a sequel.