Ladies and gentlemen, the NYTBR has a longass review this Sunday of David Markson’s The Last Novel. I’m stunned. Stunned, I say! Tanenhaus actually devoting pages to fiction off the beaten track? (To give you a sense of how earth-shattering this is, the last reference in the NYTBR to Markson involved an episode from a tell-all memoir.) Who would have thought?
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)
I was kind of hoping that Markson would be kept a secret. I know that’s not very nice, and I’m sure that Markson could use the money, and he deserves to be read by more people, but…I don’t know, it’s just that, no one cared before, so why should they care now? it’s not like The NYTBR didn’t know who he was or wasn’t aware of Wittgenstein’s Mistress, Reader’s Block, This Is Not A Novel, and Vanishing Point. When I’m reading Markson I like to pretend that I am the only person in the whole world who at that moment is reading Markson. And now I can’t pretend that’s true ever again. Thanks NYTBR. Jerks.
it’s because new york magazine had that thing about it first.
When I listened to that cool indie band before they sold all the records, they were totally cool! And then their last album was popular among the kids. And I never liked them again! Guess there wasn’t much there to begin with!
Ed, Tanenhaus has probably heard through the grapevine about you moving to Brooklyn, and figures you’re going to start doing a Travis Bickle on him if he doesn’t ratchet up the fiction offerings.
I was kind of hoping that Markson would be kept a secret. I know that’s not very nice, and I’m sure that Markson could use the money, and he deserves to be read. . .
you are lame!
I was into Markson before anybody. He asked me to be his manager! Yeah, I used to feel that way about Nicholson Baker. Isn’t it odd? I had a similar experience recently with this seafood buffet that opened near my apt. It was so completely awesome that I vowed to reveal its existence to nobody, lest the place get overrun with Philistines. I guess everyone who chanced upon it felt the same way, because it closed a few months later.
Btw, did that review actually give away the final lines of the novel? Motherfucker…I’m still 20 pages from the end!
That’s why I only read my own shit, and don’t publish it. Best kept secret in the world.