Red alert! Months after I asked what had happened to the fantastic novelist Nicholson Baker, we now have an answer! Nicholson Baker is coming out with a new book. Human Smoke is due from Simon & Schuster on March 11, 2008. It is 800 pages — an unexpectedly expansive volume, categorized under 20th century history. I will be investigating additional details and reporting back anything I can find out.
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)
that is the best news i have heard in a long time.
AWESOME! AW
Please let it be a cultural history of spontaneous human combustion…
Hot dog! I asked the same question last month.
First you broke the news to me about the upcoming Don Barthelme book, now this. I’m a pig in slop.
I always wanted to see what would happen if Baker used his gift for detail in service to a book of major scope. Maybe this is it.
Yay …