New Review
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on March 8, 2009
Filed Under Reviews
My review of G. Xavier Robillard’s Captain Freedom appears in today’s edition of the Chicago Sun-Times, along with many other interesting pieces, including Mark Athitakis’s profile of Jesse Ball.
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
Contact Ed by email.
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
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I’m trying to be kinder and gentler online lately, but I can’t help myself. Dude. Think before you write. If you think you’re already thinking before you write, then all I can tell you is you need to THINK HARDER.
Your first sentence. We have an entire genre of novels which is somehow lost in an elderly haze. (Why is it elderly? Because you couldn’t resist a quibble on the prefix “super-” for no reason.) In spite of being very old and lost in a haze, this genre is also simultaneously chasing after the exhaust of the comic book industry.
The exhaust from this metaphoric vehicle, rather than being exhaust as we normally know it, is somehow both “bright” and “profitable”.
However, there is a problem. The dog/person is not as mirthful as a recent dog/person who chased the profitable exhaust. Insufficient mirth in an exhaust-chaser! What a dilemma!
In just one sentence, you manage to bungle about six metaphors. Superhero novels are like a very old, visually impaired, insufficiently mirthful dog or person chasing after a vehicle which is spitting out money and light instead of exhaust.
This is amazing stuff. I’m only surprised that you didn’t somehow work flying monkeys, Chechnya, space travel, fig trees or Bic pens into your metaphor. It was crying out for them!
albtraum: No, you simply lack reading comprehension. You’re very much into words fitting into austere Latin roots (you must be an embittered Engish teacher) and literal-minded interpretation.
A fact for you, Mr. Wordsmith: “Superannuated” also means out-moded or old-fashioned. (Examples of this are cited later in the review with Erik Estrada, Billy Crystal, et al.) And just think for a moment what you see when you see something in a haze? Or can you? You see, there’s this thing called imagery you may have heard about. Why you immediately assume that the exhaust is related to the haze? Might it not also be related to fatigue? Ah, but you can’t. Because you’re still trying to read a prose style that is often written to ferret out the literal-minded bores of our world and that you clearly despise. You lack the imagination to go the distance. The superhero novel is not a dog or a person. It is a novel. But you cannot fathom that it would be capable of settling or chasing. You cannot accept the possibility (as many writers do) that a novel is organic and that it might likewise take on these figurative qualities. God, it must be terrible for you to live such a banal and unimaginative life.
Mr. Robillard, if I am to judge him from the novel I’ve read, understands how these verbs apply to fiction. And in writing this review, I was trying to help him, while likewise informing readers what his book is about. I think he has talent, and I hope that he will do better. I was also deploying some lively and entertaining language.
My advice to you, sir, is to simply not read my stuff. You don’t care for what I do. And that’s your right. Just as I have the right to see your “critique” for the unhelpful balderdash and trollery that it truly is. You’ve appeared here numerous times. And I just don’t understand it. Why on earth would you bother to read me if it so offends your vanilla sensibilities when it’s just so easy to ignore my ostensible offenses to the English language? I mean, surely, there’s plenty of Edmund Burke volumes sitting on your lonely bookshelves that will permit you to get your fix. Be happy with the words you enjoy. Not the work you won’t get it and that you’ll never get. Although I’ve certainly attempted with this explanation to offer you a quick look under the hood. It’s a shame you’re too unimaginative to have fun with the sentences that I spend a lot of time thinking and crafting with very specific purposes in mind.
Well, at least I apparently don’t have to worry about hurting your feelings with my criticism – you seem very optimistic.
I keep commenting on here because of a contradiction I’m trying to grapple with. You seem to have relatively good taste in literature in some ways, but are yourself apparently unable to write two sentences in a row without a mixed metaphor or malapropism. It’s kind of fascinating. I’ll try to stay away if I can in the future.