Roundup
Written byPosted on May 30, 2007
Filed Under Roundup
- If cursory glances at MSNBC headline tickers on the flight over are anything to go by, the Judeo-Christian world seems to be up in arms with Rosie O’Donnell and Cindy Sheehan. Given the relatively ridiculous nature of both figures, I hope you’ll pardon my own similarly pedantic concerns with Giants pitcher Armando Benitez, who deserves a serious reaming for last night’s abysmal performance. The man blew a potential twelfth inning victory over the Mets by serving up not one, but two balks. I watched this game, wondering if I might be easily converted from the Giants to the Mets through this rather uncanny propinquity of two teams playing for two towns I’m currently more or less in between. Alas, I learned that a Giants partisanship is a difficult personal persuasion to shake. The median arrogance expressed by certain Mets players, which outdid even Barry Bonds’ strut and swagger, dissuaded me, as did the Giants’ fantastic field work. If one is to choose a relatively trivial topic to become obsessed with, well then I choose baseball. Bluster from the likes of Rosie O’Donnell is predictably and unfathomably one-note. When one considers that Rosie O’Donnell’s career has essentially been predicated upon a shaky talent for chatting and bluster, one wonders why anyone would pay millions of dollars to provide such “entertainment” to the masses. It’s almost as bad as paying out a few million to a hothead kid who wants to play ball.
- Carolyn Kellogg cracks the LATBR.
- The Best Novels You’ve Never Read. My own picks (if we’re talking the last ten years) is Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish and Rupert Thomson’s The Book of Revelation.
- If you can get past Silverblatt, he’s talked with John Banville.
- Speaking of literary interview craziness, the Segundo backlog stands at around fourteen, including a special two-parter and all the APE nonsense. And I haven’t even started with BEA. Please bear with me. I sent off the last of about thirty boxes to FedEx yesterday.
- I guess nobody told Gabriel Garcia Marquez that you can’t go home again.
- I could care less whether Peter Carey’s Theft is a thinly veiled attack on his wife or not. Shouldn’t the bigger question be whether or not it’s a good book?
- Lots of Pessl discussion at Callie’s.
- Also, far too much information for me to sort through. Will try for another roundup later. BEA reports are forthcoming tomorrow!
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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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Whoa whoa whoa … Jose Reyes managed to actually *force* a game-losing balk, and you are not amazingly impressed? Arrogant, sure … because they earn it with resourceful stuff like this.
I like the pictures of the article in El Tiempo better:
http://www.eltiempo.com/cultura/2007-05-30/ARTICULO-WEB-NOTA_INTERIOR-3576287.html
It’s a much more gleeful story down here…nothing dour or business-as-usual about it. (There were even yellow butterflies painted on the train…people were happily waving from the windows… It was a marvelous sight. )
I’m not sure any team carrying Barry Bonds can complain re: the arrogance or questionable game play of others.
True on Bonds. He is a ridiculous although necessary presence. I suppose it as Levi suggest: transferring arrogance factors in one team to arrogance factors in another.
I would go as far as saying that his decade plus of being a basic jerk has rendered his chase, steroids or no, a non-event in the eyes of many. Anyway, back to literature.