Roundup
Written byPosted on June 13, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized
- Adam Bellow: “If I had learned one thing from my historical study of nepotism (yes, that was the subject of my book), it’s that a boy needs many fathers in his journey to manhood.” The problem with such a generalization is that when one considers daddy bears, fatherhood and nepotism take on more troubling definitions.
- Bob Hoover talks with Pete Hamill.
- The Bookseller reports that a new Stephen King novella will be in the July issue of Esquire. Even if it is just Stephen King, I must applaud Esquire’s willingness to devote 23 pages of its magazine to fiction.
- Is Andrew Cockburn’s Rumsfeld hatchet job compelling enough to stand above its own clearly demarcated vitriol?
- Weiner on Paper Cuts: “I can’t wait. Seriously, I can’t. I bet my husband it’ll be less than five days before the blog mentions perennial Times boycrush Gary Shteyngart. If I win, I get a water ice.”
- Is BEA a waste of money for the aspiring author? (via Slushpile)
- Andrew O’Hagan on Don DeLillo.
- What next? Will they set up journalistic export processing zones? (via Ron Silliman)
- The San Diego Union-Tribune offers a summer reading roundup.
- A Stephen Dixon profile. (via Dale Keiger)
- Are lost pants worth $65 million? I mean, if it’s really another predictable series of dick wars (from a judge, no less), I’m wondering how many penis implants you could get for that price. (via Henry Kisnor)
- Dan Chiasson on Les Murray’s poetry.
- Litminds interviews Jessica Stockton.
- Jenny D points to another Jenny D’s take on Chabon.
- Slate’s Michelle Tsai looks (too briefly) into how a dirty word gets dirty. (via Literary Gas)
- RIP Ousmane Sembene. (via Laila)
- Is Jonathan Lethem “an overeager college student?”
- It appears that the New York Times has hired TvNewser blogger Brian Stelter as a media reporter.
- For those thinking of McSweeney’s financial woes, Matthew Tiffany offers an independent presses harangue.
- Oh no.
- There are some troubling comics “obscenity” battles going down at the border. (via Bookninja)
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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.)
“Is BEA a waste of money for the aspiring author? ”
Yeah, pretty much. I was only there because my agent had a pass for me. I really had no intention of setting foot inside that terrarium known as the Javits. And until a publisher makes it worth my time, I’m sticking with the fan and writers conferences.
ok, that nyt blog has taught us the creepy fact that george saunders listens to the fugees. paper cuts, indeed.