The Big-Ass Roundup
Written byPosted on June 27, 2007
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- Michael Cunningham talks with Boston Now about how books are adapted for the screen. Alas, Cunningham offers no answers on why music from Philip Glass is the only reason why film critics take bloated literary adaptations so seriously.
- R.U. Sirius talks with a post-prison Josh Wolf.
- Tod Goldberg pens a love letter to US Airways.
- Early video of Indiana Jones 4. I can think of a better use of bandwidth than disseminating a large video file of Lucas and Spielberg drinking champagne and sitting in an old car. What next? A 350 MB Quicktime file of Harrison Ford passing a kidney stone?
- Dan Wickett rolls out his sixth litblog panel.
- Okay, you celebrity news obsessives, listen up. If Elizabeth Crane, who is perhaps one of the more obsessive of the obsessives, thinks that Paris Hilton is beneath her notice, then there’s a pretty good chance that the news is sizably insignificant.
- Richard Nash: “Using a variant on the word ‘fuck’ in an interview with Salon will triple your company’s website traffic.” Future Salon interviewees take note.
- Alas, this blog is rated a mere R. I’m clearly going to have to do better to match Gwenda’s NC-17. I apologize for not being sleazy enough. More dick jokes to come!
- Dale Kreiger looks into the technological tools of writers.
- Michael Chabon’s shtekeleh.
- Pete Anderson reports that Other Voices is no more.
- Rick Kleffel podcasts Susanna Moore.
- If you’re a regular of Charlie Anders’ excellent Writers with Drinks series, Charlie is looking for feedback on rethinking it.
- I somehow missed this, but Across the East River Ed has reviewed On Chesil Beach.
- The Shining cuckoo clock. (via Quiddity)
- Josh Glenn points to the Critical Compendium as a good source to track reviews.
- There’s now a new reading stunt afoot: The Book Awards Reading Challenge. (via A Life in Books)
- Mr. Teachout, please see Raging Bull immediately. For the record and perhaps rather frighteningly, I’ve seen all but four films on the list. I feel particularly embarrassed for not having seen Murnau’s Sunrise.
- Andrew Wheeler offers an early look at the new Tom Perrotta novel.
- Also from Wheeler, who got it from Max: a PDF of Murakami’s 1973 novel, Pinball.
- Clive James: “My feeling that I would have been a happier man if I had been a painter and indeed a happier man if I had been a gravedigger.” Give James points for honesty, but run the other way when he approaches you with a shove for “yard work.”
- Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights has been named the best children’s book of the past 70 years.
- Rent Girl is heading to Showtime.
- Kate Christensen talks about MFK Fisher on NPR. (via Bibliophile Bullpen)
- Andrew O’Hagan gets the Leonard Lopate treatment. (via Bookslut)
- Sarah Bradford reviewed Tina Brown’s book for the Spectator. The Spectator refused to print it, without citing a specific reason. The Guardian has run the review. I didn’t find Bradford’s review to be overly pugnacious. Is the Spectator pulling its punches? I am trying to track down the current literary editor for the Spectator, but alas, the Spectator website doesn’t load for me. I would be grateful if someone could pass along this information to me. I wish to know why the Spectator would rather run puff pieces rather than honest reviews. (Of course, if the literary editor wishes to address these questions to the public, my comments remain open.)
- Malcolm Lowry reconsidered. (via Bookninja)
- Pearl S. Buck’s lost manuscript of The Good Earth has been found! (via Bookshelves of Doom)
- Matt Cheney on “the literary establishment.”
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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
- The Super Bowl: Madison Avenue Misogyny
- The Bat Segundo Show: Christian Berger
- Paul Fischer: The Unpardonable Hack Who Charmed His Fellow Junketeers
- February 15th! Reader of a Lonely Heart!
- Knock Three Times
- New Review: Gail Godwin’s Unfinished Desires
- Macmillan: The New Amazonfail
- The Bat Segundo Show: Sue Grafton
- JD Salinger Dead
- The Mountain
Thanks as always for the plug sir (glad that fiver founds its way to you!)
When you get those dick jokes written, send a few my way, the EWN Blog didn’t even get a 13 added to its PG rating.