Roundup
Written byPosted on August 30, 2007
Filed Under Roundup
- Darby Dixon reflects upon this business of fiction writing. No, you won’t completely understand it. But write every day. Do something every day. Keep some kind of hanging sword over the work, a sense of fun and enjoyment that will make up for the horrible resistance to stop. Don’t stop.
- Slipping behind the Atlantic paywall onto the Powell’s platter: B.R. Myers on Pollan, which makes one wonder whether someone should write A Critic’s Manifesto and put an end to this damn Fisking.
- It may be a false correlation between two separate events, but let’s consider the whole Reading is Dead question. In Scotland, we have a very fine showing of participants at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. In the States, Borders reports a quarterly loss, despite a rise in sales generated by Harry Potter 7. (It should be noted that Barnes and Noble that showed a profit.) So what do all of these things say? Are we simply seeing bad management? Do the EIFF participants end up moving a sizable number of books? Andrew Carnegie was a Scotsman. Should we resuscitate his ghost and put him in charge of Borders? I will need more coffee before any reasonable associations kick in. So never mind me. I’ll save useful analysis for later.
- Perhaps they should simply sell books at the post office.
- RIP Hilly Kristal. First Tony Wilson, now Kristal. Are there any peppy music organizers to fill the void?
- Various multimedia files from the “Comics Are Not Literature” panel at ComicCon are now up.
- Mark is interviewed by Eight Diagrams.
- Great Moments in Literary Baseball. (via Books, Inq.)
- Are libraries free? Well, there are certainly limits.
- Another litblogger makes it into print; Kevin Holtsberry reviews Gerald Russello for the Washington Times.
- A lengthy paper on Google Book Search. (via Matthew Tiffany)
- Adam Kirsch takes a Shelley bio to task. (via Jacket Copy)
- Musicians are having a hard time in New Orleans. (via James Tata)
- Ben Kunkel on Bolano.
- This week in Dammit Janet: Maslin botches a review for a book ostensibly (ghost)written by Johnny Cash’s wife. “This book does not include Ms. Cash’s side of the correspondence. Nor does it need to: Mr. Cash’s impassioned dialogue is conducted as much with himself as it is with her.” Ya think?
- An excerpt from Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke. (via The Millions)
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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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