- 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)
Roundup
– August 30, 2007Posted in: Roundup
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (