Roundup
Written byPosted on September 11, 2007
Filed Under Roundup
- And it appears that the Tron followup is not dead. Joseph Kosinski is in “final negotiations” to develop and direct “the next chapter,” which will involve Flynn asking a group of nihilist hackers not to pee on his rug and a manual typewriter that reveals Flynn’s complicity in a Chuck E. Cheese venture called “Star Man’s” that never quite got off the ground.
- You see, that’s the problem with trying to sum up the history of the American short story in a blog post. Invariably, you leave a lot of things out, while others fill in the details more succinctly.
- USA Today runs the obligatory 9/11 fiction article. I don’t buy the claim that there are only 30 novels about 9/11. I’ve read far more “9/11 novels” in the past six years. Then again, I suppose it depends on what one explicitly styles a “9/11 novel.” Is not a novel some reflection of our times? And, as such, are not all novels dealing with contemporary issues “9/11 novels” to some degree?
- So is Inspector Rebus finished? Or is he? Ian Rankin has announced his book for 2016: Inspector Rebus and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
- Look, I don’t like Britney Spears any more than the next guy. But I must confess that I’m stunned by all the attacks on her figure. Is the media now in the habit of attacking any major female entertainment figure who does not fit the “Auschwitz diet” archetype? And why aren’t more people asking this question?
- Lee Rourke on Tom McCarthy’s second novel.
- Is it too unreasonable to ask for a temporary moratorium on how hard it is to get attention as a first novelist?
- Pinky unearths a sizable chunk of Pittsburgh literary events in the next few months.
- Prison chaplains are now removing religious books and materials from prison libraries. The idea here — known as the Standardized Chapel Library Project — was inspired from a 2004 report by the Department of Justice, in which it was suggested that religious books should be banned because prisons could then become a recruiting center for militant Islamic groups. I’m not a religious man, but I do honor the First Amendment. If the effort here is to curtail terrorism (which, incidentally, is not always Islamic), banning books of any sort doesn’t mean that you’re going to stop people, inside or outside, from being recruited, corrupted, or otherwise influenced into doing bad things. If anything, might not restricting books demonstrate to any potential terrorist just how inflexible the United States is on this subject?
- Sure, Knopf turned down a number of authors. But one must likewise ask how many important fiction writers the NYTBR has ignored under Tanenhaus’s tenure.
- It looks like a Harvey Milk biopic is happening. Directed by Gus Van Sant. Sean Penn as Milk, Matt Damon as Dan White. We’ll see.
- The time has come to institute a Booker reading challenge: read 110 books in four months.
- A sensible idea. There are far too many children’s books authored by celebrities.
- 100 years after limericks swept across Britain.
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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.)
David Oshinsky’s article is laughable in places. He speaks of Anais Nin as if her books were still selling like hotcakes. Well….back when Knopf turned her down, every major house in NY was doing so too. She managed to get a couple of books published by EP Dutton in the 1940s only because the junior editor who took them was also her boyfriend….some kid named Gore Vidal. And it’s not like much of her stuff is in demand now. Harcourt published three or so volumes of her unexpurgated diary in the 1990s, bringing it up to 1940, but then abandoned the project because of poor sales; the publisher of most of her fiction, Swallow Press (now run by Ohio University Press) is trying to put together the funds to publish the rest of the diary.
One amusing story that would be in the Knopf files that Oshinsky missed: I happen to know an elderly retired lawyer in upstate NY who, in the late ’50s, read Polish and Russian books for consideration by Knopf. One day he read Bruno Schulz’s “The Street Of Crocodiles,” the reissue Kultura published in Paris around 1953. He loved it and submitted a report to Blanche Knopf, urging its translation and publication. She told him that first she’d have to run it by “an old friend of mine who knows everything about Polish literature.” A few weeks later she called him into the office and showed him the letter she’d just gotten from the friend: “My dear Mrs. Knopf, I am writing to tell you that I have never heard of Bruno Schulz or his work. Yours truly, Artur Rubinstein.” Yes, the pianist. On the basis of that, Knopf passed and it was almost a decade before Walker & Co brought out Schulz in the US.
I thought Britney looked better. I can’t stand that buff/anorexic look on women. I like a little paunch.
Ed–
Regarding your comment on Britney Spears, I agree completely. Yes she’s in the pit of multiple addictions and so is acting the talentless fool, but attacking her figure?? Before I saw such comments on the web, I saw various pictures from her show and thought, “She looks great. And considering she’s had two kids, she looks really great.”