Roundup
Written byPosted on September 14, 2007
Filed Under Roundup
- Should a play that’s weeks from opening in New York be off-limits to Chicago critics? It seems that Steppenwolf seems to be denying Chicago critics coverage of its New York productions. (via About Last Night)
- Many “guy books” have become exceedling rare. That’s too bad. This will prevent others from truly determining if The Great Tool Emporium and Cab Forward is an underused Kama Sutra position.
- A too-brief Guardian blog post on Richard Brautigan. (via Bookshelves of Doom)
- Canada has taken a disreputable, privacy-invasive page from the American playbook. (via Classical Bookworm)
- Scott on Iris Murdoch.
- Dave Eggers won’t let you Friend him on Facebook. Well, that doesn’t seem terribly philanthropic, does it? If you’re feeling spurned by Eggers, then have no fear. I’ll happily add you as a Facebook friend.
- A Naughty American History quiz (via Smart Bitches)
- Slunch offers an open letter to Peter Sacks.
- A kid’s-eye view of laptop design. (via The Shifted Librarian)
- I read this story and imagined Bobby Brown singing “My Lobotomy.” “Everybody’s cutting all these lobes inside me / Why don’t they just let me think? / I don’t need remission / Make my own cognition oh / That’s my lobotomy.”
- Who knew that a novelist and NBC could come to terms on “a divorce project?” This divorce project sounds rather pleasant. Like a nice little summer crafts project instead of the pain, hurt, financial woes, and humiliation that come with the territory. So good on NBC for giving us divorce with an enthusiastic hobbyist’s smile!
- Some details on Lethem’s Omega: The Unknown revival.
- Is V.S. Naipaul a strange man?
- Mr. VanderMeer is selling books.
- If you’re going to be at the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday, please say hello. I should be there.
- Would Emily Dickinson be medicated today? (via Maud)
- No Tarantino and Heroes.
- C.S. Lewis is a relatively unknown name? You have to be kidding me.
- Fassbinder’s adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz is coming to DVD, and it will be just a tad slower.
- Doestoyevsky Comics.
- The AP fact-checks Bush’s speech from last night.
- What drives Naomi Klein?
- More controversy on italicizing comic strips at Other Ed’s. Personally, I don’t think Jumble should be italicized, unless someone here can reasonably argue that it is presenting a continuing narrative.
- The greatest beatdowns in history.
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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.)
You may live to regret announcing your facebook account Ed!
I also loved Lethem’s Omega The Unknown revival. Really an eye opening attempt. His Fortress of Solitude and short stories from the 1970s are my personal favs, and now, the latest novelist to give comics a go has also impressed me.