Roundup
Written byPosted on December 3, 2007
Filed Under Roundup
- It’s good to see Katie Haegele not only investigating how sites like LibraryThing have value in cataloging obscure printed zines, but discovering how academic librarians are using LT to keep track of small collections. I’ve been resistant to LT because of the 200 book cap. But perhaps someone might be interested in establishing a universal database tracking all known titles that have ever been put out. John Labovitz is certainly doing this for e-zines. But not every print zine went online. So why not the print catalog equivalent?
- A single page of a love story written by Napoleon Bonaparte has been sold for $35,400. Assuming that there are about 400 words on this page, Napoleon now writes at a rate of $88.5/word. I suspect Ted Kennedy’s on the phone with his agent right now wondering why he couldn’t get a better word rate for his memoirs.
- Why don’t the Brits love science fiction?
- Now here’s a use of public tax money that I have no problem with. Apparently, US and Russian astronauts have had sex in space for, ahem, research purposes. “The issue of sex in space is a serious one,” says Pierre Kohler. I quite agree. Until some enterprising inventor figures out a way to control discharges in zero-G, only a creatively deranged mind would look upon the slapstick comedy possibilities. Why then do I have an idea for a movie called There’s Something About Density?
- Someone recently suggested to me in a conversation that nobody cares about Guy de Maupassant anymore, but it appears, thankfully, that some people do indeed care.
- It looks like Putin now wants to censor Russian culture. Didn’t he learn anything from glasnost? Should I have bothered to ask that last question?
- Did editors corrupt Kerouac and Carver?
- A slim but welcome profile on Donald E. Westlake. (via Booksurfer)
- Pricing problems for newsprint production.
- If Erin O’Brien is the Pynchon of hack feature writing, does anyone have a shot at being the Nabokov of hack feature writing?
- The obligatory book tours are dead article. (via Book Glutton)
[UPDATE: Snopes says there were no sex experiments by NASA.]
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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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Excerpt from Napoleon Bonaparte’s manuscript:
“She breathlessly whispered, ‘I have always loved great men such as you. You are not at all short, like they say. Tall men are overrated. Everyone knows that short men are the greatest lovers. Short men command the fates of history…”
(Oh, just kidding.)
I also like to think of myself as the Lewinsky of Hack Presidential Blowjobs.
Thank you for your support.
Strangely enough, all the sci-fi I’ve read the past few years has been British…not only science fantasy like China Mieville and Christopher Priest’s The Prestige, but hard SF stuff too, like Ian M. Banks The Algebraist and the Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space series. (Plus, the Brits gave us Doctor Who and Blake’s 7, which is a decent track record in the televised space opera dept.)