Roundup
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on June 18, 2008
Filed Under Roundup
- In college, I had a friend named Kurt. A lot of people know someone like Kurt in college. In fact, an old college buddy named Kurt is always a good excuse to avoid talking about a book. So let’s talk about Kurt. Because I love Kurt more than this book. And my therapist insists that talking about Kurt instead of a book is fair game. Particularly because it prevents me from another night with a pint of bourbon and youthful memories that cause bitter tears. (via a guy named Mark, who now inhabits the first paragraph of the first draft of any essay I turn in)
- I understand from the StorySouth people that there is now a Battle Royale-style showdown for the Top Ten Stories of 2007. The writers left on the island will begin shooting each other, and all this will be arranged by Jason Sanford. The winner’s blood-soaked visage will emerge from the melee, only to fight Takeshi Kitano.
- Plagiarist.com’s Top 50 Most Viewed Poems. A veritable resource for academics hoping to unleash mad thrashings upon MFAs who lack the apposite assiduity. (via Messr. Junker)
- The Tomorrow Museum: a fantastic blog that I’m now addicted to.
- I greatly enjoyed Rachel Shukert’s Have You No Shame?. In fact, she’s coming up on Segundo very soon. But in the meantime, check out coverage at The Publishing Spot.
- Hillel Italie interviewed by Smart Bitches. It’s a dangerous thing these days when a blogger converses with an AP reporter, particularly when a lolcat photo is involved.
- Does the world really need another Michael Moore book? Probably not, but it will sell anyway.
- I would like to see Glenn Beck’s purported bravado tested in a dive bar. If he learned so much from “books for boys,” then let us see if he rises to the challenge when he gets into a brawl with three roughnecks and gets the shit beaten out of him. More at Guys Lit Wire.
- All that production value, such a cheap climax. Why not two Eves? (via C-Monster)
- Ideas on a DIY literary scene, and it apparently involves sitting around in living rooms. Having some personal experience in the matter, as artistic innovation goes, this actually gets more accomplished than you might expect.
- Michael Dirda has a problem with Adam Thirlwell, I’d say. And like Phillip Hensher, whom I exchanged words with, I don’t think Dirda is giving Thirlwell an entirely fair shake. I hope to have more to say on this at length. (via Bluestalking Reader)
- So the NEA has awarded $2.8 million for this Big Read nonsense. And there are few books here that you won’t find on a high school curriculum. Getting more people to read The Call of the Wild or To Kill a Mockingbird is a noble endeavor. But how exactly does this prescriptive approach to reading get people excited about books? How exactly does this help to support contemporary writers or those who are attempting to encourage others? How does the Big Read program promote the reader’s sense of discovery? Are there really any tangible results? Because the NEA isn’t exactly fessing up here. Interesting in light of the hysteria generated by the Reading at Risk report. And why in the hell has Ford devoted a hybrid vehicle to this program? We are informed that the car’s “colorful design” will “inspire new readers.” Yeah, the same way that I might become a landscape painter while taking a crap. The Big Read program is now dodgy in the extreme. But then when you have a phony like David Kipen at the helm, is this really all that much of a surprise?
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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.)
- Must hear segment with Bob Garfield calling Alicia Shepard on the "torture" debate. http://tinyurl.com/mlmolx (Thank you, @annaleighclark) 4 hrs ago
- @annaleighclark Not yet, but thanks. Shepard appeared Thursday on "Talk of the Nation" and here's the link: http://bit.ly/X0v6Y in reply to annaleighclark 4 hrs ago
- More on NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard's silence from @simonowens here: http://bit.ly/5K6FX 5 hrs ago
- More updates...
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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Based on which emasculated male books is Glenn Beck making these assertions? I’d like some titles. I’d like some proof he’s not illiterate.
And also, based on my own experience, the guy who is most worried about guys being guys is the least comfortable with and most insecure about his own masculinity.