Roundup
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on July 22, 2008
Filed Under Roundup
- There is indeed a huge difference between Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother and Jenny Davidson’s The Explosionist. One is written by a smug man who wishes to preach to the converted and has no interest in treating his reading audience with intelligence. The other is written by someone who does value the intelligence of her readers and doesn’t reveal everything all at once. Guess which of the two is smarter and more fun? Colleen interviews Jenny D and discovers a few reasons why.
- James Wood on Aleksandar Hemon, comparing Hemon with Joseph Roth.
- Clay Shirky’s asinine response to David Carr’s article doesn’t sit well with me, largely because Shirky declares War and Peace “not so interesting” without offering a reason why, and uses this generalization about the tastes of the reading public to rail against “know-nothing critics.” Since it appears that Shirky knows nothing about Tolstoy (Uninteresting? Really? In all seriousness?) and is hostile to the idea of literature possessing a cultural status, Shirky’s response is best confined to the parvenu playground. This kind of thoughtless and impulsive essay does not help us reach out to those now perched on the fence. (via Jeff)
- Am I the only person who finds Dr. Horrible to be overwrought and phony? Granted, I do like some of Joss Whedon’s work and I’m a big fan of musicals. But there isn’t a single spontaneous second in this production. This represents a calculated effort to transform the Web’s mad and gloriously unpredictable anarchy into something not all that indistinguishable from television. And you’ve all swallowed this codswallop without question because Whedon is involved.
- If you’re feeling disheartened that an editor won’t get back to you, observe that The New York Times has rejected an essay written by John McCain. I don’t buy the crazed speculation about a left-wing media conspiracy, particularly since George W. Bush wrote op-eds in 2002 and in 2001.. Most of the hawks who are hopping mad about this haven’t considered that McCain may have simply written a piss-poor essay. You can read McCain’s piece here. You’ll find such terrible sentences as “Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks” and an inconsistent tense. Conspiracy or copy cleanup?
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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.)
Ed, I have a theory to the effect that your tastes are very different from the Nielsen Haydens’. Dunno if it’s substantial enough for me to expand into an essay tho.