- Marie Antoinette. Make it stop! (via Romancing the Tome)
- Happy birthday Babar! (via Bookninja)
- Chris Bolton has single-handedly convinced me to read Scott Smith’s The Ruins.
- Demonstrating an anti-intellectual hubris unseen since Chuck Klosterman published Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, North Carolina schools refuse to use the Cassell Dictionary of Slang.
- “Indexes and Indexers in Fiction” (via James Tata)
- Robert Tressell reconsidered.
- For those having as much trouble accessing the James Wood Terrorist review, Powell’s has posted it sans registration.
Roundup
– June 29, 2006Posted in: Roundup
Magic Hours by Tom Bissell: This marvelous collection of essays chronicles everything from film shoots to novelists rescued from oblivion. (The essay on the Underground Literary Alliance, with its portrait of raucous factions, unexpectedly reveals how soft today's literary world has become.) But if you peer between the cracks of these smart pieces, you may very well see how cultural lives are formed from the most unexpected life choices. And as we follow Bissell's development as a writer over the years, that goes for Bissell as well. (
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway: Harkaway's latest novel greatly improves on his previous book, The Gone-Away World, which I'm already on record as praising. Angelmaker adopts genre elements without ever feeling like a genre book, and it leads me to believe that Harkaway is well on his way to a narrative grace close to China Miéville's. Yet inexplicably this very fun book, which includes an eightysomething badass named Edie Banister, a mysterious mechanical object that may destroy the world, farcical scenarios involving lawyers and the police, and some unexpectedly moving moments about fatherhood, doesn't appear to be getting much attention in American newspapers. Nothing from the snobs at The New York Times Book Review, nothing from The Washington Post. And since I can't get Harkaway on Bat Segundo, I hope this Jump Up and Down mention gets you hopping as well.
The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel: Unless you're really pressed for time, forget Jonah Lehrer. If you want to understand creativity and its relationship to neuroscience, then the bowtie-wearing Nobel laureate is your man. In addition to being a physically beautiful book (you will drool over many of the paintings), there are helpful overviews on optical illusions, science, biographical backgrounds, and many vital figures from the Vienna Secession. Kandel's enthusiasm (and his call for greater unity between the humanities and science) is contagious.
That indexes in fiction list is sadly not up to date. It’s missing a number of books, off the top of my head: Perec’s Life a Users Manual, Mathews’ Sinking of the Odradek Stadium, and Danielewski’s House of Leaves, as well as the recent LBC book Other Electricities.
Okay, Ed, but don’t blame me if you end up disliking it. As I recall, back in the 24fps days we didn’t agree on much.
Then again, I wrote a positive review of Phantom Menace and you panned it — and I’m finally a big enough person to admit I was wrong.
(Then again, it’s my recollection that you panned The Big Lebowski… or am I misunderestimating?)
Chris: Utterly no way that I panned The Big Lebowski. I saw the film three times in its first release — long before anybody else “got” the movie. In fact, one of those times, I was almost kicked out of the theatre for laughing too loud.
And, as I recall, we didn’t disagree all THAT much. Granted, there were some harsh differences, such as “Phantom Menace” and “Ravenous.” And Adam Sandler was, of course, a great uniter in a negative way.
In any event, now that I have your email, I’ll drop you a line tonight. I would have dropped you a line earlier to say hello, but I didn’t have a working email for you. Very good to hear from you! Funny how we both ended up in the litblogosphere.