Roundup
Written byPosted on January 31, 2007
Filed Under Roundup
- Hitch on One Hundred Years: “For this reader, the most arresting episode in the Macondo saga was the epidemic of insomnia that afflicted the tribe.”
- The Esquire Napkin Project features contributions by A.M. Homes, Jonathan Ames, Aimee Bender, Andrew Sean Greer, and many more authors.
- James Gibbons on Paul Auster: “Novelists, of course, are not obliged to occupy themselves with a fine-grained depiction of external reality, so in remarking on the abstract terrain of Auster’s books I mean primarily to underscore how anomalous his success is. Simply put, neither American writers nor American readers tend to go in for the kind of fiction that Auster has made his specialty, and it’s unsurprising that Auster enjoys not just wide readership but also prestige internationally, particularly in France, that well exceeds his critical reputation in the United States.” (via The Publishing Spot)
- Jeff VanderMeer opines that BSG is beginning to suck. I agree. And yet when Annalee Newitz boldly put forth this proposition late last year, she was greeted by a torrent of denouncements from mad fanboys. The question is when this artistic declivity will be recognized by the more rabid BSG viewers. I don’t know whether to give up on the show or hope that it will get better. I keep watching, but only when I am suffering from insomnia or my brain power has depleted to near zero. Ron Moore has not written a single episode this season other than the two-hour premiere, and I suspect that he’s abdicated on his duties. Do we really need a BSG spinoff? I’d rather see attentions directed towards one good show instead of two substandard ones.
- Charlie Stross on the writer’s lifestyle. (via Speedysnail)
- Flickr has forced its users to get Yahoo IDs. Small wonder that Fotolog has overtaken Flickr. Treat your users as if they are prisoners forced to register for a stalag and they go elsewhere.
- What kind of reader are you? Me? I’m a “Dedicated Reader.” (via Bookblog)
- Sidney Sheldon has passed on, forcing readers to find another prolific hack writer to read on airplanes.
- Flatland: The Movie! (via Books, Inq.
- Over at Mark’s place, Daniel Olivas talks with Daniel Alarcón.
- The Existence Machine on Children of Men.
- Oh! My! Goodness! Radio! Radio! Radio! (via Condalmo)
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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.)
“forcing readers to find another prolific hack writer to read on airplanes”
Never fear. James Patterson is more than up to the task.
Insulting the dead, classy move.
Heaven forbid a writer doesn’t pen books you personally find worthwhile, otherwise they will find their entire existence pared down to one pithy insulting sentence. I’m sure Mr. Sheldon’s family will be heartened to know such insightful retrospectives are being written about him.
I’m a fan of your work, but smacking down a man whose only crime was written books you don’t personally enjoy seems unnecessarily cruel.
Although for Harold Robbins and V.C. Andrews, being dead hasn’t exactly stopped them.
Mr. Pinter: That sentence’s tone was intended as playful, but if calling anyone, living or dead, “a hack writer” is the height of cruelty, then I shudder at the nature of your political correctness.
First off, it’s not as if I suggested that Mr. Sheldon sodomized dogs, molested small children, or was a dutiful member of the John Birch Society.
I put forth the following scenarios to you:
When Richard Nixon died, did you ignore Watergate?
When George Wallace or Strom Thurmond died, did you ignore their racism?
When Regan died, did you ignore the pernicious consequences of Reaganomics?
Likewise, when Sidney Sheldon dies (as he has), do you ignore his despicable contributions (at least from my reading encounters) to literature? No, you don’t.
It’s not as if I’m Christopher Hitchens wielding a poison pen here about Mother Teresa. We’re talking about two words: “hack writer.”
But this notion of offering assumptive fellatio to anyone who kicks the bucket disgusts me, and not just for its necrophiliac imputations. Should not one be aware of the COMPLETE portrait of a person, living or dead? Why do we stop to pay our “respects” when we would have said something entirely different during a dead person’s life?
And as testament to my stance, should I kick the bucket and by some odd development receive some kind of ridiculous attention for my death, I hereby invite any of my fans, critics or enemies to report of my infirmities, debilitations, sins, and whatever else they feel might shed a complete portrait of me.
No human being is perfect, Mr. Pinter, except during that interim of partisan hosannas a few days after the human’s death.
As far as I know, Sidney Sheldon was not a racist and did not misuse the presidential office. Again his sole crime, from your estimation, was writing books you didn’t care for, which in proper perspective is a sin as vile as not eating his vegetables. He did not, again as far as I know, negatively impact any aspect of anyone’s life other than those with “refined” literary taste buds.
I am far from partisan here. I’m not defending Sidney Sheldon as a novelist–I can’t say I’m a fan of his works–but I am defending him as a person who by all accounts was a decent human being whose family is grieving his death. Calling someone a “prolific hack writer” does anything but paint a complete portrait, and while this is a website largely dedicated to the literary arts, in my view it seemed more pernicious to sum up a person’s existence in such a manner.
In addition, since your criticisms seemed directed at his books rather than films or television shows, Mr. Sheldon wrote approximately 20 books in a 47 year writing career. Hardly prolific, especially when compared to authors like Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King or any number of authors who have written far more books in a much shorter timeframe. If those authors have been called hacks, it has not been due to their prolific nature (ok, maybe Stephen King has).
This is a separate debate, but I also don’t believe one can equate being prolific with being a hack. Plenty of great writers put out a book or more per year, while many hack-worthy authors have far more sparse offerings.
In any event I agree that upon a person’s death often their sins are forgotten, but I can think of far greater sins than writing popular books. At least he got some people reading, which is hard enough these days.
Mr. Pinter: Okay, you make a fair case for the frequency of Mr. Sheldon’s output. I take back “prolific.” I applied this modifier because Sheldon’s books seemed to appear everywhere to me, much as fungus grows from a dirty laundry pile if you leave it in one place long enough.
It is the term “hack writer” that we are concerned with here. As far as I’m concerned, and maybe this just makes me quirky, writing vile books that cater to the lowest common denominator can be as barbarous an act as murdering an infant. Being subjected to bad prose DOES negatively impact people, which in turn sprouts writers who wish to duplicate it and must unlearn their mangling of the English language.
Sure, Sheldon has a grieving family. So did Nixon, Reagan, Wallace, et al. That’s not the point here. The point is that Sheldon WAS a hack writer.