The “It’s Getting Close to Xmas and My Corpus Wanes” Roundup
Written byPosted on December 13, 2006
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- OGIC on Aguirre: The Wrath of God.
- The Australian’s book coverage ain’t bad these days. Recently, they enlisted a number of writers to mention what they’re currently reading.
- Book critics are rated at Time Out. I’ll go further than my colleague Scott Esposito and suggest that any list which seriously considers Michiko Kakutani’s venomous tirades and Janet Maslin’s “Well, good golly, I read a book this summer!” reviews is worthless. And where, pray tell, is James Wood?
- It appears Malcolm Gladwell has follicle competition from
Chris EatonGeorges Perec. Aside from this pedantic and wholly unnecessary observation, Eaton appears to be a writer to check out. - Jack Shafer and Amardeep Singh offer contrarian views on the McEwan/Andrews flap.
Is there any real reason to revisit Home Alone? Bad enough that this treacly nonsense launched the career of Macaulay Culkin and gave that sentimental hack Chris Columbus a second wind, steering him into the wholesale corruption of Harry Potter. But Home Alone also signified screenwriter John Hughes’ total capitulation into commercial family film fare of the lowest common denominator. Look at the list of films Hughes wrote after Home Alone: Beethoven (under a pseudonym), Dennis the Menace, Baby’s Day Out, and remakes of Miracle on 34th Street, 101 Dalmatians and Flubber. All of these scripts came from a man who desired a summer retreat at Nassau more than a desire to entertain. Imagine a parallel universe in which John Hughes continued writing comedies along the lines of Planes, Trains & Automobiles and the underrated She’s Having a Baby, not letting the lackluster reception of She’s Having a Baby get in the way. Hughes, dare I say it, could have been a fiercely independent populist. But he opted out. And it’s no surprise that Kevin Smith filled in the gap.- The year’s most notable newspaper corrections.
- Editor & Publisher compares the NYT and Post responses to Pinochet’s death.
- Sacha Baron Cohen as Best Actor? The critics in my town are often a bit batty, but this choice is a bit silly in a year that featured Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson.
- Who knew that Mary Todd Lincoln’s cake holds all the answers for historical novelists?
- In a perfect universe, Jonathan Ames, George Saunders, and Lydia Millet would be writing episodes for a groundbreaking Comedy Central series, drawing larger audiences to their often hilarious bodies of work. But since we live in a cruel and unfair universe where the spoils often go to no-talent, misogynist thugs, it is, of course, Tucker Max who yields the glory. (via Slushpile)
- Michael Moorcock on Against the Day. (via The Dizzies)
- Overrated and underrated books of the year. Which brings up another point. There was considerable excitement about David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green early this year, but it appears that the end-of-the-year listmakers have forgotten about it. What happened? Or are the critics’ memories too fickle? The only lists I’ve seen BSG on are Mr. Sarvas’ and Mr. Orthofer’s.
- Aw man. Peter Boyle has died.
- Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. But I’m a big fan of the brass balls cultural declaration. Spencer Somers believes that “Sufjan Stevens is the closest thing this generation has to a Brian Wilson.” (via LHB)
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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.)
Does that mean Somers thinks Stevens is a brilliant songwriter? Or just batshit loony?
That’s Georges Perec you’re looking at, not Chris Eaton.
The most recent incarnation (White Bread Black Beer 2006) of Scritti Politti (Green Gartside) is the closest thing this generation has to Brian Wilson.
The George Perec mix-up was my fault. I have this mysterious inability to label pictures on my site. Hyperlinking laziness, more than anything.
have you seen george saunder’s great column in the new yorker?
hilarious…
http://www.newyorker.com/shouts/content/articles/061218sh_shouts