Lately, I’ve been reading Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride — as usual, a gloriously devious book. This column suggests that Zenia is a grotesque version of Canadian journalist Barbara Amiel, who went to the University of Toronto with Atwood. Amiel, of course, was fired by the Telegraph this year after she was implicated in a lawsuit against her husband (the lawsuit having been launched by Hollinger International, which owns the telegraph). Before that, Amiel built a career writing free market tirades.

Of course, Atwood’s novel (published in 1993) came long before the Telegraph scandal, but since Atwood’s novel is content to play with the reader’s head (leading the reader to become just as curious about Zenia’s salacious details as the three protagonists), does anybody have any dirt on anything that might have gone down between the two? If Zenia is indeed based off of Amiel and there was a contretemps, then this could lend credence to the theory that vengeance promotes lively writing (much as Get Shorty‘s Martin Weir was based on Elmore Leonard’s scuffles with Dustin Hoffman).

Okay, folks, since these book lists are a lot of fun, here’s a new list I actually have a chance on. (My score here is 21.) Books that fit this criteria are long, cerebral, or epic in nature. Downright voluminous. (And to be fair, I’ve included a few “easy” long reads among the bunch, along with some speculative fiction.) For a book to count, you should have read the whole thing. And if I had to predict scores, my suspicion here is that Brian, who actually read A Suitable Boy, will score a 24.

1. The Recognitions by William Gaddis
2. Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
3. The Royal Family by William T. Vollman
4. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
5. The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
6. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
7. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
8. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
9. Ulysses by James Joyce
10. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
11. The Tunnel by William Gass
12. The Rosy Crucifixion by Henry Miller
13. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber
14. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
15. The Diary of Anais Nin
16. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
17. The Great Book of Amber by Roger Zelazny
18. The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake
19. The Stand by Stephen King (extended version)
20. A Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
21. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
22. Rememberance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
23. Noble House by James Clavell
24. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Doestoevsky
25. Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
26. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

[UPDATE: Gwenda quite rightly points out that I failed to include a more proportional number of books by women. To remedy this, I’ve added The Golden Notebook, which I haven’t read, to the list. I’ll happily pad out the list to 30 if you folks have more choices.]

The Rake points to an excerpt of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.

Memo to world: Buy this book immediately. You won’t be sorry. It’s intricate, emotional, cerebral, funny, satirical, worldly, and will have you sifting through your reference books with glee.

• What the loss of Jerry Goldsmith means (in depth)
• The State of Books & the NYTBR, Part 2
• Continued updates on pertinent backlogged posts for 2004 (I was doing it long before Kottke, thank you)
• A public response to what lit blogs are all about (corralling and finally addressing a number of points I was exchanging with Mark months ago), what they have done so far, and where we can go from here.
• A redesign of this place.
• Launch of the Wrestling an Alligator enhanced site.
• A photographic explanation of who or what Dr. Mabuse is (incriminating evidence to accompany)
• Possible reinstatement of 1999-2003 online material (more likely, greatest hits)

• I’ve started reading Kevin Starr’s Coast of Dreams (due for publication in September 2004 by Knopf), the latest volume in Starr’s underrated California Dream series. While I remain a fan of Kevin Starr, the big surprise here is not the volume’s 700 page length, but the less scholarly tone than its predecessors. The chapters are surprisingly short and snappy, without the ambition or all-encompassing portraits we’ve come to expect. This time around, Starr’s opted for a more anecdotal flavor. This isn’t as disappointing as it sounds. But given Starr’s ebullience and lifelong devotion to his material, my feeling so far is that the tome could have been more substantial. Perhaps, as Starr suggests himself in the preface, a book chronicling 1990-2003 is a bit premature. Or perhaps Starr’s histories (or any history for that matter) work more effectively when they are removed from present events. I have a few more ideas why, but they will have to wait for my forthcoming review in a few months.
• Stephen Policoff has weighed in at Mark’s and he has some horror stories about his first novel, Beautiful Somewhere Else.
• The California Supreme Court has ruled that a teenager’s poem about a shooting at another school was not a crime. The Academy of Arts might want to pay attention to these little things called precedents.
• The latest literary property to be at risk? John Buchanan’s.
• Michael Cunningham has gone Hollywood. Not only did he write the film adaptation for A Home at the End of the World, but he’s dyed his hair blond. At 51.
• It’s subscription-only, but Variety is reporting that Neil Gaiman is in negotiations to make his directorial debut with an adaptation of Death: The High Cost of Living. Gaiman writes, “Well, things are getting closer, and there may well be something that we can announce at San Diego. Or not. (Blinks innocently.)”
• Turning 30 No Cakewalk for Many Women. It ain’t exactly easy for us dudes either, but we’ve passed the stage of acceptance and we’re well on the way to putting our twenties behind us in a week and a half, thank you very much. Dave Chappelle probably has the most compelling reasons why.
• And new to the blogroll, Chekhov’s Mistress.