Now, I'm hardly going to do this one justice, but I've been meaning to blog about it for a while, and so I will, at least a little bit, because the author in question blogs a little bit, himself, and quite intriguingly at times (such as and such as): a while back I received, courtesy of Other Press--publishers of several recent-ish books I've liked (such as and such as)--a copy of The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal by Sean Dixon, who is related neither to me nor to (to the best of my knowledge) Stephen Dixon (well, at least, not that Stephen Dixon), and I found it enjoyable and fun and weird, to the extent that it actually--despite a personal "one novel at a time" rule--pulled me (forcefully!) away from Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games, which I'd been ass-deep(-and-on-the-whole-liking-it) in at the time, perhaps due in no small part to the excellent and entertaining use of a first-person-plural narrator; I can't say it made Joshua Ferris look like Hooked on Phonics--I think Joshua Ferris made Joshua Ferris look like Hooked on Phonics just fine on his own--but I can say that it did compare wildly favorably in Dixon's (Sean's) favor, at least in terms of narrative devices, there being few other points of comparison between the two books (to the best of my knowledge), Ferris's being a boring novel about being bored, and Dixon's (Sean's) novel being one in which book club members fuck and fall through floors (though not simultaneously) and adventure themselves off to distant lands and get haircuts against their will and "read" The Epic of Gilgamesh and get into e-mail conversations with bloggers and generally make for consistently good reading.

This morning, courtesy of the folks at Knopf, I received a copy of the new Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck. I then promptly fast-forwarded through the morning to my lunch hour so I could read the first story, "Cell One." It is, to say the least, nice to know Adichie remains as emotionally potent in the short form as she does in the long form (see also: my reaction to Half of a Yellow Sun; also see, on an unrelated note, but one I'm reminded of by looking at that post, the newly revealed 2010 release of a Scarlett Thomas novel--what was it I was saying about 2010?) This is one I'll be carrying around with me for a while. Worth considering. (At least, you know, based on one story. I'm assuming she doesn't fill the rest of the book with bad fan fiction or anything.)

That new William T. Vollmann book? Is actually two books. Supernova.

Gang, at least there's this: however shitty things may be right now, at least we can say we have an extremely literate president:

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will serve as Honorary Chairs of the 2009 National Book Festival, organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress. Now in its ninth year, this popular event celebrating the joys of reading and lifelong literacy will be held on Saturday, Sept. 26, 2009, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., between 7th and 14th Streets from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (rain or shine). The event is free and open to the public.

I mean: wow, right? That actually doesn't sound like the horrible punchline of a sick joke. I could actually see going to that. Without feeling like I'd be lying to myself the entire time.

BookExpo America is happening. Which I've always felt far too marginal or even marginally marginal to ever consider signing on for, and this year, it sounds like there's less for me to miss than ever before. Which, you know, cool. I've got stuff going on. Whatevs. But, uh, maybe it sounds like what the publishing industry really needs is not less but more, maybe? You know, more excitement, more passion, more trade shows, more festivals, more, more, more? Maybe? Maybe not less? I don't know. Maybe I'll try to go next year. Maybe I'll wear a big red dog costume. Maybe so many things.

In other news, we've still got a new Thomas Pynchon novel coming out this year. We've still got a lot of books coming out by a lot of great authors this year. Like, I've lost track of them all. And then there's next year which I think looks good too, or was starting to look good the last time I looked. So much to look at. Right. Shit just got real.

But yeah, the early previews of the Pynchon novel are starting to come in. Like, with this one, right here (via):

I’ve been enjoying the new Thomas Pynchon novel, Inherent Vice. The most striking thing about is that if you had handed me the first 30 pages, I would have staked my life I was reading the opening of the new Elmore Leonard.

...

In some ways it’s a surprise to see Pynchon, one of the most sophisticated, high-caste and demanding of American writers, dancing naked; on the other hand it isn’t, because there’s something about the crime novel, the thriller, hardboiled noir , whatever you want to call it that literary novelists find fascinating and often irresistible.

I don't know, I know there's that need to call Pynchon sophisticated and high-caste, but I do worry that talk like that scares more people off the trail than is healthy. I mean, bananas. Funny. Right?

In other news, I seem to be doing a lot with hardboiled mystery type books lately. Which is weird. I was never particularly a fan of the style though I also never had much against it either. Just, something that never much struck me as something I needed to explicitly go looking for. But now it's like every which way I look I'm reading one or reading about one. Weird.

Like, there's an author right now whose backlist I'm reading in its entirety (or close to its entirety) in preparation for a kind of big review I plan to write for later this year. (Hint: no, it's not Pynchon, which is cool, because I don't think I could handle that, what with the making of wetness in the pants reading new Pynchon might entail.) But this author I'm reading has me all curious about mystery stuff, now, more so than I've ever been. New avenues to explore! Always, new avenues to explore.

So, that The Road trailer I mentioned recently? Turns out it might not be all bad. Or at least, it's bad, the situation is bad, but the movie might still be more like the book than the trailer might lead one to believe. Reality, whatever. One can only hope this does wind up pulling a bunch of people in who might think they're getting into a pleasant little end of the world action adventure only to be crushed under the weight of pure existentialist pooh. Who knows.

And, really, it can never be so whaaaaaaaa? as this. Bonus points for butler jazz hands, is what I'm saying.

Nor is it any part of my thesis to maintain that [the detective story] is a vital and significant form of art. There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that. The growth of populations has in no way increased the amount; it has merely increased the adeptness with which substitutes can be produced and packaged.

- Raymond Chandler

Yeah, speaking of the producing and packaging of substitutes: uh, what, and, uhhhhhhh, what?

But really, though, come on: are you surprised that the old white dude reads a bunch of books by old white dudes? Call me back when, like, Zadie Smith is all like, "Ladies are crazy, old white dudes are where it's at." Then we'll talk about, you know, things we can talk about.

In other news, we've got a trailer now for the film adaptation of The Road by Cormac McMcarthy. Which, I mean, I don't know. It looks a lot more "boom" and "hiss" and "fzzzzzzzzzzzzt" than I remember the book being. But it's the trailer and I guess you can't have a trailer that's nothing but sad people being sad and then dying all over. So I don't know. I couldn't blame you for thinking they're ruining the book. (The book inspired one of my longest and probably least coherent but most-hit blog posts so I can't say I don't have some emotional stake in the outcome here.) On the other, it's still possible it's still going to be this very good thing in and of itself, independent of the source material, so. Who knows. (And they do the Coke can bit, which I like to imagine is the bleak unrelenting horror version of the whale from Hitchhiker's Guide in terms of things-from-books-put-into-movies, so.)

Being a six-books-to-his-name novelist, one who, at least as far as I can recall having seen, has never published a short story before in his life, Kazuo Ishiguro may tempt us to suspect that his new collection of five short stories, Nocturnes, could somehow be "minor" compared to the rest of his output--like the book is an EP dashed off before "proper" albums, like it's a lark less executed than committed before he gets back to the real work of doing a new novel. After reading the opening story, "Crooner," the only thing I can say I suspect right now is that I'm going to be incredibly sad when I get to the end of this slim volume, his slimmest since his first two novels. Sad because there won't be any more book to read. More sad because there's such emotionally wrenching power in his prose, prose that goes down as easy as water splashed with lemon. And saddest yet because, as with Michael Chabon's The Final Solution--another slender tale I've recently completed--lacing sadness through and beneath the surface of stories that might ostensibly profess to have other more immediate concerns in mind (detection and/or music) appears to be at the core of what's going on on the pages in front of me. One of the cores, at least.

Tangled thoughts. I shouldn't be discussing my reactions mid-stream, I suppose, but considering how things get away from me on here, I wanted to make sure I got at least something down in writing this month so I can lay some claim to having done something to promote National Short Story Month, about which you can read lots and lots more over at the Emerging Writers Network blog. Also, I've got this whole self-consciousness thing going on as I read Ishiguro, appropriate considering the concern with seeming lack of concern for self-consciousness that runs through so much of his work; I mean, this being the first real new Ishiguro I get to read since I picked up Never Let Me Go a couple years ago and never looked back. I guess I can't help but read myself reading the book, which is at once annoying and perfectly fine, worth and not worth considering. Whatever, I don't know, that first story kills, and the only reason I didn't spend the rest of the night reading the rest of the book is because I just know I need to savor it, and, well, yeah. Savor it.

The Wall Street Journal has the opening chapter of China Miéville's new book, The City & The City; Scotland on Sunday has a profile; I've got an urge to quit most things I do so I can handle even just keeping track of the outright bookish assault that is 2009, never even mind the existing of 2010 already looming on the horizon, which, rumor has it, will present us with new David Mitchell and new Jonathan Franzen. Jam.

(The City & The City comes out in about a week.)

Mine. Mine! Mine mine mine!

TDAOC-endorsed A. L. Kennedy is doing a bit of blogging at The Guardian and it's really quite good.

(I myself am on the verge of wrapping up my spring semester class and so I anticipate I myself might also be able to do a bit of blogging myself in the coming weeks. At least on a more consistently irregular basis. I've read and/or am reading some books that I rather liked and/or like. Which I do plan to say things about. Soon. Ish.)

The new Kazuo Ishiguro book, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, comes out in a couple weeks...in the UK. Here in the U.S., we have to wait until too long from now for it. Seriously: Want. Bad enough to consider the cross-ocean shipping charges. Which, er, I just checked, and are surprisingly not horrible. As in: under a thousand pounds. Okay then! In any case, here's a profile that makes me want the book even harder. As if such a thing could be reckoned.

(And we know the real cost kicks in when the American copy comes out and I can't resist buying it, too. Hrm.)

Here he comes to save the day!

The Onion A.V. Club is starting an online book discussion group; the first title up for discussion is Katherine Dunn's Geek Love. I'd say this sort of thing has been done before and has failed before but judging by the fact that the debut post has racked up about a kajillion comments makes me wonder if maybe it hasn't and if maybe it won't.

The discussion starts May 11. Maybe I'll check in, if I'm not watching Star Trek for the fourteenth time that day.

Pynchon-Gaitskill-Ishiguro-Miéville-(Vollmann)-Hunt...Lethem.

Shit.

(And actually I can't seem to find any other references anywhere to this new Stephen Dixon book? And Fantagraphics does comics? What's going on here?)

(And I still need to go get the Gaitskill book which is already out. It's a sad state of affairs when I am too busy to go to a bookstore to buy a book I want to own. Crap.)

I'll go on record as saying that I loved Battlestar Galactica start to finish. But I'll also go on record as saying that things like this basically confirm for me the fact that the follow-up prequel series Caprica is going to be a horrifying trainwreck doomed to last about four episodes. Dear creators, producers, and every other person involved with this scourge: the Law and Order people called, they want their newest spin-off series promo photo back.

(To be fair, the last time I made the Four Episode Prediction was against The Big Bang Theory, so clearly I know ass-all about anything. But still! "Fatcoat, Cheekbones, and Chindivot, Attorneys at Law"!)

There is a certain pleasure we take in thinking about how bad it gets, Sartaj thought, and then in imagining how it will inevitably get worse. And still we survive, the city stumbles on. Maybe one day it'll all just fall apart, and there was a certain gratification in that thought too. Let the maderchod blow.

- from Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra

So I've started reading Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra, because that is what I do now, between bouts of not blogging for weeks at a stretch, between going to work all day and making madness out of clothespins at night; I decide what I really need to go off and do is get myself wrapped up in 900+ page crime novels set in India. Or just, well, long books, really. Between the short ones. When I think I'm going to just read short things for a while. That's usually the moment I decide I need something reliable, trust-worthy, dependable. Oh, gods, it's all I can do to not re-crack open Against the Day right now.

Anyways, Sacred Games, I'm 100 pages or so into it, and it's good. Textural might be the word I'm looking for. Good story, but not so much story that I lose it when I can't pick the book up for a couple lunch hours; so far, at least. There's a police man and the criminal he catches and the criminal's telling his life story from beyond the grave and now there's conspiracy afoot. So. Good detail, good scenery, good to be reminded that shit's crazy wherever you go. Good little bits of melodramatic yet not over-the-top text like the quote above. It's, you know, fun to read. Which I like right now. Fun. Reading. Books. Now and then. When I can.

Just a couple days ago I finished The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. I sort of like her. A lot. It says something when I can say that a book about Jesuits going off to space might not be for the weak of heart. But there you have it.