Golems and watercraeft and cactii and monsters on the mind

It's probably safe to call China Miéville one of my favorite contemporary writers, based on how much I enjoyed Perdido Street Station and The Scar. The Pleasures to Pages ratio in both books--Perdido especially--is both high and favorable. Seems though I do take my time between reading his books. Maybe because there's only a finite number of them, I need to ration them out, lest I get caught in a world in which there are no new China Miéville books for me to read. (Where else am I going to see words like "anamnesis" and "stravager" be both used and cool?)

So maybe my recent reading of Lord of the Rings got fantasy (ahem, "fantasy") back on my mind, then, but since I randomly recommended Perdido to two different friends over the weekend, it seemed like a ripe time to finally attack Iron Council. I'm maybe a quarter through it now and it's different but the same. I can't put my finger on what the difference is yet. Though I know and remember this universe well, he's doing something else here. Whatever that is. Sometimes I worry this is going to bother me, and then right away something amazing happens in the book, and I'm surprised again. Though I know by now I shouldn't be.

Really, gods, I'm just enjoying it a lot.

Speaking of nerd humor...

...as someone who recently finally switched his laptop full-time to Ubuntu Linux, this made me, as the kids say, laugh out loud.

This is really just a horrible excuse to make a terrible nerd joke

I tell you, it's a good thing Edward Champion is here to beat the crap out of famous writers. God knows, without his Blogposts of Fury, such writers as David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen might have accidentally kept on doing their own things. Heavens, no!

I'll tell you something I learned from my (extremely limited) experience with Dungeons & Dragons. If you're planning on unleashing a Flurry of Blows in an attempt to kill Gods? You better roll a pair of natural twenties. All I'm seeing here is fives and sevens.

Tentative initial thoughts on The Keep by Jennifer Egan

What little I read of the reviews for The Keep by Jennifer Egan focused on the more structural aspects of the book--the multi-level framed nature of the narrative; the melding and mixing of different genres (ghost story, gothic story, love story). All of which is (obviously?) interesting, but the book is (certainly?) about more than its form. What I think this book is more about is the unique and strange sadness of being a human being in a very modern society, a social framework that makes connectivity between people ubiquitous and easy and user-friendly. What happens when the ability to make those connections--in both or either a technological and inter-personal sense--is taken away or lost (either temporarily or, ahem, permanently), is what forms a basis for a specifically contemporary tragic condition.

In part, at least.

Or maybe not at all.

What's most important right now (in that post-final-page haze) is that The Keep is really a good book and I still love Jennifer Egan. A lot. I'll need to re-read Look At Me sometime soon before I make really grand claims but I think it's safe to say that though Ms. Egan has written three quite different (in terms of tone and subject matter and "genre") novels, there's enough evidence to support a claim that she's got concerns (such as the contemporary technological/sociological landscape); one might go so far as to bandy about such pretentious-sounding phrases as "as a writer, Jennifer Egan has continued to add to her overall project" (a slight variation of which ("The Jennifer Egan Project") is a band I would very much want to be a member of).

Again, in part, or at least, or not at all. This all sounds awfully smarty-pants mumbo-jumbo but her work sort of makes me want to actually write smarty-pants mumbo-jumbo about it because, dare I say it, her writing feels...important? Which is, I should make clear, not antonymous to "fun" or "enjoyable".

(Did I just use the word "antonymous"? Gads.)

Creative writing workshops are made of people! People! OMG WTF PEOPLE!!!

While I'm looking forward to reading Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer, a review of the book in the New York Times has sparked some less-than-pleased responses: see Mark Leahy's response at the Sycamore Review blog and Barrett Hathcock's bilious reply in a guest-blogging appearance at Conversational Reading. (Dan Green offers some quicker, less angry thoughts.)

It's probably a broad oversimplification of the discussion here to suggest that it comes down to a tired "Creative writing workshops are the suck!" vs. "Creative writing workshops are the awesome!" debate. Still, interesting reading, if you're into that sort of thing. But I hope it doesn't somehow bizarrely overshadow the Francine Prose book itself, which I suspect has more to offer than the NYT bit indicates. Even if it's all reminders of the obvious sort, I've a hunch it'll be worthwhile reading anyway, for the very reason that the obvious is so easily overlooked and is well worth being made (from time-to-time) perfectly explicit.

(Sort of like the way friend Chris and I were discussing the audience at the Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band concert last night; we were trying to decide (as we are wont to do at thee indie rock shows) what the typical TSMZMO&TLLB fan looks like. We were sort of stumped--as far as we got was the idea that the indie rock fan beard was going to be scruffier than the norm (due to generally increased levels of deep-thought chin-stroking and/or inability to purchase razor blades due to blowing-of-all-cash on PBR tallboys and/or vinyl record-album first-pressings) and that there'd be some generally-more-increased levels of pretentiousness in the very air around the ur-fan than even the platonic ideal form of "indie rock fan" would likely evince--until we realized you really had to dig down to the most obvious fact to get a handle on the situation: the typical TSM... fan is, largely male. This feels weird to me. What's up with that? Don't girls like thee punk post-rock string quartets? Especially when said quartet is 3/4ths female. I know the rest of the men in the band weren't nothing to look at, but the music is something fantastic. Also, note to whoever the tool in the crowd was who made fun of the vocals: You're a tool.)

Bee Season by Myla Goldberg

Wow.

There's hype, and then there's, I feel a little weird even thinking about it

Daniel Woodrell's novel Winter's Bone has been getting hyped. I learned about it a month ago form Tod Goldberg, who called it the best novel he's read this year. I can't say the same, myself; I've read Crime and Punishment this year, and that's pretty much a competition-killer. But I can say the book deserves hype. It's really good. Dark, quite dark. It's a compelling story with a fascinating lead character and setting and fine writing (with some great moments of writing throughout). But mostly it's just good. Painful, almost.

There's other reviews out there if you need more info.

Apropos of nothing

What are your thoughts about Henry James? Or, what do you think of when you hear the name Henry James?

(Note: You needn't have ever actually read Henry James to be able to play along at home.)

The trick is to keep coming up with snappy blogpost titles

Guess who else has got a work-in-progress? Janice Galloway, author of The Trick Is to Keep Breathing, one of the best. books. ever.

She recently gave a reading at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, as reported at The Scotsman:

Janice Galloway also treated us to a piece of new writing, part of an as-yet-unnamed project known only as "the thing" - though she did go as far as to say that it might become a "novelistic memoir". The section she read was about birth - her own, as told to her by her mother, continuing what she described as a "a pleasingly reproductive theme" for the event.

As well as reading about Clara Schumann's first pregnancy, from her award-winning novel Clara, she read part of a short story published in The Scotsman Orange Short Story Award collection Work, about a young Italian boy in the heyday of light opera, tricked into the operation which will make him a castrato, able to sing all his life with an unbroken voice.

Her moving, visceral prose proved that good writing reflects ideas and emotions powerfully into our own time, even when it talks about distant times and places.

I am terribly ashamed of the fact that I did not make it through Clara; in my defense I can only say it came out in that dark time between pre-this-blog and post-the-shadow-of-college when I wasn't reading as much as I should have been, and slowish thought-provoking literary novels weren't exactly what I was reaching for when I did make my way into the bookstore. Corrective measures have been taken. (Well, I've moved it back to the TBR pile, at least.)

By the way, word of warning: skip Trick if you have even a single emotional bone in your body. The book will pull that bone out of you and beat you in the face with it. Potent text.

And if it means I gotta read Underworld to do it, I will go there

Jennifer Egan--who I'm in love with and would like to marry--talks about five not-so-random books at New York Magazine. (Via Bookslut.)

(I've been a total screwtard and I haven't read her new novel The Keep yet. I've been too busy trying not to read the reviews. (Harder than it sounds.) But I'm going to get on that book as soon as possible.)

Note to self--print out old e-mails, stuff into boxes, provide significant lump-sum future payment to great-great-great-great-great grandkids

Stories like this, about a collection of letters (and a "previously unknown manuscript of a poem") by Samuel Taylor Coleridge being sold to the British Library in London, sort of make me feel the need to re-read A. S. Byatt's Possession. Does that make me a dork? So be it.

Via Books, Words, and Writing, which has quickly become one of my favorite litblogs on the block.

"Dude, how totally Federline was that?" "That was pretty Federer, man"

Speaking of David Foster Wallace, he's got an article-essay-thing in the New York Times about a tennis player. I haven't read it all yet--okay, I haven't even gotten past the first page yet--but I'll say that the second paragraph got me more interested in tennis than I've been since the sun-drenched day I finished Infinite Jest five years ago. I don't really even remember any of his other tennis-themed essays communicating to me DFW's love for the sport in anything near the emotionally-involved way that paragraph does; I mean, sure they provide me with certain intellectually-graspable informational tid-bits such as "DFW loves tennis" and "DFW is smarter than I can ever hope to be" but I don't recall ever feeling the deep spiritual connection that can join people in appreciation of something utterly beautiful which one participant in the spiritual-connectivity had previously had little cause for which to consider that I felt by the time I got to the bits about the popcorn and novelty eyes. But maybe it's just that it felt nice at this particular random moment (which could have been any moment in my own personal history) to read about a Truly Amazing Sports Moment with complete emotional detachment or desire in regards to who wins and who loses said sporting moment (says the Cleveland boy for whom such moments generally equate to loss and heart-ache; see also the Fumble and the Drive and Michael Jordan's Shot and whatever we call the moments in which we lost the World Series in 1997 and whatever other crazy stupid moments have conspired to leave me a general emotional wreck w/r/t Great Sports Moments In History) (not that I've got my share of bound-up bitterness) (oh no) (none at all).

It would be sort of like if TDAOC was a book and the cover was a picture of Mike Tyson milking a cow: fun and all, but highly inappropriate

Somewhere along the line, I switched my blog-reading habits, and I guess I let some blogs accidentally fall through the cracks because I am a horrible human being. It's the only excuse I can offer for losing track of Elizabeth Crane's blog. Turns out she's been busy: reading some Jonathan Lethem, exploring MySpace, coming up with an awesome idea for a Project Runway spinoff, talking to people, riding trains. You know, generally tearing shit up in a great role model for all the writer-kids out there sort of way.

She's also switching publishers. Interesting story. I'll vouch for the fact that you should read All This Heavenly Glory despite the cover of the paperback edition. I'll say that it's actually a very nice cover, good photo, interesting design. But it sucks that it's on the wrong book. It's cool, though: once you get it home and you're heading out to your coffee shop to read it, you can always hide it inside a copy of David Foster Wallace's Oblivion, so people don't think you're the sort of person who reads books about "softly-focused happy young girl[s]". I mean, nobody wants to be that guy, right?

More Jonathan Franzen news, in a less-sense sort of way

Thanks to the hordes of you who made sacrifice(s) to the dark lord(s) of your choice(s), we've been granted more information about Jonathan Franzen's next novel:

Franzen is also working on a new novel. It's poor form to grill a writer about a work in progress, but I do it anyway, and he throws me a few cryptic crumbs. "The deep ecologists like to say that nature bats last," he says. "Whenever anyone is trying to say, mankind is smarter than nature ... we are of nature. And nature does therefore always bat last." So something political? "Certainly that's another thing I've been doing over the past five years. Being upset over the state of American politics."

So, there you have it. It's pretty much like you've already read the novel. It's an angsty ecopolitical sports story! Woot!

The rest of the profile/interview is interesting enough, too, from a fanboy perspective. Gotta say the photo begs for photoshopping. Also, the quote "In places The Discomfort Zone reads like outtakes from a Judy Blume young-adult novel" is distinctly off-putting in an "Are You There, God? It's Me, J-Franz" sort of way. I mean...yikes. Yikes, I'd go so far as to say, o-rama.

(Via.)

I'll be there. Metathere. Virtually there. Okay, not really there at all

If you're in Singapore in January and need something to do, drop by the "State of Play IV: Law, Games and Virtual Worlds" conference and say hi to sometimes-TDAOC-approved Neal Stephenson:

While the conference program for "State of Play IV: Law, Games and Virtual Worlds" is still being finalized, one of the highlights is an extemporaneous conversation about the future of virtual worlds, whose participants will include science fiction writer Neal Stephenson (who coined the term "the metaverse" in his book "Snowcrash"), journalist Julian Dibbell (author of "Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot") and science fiction author Cory Doctorow ("Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom").

Maybe he'll mention whether he's got any new writing projects in the works. Maybe for something under 3,000 pages. Maybe that would be nice. Or maybe he'll be delivering pizzas while Cory Doctorow goes for the world record in pogo stick endurance. That'd be gold.

Reason number kalaboolion I loves me some Stephen Dixon

From Old Friends, which I've just started:

He liked to smell flowers but for years hasn't had the heart to pick them, he said, even in the unmowed small field behind his house. "I don't want to sound sensitive about this, since anyone who knows me will tell you that's one thing I'm not, but years ago I once picked this beautiful tall blue flower to surprise Suzanne with and thought I heard the entire field weep. No, that's gotta be bullcrap. It was no doubt the wind suddenly picking up and blowing through all those wildflowers and tall grass and weeds, and I should've just thought that."

Dixon's stuff, when it's funny, is usually mind-ha-ha funny, not laugh-out-loud funny. But this bit caught me off-guard. Yeah, I laughed out loud.

Hopefully this will be more popular than my own "Poesy and Potatoes" Restoration & 18th Century Britlit club

Despite my allegiance to the Cleveland Public Library--held long and fast since my wild youth as a Professional Shelver of Books at the Westpark Branch--I may still be convinced to cross the imaginary line in the turf and visit the Mayfield Branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library for the new Pizza & Prose book discussion group, which is being run by Austin Kleon. The first book up for discussion will be Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Austin promises the group will focus on "a nice mix of graphic novels, prose fiction, and memoirs".

Actually I always sort of figured the end of the world would be a barren Texas sunset as soundtracked by Explosions in the Sky, so this is no surprise

To borrow the best phrase I've ever read in a music review: if you had told me right after I finished reading All The Pretty Horses that I'd ever again be interested in reading another Cormac McCarthy book, I'd have told you to pack your bags for an all-expenses-paid trip to my fist. But hey, crazier things have happened, so why not this: Cormac McCarthy's got a new book coming out in September and I'm honestly intrigued.

The premise ("author of those hard-bitten west-Texas narratives" writes story about "the end of the world") doesn't seem so far-fetched to me. When I set aside my disagreements with the Horses (which, I admit, are not of the highest-minded caliber) and focus on what I liked about it, it sort of feels like I've already read the book that's just now coming out. I suspect he'll bring something interesting to the genre. And it makes me curious. So while he won't be cutting to the front of the TBR line, I'm shocked and surprised to say that Cormac McCarthy might find a place somewhere in it again in the next couple months. If we as a people last long enough, that is.

(Via Rake's Progress.)

Me, I'm hoping for awesome financing and free hotdogs for the kids

What do you want from your library?

Booka Shade? Naw, man, Booker Prize

The 2006 Man Booker Prize longlist has been announced. In my continuing efforts to become the least authoritative litblogger in the 'osphere, I have successfully read exactly zero of the books on the list. This is a 133 percent improvement since the release of the 2005 longlist, from which I had previously read exactly 1.33 of the listed titles.

I rule.

Via the at least 100 percent more authoritative Maud Newton.

News, in a sense

"Jonathan Franzen ... is working on another novel".

Woo! If you'd like more information, though, you'll need to make a sacrifice to the dark lord of your choice.

One Book to, in the darkness, bind them

According to my informal research, well over 1000 people have completed the One Book meme, which started at the Faith and Theology blog. While I imagine it would be fascinating to see how responses have transformed in nature and tone since then, I'll settle for caving to absomassive peer pressure and providing some likely-to-change-depending-on-the-hour-of-the-day answers of my own.

1. One book that changed your life:

When I think of a life being changed, I think of the very nature of the game one plays becoming at once different, like starting a game of checkers and ending it in a checkmate, or that moment in the original Half-Life when Gordon gets captured and suddenly you've got to fight your way back out of imprisonment after losing all your weapons. For the purest example of this I think you'd have to go back to my childhood, way back, and find that first book I ever read by myself. (I think it was about Raggedy Anne & Andy.) I mean, games don't much change more for the player than when they learn the language moves are made in. But for my One Book I'm going to give the nod to Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. It fundamentally changed my view of what literature is and what it can do and, if I'm feeling melodramatic about it, it may be responsible for much of what's followed in life.

2. One book that you've read more than once:

Funny because I was just talking about this the other night. I've read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson twice. I've read it twice because I really liked it the first time but then I realized a while after I read it that I couldn't remember anything that happened in the book. Then when I read it the second time I realized I could remember all of it, but only when I was reading it would it come back to me. Now I'm thinking I'll probably read it a third time because it's all gotten blurry again.

3. One book you'd want on a desert island:

I'm going to wait until it's released in Fall 2007--can I do that, can I place a temporal restriction on my arrival at my own hypothetical little island?--and take the edition of War and Peace that Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are translating. I've never read it, and I have a hunch I'll need to be on a deserted island if I'm ever going to. Them crazy nineteenth century Russian writers and their love of words.

4. One book that made you laugh:

I'm thinking of actual laugh-out-loud action here and it's hard to come by; it's a rare book that cuts through my hard-held belief that laughing to oneself while alone in one's living room at night is a sure sign of madness. So call me paranoid but I'm going to go with a safe answer and say The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams because seriously, come on, the whale's monologue was the sort of thing you'd be insane not to have laughed at when you first read it.

5. One book that made you cry:

If you want to talk about emotionally devastating literature...I think I remember Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison hurting like all hell. It's been about ten years since I read it and much of it's gone out of my head by now, and I'm thinking it's time to add this one to the list of books that would qualify as answers to question number two, above. So I don't much know what to say about it other than to point at it and say, "Yeah. That. Hurt."

6. One book that you wish had been written:

David Foster Wallace's next fucking novel, already. Come on, man!

7. One book that you wish had never been written:

Oh gosh. There's not many books I actively despise. So I'll use this space to make an embarrassing admission: when I was a far younger reader, the first time I read Neuromancer by William Gibson, I hated it with literal throwing-it-across-the-room passion. I don't remember why. I remember thinking it was stupid, and I couldn't see what the big deal about it was. It is perhaps the strangest and most "wrong" of a reaction I've ever had to a novel. A few years later I tried it again and liked it much more. There's a lesson in this, I'm sure. (Also interesting is that the only other Gibson book I've read is Pattern Recognition, which I really enjoyed, first time out.)

8. One book you're currently reading:

The one (and only--I'm not the kind of guy who has fourteen books going at once, if you discount the Beckett I have on the back of the toilet; and I don't count it because so far I've only read the opening paragraph of Molloy there, though I've read that paragraph about ten times now) book I'm reading right now is The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. It's a very long book. I suspect it will be the only book I'm reading for a while, which is fine. I snapped my way through a succession of very short books in a very short period of time before I started this one, when I decided I needed to throw a boulder into my path to force myself to slow down for a while. Plus I made a vague commitment several months ago to clear out some of the largest and most imposing books on the TBR pile before the end of this year. I guess it was finally time to honor that promise. Plus I've seen the movies so many bloody damned times by now that I was starting to feel immense guilt about not having tackled the book yet. So.

9. One book you've been meaning to read:

This is me making vague hand-motions towards the obligatory litblogger TBR stacks and shelves. (Seriously, it's nuts right now. It's been nuts for a while now but really it's just nuts looking. And I don't even get free books from publishers. I keep like finding other books on the "already read" shelves that I guess I never actually read or which warrant re-reading and I keep moving them over to the TBR section. Do I really need to re-read Infinite Jest any time soon? Well, yeah, I do, but. Uh. Nevermind.) If I had to pick out one, though...lately I've had a strange urge to give Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle another shot, so I'm going to say Quicksilver. I was very excited about the books when they started to come out, and then I got through 400 pages of Quicksilver, and I got sort of angry at it and quit, because it was slow and not nearly as interesting, I thought, as Cryptonomicon. But now I'm thinking of maybe taking another stab at it sometime in the next ten months. Maybe I'll have better luck with it this time through.

10. Now tag five people:

There's nobody left to tag. Everybody on the internet has done this meme. Everybody.

Okay, that's not true. I tag everybody who reads my li'l blog via the LJ feed, whether or not I know you. I also tag everybody else on the internet who hasn't done this meme yet. Let's just finish it up this weekend, 'kay? Kay.

Poetry reading on Friday at City Hall

This just in from the Poets & Writers League of Greater Cleveland:

When: Friday August 11, 2006 at noon
Where: The Rotunda of City Hall
What: Poetry Reading by local poets
Who: Marcus BALES
George BILGERE
Kisha FOSTER
Nina GIBANS
Jack MCGUANE
Cindy WASHABAUGH

The Mayor´s Committee on Art in the Rotunda announces a poetry reading on FRIDAY AUGUST 11 at Noon, in the Rotunda at City Hall, which is the big interior space in City Hall, at E 6th and Lakeside, beside Claes Oldenburg´s "FREE" stamp sculpture. Bring a photo ID with you to get into City Hall.

The event will last approximately one hour. Each poet will read a few of their best-known poems.

Marcus Bales is the winner of the 2001 Ohio Writer Poetry Contest; his poems have appeared in Salt River Review, the Melic Review, The Pedestal Magazine, The City Poetry Magazine, Snakeskin, but never in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, or Poetry.

George Bilgere is the 2003 winner of the Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature, and the 2006 winner of the Ohioana Poetry Award. His new book, _Haywire_, won the 2006 May Swenson Poetry Award. He's the host of Wordplay, a radio show devoted to the Cleveland poetry scene. It airs every Wednesday on WJCU, 88.7, at 12:30 in the afternoon.

Kisha Foster is a junior at Cleveland State University who started her career as poet at19 and after six years of hard work, Foster is performing with increased comfort coworker and mentor Rafeeq Washington. Foster has been performing across the country and was recently honored by having one of her poems performed at the PWLGC "Writers and Their Friends" biennial celebration of the Cleveland writing community.

Nina Gibans is a lifelong resident of northeast Ohio. She has worked for cultural organizations in volunteer and professional capacities her entire career and has served on numerous civic and cultural boards of trustees. Her degree is in art history and aesthetics.

Jack McGuane is Poet Laureate of Lakewood, and widely known for his outspoken poems and adeptness with apparently simple language that gets memorably under your skin and into your head.

Cindy Washabaugh is a faculty member in Cleveland State's creative writing program.

Introduction of the Event by the Mayor´s aide, Melaina Kampf

Marcus Bales will read Ray McNiece's poem "Love song to Cleveland", which Ray gave to Mayor Jackson at the Ingenuity Festival; and will introduce each poet

Reading order:

Jack McGuane
Cindy Washabaugh
Kisha Foster
Nina Gibans
George Bilgere

concluding remarks by Melaina Kampf.

Howevermany Books Challenge Round-up #3

Third verse, same as the second and the first. This'll at least make it look like I've been doing something with all this time I've spent not blogging.

This time, no lengthy intro. And away we go:

32. Lydia Davis, Samuel Johnson Is Indignant
    
    I found this book unmemorable and vaguely annoying. Except for the hiccups story. That one I found very memorable for being specifically annoying. I almost quit reading the book and I almost threw it out a window. I didn't, though.



33. Land-Grant College Review #3
    
    I know, I know: I'm a bad person. I don't read enough lit mags. But I've now read all three issues of Land-Grant College Review, each of which has contained several excellent stories. From issue #3, I especially enjoyed "Appalachian Spring" by Evan Lavender-Smith, "War Buddies" by Joan Silber (which, I hope this doesn't seem sexist of me, and I hope it comes off like a compliment, but, I hadn't noticed the author's name when I started this story, and about halfway through when I looked at the author's name, I was surprised to see a woman's name, because the narrator of the story has a very convincing "male" voice, the sort that it's sort of surprising to find that it was faked, if that makes any sense at all), "An American Son" by Lewis Buzbee (this might have been my favorite story of the issue), "Outlier" by Mary Swan, and "We Found Ourselves in Toronto" by Brock Clarke.
    
    One of these days I'm going to spend a month or two reading nothing but other stuff written by the people who wrote my favorite stories in each issue of LGCR. That will be some good times.



34. Mary Gaitskill, Two Girls Fat and Thin
    
    Mary Gaitskill's first novel, more accessible and immediate than last year's Veronica, but not as great as Because They Wanted To, her second collection of short stories. But still a darn fine book, I thought. Maybe you'll think so too, if you don't mind a book with some dirty parts in it. It's not a great book, mind you. But it certainly doesn't suck.
    
    I've got her first story collection, Bad Behavior, over on the To Be Read pile (which I may or may not have mentioned is now a collection of piles of books and shelves of books, but TBR-CoPoBaSoB isn't a snappy acronym), and I still plan on re-reading Veronica sometime in the next six months, now in part because I suspect I entirely or significantly disagree with Dan Green's smack-down of the book but I'm totally unprepared to say why or how or even what he got wrong about the book.



35. Clive Barker, Weaveworld
    
    Now, I know what you're thinking, and you're thinking, "Darby, what were you thinking?" And I'll tell you what I was thinking: I was thinking nothing, nothing at all, or, more specifically, I was thinking, "I want to really, really not think for a little while, now." So I read Weaveworld. I just needed something fun for a few days, something with mysterious creatures in it. I needed, nay, craved a tale of chaos unleashed upon an urban environment. This book hit the spot.
    
    But then, check it: a couple days after I finished this book I was hanging with a couple friends, watching old reruns of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? on the Gameshow Network--no, mind-numbing narcotic drugs were not involved in the evening's proceedings--and we watched this guy get to like the $500,000 question, and it was totally about the Rub' al Khali, and I knew the answer even before Regis read the choices, because I'd just read Weaveworld. It was pretty awesome.



36. Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
    
    Annoyed and irritated the living hell out of me. Even though it was pretty at points.



37. Kevin Brockmeier, The Brief History of the Dead


38. Kevin Brockmeier, The Truth About Celia
    
    Kevin Brockmeier is up to something, and I think I'm going to like it more once he takes what he's up to and stops diffusing the majority of the suspense at the very beginning of the book. Yes, I know, these aren't meant to be "suspense novels," but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be a sense of tension here, some sense of mystery to keep you turning pages. Because strictly speaking you can see the whole playing field at the start of the books, and you can see what moves are left to the players, and you know essentially where everything's going to wind up once you turn the last page. For lesser writers this would be a sort of immediate literary stillbirth. But Brockmeier has a way of writing really good, beautiful prose, and it's generally worth reading for itself. Still, for as much as I enjoyed both of these novels, I felt a bit wanting at the end of them, as if I'd just watched a pre-legendary baseball player taking practice swings--as cool as it is to see that, you kind of can't wait to see what's coming next.
    
    I'd personally suggest reading Brief History first because I think he gets closer to the home-run swing in that book than in Celia. There's more mystery to the world of the novel and more surprises to be found by the end of it. (Even though the character Laura's last chapter epitomizes the problems inherent in the "there's nowhere to go but where there's to go" fatedness quality of the book's plot. You're reading for the art of the writing, not the content of the text.)



39. Douglas Coupland, jPod
    
    A big huge goofy sloppy delightful faux-pomo mess. I enjoyed it a lot.



40. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
    
    A big huge goofy sloppy...I kid. Seriously one of these days I'm going to unleash a big huge post about my Summer of Dostoevsky project to date. But not today.
    
    I will say I liked this book a lot more this time than I did when I last read it a few years ago. Also it was even easier to like it once I was done with it and I could mentally gloss over the parts that are sort of blah blah blah whatever.
    
    And you ask: "Oh wait, you mean to say that not every word Dostoevsky wrote was mad-genius?"
    
    And I say: Blah blah blah whatever.



41. Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
    
    Philip Sherburne, in his review of the Ellen Allien & Apparat album Orchestra of Bubbles (which, incidentally, is currently in the running for my Top Album of 2006), described the album as being "[l]ike some crazy amusement park ride, you feel yourself ascending and descending at the same time; it's a simultaneous come-up and come-down, a combo rocket takeoff and marshmallow-factory landing." I didn't really see the album that way--I thought it was just awesome music. But then my girlfriend had me read the Zen book all the kids love, and I felt exactly what Sherburne meant. The book really surprised me--I didn't think I'd care for it. But I found it interesting and it left me with a queer mixed feeling of inspiration and uncomfortable uncertainty.
    
    Then I found out what happened to the kid after the book ends (the copy I read was published before what happened, happened, and so I lacked the explanatory preface that I suppose later copies contained) and I got super depressed.
    
    Yeah.



42. H. D. F. Kitto, The Greeks
    
    It was mentioned in the Zen book, but it didn't make me insane, which is just further proof that I'm not a raving genius.
    
    Damn it.



43. Josef Pieper, The End of Time
    
    I disagree with it.



44. Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Television


45. Michael Martone, Michael Martone
    
    A funny thing happened to me on my way to the last two LitBlog Co-Op Read This! selections.
    
    I initially skipped the Spring 2006 selection, Television, when it was announced, because, honestly, what I read about it, I was convinced I wouldn't care about it in the slightest. But then I relented and read it and found it oddly delightful. In that quirky French way some books have going for them.
    
    I then eagerly and immediately read the Summer 2006 selection, Michael Martone, because I was convinced I would love it. Turns out I was generally underwhelmed and often kind of bored. I sort of disliked the style of it a lot. Maybe I just read it the wrong day of the week. Dunno. Dan Green is quite enthusiastic about it. Keep your eyes on the LBC site for the upcoming discussion of the book.



46. Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint
    
    Some part of me keeps thinking I shouldn't like Philip Roth. That has yet to stop me from liking his books, though. Not quite in a can't-get-enough-of-his-work kind of way, though. This is the third book of his I've read and I liked it. I'll probably read more of his books down the line, I'm sure. There's a chance I might like those books, too.

Upside, downside

Upside: I've finally seen Sonic Youth live.

Downside: I haven't blogged in a week.

Unrelated? Yes. Also unrelated is the new Stephen Dixon interview at Failbetter that I'm going to you point you toward. Pass your time thither until I get my act together around here. Fascinatining stuff what I've read so far. The first question already answers a question of my own:

McSweeney’s Books published the first volume of the “I.” series, I: A Novel, back in 2002, and at the time, you spoke of two more to come, the last a three hundred-page novel. When and why did you decide to merge them into one, and publish it as End of I.? What happened to the pages you cut—will you integrate them into a new work?

I didn't merge the last two novels of the I. trio into one. The trio became a duo when McSweeney’s rejected the second voume of the work, then called 2. They rejected it, they said, because they were cutting back on their fiction. So I removed 2 from the trio, rewrote it in its entirety (something I've been doing a lot with my work the last few years), gave the I. character a name, and submitted the work, as Old Friends, to Melville House, which took it in a couple of weeks. Then McSweeney's wrote, saying they were starting a new fiction series and they'd like to see 2. I said 2 was now Old Friends and unavailable, would you like to see 3, which was now End of I. and also entirely rewritten from first page to last? They did and they took it.

You want one in the shape of Infinite Jest, that'll cost you extra, kid

I seem to be in a bit of a creative rut at the moment; about the most creative thing I can say I've done this week is learn how to pronounce Solzhenitsyn. Which isn't actually creative so much as it is a neat parlor trick. A little something to impress the literary kids right after Bobo the Structuralist Clown makes balloon animals in the shape of Philip Roth and right before the ouija board gets Keats on the line ("Here is one whose name is writ in TERROR YES YES YES").

I guess things might not be as bad as all that just yet--my fingers, at least, aren't physically broken, even if the will behind them is feeling somewhat densely damaged. I do have some honest to by god words written about my Dostoevsky Summer, but I'm nowhere near making a point yet, so that's still on hold just yet, and I'm a bit worried that I've shot the whole wad on a metaphor that involves the word "bling." We'll see what happens there. I've a hunch it's time to immerse myself in some writer porn, books by writers about writing, which will at least let me stall for time while I re-train my brain to respond to caffeine, or something.

Otherwise, there's stuff going on out there, none of which I have much of anything to say about. Check the sidebar for as-I-post-them links. One thing I will note is that reviews are rolling in for Jennifer Egan's new novel The Keep. Mostly I'm trying not to read them, though. I've glanced at enough paragraphs to get a feeling for the consensus, which seems somewhat mixed to cautiously optimistic; also I've read enough to know it's going to be quite different from her previous, TDAOC-approved novel, Look at Me. So color me curious.

Finally, I'll leave you with this. Seriously, 40 hits. That doesn't even make sense.

Disadvantage: the book won't offer to buy the next round

There's a handful of authors out there with whom I'd like to talk shop over multiple cups of coffee. (And by talk shop, I mean lace their coffee with borderline-lethal amounts of espresso, so I can get them really super wired, so they'll just talk and talk and talk while I sit there like a sponge designed for the sole purpose of absorbing genius.) Francine Prose is pretty high on that list. Though maybe strangely so: as I've said before, I'm maybe not so much a fan of her fiction, but I'm sort of crazy for the way her brain works when she talks about fiction.

It doesn't look like she plans on coming to Cleveland anytime soon. But that's okay, because her new book, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them, is coming out this September. Advantages over meeting the real Francine Prose include the ability to stuff her into my laptop bag so that I can reference her whenever needed, and the knowledge that spilling coffee on her will not generate hard feelings resulting in me becoming the target of satirical barbs. I'll admit, I'm weak. I wouldn't be able to handle that.

If you'd like to learn a little more about Francine Prose, you can check out a recent interview at The Atlantic, where she talks about the book, the sadistic culture of writing workshops, and how writing and reading are ultimately endeavors of passion and pleasure and love. I would excerpt part of the interview here but the whole thing's pretty much inspiring and it's hard to pick out any one part of it. (Michael Schaub at Bookslut is better than I.) I'm counting down the days until I can read the book itself.

Pynchon Watch Y2K6 Continues

Well, there you have it: the new Pynchon book will be called Against the Day; it will be huge; it will probably be very confusing.

It will also, probably, despite best intentions, remain unread on my bookshelf for a very long time.

(Via.)

Bloggapalooza

While I unfortunately won't be able to make it--my Saturday is booked about six ways 'til, uh, Sunday--Gloria Ferris can suggest a few good reasons why you should attend Bloggapalooza at the Town Fryer, a street festival and fundraiser to support Meet the Bloggers. (I'm sad that I'm going to miss my chance to meet the Bloggi Lama.)

Yet another Stephen Dixon post; also, new literary anthology due this year

Yes, yes, another Stephen Dixon post. But this one's not by me. Andrew Palmer, Founding Co-editor of Avery (a brand new "anthology of new fiction"), mentions (over at the Avery blog) the recent publication of End of I., and then goes on to discuss Frog, Stephen Dixon's 1991 National Book Award Finalist novel. Worth reading for Andrew's well-formed opinion of Dixon's work. (Link via Metaxu Cafe.)

What's also fascinating here is that Andrew tells us that the debut issue of Avery will feature an excerpt from Stephen Dixon's next novel, Meyer. The issue will also feature work by Ander Monson, whose book Other Electricities I rather liked. Sounds to me like a literary anthology worth looking for.

Inappropriate Punchlines for Inappropriate Times; or, Tails, a one-act play

Scene: The Internet, circa 2006

Two BLOGS passing the time in a place without any visible character.

One is well dressed--hats, cloaks, sticks and all.

The other is slipshod.

Each of them has a large leather bag of smarts.

THUMB DRIVES AND OVEN CLOCKS's bag is nearly empty.

CROOKED TIMBER's bag is nearly full.

CT sits. TDAOC stands.

CT: Was Foucault a closet Habermasian?

TDAOC: Oh...SNAP!

The play fades out, overtaken by dark and music.

Stephen Dixon Watch Y2OMGBBQ

A Technorati search of this blog informs me that I've dropped Stephen Dixon's name in 15 of my 368 posts. Meaning that, on average, I've mentioned Stephen Dixon once out of every 25 times I've opened up the Blogger create post window. I have no idea whether I've ever said anything interesting or intelligent or persuasive about the guy's work--that strange blogger fear of reading one's own archives prevents me from investigating the matter in-depth. But a four percent blogging batting average has to mean something, right? (Compare this number to Kazuo Ishiguro, who has come up in 26 posts, and Stephen King, who I've mentioned three times. I'm far more of an elitist snooty-lit-loving jerkface than I might like to claim I am, aren't I? Crapsticks.)

Whether or not I've said anything worth saying, the number of times I've mentioned Stephen Dixon means at least that there's maybe a small chance that I've verbally bludgeoned someone out there into reading Interstate, which despite what I'm about to mention remains the one book of his I've read that I'd suggest someone read, were they only going to read one of his books, or were they looking for someplace to dive into his output. People looking for his most current work, though, might be interested in knowing that McSweeney's has just published his latest book, End of I., which is the sequel to I., and that the two books are now being sold as a package deal. It's a good deal, considering how McSweeney's loves to publish not just good books but nice book-objects. (I., I can confirm, is pretty sharp. I can't imagine End of I. being any less nifty.)

The Rake likes it, so far. I plan on picking it up once I go off money-saving mode, myself. Maybe once I work through some more of the other Stephen Dixon titles on the TBR pile. Maybe.

Pynchon Watch Y2K6

Despite my ambivalence towards Pynchon, I still feel compelled to point you towards some potential new info about his upcoming book (as, I should say, was pointed out by the Rake--which is to say that, no, I'm not purposely seeking this stuff out, though, yes, I am strangely interested when I stumble across it).

LBC Summer 2006 Read This pick

The LBC kids have announced their Summer 2006 Read This selection. I think it's the first Read This pick that's felt like a book I really need to read. It sounds fascinating, and I'm looking forward to picking it up.

The third

...turns out to be a little anticlimactic.

Let us never speak of it again

So, first, Sleater-Kinney breaks up a couple weeks ago, and now, Out Hud has to follow? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Out Hud was even on the same level, but it still sort of sucks. I really dug on S.T.R.E.E.T. D.A.D. for a good while when I discovered it, and they were ridiculously fun as a live act at last year's Pitchfork festival ("Teddy Grahams? What, was this on Xiu Xiu's rider or something?"). I would have liked to have seen them again sometime.

I hope indie rock band break-ups aren't like celebrity deaths. I don't want to know who the third would be.

The third wire trick is to keep the policeman breathing string

Dan Wickett hooks you up with a link to forthcoming titles from Dalkey Archive Press. Dalkey Archive is, I think, an interesting publisher, one I falsely thought I'd first encountered when I read The Third Policeman earlier this year. (Though in truth it was the Policeman/Lost crossover story that made Dalkey stand out in my mind as a name worth paying attention to.) Turns out I first read a Dalkey-published book back in the angsty halcyon days of 1999, when I read Janice Galloway's The Trick is to Keep Breathing (a book that remains a personal favorite today and one of the first couple books I'm likely to recommend to someone asking for something off my shelves). Then more recently, I read The Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus (which, though it remains not a personal favorite, is a book I've come to feel I maybe need to take another look at sometime).

I, like approximately 178 percent of the average reading public, tend not to give a damn about who publishes the books I consider buying. (Except for cases when the name of the publisher is something like "Joe Blow's Basement Paperback Romance Novel Self-Press" in which case I use a handy browser hack to convert the Amazon One-Click Order button to a One-Click Oh Dear Lord Get Me Out Of Here Now Now Now button.) But if I ever cleaned out the To Be Read shelves and was looking for someone to guide me through the vast, unkempt wilderness that is literature for a while? Dalkey'd be an interesting press to follow, I think. And if I happen to find a $500 bill on the sidewalk any time soon, well...they have something for that.

More commentary on the PD/Blogger meeting

...can be found here.

Hee hee! No no. Heh heh. Erm I mean. Huh huh. Wait for it...damn I got nothin'

Hey! Check it out: Dave King, author of The Ha-Ha, is interviewed for the 49th Bat Segundo show. I swear I'm going to listen to this one. Right after I catch up on the first 48 shows. It's just too bad I don't have any huge, gaping empty blocks of time coming up that need fillin'...OH WAIT.

Yeah, the "I'm unemployed" jokes are seriously never going to get old.

Anyway check out the podcast and let me know how it is. Remembering Dave's reading here a while back, I can probably safely promise that it will be an interesting interview. But I make no money-back guarantee. Seriously. I need the cash. I'm unemployed.

Seriously. Never going to get old.

Oh yeah, and speaking of the PD...

...Erin O'Brien was in it today.

You may now refer to me as "The Darb"

I don't know (or care) what this article is actually about; all that concerns me is the fact that it calls Zadie Smith "the Zade," and that it attributes to her the greatest fictional quote ever: "By way of assessing the competition, she concludes thus: 'In my opinion, Jonathan Franzen is a shithead.'" Comedy bonanza goldmine, people.

Damn the editors! Damn the bloggers! Damn the torpedoes!

While I did not today get pulled into a world of literary-critical fame and fortune, I did enjoy the Meet The Bloggers Meeting the Editors Who Are Meeting the Bloggers That Met the Editors discussion at the Plain Dealer offices. It was a Psychobilly Democrat who remarked that here he was, a guy in his thirties, "going on a fieldtrip," which was pretty much exactly how it felt, though we never made it past the editorial meeting room, what with the discussion running for 90 minutes straight. (I wouldn't mind heading back there to steal a quick tour of the building, and I'm sort of kicking myself for not sticking around to listen in on the editorial discussion meetings--I mean, really, where did my unemployed ass have to go that was so important?--so I'm sort of hoping these meet-ups become, if not a regular thing, at least a semi-irregular now-and-then thing, even if just to help sate my vague general geeky interest in seeing what goes on under a hood.)

If the thought of bloggers hating on editors for being mainstream media bastards and newspaper folks hating on bloggers for being annoying young upstarts for 90 minutes gives you hives, you can relax. It was a civil, interesting discussion, I thought. (Whether anyone on either side of the table was changed in their views or whatever...I don't know, you'll have to ask them.)

My takeaway? There's room to explore possible avenues for give-and-take between the two groups. And there does exist a desire to do so. The bloggers present had a great interest in what goes on at the paper; the editors present were genuinely curious about what makes "bloggers" tick. Interest and curiosity are not the same thing, of course. If you want to talk hierarchal power dualities (and who doesn't?), it was clear there's still...let's call them feelings of height and feelings of climb about where you'd expect them to be. I'll suggest it was agreed that everybody recognizes that the rules are changing on the fly, and that people have to keep up on their game, lest they make themselves like endzone-bound Ernest Byners.

Also of interest (ready yourself for the abrupt topic shift) was the fact that the meeting was sort of a, how might one say it..."man-fest". A couple women on either side of the table in a room of about twenty-ish people. Nature of the newspaper game? Glaring blogosphere gap? Or just randomly skewed stats? Beats me.

In any case, it was interesting. Maybe someday I'll try chatting up Karen Long, the Plain Dealer's book editor, about, like, books, and reviews, and stuff. Though it probably wouldn't be a great discussion, because it seems like the litbloggers are really supposed to pick a mainstream media critic and just get all antagonistic up in their business? But mostly I just enjoy her columns, so the sum total of our discussion would probably wind up being me saying "So you like books too, huh?" and her nodding and then me nodding back. Yeah, I'm so not cut out for this.

If losing one's job means becoming more active in the local community, then I can't wait to see what happens when I become homeless

This one's via Meet the Bloggers. Tomorrow (Monday, July 10) at 2:30 PM the editors of the Cleveland Plain Dealer will meet with local area bloggers before the paper's 4:00 PM content meeting.

I'm planning on attending, assuming I can wake my dead-beat unemployed ass up in time to get downtown. Really I've no idea what I expect to gain from the meeting. Which is fine. Mostly I'm just curious to see what all happens out there in the world during the 9-5 stretch of the day that I've been pretty much locked away from for so long. Should be interesting.

Of course, I'm also interested in not shaving. Or doing laundry. Or really much of anything else. All the more reason to curb the impulse towards decrepitude as quickly as possible, I suppose. Even if "getting involved" feels sort of weirdly like "cheating". H'mm..

The Day I Became an Economic Casualty

So, let's say you just got laid off from your job...

Two me, smart and dumb

The other night, friend Chris and I were discussing the books we're reading. I mentioned that I was reading Mary Gaitskill's Two Girls, Fat and Thin, and that between it and Because They Wanted To, the short story collection of hers that I read last year, I'd decided that I really need to give Veronica another shot, because I'm loving everything else of hers so much that I'm thinking I really must have not been there when I read Veronica, what with it having elicited within me response that essentially amounted to "Eh..." I mentioned I'd maybe pick up a copy for the permanent collection when the paperback comes out. Good a time as any.

Well, looks like the paperback release date is July 18. Good times. I'd say expect further discussion about this book in a month or two, but by now you know better, because you probably realize that any promises I make about things I'm going to talk about on this blog are damn lies. I'll explain my behavior in a couple weeks.

JCU prof wins Premio Grinzane Cavour prize for best debut novel

Congrats to Steven Hayward:

Steven Hayward, English professor at John Carroll University, was in Turin, Italy, recently to accept the Premio Grinzane Cavour prize for best debut novel for "The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke."

The prize, awarded to promising young writers, is among the most famous Italian literature awards. Past recipients include Jose Saramago, Gunter Grass, Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee.

I went to John Carroll before Steven started there, but I've heard nothing but nice things about him. (And I did make it to a couple of the Canadian writers readings he set up this spring.)

Howevermany Books Challenge Round-up #2

So I suppose, after four months, and in the middle of a four day weekend, it's probably time for another 2006 reading list update. I imagine I might miss a few, borrowed books, library books that have since been returned, etc; also, the exact order may be a bit mixed up. But that's okay. I'll fake it, if I have to.

Why run through this seemingly elitist exercise every couple (or more) months? It's an excuse for myself to keep a running tally of what I've read during the year, because I've grown curious about keeping track of such things, because I feel it helps to lodge books better in my memory. And by doing it this way, I don't have to edit the blog's sidebar code every single time I finish a book. (Which I imagine non-Blogger blogging software platforms might make easier, which is more reason for me to consider jumping ship at some point, someday, maybe, when I cure myself of my laziness.) It's an excuse to think back on some of the books I've read, to see what's risen or fallen in my mind over time. I guess there's the possibility that seeing the order in which I've read books might be illuminating, but I kind of doubt it. There's also the opportunity to say a word or two about books that might have fallen through the cracks, and in today's case, it's an excuse to set some things straight between you and me, namely regarding the potentially misbegotten belief that all I do all day is read smart-people books and think highly of myself for being such a smartypants smart-people's smart person mcsmartsalot Smartstone von Smartborgenson. It's a chance to maybe make up for nearly two weeks worth of slow blogging with a huge lump sum payment, which maybe nobody will read anyway but at least I'll feel better about myself for it. Also, while cowering in sight of the behemoth that is my To Be Read pile (which has actually now been moved to a new bookshelf, and is in fact now even neater than it was to Sam's eyes, and of which photos are certain to surface on this blog sometime in the near future), Jen wondered just how fast a reader I actually am; in answer to her question I can say that no, I definitely do not, in fact can not, read that many books in a month, or perhaps even in a year. Yeah, I can safely acknowledge that if in any given timeframe I do maybe read more books than many people do, it's not so much because I'm a fast reader, but more because I'm devoted to spending lots of my free time reading books, typically to the exclusion of other activities, like socializing in bars, doing laundry, or sleeping, which, ultimately, makes me sort of lame, and therefore, not an object at all worthy of anybody's envy or self-comparison.

Finally, it remains my firm opinion that for the community of readers, all the reviews and critiques and criticisms in the world don't mean jack squat crap in the face of an enthusiastic recommendation from a fellow reader whose likes and dislikes and interests are similar to your own. So let these round-ups be my way of helping you decide whether or not you think my future suggestions are worth your attention. If they are, welcome. If not--no harm, no foul.

Wow. That sounded way more dramatic than I intended.

A'el. Anyway. Here's some books. I liked some of them a lot.

11. Francine Prose, Blue Angel.
    
    Though I have admired, enjoyed, and largely enthusiastically agreed with the couple reviews/essays of hers I've read, I just don't think her fiction is meant for me. It's something about theory vs. execution, I guess.



12. Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans.
    
    It's true: I am a sort-of raving Ishiguro fanboy. (Also.)



13. Stephen Koch, The Modern Library Writer's Workshop.
    
    Cause for one of my finest blog headlines ever. Also I think I need to re-read this one very soon, and that it's very important I do so, since I've pretty much given up on the writing front recently; I say pretty much because I know I can't give up, not really, but the outlook (and my own sense of devotion) sure feels bleak right now. Not really writing at all for two months will do that. On the upside, I've lost a little weight. So maybe someday I can at least be a skinny failure.



14. Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go.
    
    It was a must-read after I read it last year. It remained a must-read after I re-read it this year. Easily one of my favorite books. Hand me a flagpole, and I'll raise this book on it, and wave it around in the air, like I just don't care. It's that good.



15. William T. Vollmann, The Ice-Shirt.
    
    A bit of a Vollmann debate broke out recently in the blogosphere when Levi Asher at Lit-Kicks called Vollmann overrated and Edward Champion and Scott Esposito rushed in for the defense.
    
    Thinking back on the (relatively little) Vollmann I've read this year, Europe Central and The Ice-Shirt, I think I'm currently placing myself somewhere in the middle of the opinion spectrum. (A reasonable but honestly dull and safe place, I'll admit.) While there are portions of Europe Central that will hold up well against anything in your collection--namely what I referred to in my post-read summary as a "loose trilogy of chapters sort of in the middle", a chunk of the book which, were it to be published as a separate novella or story collection, I would recommend without pausing to inhale--there really is a hell of a lot of muck to get through to get to the good stuff.
    
    It's true, as Jeff suggested, that I need to read some of Vollmann's non-historical stuff. Without doing so it's probably not fair for me to make grand pronouncements about the guy. But I'll tentatively go ahead and say anyway that Vollmann is, honestly, a smart person kind of writer, the kind of guy who only lit elitists might be bothered enough by to bother with. Even though, at times, he really does deserve a far wider readership than he might currently have. He sure doesn't make it easy for someone like me to recommend him to casual readers, though.
    
    Paradoxical? Yes. I guess he just troubles me and challenges me and I look forward to reading more of his stuff. Someday. And while there's books in my collection I'd hand you before any of his books, I wouldn't block your way if you decided to go for the Vollmann, instead.



16. Stephen Dixon, Tisch.


17. Stephen Dixon, Gould.


18. Stephen Dixon, I.
    
    Stephen Dixon is also a little paradoxical, maybe, in that, I'll suggest, he really is far more of a "popular" type of writer than he may initially seem to the casual reader, far more humane and interested in humanity and the human condition and communicating to you and with you about that condition than his frankly sometimes awkward prose style and sentence structures and plot outlines and surface concerns and endless repetition and alternate versions of events and his lists and his ands might indicate, and that for the whatever and ever smart-people-book-like trappings of his books his work should be enjoyed by many, many more people than it currently is.
    
    And while I would not suggest any of the above three books as a starting place for anyone interested in reading some Stephen Dixon--Interstate remains the book I'd press firmly into your open hand without hesitation, because it is essentially incredible and harrowing and plain-spoken and complex and fantastic and almost obscenely depressing in its very nature--I'd say that the way immersing oneself in the various writings of a single author can be richly rewarding is especially true of Dixon, whose writing, when quickly glanced at, might seem sort of samey, is really more varied and intricately and individually textured than might be immediately apparent. I'm not saying every sentence of his drips with honey, but I wouldn't hesitate to suggest his books have features in common with bee hives.
    
    Has my opinion grown with time and retrospect? Yeah. Will I continue to work my way through his back catalogue? *shake shake* All six books on my TBR pile point to "Yes".



19. Dave King, The Ha-Ha.
    
    I liked this book. And I'm remembering now the reading Dave gave here a couple months back. I'm also remembering his description of the book he's working on now. I'm thinking now I'm looking forward to reading that next book when it comes out.



20. Allegra Goodman, Intuition.
    
    Left me feeling sort of muddled. It's probably not a good book to read if you really like mice. Did make me want to buy a lab coat. Uhm...uhm.



21. Philip Roth, Everyman.
    
    Read it in a day. Found it painful.



22. Mary Doria Russell, A Thread of Grace.
    
    I never said anything about this one after I finished it, which is a shame, because it was a good and thought-provoking book, and I really wish I had a better record of at least some of my thoughts about it. If you are interested in historical fiction, and my thoughts about Vollmann have scared you away from his stuff, I'd say Russell's book would be a good one to add to your reading list. I wasn't truly in love with all of it, but what I liked I did like quite a bit. The structure's a bit beguiling at times, but there's a rather brilliantly painful bit near the end that will stick itself in your skull and stay there for a while. You won't want it there, but it's good it's there, because it should be there, I'll say.
    
    That said, I do want to read her other books. Eventually.



23. Dan Brown, The DaVinci Code.
    
    I...uhm...see, it's like...then...there was...this...and...stuff...and...
    
    Oh, hell with it: I enjoyed this book, and screw you if you think less of me for that. Why?
    
    Because there's nothing at all wrong with a decent piece of popular fiction.
    
    Because even the finest libraries have restrooms where even the smartest people have to go poop.
    
    Because Audrey Tatou is really cute, no matter what type of movie she's in.
    
    Because this book wouldn't be such a thorn in the sides of so many people if people on both sides of the "opinion debate" surrounding it weren't for some reason taking it all so bloody damned seriously.
    
    Because if people could stop calling it "factually wrong" long enough to think about it, they'd realize it's really not so uninteresting as a piece of alternate history fiction.
    
    Because if it wasn't for big plain dumb fun pieces of "popular fiction"--the space operas of David Brin, the thriller novels of Dean Koontz, the horror novels of Stephen King--I would not today be interested in literature.
    
    Because I said so.



24. George Saunders, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil.
    
    I wasn't too crazy about this one. . . . . .



25. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground.
    
    I kicked off my Summer of Dostoevsky project with this one, which I'd last read about eight years ago. I don't think I got it that first time. I don't think I got it this time, either, though I know I was better equipped to deal with it this time, by which I mean more willing and able to read a book for what's on the page rather than what I want there to be on the page. I will probably read it again before the summer's over.



26. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gambler.
    
    I think I was drunk when I read it. Or just tired. Or something.



27. Richard Ford, The Sportswriter.
    
    Strangely, though I honestly enjoyed the book, I feel no compelling urge to read the sequel. Can someone tell me: is Independence Day better? Is it more-of-same? What's the selling point here? Am I weird for sort of feeling like it's just not a high priority for me to read the next book?



28. Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman.
    
    Pretty much what I said then. I keep forgetting to press this into the hands of my Lost group, though.



29. Yannick Murphy, Here They Come.
    
    I sort of keep forgetting that I read this.



30. George Saunders, In Persuasion Nation.
    
    . . . . . .but damn if I didn't totally adore most all of the stories in this Saunders book.



31. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.
    
    I just finished it today. Every bit as relevant today as it's ever been. I'll have more to say about it once I shake off the spell it's had me under for the last month. (I spent far too long reading it. Not good for the ol' mental and emotional health.)

You could write volumes about the importance of all of the things that Dostoevsky doesn't say in Crime and Punishment

 

I need to hear a symphony

You'll have to bear with me for a bit. I'm sort of too bummed out to deal with it.

Pynchon, pullon, lovon, squeezon

Bud Parr at Chekhov's Mistress just read his first Thomas Pynchon novel, The Crying of Lot 49.

I know that Pynchon fans are diehards, but I somehow feel like I missed the boat. [...]

Crying moved pretty fast and its farcical surreal story line made me not worry too much whether I was getting the references. I think I did get them, I think I think, but there are several books on this book, so I can only assume that one would have to read it with an eye to uncovering more than what's on the surface to get everything. This is not a book I'm interested in doing that on. Perversely, the book's shortness (along with the issue above) makes me not want to delve in too deep.

My own path through Pynchon has involved mostly false starts. I started with V. which I read a chunk of before I gave up on it. I forget why. I'm pretty sure I had no idea what was going on. Then sometime later I tried reading Gravity's Rainbow before I gave up halfway through. (Well, truth was I gave up after about ten pages. I really loved the first ten pages. But I had to work for them--like, in a pulling out the old English major hat kind of way. When I realized it would take four years for me to read the book that way I decided to coast, thinking I'd get what I'd get and to hell with the rest. What I got was not very much, and then a headache, and then a resounding desire to quit. Which I did. I think maybe the book was about a penis.) Then just last year I read Crying and I read it in a day and I think my reaction was similar to Bud's.

Thing is, I think I like the idea of Pynchon. I recognize and acknowledge that he's a very important writer. I mean, it's not like it's just anyone who can claim to be Thomas Pynchon, right. I can't. You can't. (Unless you are, in fact, Thomas Pynchon, the famous author, in which case, OH MY GOD I LOVE YOUR WORK WILL YOU SIGN MY CHEST?!?!? K THNKZ PLZ BYE!) But my experience with his writing has lead me to suspect that it's all much better in theory, for me. Modernist, post-modernist, Saussurian Seussian, whatever the heck he is, I feel like he's not necessarily out to tell me a good story, which, when which urge it's without, literature doesn't feel all quite right and there to me. It's not that he's going so far as to use a communications medium to explicitly not communicate anything to me, so much as it is that there's a signal-to-noise ratio which is tipped out of balance in a way that doesn't please me so much as the TiVo menu summary suggested it would. ("4 stars. Action/Adventure. A man travels through a war-torn country on a voyage of self discovery.")

Plus there's the fact that I'm not that smart anyway and I miss enough stuff under the best conditions that when missing things becomes part of the actual fabric of the experience of reading the book, well. See, I was going to include this as a humorous little self-deprecating parenthetical, but then I remembered I've really been thinking about this a lot lately, about how it is we strive to become better, more attentive, more attuned and explicative readers (because if you're a lit blogger and you think you've got it all figured out by now you're a huge lying asshole and your blog probably sucks) and just how far behind where I feel like I should be I often think I am, and how the last year and a half of reading has lead me to constantly question not only the literature but more and more my own ability to relate to that literature, and how all that mixing itself up in a boy's mind starts to make the word "discouraging" sound like a pleasant bedtime story, a state to aspire to rise up towards, and, and. It's almost enough to make a lit blogger want to hang up his hat and go start a politics blog; at least there, nobody, least alone the blogger him or herself, expects deep attention to the struggling subtle unspoken. Rock out with your red, white, and blue cock out.

Still, for all that, I'm sometimes tempted to rope some friends into doing a good slow group reading of Gravity's Rainbow, just to see what's to be gotten through teamwork, because 10,000 Pynchon Fans Can't All Be Mark E. Smith, right? And when news arises that there's a new Pynchon novel on the horizon, you can bet I'm going to let you know about it.

To Be Read pile, June 06

To Be Read pile, June 06
Originally uploaded by thegrue76.

"Ambition if it feeds at all, does so on the ambition of others." - Susan Sontag

Li'l Raskol

So I started my Summer of Dostoevsky this week but through a case of bad schedule management this is also the week of the annual Summer Attempt at Doing Real Exercise Outside in which I've reached the "Oh my god I can't believe I'm still doing this, when can I go back to being a video game playing lazy ass who eats the entire f'n bag" stage, so that by the end of the day, after work and the physical-moving thing and cleaning up and expending the last of my energy for the day on eating something that might have some semblance of nutritional value, when I try to sit down with good ol' Uncle F to tha Y-O-Dor I'm pretty much both baked and fried crispy. In five days I've read seventy pages. I am so weak.

Needless to say, I've also slacked off on blogging, but that's okay, because blog post frequency doesn't matter anymore:

Daily posts are a legacy of a Web 1.0 mindset and early Web 2.0 days (meaning 12 months ago!). The pressure around posting frequency will ultimately become a significant barrier to the maturity of blogging. Here are 10 reasons why.

Word! Word, I'll go so far as to say, up. So from now on when I disappear on these retarded little excursions of mine into real-world activity--don't worry, the exercise thing will go away soon I'm sure, I'm already like three days past my expected attention span for this sort of thing--don't think of it as me being anti-productive, but actually as me being the saviour of the internet. Oh yes: my will be done. Where my will right now equates to my very soon becoming impossibly comfortable once again with my own lethargy.

(Link, incidentally, via Jim Eastman, who is a far better blogger than me. Exhibit A: his thoughts on coffee science and coffee culture. Exhibit B: pondering his first two hundred and ten minute DJ set. Exhibit C: his recap of the Detroit Electronic Music Festival.)

2005 RTA Bus Card Project

Congrats, Austin! Now, if we only could get the RTA to let Austin do some graphic work for the busses, too...

Well okay then

All this week, Elizabeth Crane has been leading a discussion about George Saunders's In Persuasion Nation. I'm sort of a tool and didn't get my hands on a copy of the book until today; so I'm not shooting my mouth off on her blog (which is for the best anyway), but I do look forward to reading through the chat after I finish the book.

A few weeks ago I read The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil and got sort of grumpy and not-so pleased over it. All is forgiven, though, because of "My Flamboyant Grandson", the second story in Nation. And then there's the third story, "Jon", which, well...forgiveness to burn, because fuck, wow. Both stories smack of a painful yet funny Highly Unprobable And Yet Not So Unlikely Truth that works really very well.

So go to the bookstore and read "Jon". You'll forget you're standing there blocking the aisle. It's okay.

Because I am nothing if I am not one who strives to please the ladies, while giving free lessons in the importance of non-ambiguous sentence structure

Go write about sex with Erin O'Brien.

*cough*

(For more info, click here, search on the resulting page for "sex", and click that link. Or you may click here, if you like your more-information-getting to be a bit more...vanilla.)

Dead-tree-media-and-possibly-antifeminist-magazine gets it right. Wait, huh? What? Is it the day of the beast or something?

Good advice from the Good Housekeeping "Book Babes":

Q: My daughter is reading chick lit, but it doesn't speak to me. Which books can you recommend about romantic relationships for women of a certain age?

A: ... If you would rather read fiction, you can't go wrong with This Is Not Chick Lit: Original Stories by America's Best Women Writers. Among the contributors are Francine Prose, Jennifer Egan and Aimee Bender. The quality stories avoid commercial pandering. No Prada wearing here!

The book, which is edited by Elizabeth Merrick, comes out in August. The same day, coincidentally, as Jennifer Egan's new novel The Keep. Which fact I'm just going to keep mentioning over and over again, so if you forget it, don't worry, I'll mention it again sometime after I mention again that Mark Z. Danielewski's newest novel, Only Revolutions, is coming out in September, the wait for which said book is pretty much making me metaphorically totally lose my shit.

(And anyway, is Good Housekeeping the anti-feminist one or is it the subversive one? I don't keep good track of my anti-anti-feminist publications. But my hunch tells me anything with Sarah Jessica Parker on it is...not exactly swimming against, or even cross, soci-economic currents.)

Three things about Here They Come

I just finished Yannick Murphy's Here They Come. A few quick thoughts:

1. If they made a movie out of this book, I think the movie would be "written" and directed by Harmony Korine. It would be a very strange, disturbing movie, full of weird gross ickiness and shocking things and it would sort of hurt, in a way different than the book itself hurts. It would mistranslate the moments of beauty that are present in the book but it would also probably affect the viewer in its own also good but unique ways. I have no legs. I have no legs. I have no legs. I have no legs.


2. It's funny reading this right after The Third Policeman, for two reasons, one of which deals with the endings of either book, so I won't go into that, the other of which is that after reading the books back to back one can't help but wonder if, were one to rub the two books against each other vigorously for an extended period of time, one would wind up with two entirely new books, The Third Come and Here They Policeman. Me, I figure by now I'm 28 percent car.


3. Here They Come was a recent topic of discussion at the LitBlog Co-Op site. While I haven't read the posts or comments yet, one can safely assume their general quality to not low. Do check it out.

Speaking of Mark Z. Danielewski...

...this quite literally just in via a Google Alert. You'll want to read the first paragraph and the closing paragraph. Which I'll just go ahead and excerpt for you because I'm that nice.

When Mark Z. Danielewski's second novel, "Only Revolutions," is published in September, it will include hundreds of margin notes listing moments in history suggested online by fans of his work. Nearly 60 of his contributors have already received galleys of the experimental book, which they're commenting about in a private forum at Mr. Danielewski's Web site, www.onlyrevolutions.com.

...

Mr. Danielewski said that the physical book would persist as long as authors figure out ways to stretch the format in new ways. "Only Revolutions," he pointed out, tracks the experiences of two intersecting characters, whose narratives begin at different ends of the book, requiring readers to turn it upside down every eight pages to get both of their stories. "As excited as I am by technology, I'm ultimately creating a book that can't exist online," he said. "The experience of starting at either end of the book and feeling the space close between the characters until you're exactly at the halfway point is not something you could experience online. I think that's the bar that the Internet is driving towards: how to further emphasize what is different and exceptional about books."

Oh, sweet, sweet, sweet anticipation.

The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, written in 1939 or 1940 but not published until after the author's death in the 1960s, is now better known as that book that showed up for one second in an episode of Lost, and was touted in interviews by folks associated with the show as being a book that would help the reader figure out what was happening on the show; I think the word that was used was it would give the viewer more "ammunition" for the task.

As a fan of the show of sorts--I think it's a great premise that takes too long to accomplish anything, but that when it's on, it's really fuckin' on--I heard of the book, and it's semi-obscure nature, the fact that it sold more copies since it's prime-time appearance than it did in the previous forty years combined. I didn't plan on reading it though, because I don't get into the viral marketing aspect of shows or games. (Not that I have anything against it--I think the alternate reality game type stuff Maureen's been involved with is fascinating. And given a few more hours in the day, I'd probably be on the message boards myself.)

But when the book's sitting on the shelf at the used book store for five bucks? Well, yeah, I'm game. Curiosity and affordability got me into the book. The fact that it's a crazy piece of writing kept me in it.

This book is totally worth reading, even if you're not a fan of Lost. (If you are a fan of the series, it does give you another lens through which to see the book. It is, after all, fun looking for clues as to just why this book is so important to the events on that island.) The book is somehow simultaneously hilarious and terrifying; it's straight-forward but absolutely surreal. At times it feels like Kafka and at times it feels like Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves and at other times it feels like something else entirely I can't even quite identify. Maybe something Nabokov-ish.

Mostly when reading it I possessed the strange feeling that I was reading a book that really had no right to exist in the context that it did. Like somehow there's natural laws against it. Or at least that there ought to be. But that it's to our benefit, of sorts, that there aren't.

Anyway I'm obviously still all of a jumble mentally over it so I'll shut up. At least for a little while. I feel like I'll be coming back to this one soon.

You know you want to play, too

TDAOC visualized through this program. (Click the image for the larger version.)

Two other lit-blog examples.

Academihottie

"Academihottie" is my favorite new word.

I tell you, kids these days

Over on LiveJournal, there's a thread going about books that cause the reader to lose the will to live. And not in the "Wow, The Trick is to Keep Breathing is so depressing, and somehow that is the most awesome thing ever" sort of way, but in the "Oh my god, this romance novel makes me want to shoot nailguns at my eyes" way.

Which is all fine and whatever except my informal review of the comments shows that The Catcher in the Rye is the number one most hated book amongst those who commented. Now, don't let me mislead you into believing that I'm a Salinger fanatic. But isn't it reading the book sometime in your teens and falling in love with it sort of a prerequisite to being truly alive? Or am I totally off base on this one?

Also, the fact that there's votes against On the Road makes me want to beat someone. I mean...really. And just now I was going to go find something I agreed with and saw the vote against Kazuo Ishiguro and I got so mad I exploded my computer with my brain, so, no agreement tonight.

Synchronicity. Or, synergy. Or, pure coincidence

You can't fake this sort of thing:

1. I'm currently reading The Sportswriter by Jeff Ford. It's a book about a sportswriter, who observes a lot of things other than sports.

2. The current guest blogger at the Powell's "Home of the Lit Stars" Bookstore Blog is Chris Ballard, a real life sportswriter who has recently published a non-sportswriting book, The Butterfly Hunter, in which he observes a lot of people doing strange jobs that aren't related to sports.

I haven't read Chris's book but I like his posts and so well I guess we know what that means: one more author I need to check out sometime before I die.