Pynchon Watch Y2K6: We'll get to the niece thing later; but first, let's get to the thing about my curious reaction to V.

1.0. - Something Curious

And then something curious happened: I read V. and I liked it. I didn't get it. But I mostly enjoyed reading it.


2.0. - On Reading Lists

My reading habits are erratic. I don't structure my trek down the main streets and back roads of writing. True, there's various book discussion group deadlines, but I'm not married to those schedules. (Sorry, Austin--I, uh, got distracted.) Sometimes I read brand new-ish books just so I can feel like I at least have a tenth of a hundredth of a clue about what's going on "today" in literature. (Which pretty much comes down to "Lots of people are writing lots of books and some of them are awesome" but that doesn't make for good conversational copy.) (Also, synchronicity: Dan Green posted this while I was writing part of this post. I may come back to that some other time, because it really is a fascinating topic.) About as structured as I've gotten this year has been my Summer of Dostoevsky project, and with only two books of the planned five read, you can see how well that's gone. (I did recently pick up my next Dostoevsky book--Demons (or The Possessed)--and was blown away by the opening chapter, which was funny and weird, and then I set the book down and walked away because it wasn't time for it yet. No idea why.)

But for these token stabs at order, I'm most often bouncing merrily through the world's back catalogue from one book to the next, neither rhyme nor reason dictating what book gets picked up after the current one gets put down. If anything, I've got a ready awareness of the multiple (and potentially conflicting) directions I could be taking my reading list in at any one moment in time. I should be reading more literature in translation; I should be reading more books by women; I should be reading more classics; I should be reading certain books that I've been meaning to read for a very long time but haven't gotten to yet because of whatever reason comes up every time it comes time to grab a book off the shelf. I figure there's always at least eight books that I should be simultaneously reading at any particular moment. How constant that list is from any one moment to any other moment, well...

What I'm saying is nothing the typical avid reader doesn't know, whether he or she chooses to think about it or not; there are more worthwhile words than can possibly be read in a lifetime, there's more worlds than those in any gunslinger's philosophy, yadda yadda etcetera and so forth; I generally choose not to think about it too much because otherwise I'd go insane with grief over lost opportunities and all those sweet reading lists lost on impact. I at least like to think this justifies and encourages my haphazard reading list. Wherever it is I go, it will be worth the going. And the going, like breathing, will happen one moment after another.

What it doesn't (and, yet, I guess, does) explain, is why I found myself this last week reading, not one of those eight immediate-priority books of the mysteriously ever-shifting moment, but rather a book by an author who I'd thought I'd already written off as someone whose work I had no honest intellectual interest in.


3.0. - If You Must Read Only One Book, Read Two Books Instead

I feel bad for V.; the book gets comparatively short shrift these days. V. seems stuck in a sort of book-sized shadow of Pynchon's own making, darkened by both Gravity's Rainbow--the younger brother who won all the awards and honors in school and who was totally huge enough to beat up other teams single-handedly on the football field--and The Crying of Lot 49--the younger brother who actually got laid a lot because sitting through an entire conversation with him wasn't impossible.

I forget when I picked up my copy of V., though I know it came from a used book store, based on the price sticker I rubbed off the cover this week. I don't know why I bought it when I did, though I can imagine the phrase "Pynchon, hey, he wrote Gravity's Rainbow" probably sounded through my brain. I know I can safely say that since whenever I bought it, I've heard next to no talk about it, this book that won awards when it was published. (Which of course begs the question, if it wasn't for the other brothers, would we know this one today?)

One reference came this year somewhere on the Internet when someone suggested using it as a warm-up book (following Crying, of course, because Crying's the short one, the one you can read and then you can pat yourself on the back and introduce yourself at ritzy business networking functions as being someone who has read an entire Pynchon novel) for the ultimate goal of reading Gravity's Rainbow.

What a fantastic tag line, right? "V.: A warm-up book." Hey, all you professional published authors in this joint: raise your hands, those of you who have written a book with the intention of it being classified a "warm-up" book.

Vollmann, you smart ass. Put your hand down.


3.2.0.

I'd like to suggest that the time is ripe for a re-evaluation of V., Thomas Pynchon's first novel. Rather than being considered one of Pynchon's "other works," rather than being that book he wrote "before Gravity's Rainbow," one can easily argue that V. in fact stands today as a formidable, unique, compelling, fascinating, and self-sufficient piece of modern literature, worthy of detailed (re-)analysis, consideration, contemplation, and conversation.

One could definitely argue all that.

Though, I'm not going to.

But one definitely could, were one to set one's mind to it.


3.1.0.

But before we move forward, some additional anecdotal evidence regarding V.'s lack of self-status in contemporary conversational culture. Friend Chris (a sort of recurring character here on this blog, who is in fact a real live human being, one who often reads books I recommend, who in fact recently read The Exquisite by Laird Hunt because I told him he had to immediately and who also admitted to enjoying the book (which said factoid is casually dropped here to reinforce the fact that many people should read the book because it's a very good book, insofar as the second-hand account of the opinion of a friend of a blogger should amount to a bit of real-world concern or care by anyone anywhere)) has for some time been gearing himself up for his own first attempt at Gravity's Rainbow. Because, let's not fool ourselves: Gravity's Rainbow, whatever worth one finds in it, is sort of the dead body in the car crash of difficult modern literature. Sooner or later, every kid worth an ounce of curiosity is going to slow down and look for his or her own self.

Friend Chris recently noted in conversation that for all the talk he's heard about Rainbow and Crying, he's never once heard talk of V., that first novel which is so problematic for a blogger who keeps landing the title of it at what would normally be the end of his sentences, where the period in the title would make it look weird and, to this blogger, slightly unsettling. Nobody ever references V., Friend Chris said.

And then a few curious things happened:

1. I mentioned in an e-mail to Friend Chris that I was, quite randomly and unexpectedly, reading V., myself.


2. Friend Chris saw a quite random, humorous reference to the novel V. in a day-to-day calendar (a tie-in to the Daily Show's America: The Book book).


3. V. was unexpectedly mentioned in casual conversation by a third party, which reference spurred Friend Chris to mention the fact that V. never gets mentioned in conversation, along with a relating (like this list) of the curious, nearly concurrent references to that book.

Curiouser and curiouser.


3.1.1.0.

It should, of course, be at least passingly noted that anecdotal evidence is certainly not intended as a definitive statement or proof of the aforementioned hypothesis about V. and its status and the shadows and car crashes and all that. I am perfectly willing to entertain the idea that I might be plain wrong about the frequency with which the book is mentioned, or its status among other, like me, contemporary casual literary elite.

So while objections may be fairly lodged, it should be noted that your own anecdotal evidence may be used in the court of public opinion to point out that you, in fact, either a) hang out with more interesting but far stranger people than I do, which will cause the public to raise its collective eyebrow at you, or b) are ultra-highly-active on the Pynchon-L e-mail discussion list, which--and please, take no offense when I say this--means your viewpoint, as far as the rest of us are concerned, doesn't at all count.


3.2.0.

And this is where this would go if I wasn't feeling like rushing to get that point across, back up there a ways.

Moving on then.


4.0. - Yeah, Darby, Way to Have Your Cake and Analyze the Fun Out Of It Too, You Big Jerk

So while I'm not going to three-point-two V. right now, I am going to try to say at least some stuff about it.


4.1.0.

First, yes, my overall reaction to the book was strangely positive. You can take that as a sort of average of all my responses during all the moments I read the book. My specific reactions ranged anywhere from stark raving joy to feeling utterly bored witless.

Perhaps my biggest take-away from reading this book was a sense of finally getting it, a little. By it, here, I mean the buzz, the hype, the hoopla, not the same sort of "it" I meant way back at the beginning of this faux-essay. Reading V., really diving into it this time, it felt like I was finally being let in on why the joke's funny, or what the glossy expense reports have to do with me personally down here in the cube farm murk. While I'm not inspired to flat-out Pynchonoid fanboy levels of ecstasy, here's what's crazy and new for me: I can see how someone could go there. There's enough detail in this book to warrant weeks, months, if not years of avid discussion and debate. (Everything 3.2 might imply. And now maybe it makes sense why I'm not going there, not even really attempting to go there, here. Because I wouldn't know where to start and I'm not sure I'd know how to get out once I got into it. Plus I feel a need to move on.)

Maybe even more important is that I can see some of the DNA that got passed down to who knows how many inspired-by-that writers. Of whom David Foster Wallace is the most personally interesting example. A full explanation of that is way, way beyond the level of effort I'm willing to take up here, but suffice it to say again that I can see where the discussion might lead, because I now have a somewhat deeper feel for where it starts, beyond just accepting what's said about some things.

All of which is very nice and all but what's it got to do with the price of love in Malta? Probably not much. Probably just makes me feel a little more confident about my ability to understand what's going on in letters today. Probably just gives me more to think about while sitting in cars in parking lots staring through windshields at electric lights wondering and waiting for whatever comes next. Plus I had fun reading the book. Which brings us to


5.0. - Aw, Now You're Just Teasing

the pleasure of Pynchon. But not yet. I'm just reminding myself where I go after


4.2.0.

the difficulty of Pynchon. (Honestly I'm not sure which is worth talking about first. Honestly I may have switched these back and forth once or twice. Honestly, things sort of worked out for the best this way, so I let it ride, because why not? Let it be said, in any case, while I've already got my aside-mode blinker on, that I'm intentionally keeping things macroscopic here, because I'm in no way ready to get too critical-analytical, certainly not yet at least. Also note that I'm glossing over the fact that some people might not find this book difficult in the least. One person's hole is another person's hypothesis.)

What makes V. difficult? What kind of difficulty are we dealing with? It's not linguistic. (Contrast this with, for example, the occasional difficulty of William T. Vollmann, who seems, at times, more interesting in making a mockery of language than an art of it. I can say that without worrying that he's about to pull a gun on me because I saw him slip out the back door a while back with a bad sniffle in his nose.) On a sentence by sentence level, the language itself isn't particularly difficult. Pick sentences at random, and there's not much you can't quickly understand, especially with a decent dictionary nearby. (This book got the word "scungille" stuck in my brain.)


4.2.a.side:

Pynchon's prose, for some reason, reminds me of Steve Erickson's prose. Neither writes necessarily beautiful prose, in terms of surface-level poetry, and yet it's fully functional in seeking its ends, while being quite capable of making its own occasional leaps to loftier heights. DaVinci dropping tabs of Monet? Something worth considering, perhaps.


4.2.c.ontinued:

So logically enough, then, the difficulty must rest a plane or two higher. It's still in and of the word-by-word details, though; though it's in the way we, the reader, have to process, arrange, and connect those details, as we read this book. Let's semi-arbitrarily tackle first structure, then characters. Though the two are interdependent (as I found out that we shall see).


4.2.1.0.

Structurally, the book happens along two timelines. The first (as presented in the book) "present day" timeline is set from 1955 to 1956. The second, related in what I'll call flashbacks though I use the word somewhat hesitantly, stretches from the end of the 1800s through the 1940s. The present day timeline takes place in and around New York City, with some travel. The flashback timeline is set in a variety of locales, including Italy, Africa, and, yes, Malta. The timelines are essentially divided by chapter, so the "cuts" between the two are (perhaps blessedly) not of the "jump-cut" nature. Though present-day events may be used as introductions to or preludes to flashback chapters, and one can certainly argue that the flashbacks are hardly more than present-day re-constructions of unwitnessed, untrue events.

So far I'm not talking rocket science levels of complexity here. We'll jump back to notions of structure in a moment, but first, let's talk about:


4.2.2.0.

Characters. Sweet holy lord, this book's got a lot of characters. And oh boy, do those characters connect in a whole lot of ways.


4.2.2.a.side:

Here's where I can most see myself falling toward the Pynchonoid trap. The more I read, the more characters I met and the more connections I saw, the more I needed to help myself keep some semblance of a track of them. The resulting (incomplete) character map I began drawing on the inside back cover of my copy of the book now looks like a pair of twisted spiderwebs, loosely (yet, crucially! maybe?) linked.


4.2.2.c.ontinued:

What makes the number of characters difficult is, in part, their varying levels of importance, which does not necessarily depend on the amount of face time they get. Seemingly minor characters can slip in, color the entire proceedings with their perceptions, then hop out the back way, never to be heard from again. Other seemingly minor characters can actually be somewhat more important characters in disguise--with the nature of their importance being a topic of discussion in itself. Major characters can seem to not have much of anything to do with anything going on elsewhere in the book. (And, maybe they don't.) Other major characters, through whom we see major portions of the story, we never actually get to know too well. (How can we, when they seem to have distanced themselves from themselves?)

Now, with some of this information in hand, we can go back to


4.2.1.0.

the structure question, and mention that the order in which and the span of the book over which we meet these multitudinous characters is what ultimately (for me) ramped up the book's difficulty. Because it's not that we're introduced to a whole bunch of characters all up front who we then follow through the text. Characters are doled out and stretched out and chopped up from the beginning of the book to the end of it. (We meet new characters in the Epilogue! We see old only alluded-to characters fresh and new in the Epilogue! If this book had an index, it would certainly list characters who only appear on pages after the last page of the book!)

We can also mention that the connections (and the importance of those connections) between the characters are often never made immediately clear. Main characters from the present-day plot line don't actually meet and interact until near the end of the book. Meanwhile in reaching those points, we wade through a thick sea of casual, random encounters. (Which, are they truly casual? Or even of the slightest importance?)

But it's the presence of connections that prevents one from writing off the book as a bunch of random stories with no particular collective importance. What happens in the flashback stories, is that we are given some sense of a main story (or stories) that threads its way throughout these various historical settings. (That, of course, is the story of V., the woman--or, woman?--of the title of the book.) It's a story we're never directly given, per se, but is one we glimpse out of the corner of our eye as we pass through other exotic tales, which seem (and might be) completely disconnected from each other, if not incomplete in and of themselves.

But in more human terms, what this kind of structure creates is a tower of fatigue-generating, patience-rewarding details. Reading this book is tiring, when you've got to keep so much of it in your mind at once, without knowing whether what you're holding is necessary or not, nor whether what you've dropped is worth the effort of stooping down to pick back up. It's not unlike the effect of reading a long collection of short stories in one go: picking up characters and events and settings and ideas almost as quickly as you drop them often can mean the stories near the end of a book aren't as easily or readily enjoyed as those near the beginning. Now sandwich those stories into an already existing plotline and change the name of a minor character in each story to a single name, so those various characters all become one character. Things get exponentially more fascinating, and frustrating.


4.2.3.0.

To spin a new simile: the difficulty of V. is like the difficulty of a well-paced videogame. What starts seemingly simple becomes increasingly difficult with each new stage; ability to reign victorious over successive stages depends on one's mastery of the obstacles thrown at the player earlier in the game, until defeat of the final boss (the book itself, on the literary side of the "like") requires a synthesis and expansion of every technique the game has taught the player.

V., however, does not offer green warp pipes.


4.2.4.0.

All of which is to say, in short: the book offers the diligent reader a surprising amount of complexity. Or, difficulty. Depends on your views, I reckon.


4.2.4.a.side:

None of which is actually as scary as I might make it sound; for the human mind is a wondrous thing, and does a lot of the work for the reader, without having to spell it all out as it's doing it. (You needn't recite bunny-ear rhymes to tie your shoes.)


4.2.4.b.ut:

That's definitely not to say that one can sleep through the book; blink in the wrong spots, and you'll lose who knows what ground. (You do still need fingers to tie your shoes; the brain's not that amazing, not yet.)


4.2.4.c.ontinued:

And while the structure and character questions aren't the end-all, be-all of the book's difficulty, I think the points I've raised here give the curious reader (or, at least, they've given me myself and I) some semi-spelled-out sense or idea of what it actually is going on here that's so challenging about Pynchon's work. (Not that I'm saying these things are universal to his writing--but, they do give me some idea of what I might consider looking for, in his other books, should I choose to tackle them.)

And, I think this is enough to point forward toward one more point I'd like to make about the difficulty of Pynchon, which deals with the question of importance.


4.2.5.0.

Importance. I think I've alluded to it, but let's make it clear: I'm curious not just about the metascopic Importance of Pynchon (i.e., in a literary or cultural sense), but in the microscopic importance of the things inside his books. One, I suspect, can learn about the one by examining the other and vice-versa. Neither of which I'm really going to do right now, of course. I'm just going to point a little and go Hmm and Huh and nod and smile and get a headache and then I'll try to move forward with my life.


4.2.5.1.0.

When I say I question the microscopic importance of things inside Pynchon's books, what I mean specifically is that sometimes, I don't know what the hell he's talking about and why I should care. Lots of things happen in V., and often, their significance eludes me. Why the alligators? Why the connections? Why a waterspout? Why V. herself (her?self) at all? Why Benny Profane? Why self-referential third-person language?

Many questions are raised. Some are more profound than others. How many are answered? That's another question entirely.


4.2.5.2.0.

When I say I question the metascopic importance of Pynchon in the literary, cultural landscape, well...now, unlike a few more weeks ago, I've got a lot more ways of asking and approaching that question. Like, why the alligators? Why the connections? Why the structural hijinks and character onslaughts? Why V. her(?)self?

And then, why do people care about these things? These words? This man?

What's up with all that?

And, hence:


5.0. - Whatever, You Know We All Totally Skipped All That, Right?

The curious pleasure of Pynchon.

That's sort of it, isn't it? My fascination with the guy, wrapped up in a nutshell. Here's this guy who writes big challenging books. What of them brings pleasure? What of them is important or worth pursuing? What have I found there in returning to him, past my own imagined sell-by date for the guy?

The word challenging is sort of telling, already, for some people, some cases, I suppose. Some challenges will always be pursued, whether the rewards were worth the pursuit or not. Climbing mountains, landing remote controlled cars on other planets, building empires out of green? Cool beans. You go, indeed. Stacking golf balls to get into Guinness? Winning the hot dog eating championship? Getting Lulu's ultimate weapon by dodging 200 bolts of lightning on the thunder plains in Final Fantasy X? Get a job, you stinky hippie.

When it comes to literature, it's true that I do ultimately (and, on average) find reward in challenging literature. From the pomo hootenanny of Infinite Jest to the sparse realms of Stephen Dixon, the never-easily categorized Jennifer Egan to the adult content of Mary Gaitskill, there is, for me, reward in the thing and the hunt of the thing.

Certainly, V. is full of challenges, and, to my surprise, I've found them oftentimes pleasurable, or at least, intriguing. This book, copyright 1963, well before the rise of "interactivity" as a cultural buzzword commodity, demands more, on a purely technical level, of the reader than many other books I've come across. Once I realized what was going on, I did see it as an interesting, oftentimes exciting endeavor. The activity of assembling a story from the scraps and folds of other stories while always questioning where what one's left with came from and what its ongoing and ultimate value is, is, well...fun.

What I think is sort of more curious about what I found in reading V., is how much--as this lengthy post in part proves--I've found myself interested in simply trying to define the challenge itself. It's like doing the challenging thing and then turning around to find out whether you climbed the wall or took the bungee jump. (Or both at once.) I'm not sure how interesting that--or any of this--sounds to anyone other than me. Maybe this says more about me and where I am right now as a reader and what it is I'm currently--today, this month, this year--asking for from the books I read. Maybe, after reading The Exquisite, it was inevitable that I'd circle back around to Pynchon, for another desperate stab at the godfather of modern post-modern experimental rootin' tootin'.

Maybe, finally, a lot of things.

Maybe that's the only conclusion I can logically draw.

Know something? That's damned exciting.


6.0. - Sobering Thought, That

Or maybe, like's so for Mondaugen, it's all after all merely code for chaos.

Cuz those are where the DEVIL is

Here's something:

Paramount Vantage is looking for audiences interested in seeing people dead, and so they've purchased a horror script called Details from writer Dan Kay....

The Hollywood Reporter says the script is an adaptation of a short story written by British fantasy writer China Miéville. A girl uncovers a demonic force that only she can see and disappears. Her father goes looking for her and will stop at nothing to bring her back....

I haven't read the story but it will be interesting what comes out of this. At least in his Bas-Lag novels, Miéville's big on visuals. He builds worlds and monsters and events and he wants you to see them there in front of you. (Maybe his short work is more sparse. I don't know.) So it might be fun to compare your visions of his story with those of directors and script writers and money-makers, in a "Wow, they made the Ents I had pictured in my head" way. It might also be a complete train wreck. We'll just have to wait and...shoot me with guns before I finish that sentence, I suppose.

You lost that bloggin' feeling

So you know that feeling you get when you've read a handful of books and they've all made you want to say lots of things but then you sort of don't get around to saying them until everything's all piled up in your brain to the point where you know you have to say all those things even though you've started second-guessing the value or worth or intelligence of anything you've thought, ever? Consider me right now the Oh Captain My Captain of that little angst-ridden Club. Apologies in advance if things become uneven here. I mean, moreso than usual.

It's like I'm waiting by the phone for it to ring and half of me will answer it and the other half will be listening to the payphone tones in Nebraska

There are few things in this world I look forward to more than heading to the local indie theater to see a brand new David Lynch movie, so when I hear things like the fact that his latest effort, Inland Empire, does not yet have an American distributor (and hence, wide release date), I begin to cry tears, real tears that are, appropriately, both of and not of themselves, simultaneously and asynchronously. I don't exactly panic, yet, because I know there has to be someone wearing a fancy suit out there who knows that I am standing here with ten dollars and a smile that I am patiently (as patiently as possible) waiting to personally hand them for the privilege of letting Lynch bash my skull in with electrons and mysteries. And I know there must be people other than me, willing to make this same exchange. And what fancy-suited person doesn't enjoy receiving money? And smiles? In short, I trust. In essential universal rationality. And, in smile magic.

Here's a profile of David Lynch at the New York Times. In it, he talks about making the move to digital film recording, the process of creating Inland Empire, and how he doesn't much like talking about some things. We learn that "this may be his most avant-garde offering since 'Eraserhead'," which is sort of like a bullet landing in the gut of my aforementioned patience--not immediately lethal, but certainly likely to cause long-term annoyance. Also, we get some description of the movie itself, the most information about the film that I've yet seen, and despite my normal policy about avoiding reviews of those things I know I'm going to see/read/need, I'm pretty much okay with reading some things about the movie (as if my appetite needed further whetting) because I know that no information can possibly spoil the raw experience of actually seeing the movie itself.

All that, and the article reminds us of the perennial joy that is dropping by Lynch's website for a weather report. Straight from the man himself.

Well, gee

So I'm reading The Rainbow Stories by everybody's favorite crackhead William T. Vollmann, and I have to say that for as often as his writing can be dull or overblown or whatever (his stance on editor intervention--namely that it's got no business messing with his work--can sometimes seem like pointed pigheadedness when you're stuck in a quagmire of whatever he's going on about), he's just as often worth reading, though (in my experience) rarely for stunning, jaw-dropping, chilling moments of beauty and truth, but more for the overall adventurousness and expansiveness and inquisitiveness of long stretches of his work; like enjoying the parts and the flow of the equation on the left side of the equals sign rather than what pops out on the right side of the function; but then just now I finished the "Blue Wallet" chapter of Rainbow, and oh my, that final moment right there is a grade-A prime cut moment, the kind of thing that makes you get up out of your chair and get on the internet so you can point to it with both hands and say, "Look. Look, friends. Look."

Me, elsewhere

A while back, British author John Baker was kind enough to invite a whole bunch of litbloggers to answer some questions about blogging and books and such. My answers to his five questions went live today. Fear of reading anything I've written more than five minutes ago prevents me from reviewing what I said, so all I can say about my answers is that I nattered on to some darn silly lengths. Hopefully I didn't sound too inane. (Don't tell me if I did. It'll crush my ever so fragile spirit.)

So if you're looking for more of me--and why wouldn't you?--go check it out. While you're there, take a look through the archive of responses. They're typically far more terse and likely more interesting than my own tower of babble.

It's like an early birthday present, but it came late this year, nevermind the fact he's dead, and the present is for you, not him

So what do you get for the T.S. Eliot fan with everything? Something they most certainly don't have. (Again via.)

(And yes, by the way, I do think T.S. Eliot is sort of bad-ass.)

Next thing you know, people are going to be using cars to drive, and coffee makers to make coffee, and windows to check the weather outside

So I guess there was this thing going on last night:

Housing Works Bookstore and The National Book Critics Circle bring you a panel on blogging and book reviewing, with a discussion about what happens when the two intersect.

Oh boy. There's a recap of the event over at the Critical Mass blog. Oh god, I feel a migraine and some naughty language coming up after the block quote:

For all the talk about the separateness of blogging and print reviews, the panel came to the conclusion that these mediums are essentially engaged in a single (growing) conversation about books -- and blogs have merely made that conversation more visible, providing not just new points of view, but an ever expanding amount of information sites like this one or Moorishgirl.com which link to and comment upon book pages from around the world.

Oh man. Did you people really need a fucking panel to tell you that? Hell. Where's my Advil.

People, let me lay it out for you: The Internet is nothing more than a medium for communication. Blogs are nothing more than people communicating with other people. There is nothing inherently special about blogs. Some people, they got together and invented computers, and then some other people found a way to make those computers "inter-connect" with each other in a sort of "network" so that information could be passed between them, and then everybody else on the planet got together and said, "Hey, let's use this technology for the purpose it was created for," and they did so, and then there were blogs.

That's it. That's the whole story. And now the conversation is over. Know why? Because I just ended it. Because there's nothing left to say. Sure there's details that may have been left out of this Intro To Blogging 101 course--but it's all just a matter of execution, and is really only of interest to people who are going to create their own blogs. Then you need to know about Technorati and search engines and how these things actually function in a technical sense. As for how they function in a communicative or a "higher" sense? There's nothing left of interest to say: if you can read, if you can consume and process information, you can see what blogs do.

So now we can all get on with our lives, secure in the knowledge that there's nothing all that special about blogs, safe in the recognition that we can stop acting like we're all engaged in some kind of intellectual turf war, and we can all put our egos back in our little ego boxes and go about doing what we do best, which is engaging in communication. Whether on the Internet or by telephone or television or newspaper or over coffee at the coffee shop or by Pony Fucking Express.

I'm not saying we don't live in interesting times. We do. I'm just saying there's nothing surprising about why they're interesting.

Now can I get my Advil please?

"And know the place for the first time."

Happy birthday, big guy.

Lipstick

Lipstick.

Pynchon Watch Y2K6: The illustrated edition (well, it would be, if I owned a scanner)

Hey kids! When we last left our almost unexplainable fascination with Thomas Pynchon and his upcoming novel Against the Day, which we here at TDAOC HQ have nearly next to no intention of actually reading once it's released (as much as the idea of playing Internet Grad Student with all the other crazy bastards who have preemptively cleared off their calendars for the next eight months may appeal, from a certain sick and twisted and yet nonetheless entertainingly desirable standpoint), we'd noted that the release date had been bumped up to November. A look at the Amazon product page for the already less-understood-than-the-average-brick book also reveals that the page count has leapt from 900-odd pages to 1120 pages. For those of you who didn't wake up after four sordid college years with minors in mathematics, I can safely derive for you that that right there is an integrated shitload of pages. Personally, I hope the extra 200 pages contain nothing more than one long list of obscure, contextless references designed solely to keep True Pynchon Fanatics busy with their researching and referencing and thinking until the man publishes his next book in late 2018.

But while the future is soon to be now the past ain't even past yet and Gravity's Rainbow is about to get the pretty pretty picture treatment. No no, don't get your hopes up, it's not a Major Motion Picture starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie: Garth Risk Hallberg, guest-blogging at The Millions, alerts us to the release of Gravity's Rainbow Illustrated, which features one picture drawn by Zak Smith for every single page of GR. You can see all 760 images online; much like the text of the book itself, I have no idea what the shit-hell to make of it. But the pictures are pretty neat anyway.

What's of interest about the book version for me--and for you fans of me and my impeccable taste in tasty things--is that the book has an intro penned by Steve Erickson, author of Our Ecstatic Days (one of my top two Books of 2005) and a bunch of other books which I read all at once last year causing semi-permanent self-brain-breaking. Can't say I'll need the book, but I'll be curious to see what Erickson has to say about all of it. Probably doubtlessly something totally awesome.

And so long as we're on the subject of Erickson and authors I profess to care little to nothing for or about and yet feel compelled to mention them with some regularity--remember that new post-apocalyptic Cormac McCarthy book I mentioned a while back? Yeah, well, who better to review it than Steve Erickson? So he did just that. And dammit if the review ("Apocalypse is personal. It's in the details.") doesn't further pique my interest. (Via Jeff at Syntax of Things, who certainly doesn't hurt the cause by calling The Road one of the best books he's ever read.)

Happy Birthday, Dmitri Shostakovich

I'm ashamed to admit that though I've read William T. Vollmann's Europe Central, I've yet to track down good recordings of Dmitri Shostakovich's work. (What, you think it's all lame Squarepusher jokes musicwise up in this joint? Naw, man; I got, like, class, and stuff. Or at least, I used to go to some classes a long time ago.)

Monday marks Shostakovich's 100th birthday. AllMusic--also known as "AllYourTimeJustWentDownTheDrain"--notes the occasion, and has posted some 30 second samples of his music. Not quite going to cut it as far as really experiencing the music goes, but it's a nice reminder that I still need to find his stuff for real.

IDMs with Wolves

...starring Tom Jenkinson as Kevin Costner.

Special Topics in What the Hell?

So I finished reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics last night.

Yeah.

Huh.

Uh.

...

Let's say I liked it and leave it at that for now while I continue to, ah, process. And that those of you who had already read it pretty much had every right to giggle to yourselves when you read my previous comments.

Yeah.

"Pros like me, we contain multitudes."

Matthew Tiffany's response to the Lev Grossman interview. (The line I quote in the subject line made me laugh out loud.)

Next thing you know, people on the internet will be using the internet for the intended purpose of the internet, OH NOES

Lev Grossman--who is, like, some important guy, or something--says:

At the risk -- nay, certainty -- of sounding kind of snobbish, I wish book sections in general would leave book-reviewing to the pros. There's a pervasive notion that anybody who can read can write a book review. Not so. Good god, there is nothing so boring, so dank and unappealing on the page, as a bad book review.

I'd reply at length, but my brain made like a finely-tuned wave crashing against the immovable rocky shore of the last sentence's stupidity; it done well broke on that shit. (I mean, come on. Things that, on a page, would be more boring, dank, and/or unappealing include high school poetry, wet caves, feces, and many professional book reviews. And I'm not even trying.)

I shall, instead, pretty much command you who are interested in this subject to go read Bud Parr's excellent break-down of the book review and response landscape. Teaser ahead!

Having defined a book review we have to acknowledge that what most people are doing, amateurs and professionals alike, are just writing about books, plain and simple. Whether or not there really is a "pervasive notion that anybody who can read can write a book review" is questionable. The truth is that writing itself stands on its own in this world of amateurism; a review by an amateur will not be read because the writer sits comfortably behind the reputation of a newspaper, but because it's smartly written and interesting; the crème de la crème shall, to mix a metaphor, rise on its own.

(And lest I seem like I hate Lev, note that the sentence that follows in that interview the ones I quoted above is "And at the risk of sounding reverse-snobbish, I'd like to see more serious review attention go to genre fiction," which, well, okay, you can't hate a guy who says things like that. Even if he is a big stupid jerk.)

Grant Bailie is a lit-tease

Some of the best opening lines I've read in a while.

We built this city on soup cans and crabs

You know what this city needs? More Erin O'Brien. The Free Times is doing its part by giving her a regular column. She's written for them before--she notes that past columns have dealt with "the local race track and masturbation and crossdressers." So you know it's gonna be fun.

Admit it, you know you love her, if for no other reason than she also hates it when I act all smart and crap.

That's it, I'm takin' my blog and I'm goin' home

Even Austin Kleon's mistakes are cooler than my blog's best moments. (Which, okay, wouldn't be hard to do, but.)

Had enough Mark Z. Danielewski yet?

Of course you haven't. Here's a big-ass article and interview at Los Angeles City Beat. I haven't read it all yet, but based on this paragraph which caught my eye, it looks like it will be good reading:

"House of Leaves was about plot," says Danielewski. "It was a house that sat on a 'plot,' and it was about stories, just like a house is supposed to have many 'stories.' Only Revolutions is about character. It is a character – literally and figuratively – 'driven' book." It doesn't grab the reader as immediately as House of Leaves or have the previous novel's polyphony of perspectives. The book hurtles you straight onto the road and into the split-screen vortex of the folie à deux of its couple, without the framing narratives or scholarly apparatus. "It's getting out of the 'House,'" says Danielewski, "away from ancestors and progeny, which is what House of Leaves is about." The "This is not for you" injunction of his first novel is replaced in Only Revolutions with the phrase "You were there." If House of Leaves is a centripedal book – moving further and further into the interior of its uncannily oversized edifice – Only Revolutions is a centrifugal book, venturing into the great outdoors, embracing the road and the world that whirls around its archetypal teens.

(See "Post 414," Thumb Drives and Oven Clocks)

Because I sometimes feel the need to listen to the hype, I'm reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl right now, because that's what all the kids on the street are talking about these days, and I'm about two-fifths of the way through it, and it's pretty good, and occasionally is really funny, and has boldly colored characters in what feels like an interesting, if somewhat slow-moving, situation; I want to know what happens next, which is good. The book's narrated in a voice that is all about being a voice, whether or not that voice sees itself as being as present as it is. There's a certain undercurrent of absurdity to the narrative voice and the narrator herself which is oddly appealing, once you get attuned to it. In short, it's a fun enough read so far.

But I've got two problems with the book, both of which deal with narratorial tics, if you can call repeatedly and spontaneously slapping oneself in the face with a ripening clump of kelp while talking to the guy behind the counter at the post office a "tic." First, there's the constant reference to other texts. (Movies, books, whatever.) If I met this narrator in real life, and she talked that way to me in real life (which she wouldn't, she being a shy sort)? I'd cry a little on the inside. Because it makes me feel sort of dumb. It's terribly distracting and annoying. As is, my eyes are slowly learning to skim anything that appears after the word "see" between parentheses. I sort of wouldn't mind a bootleg Phantom Edit copy in which all the intertextual-references have already been Yossarianed for me.

And, second, and here I'm talking to you, Blue van Meer, narrator of the book, as if you were real, because sometimes you do feel real to me, which is yet another compliment inconveniently dropped into the middle of a complaint because oh I so do hate to complain when things are otherwise going well, because it makes me feel guilty as hell: Blue? Hon? Love? Oh precocious and vaguely Daria-esque maiden of my heart? Shut up about your father. Shut up. Shut. Up. Shut. Shut. Shut. Shut. Shut up. He's a great guy. I get it. We all get it. We got it a long time ago. You're an interesting creature, and you give me great hope when you see your own outline outside the shadow of that great, great man. But the thing about progress is it doesn't involve going backwards all the time. Break the hold he has on you. I'm pulling for you. There's a lot of pages left. Use them wisely.

Video killed the novelist star; also, yet more rambling about Mark Z. Danielewski, and experimental literature

Here's a little video interview with Mark Z. Danielewski. Kind of neat. Interesting fact: each page of Only Revolutions apparently contains 360 words. Which makes sense once you look at the book, and I'm surprised I hadn't guessed so on my own yet. (Via.)

Also, Scott at Conversational Reading calls some BS. Like the current commenters, I disagree that some of his selections are "experimental" books. Infinite Jest, yes. (Though, as per my recent musings, I think it was the quality of the writing--sentences!--in that book, when they were at their best, that was what made the book most interesting--far more so than silly footnotes about the names of drugs.) The Corrections, not so much. (Though gods lords yes I loved that book, and I liked what he did with the pacing and structure of the story, I'd be hard pressed to say it's a truly experimental text.) What I got through of Underworld some years back didn't scream experimental to me, nor has what William Vollmann I've read (which is admittedly extremely little). And while I don't know Scott Erickson's work I would not hesitate to add Steve Erickson's name to the list, whose Our Ecstatic Days was phenomenal, nevermind the fascinating playfulness of his entire back catalogue. Also, most recently, and obviously: The Exquisite by Laird Hunt. (Which I still am recovering from, though I think I'm almost there. Believe you me: not reading a book for an entire week feels downright queer.)

Whatever my thoughts on Scott's list, though, I do agree that I think there's far more experimental literature (however one may choose to define "experimental") out there than the reviewer Scott quotes gives credit for. Of course, at the same time, I do find that House of Leaves felt like a thunderbolt. Or maybe like a buckshot to the emotional gut. If for no other reason than that book felt more fun to read than many other books I'd read up to that point. I do think the quality of the writing and the experimentation in that book do things few other books do. It found its own (literal and figurative) space to exist in.

All of THAT said--I've no interest in the possibly logical outcome of these ramblings, which is seeking an accurate definition of what is and isn't experimental literature, what elements comprise an experimental work. Scott's got something different in mind with his list than I do with mine. And that's cool. But I'll stick with an "I know it when I see it" idea of what it is.

"Where do we go from here? / The words are coming out all weird"

Damn. The Exquisite ruined me a little, I think. I mean, I was on a pretty good run of books before I read that one, and it was good because I needed a really pretty good run, but then to get blown out of the water by one, I dunno. I look at the shelves and it's like, what have you other books got to offer me, right now, where I am? Maybe we'll be friends later, but not right now. Not just yet.

That said, Mark Z. Danielewski's Only Revolutions came out yesterday. I don't have it yet, but I will soon, because whether or not I'm ready for it, I need it. Likely is, if you know who he is by now, you already know whether you need it or whether you emphatically don't need it. Actually, you probably know whether or not you need it based on whether the thought of extremely experimental fiction gives you joy or fear. I expect the book will change few minds.

That said, if you are still on the fence, I doubt this article is going to push you one way or the other. Basically all you learn is that, hey, Danielewski has the gall to not be his characters. Shocking! Also you learn he maybe thinks highly of himself. Shocking!

The article does sort of dance around a good point, one that's pretty crucial from my perspective: for all the high-falutin' intellectual hooha Danielewski offers, it's the unfatigued imaginative spirit of House of Leaves that makes it an indubitable winner for me. To try to explain: He does all sorts of layout stuff in that book, sure, and it's all good clean fun, but none of it means anything on its own. The fact that he uses these techniques to further a story (made of stories) in interesting new ways is part of what makes it worth something. That all of it is built up out of good strong sentences--oh yes, those basic building blocks of all literature, sentences with voice and meaning and tone and implication--that's what makes the magic happens. It's the voices of Johnny Truant and Zampanó, the play of their stories off each other, that goes farthest for me in creating the illusion of depth within the novel. The sense that there are unfathomable distances between the pages that are left to be explored. Or run from.

Also it certainly doesn't hurt that Danielewski's got the coolest autograph ever. Seriously, you can look at my copy of the book, but keep your hands off. I'll cut ya.

Also it doesn't hurt that the story is just spooky as hell.

Also, come on: Poe. Someone stirred in an extra helping of hot when they were cooking up that family's cup of the gene pool. Haunted, people. Check it. One of the best albums of the decade. Try to fight me on this one. I dare ya. I'll cut ya.

I digress.

To go back to sentences--it's the same thing going on in The Exquisite. The structure of the book is pretty fascinating, and is what gives it its experimental edge. But there is something really unique going on with the voice of the narrator there. A certain shiftiness or slurriness to the voice on a sentence-by-sentence level, as if there's something really multipronged about the guy's mindset. But then that's just one more thing I look forward to paying more attention to next time I read the book. Once I, like, learn how to read again.

New litmag - samizDADA

Here's something. samizDADA is a new lit-ish magazine that promises both a print edition and an ongoing online presence. Sounds like they've got an interesting missionesque-statement:

Regarding samizdat, we will accept for publication things that other magazines may not, and we encourage an open attitude towards the pieces that we do publish. If you read or see something on the site that you like, pass it on. Print out a copy for yourself. Print out a copy for someone else. Print out a few copies, staple them together, and leave them in a pile at your favorite coffee shop. Hell, print out your favorites and mail them randomly to people in the phone book...

Regarding dada, the other half of the magazine’s name, we value the absurd and the reactionary. Absurdity is often lost in many of today’s literary works; instead of sprawling, careening fun, the literary scene is taken up with short stories of grim and gritty realism (often dealing with young people and their difficulties with their parents / the modern world / etc.). We appreciate stories, poetry, art, and photography with a sense of whimsy and fun. It is even better if you have a point, but it is not required.

They'll be publishing under Creative Commons, so if you're into that sort of thing, there you go; also, they're looking for submissions.

The Exquisite by Laird Hunt

The Exquisite by Laird Hunt is experimental and noir and dreamy and disturbing and complex and dark and hilarious and is one of the most enjoyable and thrilling books I've read since I started this blog. Now and then when I was reading it I had to put it down and it was physically painful to do so because I really wanted to devour the entire thing all at once, but it was mentally necessary to get away from it because, damn.

Plus, the cover totally rules.

Bud Parr suggests (some quantity of possible-spoiler level info in that review, not necessarily in a giving-away-the-ending sense but which, if you're like me, you might still be happier avoiding until after you've read the novel) that the book might be appropriate for fans of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Alejandro Amenábar's Open Your Eyes (remade as Vanilla Sky). Matthew Tiffany seems to recall the book being compared to Cloud Atlas. I'd say those are fair comparisons. I'll go a step further: if you're at all interested in the intersection of experimental narrative and fantastic story-telling, then you should read this book. Hell, even if you're only interested in one or the other, you should still give it a shot.

If you're at all interested in reading the book--and you should be--then you might not want to read any more reviews. If you know what I mean, then you know what I'm driving at: half the fun of this sort of book is experiencing it raw for the first time, of finding out what sort of book it is as you read it. But at the same time, I'll say I suspect the book doesn't exhaust itself after a first reading. There's plenty here I look forward to re-reading. Plenty here that I suspect will gain additional resonance during future readings.

Plus I'm also totally looking forward to re-reading the opening story of Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen because Hunt's book explicitly references Link's book. So you might want to pick up a copy of that, too, when you place your order. Or, if you're already a fan of Ms. Link, then, well, go read Hunt's book. Now.

Other items of note: Laird Hunt has an author's Web site and a blog. MetaxuCafe.com is throwing an Exquisite Party in NYC on September 17 where you can meet Hunt; I would totally go if I lived a couple states closer. The Exquisite is published by Coffee House Press, who also published Sleep, an anthology of short stories by Stephen Dixon which has been on my TBR pile for some time now.

TDAOC HQ: The editors have been sacked

I was recently unkind toward a review of Jennifer Egan's The Keep. Donna Bowman, author of the review, was kind enough to drop by and set the record straight about her intentions. Seems the source of my ire--a statement about Ms. Egan being a "known" chick-lit author--was probably not actually written by Ms. Bowman. Misunderstandings and outlandish reactions, on my part, ensued.

(What all this really means, of course, is that I'm now focusing my death-ray vision on the Onion A.V. Club editorial offices, with special focus on the bored intern, or whoever, it was who wrote the offending intro statement.)

So, be sure to go read Ms. Bowman's response, then come back here and call me names, because I'm dumb. Here, I'll start: I'm dumb!

And by hazardous, I mean, scrumptious

Warning: Reading Maureen McHugh's blog may be hazardous to one's diet.

(I'll say I like the new name of her blog, though I'll admit I was pulling for "Sorry Darby" to get bumped up to main-title status. I like to think that sort of thing would do wonders for my yet-still-not-actually-existent writing career.)

Pynchon Watch Y2K6: Cover image, release date; grass, your ass

Amazon's got a cover image posted for the upcoming Thomas Pynchon novel, Against the Day. It's sparse. But there's a symbol on it. Hey, Blue! What do you make of that clue? Is it the real deal? An advanced copy cover? Does it really even matter to the legion of eager fans?

Also, note that the release date has been bumped up to November. So if you're like me and you were considering reading all of Pynchon's other stuff before the new one comes out so you can play along at home with all the grad students on the Internet? Forget it. Go home. It's over. You're screwed.

Ow ow ow ow Ow Ow Ow OW OW OW OUCH

If I've been remiss in replying to the fact that The Onion AV Club this week referred to Jennifer Egan as a "known chick-lit author" it's because every time I start to try to think of a reply worded strongly enough, my brain saves me from having to plumb such depths of my soul by jumping out of my head and strangling itself to death right here next to me on my living room carpet. Seriously, that hurts by the fourth of fifth time.

About as far as I can get each time before brain-death sets in is to say that if you read Look At Me and your thought at the end of the book was "Mmmm...fluffylicious!" then you need to go back and re-read that book because you missed a little something. I mean, you missed all of it. Either that, or you were actually reading a cake. With your tongue.

On the upside, props to Donna Bowman for giving the book an A. I hope this means lots of people get past the total weird backhanded nature of the compliment and they read the book. I also hope that by the time they finish the book they've completely forgotten Bowman's review and they go out and read Look At Me. And then Jennifer Egan will actually be even-more-widely-known as the interesting, challenging writer she is.

(See also: Condalmo, who disliked the review even more than I did.)

Random thought

Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany is science fiction the way The Trial by Franz Kafka is a legal thriller.

Curiouser and curiouser

Amazon has some links to example pages from Mark Z. Danielewski's upcoming book Only Revolutions.

Free-verse story telling? Check.

Outrageous book design? Check.

Parallel spiral plots? Check.

Lines like "I'll destroy the World"/"I'll devastate the World"? Check.

The hairs on the back of my neck raised in the delightful buzz of geeked-out anticipation? Check.

Cat Power was going to call her most recent album The Cheesiest until someone suggested that title wouldn't be the greatest

Good grief! What does Ed Champion have against the writers I like? Is he going to go through the lot of them tearing them apart one by one like some author-eating Audrey II? Should I take down my China Miéville post before E.C. gets wind of it and sets his critical sights on yet another writer I hold near and dear? Because after his takedown of Mark Z. Danielewski, I don't think I can stand to watch another round of...

Erm, wait. Ed seemed to, uhm, enjoy House of Leaves. Well. Pish-posh. I might have to take back my cheese comment.

(And hey, Ed: this'll come in handy. I've been using it tonight myself. Miéville. There's one that should be in the Hard to Pronounce Literary Names guide.)

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.