So, I started 2666 over the weekend, and got about forty pages into it, and my hasty initial non-analytical snap judgement (pre- any informed mental developments generated through the not-quite-here-yet group read conversations, which, judging by the links, one might truly begin to suspect could safely be called a web read) is that those might be among the most smoothly unremarkably decent pages I've read in some time. To be clear: a book can not be judged on 40 pages alone. To also be clear: nothing about those pages leapt from the book's binding to perform salacious acts upon my person. Which certainly means nothing bad about the book; I did in fact enjoy those forty pages; I will almost certainly read at least another 40 pages, perhaps even sooner than I might expect. But nothing about them has pierced through a hype-built desire to remain a little bit (honestly and for the good of the thing) still-yet-skeptical about the whole thing. In any event: onward.

And by perfect I mean perfect

Stephen Dixon has a new short story up at Matchbook. It is incredibly short and absolutely perfect. It reminds me, after having not read his stuff in a while, why I love his stuff so much. If it is at all indicative of the kind of Dixon we can expect to see in the contents of the upcoming collection What Is All This? then May can not come soon enough.

It's probably ridiculous of me to even contemplate trying to do something like this--what with full work days and a new semester of school starting up shortly and the urge to occasionally drink a beer or spend time not looking at bright shiny screens for occasional ten minute intervals (ignoring completely for the moment that right smack dab in the middle of all of this Final Fantasy XIII comes out in America, which, whatever, I'm a nerd, sorry, and I've got about a hundred hours of my life I need to have a good reason not to remember in minute detail when I'm an old and crusty bastard)--but there's a group read of Roberto Bolaño's that's-what-she-said long novel 2666 starting up a couple weeks from now. I bought the hardcover around the time it came out, because I am sometimes optimistic, and even though I wasn't goo goo gah gah over The Savage Detectives the way I figured I was supposed to be, I did find the opening couple pages of 2666 oddly enchanting, when I stood there reading them in the bookstore, convincing myself I might as well just go ahead and buy the hardcover because the paperback had come out at the same time and it was a box set split into three volumes and that's for wimps and sissies, and then here we are a year later and an actual less-costly real-paperback one-volume paperback edition comes out and oops, wallet fail, ahem! and the book has sat in various locations around the apartment ever since, taunting me with it's being really popular but also that's-what-she-said huge and full of women being murdered, a subject I find about as emotionally and mentally entertaining as one dog trying to make another dog have babies, but what do I know, maybe? (While the Bolaño book remains the size illustrated above, the cat, tiny at the time, could now safely bench press the thing. Big cat.) Long story short, despite the universe and even myself telling me I should read the book, I haven't, and I was starting to think I maybe just wouldn't, because, really?, and now here we are, a year later, and even Stephen King has read it and liked it and that dude just published a 1000-plus page novel and what have I done with myself in that time other than make excuses? Well, okay, I have done stuff, but still. I have made stuff, even though some of that stuff has been excuses. Maybe I'm nuts. Maybe I'll actually try this time. (Via Twitter, basically.)

I've pushed past the dog sex. (It is sentences like the preceding that every blogger should be so lucky as to have to write, at least once, in their blogging careers.) Whether out of some sense of obligation ("If I can't read this book, what can I read?") or desperation ("Oh gods, I may never read again"), I felt I had to, and it's okay that I have, because The Mysteries of Pittsburgh quickly becomes pretty much basically entertaining again, like, a paragraph or two after the canine coitus. (Finger tip lick, second point drawn in the air above my head.) Though the dogs keep coming back up. Which, fine, I'm not there to watch it anymore. Things do get a bit dicey around a game of Twister, when it's pretty obvious that Little Tiny Baby Michael Chabon was all about flexing some descriptive muscles ("I am so hot right now," he says to himself, while somewhere nearby, a few states away, Little Tiny Baby Wayne Coyne says the same thing while splashing about in fake blood and a stack of boomboxes the size of God), but, halfway through the book, I'd place pretty good odds in favor of me actually finishing the thing, which, well; sweet. Sweet enough. And it really is okay. Because for every overtly self-interested flake of linguistic dandruff, there's the enthusiastic head-scratching that brought it to the light, and if I'm in need of anything these days, it's some enthusiastic head-scratching. Or better shampoo? I don't know.

I will say, the one book I have been having good fun with lately, when I've remembered to pick it up during small moments of nothing else, is Michael Bierut's Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design. That's probably as much though because I can read about the maximum number of pages at a time that my attention span allows for right now and feel like I got something close to a complete thought out of that time. Also, I could totally listen to that guy say "Helvetica. Period." on repeat for days without growing tired. Okay, maybe only minutes. Still. Period.

The Millions has posted its preview of the anticipated books of 2010. I have to imagine that if there are any two books that are going to get me back around to getting on the reading bandwagon again, they'd be The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer (whose story collection How to Breathe Underwater I really liked) and A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (whose everything I everythinged, duhs). It's too bad but probably for the best they don't come out until May and June. I probably shouldn't hit those things un-warmed-back-up. Oh, there's also a David Mitchell book (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet) coming out in June, which for some reason I'm just irrationally nervous about. And, oh, hell, there's the American release in April of the short story collection What Becomes by A.L. Kennedy, who, love. Yikes. What a year to be a mess.

Things that are actually awesome include the old typewriter my girlfriend got me for Christmas. She knows me and my odd likes well. (For those of you out there--and I know there are those of you out there--who enjoy yourselves some good typewriter porn, here's the rest of the set.) It's a beautiful piece of equipment, in damn fine shape, with a handle still on the case (I do wonder if it's the original handle or if someone gave it a refurb along the way, but still, awesome either way; the case itself is in fairly stunning shape for however old it is) and there's this scent, this, metal, age, time scent, that kind of makes you want to take up whiskey drinking and manly writing. (Or at least whiskey drinking.) It's even got an end-of-bell line, a feature I'd figured was made up by the movies, being not-there on the other typewriter (a '20s era (?) Royal Junior Portable (with round keys! ee!) which I'm sure I have pictures of somewhere but can't find right now) in my now-two-piece-strong collection. There's more charm between the two of them than I know what to do with. Well, I suppose I could try actually writing on them, but....

Kids, if I haven't been writing, it's because I haven't been reading. I've picked up and put down more books in the last month than I have in the previous mumble mrnrmms. That includes both Blood Meridian and Our Mutual Friend, two books that I'd picked up and put down sometime in the last decade, both of which I picked back up in the last month, thinking maybe they'd actually work for me this time. Neither did. Though I did make it about ten pages past the points I'd originally abandoned them. At this rate, woo, some day, maybe. I've also set down A Game of Thrones, which I picked up, thinking, maybe what I need are some dragons and kick-ass sword fights and, like, elf chicks, or something? And then I got 250 pages into the book and I find out all the dragons are extinct, I guess, and there's no Liv Tyler to be found in a thousand miles? I mean, not that the book is bad--I'm generously telling myself I'm only pausing on this book rather than quitting it--but, still, I mean, no dragons. Just a bunch of assholes being political toward each other. No thanks, CNN, I will not engage with you for my light entertainment needs. So then yesterday I started reading The Mysteries of Pittsburgh because I like Michael Chabon a good deal and because maybe I needed to forget about big books for a while (did I mention I tried to read Ada, or Ardor by Nabokov on an empty brain and physically died 20 pages in?) and Pittsburgh comes from the area of the To Be Read piles that my girlfriend has dubbed "the cute little books" section, so, win, right? And it's been going alright--"Yes," I tell myself, "what I do need right now is an old-fashioned tale told by a horny young man who is trying to figure life and girls out but mostly girls of the manic pixie variety, because they are dreamy and mysterious and life is genuinely an interesting thing"--and I've been floating along okay but I just hit some dogs fucking, and it's like, really, Little Tiny Baby Michael Chabon? Dogs? Fucking? I don't know. Heartfelt sigh.

So, you see, I'm at a loss. They don't grow doctors who can look inside you and fix the part of you that's broken your ability to read, and I'm sure my insurance wouldn't cover that option anyway, so I'm stuck. And I'm wondering if the Internet knows what to do, how to literally flush out your brain in such a way that you want to actually start using it again, in a concentrated long-term no-blinky-blinky-lights sort of way, because all these hours spent watching episodes of the original Star Trek series (which is both as cheesy and far better than I remember it being) and playing Fallout 3 (which really does kick a lot of ass, actually) don't seem to be doing it. Should I eat more soup? Is soup good for this? I can't eat more soup. The soup train is full. Tremble.

I.

Don't follow the critics too much. Art appreciation, like love, cannot be done by proxy: It is a very personal affair and is necessary to each individual.

- Robert Henri

II.

"When I say truth, I mean beauty.... For me, Edgar, that sums up what all art is for, and the only way it can be judged."

He smiled--a trifle defensively, I thought.

"I don't want to think too much about art, you see. I don't want to criticize it. I don't want to attend symposia, listen to papers, or discuss it at cocktail parties--although sometimes in my line of work I'm forced to do all those things. What I want to do is clutch my heart and fall down when I see it."

- from Duma Key by Stephen King

What I talk about when I talk about clearing my head

Sleeping too little. Noticing ascenders. Hand thoughts. Disappointment. Design. White space. Doing things. Friday Night Lights. Story telling. Fallout 3. Laundry. Carrying books. Desire, competition. Productivity. Management. Creation. Confessions of a Shopaholic. The cigar box full of charcoal that's probably gone to dust in my trunk over the last few months. Tracking and kerning. Getting an oil change four thousand miles too late. Blogging. Writing. Reviewing. Making madness out of clothespins. Food allergies. Caring passionately about poetry, once. Caring passionately about caring. Time. IRC. Friendship. Social anxiety. Heartstrings. Getting it. The praying mantis that got away when the wind came. Sparkling water. Weight. Classes. Technical jargon like comforters. Choices. Hanging your own paintings on your walls. Using color. Breaking habits. The number of Stephen Dixon books on my shelves. A drawing of a shirt hanging from a lamp. Old review CDs. Lines and curves. Shape. Homework. Being wound up tight, fueled on something other than breath. Quitting. Red violet and yellow green. Neutrals. Too much structure. Head thoughts. Fearing descenders. Sleeping too much.

Fantagraphics has officially announced the new Stephen Dixon story collection, What Is All This?, due out in May 2010.

Click through for a shot of the (previously mentioned) cover (which I really like). Here's a quote for you:

Fantagraphics Books is proud to present his latest volume of short stories, a massive collection of vintage Dixon, eschewing the modernism and quasi-autobiography of his I-trilogy and instead treating readers to a pared-down, crystalline style more reminiscent of Hemingway....

"This is our third book of prose fiction -after Alex Theroux's Laura Warholic and Monte Schulz's This Side of Jordan- and readers may notice that the common denominator among these books is that language itself serves as the animating literary force," says acquiring editor and Fantagraphics co-publisher Gary Groth. "Dixon's finely chiseled sentences cut to the quick of people's lives. None of these stories have been collected in any book; they have appeared in a wide variety of literary journals over almost 40 years and Dixon has entirely rewritten all of them. Dixon admirers will be cheered to learn that these stories comprise a wholly original work."

Oh, yeah, and it's about 900 pages long. Nice.

In the comments of this post over at the Fantagraphics blog, there is a little bit of information about that Stephen Dixon book they're putting out next year: it's a 900 page collection of uncollected short stories called What Is All This?, cover design forthcoming from Jacob Covey.

Kids, the stuff Stephen Dixon hasn't collected is more than the stuff you'll ever produce ever in a million years. Even counting your Twitter stuff. We can just go ahead and shut down the Internet now.

Syndication? Re-runs? What is this, Family Ties? Not so awesome, but close: my Identity Theory review of Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City hit Powell's Review-a-Day over the weekend. So, now, you know, if you missed it the first time, here's your chance to take home a little bit of dislike of your own.

Cormac McCarthy talks to the Wall Street Journal:

WSJ: When you first went to the film set, how did it compare with how you saw "The Road" in your head?

CM: I guess my notion of what was going on in "The Road" did not include 60 to 80 people and a bunch of cameras. [Director] Dick Pearce and I made a film in North Carolina about 30 years ago and I thought, "This is just hell. Who would do this?" Instead, I get up and have a cup of coffee and wander around and read a little bit, sit down and type a few words and look out the window.

WSJ: But is there something compelling about the collaborative process compared to the solitary job of writing?

CM: Yes, it would compel you to avoid it at all costs.

More like Cormac McCarthZING!

(More here.)

Infection

There are points, scattered throughout Inherent Vice, when you realize that, yes, of course, Thomas Pynchon had to write a mystery novel, a-doy. Because, you know, paranoia? and like, connections? Dig?

Hey gang. My review of Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem is up at Identity Theory. It starts like this.

There was recently an interesting discussion at The Quarterly Conversation about what constitutes good literary criticism. J.C. Hallmann suggests that his fellow critics ought to approach literature not in the way critics do, but in the way writers do, in that writers are “perfectly comfortable saying that they simply liked a book—or disliked it.... Writers set out to celebrate the work rather than exhaust it....” In response, the editors quote Harold Bloom, who “gives us a phrase that is quite possibly the ideal definition of a critic: ‘the strong reader, whose readings will matter to others as well as to himself.’”

Reading these essays helped me find a way to write about Jonathan Lethem’s eighth novel, Chronic City. I think from these essays I took the permission I needed to plainly state here three things that I know already in my head and heart. First, I am not the strong reader I might like to be. Second, I found Chronic City tedious, boring, and uninspiring. Third, the second might find cause in the first.

Head over to Identity Theory for the rest.

"Man, did you miss a big story," he greeted Doc.

"You too, man."

"I'm talkin about sets of fifty-foot waves that wouldn't quit."

"'Fifty,' huh. I'm takin about Charlie Manson gettin popped."

They looked at each other.

"On the face of it," Vehi Fairfield said finally, "two separate worlds, each unaware of the other. But they always connect someplace."

"Manson and the Surge of '69," said Doc.

"I'd be very surprised if they weren't connected," Vehi said.

"That's because you think everything is connected," Sortilege said.

"'Think'?"

- from Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

...all of which, combined with this, (via The Rake, with whom I agree), has me feelin' a might bit pe-cyul-yar...but such is to be expected. This is actually (a third of the way in at least) a straight-forward novel, a novel's novel, if you will, and it's great fun, even if I'm only partially attentive, life being life, and all.

Also, the new Dan Chaon book is really good so far, and is making me glad I'm reading fiction again.

For the Murakami-ites up in this joint: we'll start seeing 1Q84 in 2011. So you've still got time to read the other 186 books of his that have been translated into English before then.

Francine Prose goes a long way toward making me want to actually read that optimistically purchased hardback of 2666 that's been sitting on my shelf for an age and a half now.