It's okay, I still think you're smart

Karen Russell, Donald Antrim and Jeremy Denk (a pianist who's been writing for the New Yorker recently) were among this year's class of the Macarthur Genius Grant recipients. (Fun fact: you can't apply for a genius grant; you have to be nominated by their "constantly changing pool of invited external nominators" and won't be made aware that you are under consideration unless you actually get one. So, that project is out.)

Originally known as "The Mistake"

Last night I went to a reading to celebrate the newest issue of Granta, "Betrayal." Associate Editor Patrick Ryan hosted the event, a slight disappointment to those of us in the John Freeman Fan Club, although Ryan did a great job in his stead. Among his revelations about the inner workings of the magazine: the cover for this issues is a photograph of blood and milk swirled, which wasn't what I would have guessed. And yes, the theme of this issue started off as "The Mistake."

Ryan kicked off by bringing Karen Russell to the front of the room, noting that Granta had named her a promising young novelist before her debut had been published and that "we're pretty proud of foreseeing her career." (By the way, is it ever going to be okay to refer to authors by their major works in the style of a Mafia nickname, like this: Karen "SWAMPLANDIA" Russell? Let me know.) She read a bit from a story set in "shitty drab Wisconsin" (check yourself) about an Iraq war veteran with an incredible tattoo. Last time I saw Russell read, she was capturing the voice of a child protagonist and her voice was very high and thin and wispy. I had taken this to be her normal reading voice, but she lowered her timbre for the veteran and the other, 19-year-old protagonist of her story.

Trumpted as a "debut author" for this issue was Lauren Wilkinson, the second MD/MFA I have heard of (the first being Chris Adrian of the McSweeney's crew). Wilkinson is tall and candidly admitted to being so nervous she wrote out all her opening remarks, but she didn't seem nervous at all. She spoke a little about the former president of Burkina Faso, who did not come up at all in the excerpt of her story "Safety Catch" but has now made me very curious to learn about. Something clever all these readers did was to read openings or excerpts only from their stories, in order to prompt us to buy the issue in question. (I fully plan on it tonight; I didn't want to brave the crush last night.)

Also reading were Colin Robinson of OR Books, who brought the opening of an essay on playing paddleball with his brother at the 14th street YMCA, and Ben Marcus who said his story was intended to evoke "the feeling of being very scared."

The authors read to a packed crowd in the McNally Jackson basement; I was so close to the woman behind me I could feel when she was clapping. Just like every time I go to these things I get the feeling there are authors in the crowd I should recognize, but don't. I scan faces to imagine them on flyleaves; nothing. When I moved here I imagined by now I'd know everyone at parties like this, down to the woman with the dark bob serving wine in the corner. There's still a little time, I guess.

Pulitzer Prize 2012: And the envelope is... empty

Very funny! Now go back in your room and don't put the ceremonial branches on the fire until you're finished.

"I think it's an outrageous insult. Only one finished real novel among the finalists, AND they can't pick a winner. DO YOUR FRAKKIN' JOB." --Ron Charles of the Washington Post Book World

My small SWAMPLANDIA! problem, or the literary lost soul

I really liked Karen Russell's SWAMPLANDIA! (correct punctuation and all) but I wish I had loved it. I'm looking forward to Russell's next book as well as catching up with her first, a short-story collection entitled ST. LUCY'S HOME FOR GIRLS RAISED BY WOLVES. I was caught off guard by how much magical realism there was in SWAMPLANDIA!, the story of the decline of a family amusement park in Florida after the death of its star attraction, alligator wrestler Hilola Bigtree. (In fact, we begin with a recollection of her performances struck with the unforgettable opening line, "Our mother performed in starlight.") 

Russell is a fair author to take on this mantle, particularly if she will address some of the faults of other magical realist writers (ahem long lines of beautiful available ladies in ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE). And in some ways, the narrator she chooses to bear the burden of most of the book, the sheltered yet adventure-seeking Ava Bigtree, is the perfect choice -- still young enough to harbor some illusions, but old enough to be forced to witness some of them being dismantled. Her unique worldview is captivating -- except in the odd moments where it feels like Russell is trying to make it unique, through using metaphors and similes that flower out of control.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good poetic line, and Russell can sling them. (Insert digression here about whether Russell might have been better served as a career poet and my conclusion that, while maybe she leant that way, poets should be able to write novels, because why not. It livens the shelf.) Here's an example of a poetic digression in SWAMPLANDIA! that I loved, about Ava's brother:

"Kiwi and his father could sometimes meet at the intersection of their two angers, like neighbors drawing up to the barbed stars of a fence." 

It's a neat simile, it's concrete, and it illustrates a detail about their relationship that you didn't already know. Here's a more elaborate one that I think still works:

"Something about the way [the seaplane] landed, floats first, gave Kiwi the impression of teeth entering the water, the jet floats biting in to the red-dyed water like two bright fangs."

But every so often Russell leans on her metaphors and her ornate command of language and, to my mind, ends up making no sense at all. I feel like my hated eighth grade English teacher pointing this out, but I don't know what to make of a passage like this:

"Moths jumbled tunelessly above our heads, kaleidoscoping in this way that looked like visible music to me -- something that would be immediately audible to an alligator or a raccoon but that we human Bigtrees couldn't hear."

The conflict between tunelessly and music/audible, the needs to clarify "kaleidoscoping" (a verb I don't have a problem with, only I think it's fairly clear as-is) and specify that the humans wouldn't hear it, even though if we follow the path they could see it... see the moths? Do moths even make noise apart from when they brush up against things? It's also puzzling why Ava would pick out this detail of a night sequence (as it happens to come from) and invest it with such particular importance, although there is ample evidence in the rest of the book that she is prone to paying attention to the wrong things.

Reading passages like those I started to understand, when people fault critical darlings like SWAMPLANDIA! for being "too literary" and somehow unapproachable, that this is what they mean. If I had had to close-read that passage I might still be reading the book right now (exaggeration). I would never say everyone has to write like Hemingway or McCarthy, and some of Russell's turns I dearly loved -- like the way her shame for her father, trying to keep Swamplandia from going under, became "like a sword I'd made, glinting and strong." But I have to go with the comment made by Slate's John Dickerson who, exasperated on the Slate Audio Book Club's discussion of the book, finally exclaimed "Everything can't be like everything else!" That is a useful lesson for all of us out there.

Filmbook: HBO might buy your book but where will it go?

Sarah Weinman (Publishers Marketplace, plus a ton of other places) has been keeping a running list of books purchased to adapt by HBO this year -- to which we can add, recently, THE CORRECTIONS and SWAMPLANDIA! (A few other properties we're keeping an eye on, although they weren't from 2011: THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS, coproduced by Oprah; I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR BAND, produced by Will Ferrell, starring Lizzy "Did you have an awesome time?" Caplan; AMERICAN TABLOID, coproduced by Tom Hanks.)

These are great buys provided that they actually get made, and forgive me for being a little skeptical about that. HBO is currently airing, by my count, 3 book adaptations -- "Game of Thrones," "Boardwalk Empire" and "True Blood." "True Blood" is rounding up on its fifth season (in '12) but the other two are only in their 2nd seasons. How many adaptations are they realistically going to run in a year? I'm not in their target audience (never subscribed to HBO, don't have basic cable) so maybe there's a clamor for it, but at the rate they're going we all will have had time to read all these books before they go up onscreen. Of course, A GAME OF THRONES was published in 1996... so either Franzen or Gaiman ought to be next.

Just to show I'm not a hater, my casting for "The Art Of Fielding" on HBO, ready, go: Liam Neeson as Guert, Max Greenfield plus about 30 pounds as Mike, Jessica Chastain as Pella (she's having a moment), Darren Criss as Owen (ditto) and blond American-accented Ben Whishaw as Henry. Do it this year, gents.