20 hours ago
15 October 2012
12 October 2012
"Today it’s hard to fathom that anyone would think a political novel might be an election game-changer. But 1958 was a different time. Major novelists were celebrities, best sellers could be cultural events and Steinbeck himself had credibility as a moral authority. The Stevenson camp was trying to use an unorthodox media strategy to attack the man they saw as their greatest foe, just as politicians today use social media to bypass traditional gatekeepers and influence public opinion. The question was, would Steinbeck agree?"
This tale of a (spoiler) never-written Steinbeck Nixon attack novel is splendid. I'll definitely take a print copy with me when I jump in my time machine to head back to 1958. I'll have time to make that happen when not chatting up Peggy Olsen in the Sterling Cooper secretary pool.
This tale of a (spoiler) never-written Steinbeck Nixon attack novel is splendid. I'll definitely take a print copy with me when I jump in my time machine to head back to 1958. I'll have time to make that happen when not chatting up Peggy Olsen in the Sterling Cooper secretary pool.
NYC: Emma Straub and Amy Sohn in Brooklyn tomorrow
I hate giving away my secrets, but... the Brooklyn Public Library does readings on Saturdays and Sunday afternoons and they get huge names for (relatively) little hassle and the low, low cost of free.
This Saturday's is Amy Sohn and Emma Straub, at 4PM at the Central Branch (Grand Army Plaza). They're part of a "Writers In The City" series including Martin Amis (Nov. 3) and A.M. Homes (Dec. 1).
This Saturday's is Amy Sohn and Emma Straub, at 4PM at the Central Branch (Grand Army Plaza). They're part of a "Writers In The City" series including Martin Amis (Nov. 3) and A.M. Homes (Dec. 1).
11 October 2012
Bob Dylan is super disappointed in you
Congratulations to Chinese author Mo Yan, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Mo Yan, the pen name for Guan Moye, is a former member of the People's Liberation Army and writes like Faulkner mixed with Gabriel Garcia Marquez according to Granta. No word yet on how China, which has been unilaterally boycotting the Nobel Peace Prize after it was awarded to a Chinese dissident in 2010, will react to this announcement. (I'm guessing... not well.)
10 October 2012
"Does the bodyguard..."
Catching up on old New Yorker fiction podcasts, a weird synchronicity appears: from August 2011, Salman Rushdie reads Donald Barthelme's short story "Concerning The Bodyguard," which must have had more than a passing resemblance to his years in hiding.
The other NBA
Your nominees for the 2012 National Book Award:
In fiction:
Junot Diaz, THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER
Dave Eggers, A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING (reviewed here)
Louise Erdrich, THE ROUND HOUSE
Ben Fountain, BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK (reviewed here)
Kevin Powers, THE YELLOW BIRDS
In nonfiction:
Anne Applebaum, IRON CURTAIN
Katharine Boo, BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS
Robert Caro, THE PASSAGE OF POWER
Domingo Martinez, THE BOY KINGS OF TEXAS
Anthony Shadid, HOUSE OF STONE
Check out the poetry and YA finalists here.
Hoping for a big win for Katharine Boo, whose BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS is so fascinating and incredibly reported. I don't really have a rooting interest in fiction; I would like Eggers not to take it, for reasons we can discuss, but my review is a good starting point. BILLY LYNN I liked with reservations, and I haven't read the others yet.
In fiction:
Junot Diaz, THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER
Dave Eggers, A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING (reviewed here)
Louise Erdrich, THE ROUND HOUSE
Ben Fountain, BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK (reviewed here)
Kevin Powers, THE YELLOW BIRDS
In nonfiction:
Anne Applebaum, IRON CURTAIN
Katharine Boo, BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS
Robert Caro, THE PASSAGE OF POWER
Domingo Martinez, THE BOY KINGS OF TEXAS
Anthony Shadid, HOUSE OF STONE
Check out the poetry and YA finalists here.
Hoping for a big win for Katharine Boo, whose BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS is so fascinating and incredibly reported. I don't really have a rooting interest in fiction; I would like Eggers not to take it, for reasons we can discuss, but my review is a good starting point. BILLY LYNN I liked with reservations, and I haven't read the others yet.
09 October 2012
Salman Rushdie at the New Yorker Festival: "There is no right not to be offended."
The first time Salman Rushdie came to New York after February 14, 1989, when Iran announced it had laid a fatwa on him, he barely saw the city at all. He was rushed from the airport in an armored limo in a motorcade to Columbia University and whisked offstage during his own applause to be taken back. His trip to the SVA Theater on Sunday to talk with New Yorker editor David Remnick about his years in captivity was undoubtedly less complex -- maybe he took a cab, maybe he even walked -- but as he stepped up to the podium a hush fell over the crowd greater than an ordinary reading.
Rushdie is currently on book tour supporting his first memoir JOSEPH ANTON, about his years in hiding (and named for the Conrad + Chekhov code name the British secret police used for him). I finished JOSEPH ANTON right before the event (no, seriously, I was waiting in line at the auditorium with about 10 pages remaining) and, at the risk of sounding like a philistine, it was one of my great surprises of the year. The description of Rushdie's years under the fatwa, how he was a virtual prisoner under state protection forced to find safe houses at his own expense is horrifying -- but also absurd, occasionally bitchy (at last, a chance to settle scores against writers who didn't support him then!) and funny. Rushdie is issued a wig so that he can go out, only to hear someone call out "Look, it's that bastard Rushdie in a wig!" and retreat. When he's allowed to look for a permanent safe house, that location is never "blown," and the only shooting occurs when a policeman's gun accidentally goes off while cleaning. He travels to Australia and New Zealand to spend an off-the-map Christmas, only to practically kill himself and his girlfriend and son in a car crash -- after which the ambulance driver asks for his autograph.
It is easy to have a sense of humor about these events because Rushdie's life is no longer in danger from the official government fatwa (although there are still people out there who want to kill him). The book goes into this bizarre coda after Rushdie becomes officially "free" of protection in Britain, a time in which he continued to publish novels but also left his wife (who had been his girlfriend for most of the for Padma Lakshmi, moved to New York and then Los Angeles to be with her and was ultimately left by her. Rushdie told Remnick that his biggest regret was signing a conciliatory statement drafted by British Muslim leaders in the early days of the fatwa and believing (wrongly) that if he just sat down with his enemies, they would see that he meant no offense. He may also come to regret the extended passage in which he compares Lakshmi's lover after him to Scrooge McDuck. None of these decisions would have been possible, it is suggested, while Rushdie's life was still in danger; but maybe freedom contains its own noxious consequences.
The furor over THE SATANIC VERSES may have officially died down, but clearly in Rushdie's life it will never end. After the author was prevented from attending the Jaipur Literary Festival in India due to threats against his life, a reading of passages from the book (which is still banned in India -- where Rushdie was born) was held, and he gave an interview to the effect that it probably would not have been published today. He states this case more strongly in JOSEPH ANTON by casting his demonization as a prefiguring moment to the outbursts of violence by fundamentalist Muslims culminating in the September 11th attacks. But the frame he sees both of these events and other examples in the intervening years is, unsurprisingly, extreme. It's very strong to see an author, especially one who grew up Muslim by culture (though secular in practice), suggest that all of Islam has been contaminated by these radical fringes -- since so much time has been spent since 9/11 trying to talk people out of believing that. Rushdie, who says he decided he was an atheist when he ate a ham sandwich at boarding school and nothing happened, sees the past quarter-century cast in the rise of violent Islam and the rise in "the outrage industry -- where you define yourself by what you hate," but clearly hasn't been living in that himself.
Rushdie told Remnick he always knew he would eventually write about his years in hiding, and wanted to be the one to do it -- but waited till he was "in a calm place" to do so. These days Rushdie makes more appearances in the New York Post than in militant speeches. Yet, though he tries, I still don't have any idea how Rushdie went on writing in those years. Perhaps the captivity played a part in his actual productivity, but emotionally -- how did he do it? It is an impulse that perhaps can only be understood by people who have been in similar straits. At several points in the book, Rushdie mentions that he's far from the only writer who has experienced sanctions or death threats the way he did, but notes that up to the end elements of the British press still pushed the idea that he'd brought it on himself. That may be the most enduring shadow of all.
Rushdie is currently on book tour supporting his first memoir JOSEPH ANTON, about his years in hiding (and named for the Conrad + Chekhov code name the British secret police used for him). I finished JOSEPH ANTON right before the event (no, seriously, I was waiting in line at the auditorium with about 10 pages remaining) and, at the risk of sounding like a philistine, it was one of my great surprises of the year. The description of Rushdie's years under the fatwa, how he was a virtual prisoner under state protection forced to find safe houses at his own expense is horrifying -- but also absurd, occasionally bitchy (at last, a chance to settle scores against writers who didn't support him then!) and funny. Rushdie is issued a wig so that he can go out, only to hear someone call out "Look, it's that bastard Rushdie in a wig!" and retreat. When he's allowed to look for a permanent safe house, that location is never "blown," and the only shooting occurs when a policeman's gun accidentally goes off while cleaning. He travels to Australia and New Zealand to spend an off-the-map Christmas, only to practically kill himself and his girlfriend and son in a car crash -- after which the ambulance driver asks for his autograph.
It is easy to have a sense of humor about these events because Rushdie's life is no longer in danger from the official government fatwa (although there are still people out there who want to kill him). The book goes into this bizarre coda after Rushdie becomes officially "free" of protection in Britain, a time in which he continued to publish novels but also left his wife (who had been his girlfriend for most of the for Padma Lakshmi, moved to New York and then Los Angeles to be with her and was ultimately left by her. Rushdie told Remnick that his biggest regret was signing a conciliatory statement drafted by British Muslim leaders in the early days of the fatwa and believing (wrongly) that if he just sat down with his enemies, they would see that he meant no offense. He may also come to regret the extended passage in which he compares Lakshmi's lover after him to Scrooge McDuck. None of these decisions would have been possible, it is suggested, while Rushdie's life was still in danger; but maybe freedom contains its own noxious consequences.
The furor over THE SATANIC VERSES may have officially died down, but clearly in Rushdie's life it will never end. After the author was prevented from attending the Jaipur Literary Festival in India due to threats against his life, a reading of passages from the book (which is still banned in India -- where Rushdie was born) was held, and he gave an interview to the effect that it probably would not have been published today. He states this case more strongly in JOSEPH ANTON by casting his demonization as a prefiguring moment to the outbursts of violence by fundamentalist Muslims culminating in the September 11th attacks. But the frame he sees both of these events and other examples in the intervening years is, unsurprisingly, extreme. It's very strong to see an author, especially one who grew up Muslim by culture (though secular in practice), suggest that all of Islam has been contaminated by these radical fringes -- since so much time has been spent since 9/11 trying to talk people out of believing that. Rushdie, who says he decided he was an atheist when he ate a ham sandwich at boarding school and nothing happened, sees the past quarter-century cast in the rise of violent Islam and the rise in "the outrage industry -- where you define yourself by what you hate," but clearly hasn't been living in that himself.
Rushdie told Remnick he always knew he would eventually write about his years in hiding, and wanted to be the one to do it -- but waited till he was "in a calm place" to do so. These days Rushdie makes more appearances in the New York Post than in militant speeches. Yet, though he tries, I still don't have any idea how Rushdie went on writing in those years. Perhaps the captivity played a part in his actual productivity, but emotionally -- how did he do it? It is an impulse that perhaps can only be understood by people who have been in similar straits. At several points in the book, Rushdie mentions that he's far from the only writer who has experienced sanctions or death threats the way he did, but notes that up to the end elements of the British press still pushed the idea that he'd brought it on himself. That may be the most enduring shadow of all.
08 October 2012
Rona Jaffe's THE BEST OF EVERYTHING has been adapted into a play in which most of the male roles are played by cardboard stand-ins. I'm on board with everything in the previous sentence, how about you?
05 October 2012
"I personally have at least 7.8% more work today than I did yesterday." --Elif Batuman on Twitter this morning.
Great news! Elif Batuman has a debut novel out there called THE TWO LIVES that just sold to a publisher!
Less great news for us: The publisher is in the UK, with no US deal announced yet, and we won't see it until 2015.
Great news! Elif Batuman has a debut novel out there called THE TWO LIVES that just sold to a publisher!
Less great news for us: The publisher is in the UK, with no US deal announced yet, and we won't see it until 2015.
Super-long sentences and fanboyism: Chabon and Smith at 92Y
Last night I went to see Michael Chabon and Zadie Smith read together at 92Y on the Upper East Side. I should just quit blogging and going to all reading events because it's never going to get any better than this! I'm not actually quitting but the sheer joy of seeing two of your favorite authors onstage and having them praise each other cannot be understated.
Chabon read first and Smith introduced him, praising his work for containing multitudes of voices and never losing the fan's spirit which animates his characters and is so often lost to adulthood. He read Part III of TELEGRAPH AVENUE, "A Bird of Wide Experience," a single sentence 11 pages long that follows one character's beloved parrot through Berkeley overlooking other characters in their daily routines. It was a show-stopper and judging by the laughter from the crowd, enough present had already read TELEGRAPH AVENUE to know what was in store and anticipate it appropriately.
As if planned that way, Chabon's introduction of Smith contained a list of things that bring him joy including a new Zadie Smith book (also the First Amendment, his son's Halloween costume and Wes Anderson movies). Smith read a short passage in which Natalie and her neighbors confront a teenage smoker on the playground, and a longer passage in which a character tries to break up with another, which she infused with a pathos beyond the page. She also switched seamlessly between different characters' voices and compared the London neighborhoods mentioned to places in New York (Bed-Stuy, the Upper East Side, the Bronx).
In Q&A both authors were asked if they mentally cast their own books while writing for possible future adaptation; Chabon said not usually, although he tried to put some of "The Wire"'s Wendell Pierce in TELEGRAPH AVENUE Archy Stallings (Pierce, call your agent); Smith suggested Jessica Chastain for Leah Hanwell of NW. Both authors cringed when asked to grade President Obama's performance in Wednesday's presidential debate until Chabon meekly offered, "You know when you're watching a sporting event and you're yelling at the TV, 'Hit him! Punch him'?" Describing dream projects they have yet to complete, Smith said she'd love to write a novel set in 1930s movie musicals; Chabon quipped that he'd like to rewrite MOBY DICK from the perspective of the whale.
Chabon read first and Smith introduced him, praising his work for containing multitudes of voices and never losing the fan's spirit which animates his characters and is so often lost to adulthood. He read Part III of TELEGRAPH AVENUE, "A Bird of Wide Experience," a single sentence 11 pages long that follows one character's beloved parrot through Berkeley overlooking other characters in their daily routines. It was a show-stopper and judging by the laughter from the crowd, enough present had already read TELEGRAPH AVENUE to know what was in store and anticipate it appropriately.
As if planned that way, Chabon's introduction of Smith contained a list of things that bring him joy including a new Zadie Smith book (also the First Amendment, his son's Halloween costume and Wes Anderson movies). Smith read a short passage in which Natalie and her neighbors confront a teenage smoker on the playground, and a longer passage in which a character tries to break up with another, which she infused with a pathos beyond the page. She also switched seamlessly between different characters' voices and compared the London neighborhoods mentioned to places in New York (Bed-Stuy, the Upper East Side, the Bronx).
In Q&A both authors were asked if they mentally cast their own books while writing for possible future adaptation; Chabon said not usually, although he tried to put some of "The Wire"'s Wendell Pierce in TELEGRAPH AVENUE Archy Stallings (Pierce, call your agent); Smith suggested Jessica Chastain for Leah Hanwell of NW. Both authors cringed when asked to grade President Obama's performance in Wednesday's presidential debate until Chabon meekly offered, "You know when you're watching a sporting event and you're yelling at the TV, 'Hit him! Punch him'?" Describing dream projects they have yet to complete, Smith said she'd love to write a novel set in 1930s movie musicals; Chabon quipped that he'd like to rewrite MOBY DICK from the perspective of the whale.
04 October 2012
On bold, fresh starts
My paperback copy of Jonathan Franzen's debut novel THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CITY contains in the front matter one of my favorite absurd blurbs of all time. What's wrong with this picture?
If that's indeed what he meant, then Upchurch is incorrect because Franzen's debut does bear some of these thumbprints of The Debut Novel as I have suggested. Packed with characters who get one scene in the spotlight and are barely mentioned again, inconsistent in timeline, it sprawls completely out of control and the ending doesn't do much to rein it in. But its biggest failure is also its biggest strength: The novel introduces a high concept and sticks to it even when introducing a thousand other things in the middle. It's a crazy concept, but it interested me enough to pull me through a crowd of largely unlikeable errors.
The conceit that Franzen is faithful to, to a fault, can be summed up like this: "What if the political conspiracy a bunch of cranky old white men think is happening in their city is real?" The city in question is St. Louis (the titular 27th city -- I assume that was its ranking in the 80s when this book was published, it's now something like 58th) and the triggering event is the appointment of a new police captain, S. Jammu, from India. Jammu's commitment to cleaning the city up is called into question by a number of successful businessmen who view her as an interloper (some of them with clear racist overtones) and who are skeptical of her popularity and determination; the book is largely told through the perspective of one of them, construction magnate Martin Probst, best known for owning the company that built the Arch. A few even posit that the coincidence of Jammu's arrival and the marriage of another of the city's leading lights to an Indian heiress is proof that there's a conspiracy to change St. Louis' direction. And guess what? There is! (I didn't spoiler-tag it because you find that out in the first 50 pages -- well ahead of poor Probst.)
This week I finally finished D.T. Max's biography of David Foster Wallace, EVERY LOVE STORY IS A GHOST STORY, in which Franzen plays a minor role as DFW's friend who encouraged him to write more sincerely and less to cleverness. When they met Franzen was (I think) already 2 published books in to Wallace's 1, and appeared at least to Wallace to have more direction in his life; Max suggests that Wallace looked up to him more than he envied him, although there was probably some of both on both sides.
This charge to write moral, sincere fiction is a little funny but not outright contradictory when looking at THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CITY, because I did feel sympathetic toward Martin Probst -- to a point. Like Charlie Chaplin, he is caught up in this great mechanism of city politics that he doesn't understand, even though he believes he does. The soul of this book is still fairly cynical, though; having read Wallace's first novel THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM I felt more attuned to its central character Lenore's search for meaning and self-definition. (Then again, maybe I would have anyway given that Lenore's a 20something recent graduate and not a 50something captain of industry.) In any event, it seems that Franzen took his own advice.
*ZING! Guess what I spent too much time watching last night!
"Franzen's tour de force (to call it a 'first novel' is to do it an injustice) is a sinister fun-house-mirror reflection of urban America in the 1980s... There's a lot of reality out there. THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CITY, in its larger-than-life way, is a brave and exhilarating attempt to master it." --Michael Upchurch, The Seattle TimesStill don't see it? Let me isolate it for you:
"To call it a 'first novel' is to do it an injustice." --Michael Upchurch, The Seattle TimesIt is factually true that THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CITY was Franzen's first published novel (whether it was his first written, who even knows -- but probably not). There are pejorative things to be said about first novels that have traits we associate with them -- clumsiness in plotting, overly clever character names or traits, an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach to detail. But a fact is neutral -- you can't call it unjust unless you are in a presidential debate.* Anyway, from what I can find Upchurch is still the critic at the Seattle Times lo these 24 years later, so maybe he can clarify that that's what he meant.
If that's indeed what he meant, then Upchurch is incorrect because Franzen's debut does bear some of these thumbprints of The Debut Novel as I have suggested. Packed with characters who get one scene in the spotlight and are barely mentioned again, inconsistent in timeline, it sprawls completely out of control and the ending doesn't do much to rein it in. But its biggest failure is also its biggest strength: The novel introduces a high concept and sticks to it even when introducing a thousand other things in the middle. It's a crazy concept, but it interested me enough to pull me through a crowd of largely unlikeable errors.
The conceit that Franzen is faithful to, to a fault, can be summed up like this: "What if the political conspiracy a bunch of cranky old white men think is happening in their city is real?" The city in question is St. Louis (the titular 27th city -- I assume that was its ranking in the 80s when this book was published, it's now something like 58th) and the triggering event is the appointment of a new police captain, S. Jammu, from India. Jammu's commitment to cleaning the city up is called into question by a number of successful businessmen who view her as an interloper (some of them with clear racist overtones) and who are skeptical of her popularity and determination; the book is largely told through the perspective of one of them, construction magnate Martin Probst, best known for owning the company that built the Arch. A few even posit that the coincidence of Jammu's arrival and the marriage of another of the city's leading lights to an Indian heiress is proof that there's a conspiracy to change St. Louis' direction. And guess what? There is! (I didn't spoiler-tag it because you find that out in the first 50 pages -- well ahead of poor Probst.)
This week I finally finished D.T. Max's biography of David Foster Wallace, EVERY LOVE STORY IS A GHOST STORY, in which Franzen plays a minor role as DFW's friend who encouraged him to write more sincerely and less to cleverness. When they met Franzen was (I think) already 2 published books in to Wallace's 1, and appeared at least to Wallace to have more direction in his life; Max suggests that Wallace looked up to him more than he envied him, although there was probably some of both on both sides.
This charge to write moral, sincere fiction is a little funny but not outright contradictory when looking at THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CITY, because I did feel sympathetic toward Martin Probst -- to a point. Like Charlie Chaplin, he is caught up in this great mechanism of city politics that he doesn't understand, even though he believes he does. The soul of this book is still fairly cynical, though; having read Wallace's first novel THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM I felt more attuned to its central character Lenore's search for meaning and self-definition. (Then again, maybe I would have anyway given that Lenore's a 20something recent graduate and not a 50something captain of industry.) In any event, it seems that Franzen took his own advice.
*ZING! Guess what I spent too much time watching last night!
03 October 2012
September Unbookening
Bought 4
Borrowed 4
Checked out 8 from library
Received to review 3
19 in
Donated 6
Gave away 2
Returned to library 9
17 out
So close! I'll make it up next month.
Borrowed 4
Checked out 8 from library
Received to review 3
19 in
Donated 6
Gave away 2
Returned to library 9
17 out
So close! I'll make it up next month.
02 October 2012
Genius time!
Congratulations to Junot Diaz and Dinaw Mengestu on being named part of this year's crop of MacArthur Geniuses. (Secondary congratulations to Raj Chetty who is not an author, but who is a fellow survivor of my high school.)
01 October 2012
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