Spotted on the subway

Being read by a woman about my age in a white puffy coat, tall-ish with dark circles under her eyes.

Profiling is not right, but I would not mess with someone carrying this book.

"The technology I like is the American paperback edition of FREEDOM. I can spill water on it, and it would still work! So it's pretty good technology. And what’s more, it will work great 10 years from now. So no wonder the capitalists hate it. It’s a bad business model... Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing - that’s reassuring. Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough."

-Grumpus in chief Jonathan Franzen -- though he has a point about the technology -- speaking at a book festival in Colombia over the weekend.

My five years with Marilyn

The role of Arthur Miller in the Oscar-buzzed biopic "My Week With Marilyn" is one of the most thankless parts in a movie full of them. Miller's job in the script is to show up, look awkward, and then be a real jerk so that Marilyn can seek solace in the movie's real hero, scrappy 3rd assistant director Colin Clark. Dougray Scott's performance as Miller is just stage furniture but that's not his fault.

I wasn't much moved by "My Week With Marilyn" overall because as we all know I hate Hollywood, and America, and sexiness. (Mostly I entertained myself on Kenneth Branagh, who seems to be having a really good time having a really bad time as Sir Laurence Olivier.) But Miller's life is rich enough to furnish its own biopic in which he is allowed to play more than just a nerd whose desire to have his own life is inconvenient to the plot.

Tournament of Books '12: Will you be ready when the rooster crows?

The Morning News' annual book competition, the Tournament of Books, announced its contenders about a week and a half ago. Check them out:

Nathacha Appanah, THE LAST BROTHER
Julian Barnes, THE SENSE OF AN ENDING
Teju Cole, OPEN CITY
Helen Dewitt, LIGHTNING RODS
Patrick DeWitt, THE SISTERS BROTHERS
Jeffrey Eugenides, THE MARRIAGE PLOT
Chad Harbach, THE ART OF FIELDING
Alan Hollinghurst, THE STRANGER'S CHILD
Jesmyn Ward, SALVAGE THE BONES
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
Téa Obreht, THE TIGER'S WIFE
Michael Ondaatje, THE CAT'S TABLE
Ann Patchett, STATE OF WONDER
Donald Ray Pollock, DEVIL ALL THE TIME
Karen Russell, SWAMPLANDIA!
Kate Zambreno, GREEN GIRL

The T.o.B. is more fun and transparent than most literary awards for the following reasons:

• Inclusion of a "March Madness" style bracket pitting books against each other. 
• Unabashed celebrity judge included among the authors making the decisions. This year's, Wil Wheaton, is also an author in his own right to be fair. (There's also a reader judge, should you non-famous people feel under-represented.)
• Every judge writes an essay defending her or his choice, so if you disagree, you have plenty to chew on in your disagreement. (Or you can print the essay out, ball it up and throw it into the wastebasket shouting No it's not!!! Your choice.)
• "Zombie Picks" (voted on by readers) resurrect two picks discarded by the judges in earlier rounds and give them a chance to compete for the big prize.

I have made the questionable decision to try and read as many of the contenders as possible before the tournament begins on March 7. Not only will I be catching up on some of the (possible) best books of '11 I missed, I will have slightly more authority in arguing that the judges' picks are wrong, so wrong. (Uh, if they are, that is.) Taking out the ones I had the foresight to read beforehand, here's my personal reading list:

1. Nathacha Appanah, THE LAST BROTHER
2. Julian Barnes, THE SENSE OF AN ENDING
3. Teju Cole, OPEN CITY
4. Helen Dewitt, LIGHTNING RODS
5. Patrick DeWitt, THE SISTERS BROTHERS
6. Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
7. Michael Ondaatje, THE CAT'S TABLE
8. Ann Patchett, STATE OF WONDER
9. Donald Ray Pollock, DEVIL ALL THE TIME
10. Kate Zambreno, GREEN GIRL

Granted, I could probably spend all that time on 1Q84 and not read any of the rest, so let's just call this... a noble attempt. I'm kicking it off with Nathacha Appanah's THE LAST BROTHER for the highly scientific reason that it was the first to make it off the library request page and into my hands. Which one of these did you like the most?

Reading on the Road: Martin Amis edition

"Junk novels were sold in airports. People in airports bought and read junk novels. Junk novels were about people in airports, inasmuch as junk novels needed airports to shift their characters round the planet, and airports served, in junk novels, as the backdrop to their partings, chance encounters, reunions and trysts. Some junk novels were _all_ about airports. Some junk novels were even _called_ things like AIRPORT. Why then, you might ask, was there no airport called Junk Novel? Movies based on junk novels were, of course, heavily reliant on the setting of the airport. So why wasn't one always seeing, at airports, junk novels being made into movies? Perhaps there really was a whole other airport, called, perhaps, Junk Novel Airport, or with a fancier name like Manderley International Junk Novel Airport, where they did them all... Readers of junk novels and people in airports wanted the same thing: escape, and quick transfer from one junk novel to another junk novel and from one airport to another airport."
--from THE INFORMATION

Brooklyn Authorati Gather On Area Woman's Stoop For Some Reason

But be careful, some of them bite!

For a good time, Photoshop yourself into this Conde Nast Traveler portrait of a number of (though by no means all of) the borough's finest and pretend they all showed up to talk shop with you.

Check out the original via Jami Attenberg. (Also, that's not my stoop, although if you have an inkling of where it is...)

NYC: Free publishing panel Feb. 15

Q: Do you like social media?
A: Too bad, you're already in it! But while you're there you might as well check out this panel about publishing in the 21st century next month during Social Media Week. Emma Straub will be there, undoubtedly revealing how she can be working at BookCourt and on Twitter and writing books all at the same time. (I suspect a secret twin.)

Obvious headline is obvious

Really Popular Book Still Really Popular; Movie Adaptation Will Also Be Popular Probably

Impulse mass-market purchase of the month

Sorry I'm not sorry. I heard it was terrific.

Two new ways to unbooken

Finding that your New Year's resolution to read the books you have and not buy any more is weakening? Maybe one of these approaches would work for you:

• In the spirit of Judith Levine's NOT BUYING IT, Meg Hourihan (who cofounded Pyra Labs, the company that once launched a little web program called Blogger) is tracking her spending openly and making an effort not to make unnecessary stuff purchases in 2012, over on her blog Makeit.do. Per her rules, she can borrow a book from a friend or the library, but not buy it.
• For something more literary and less generally minimalist, pay attention to Canadian critic Michael Hingston, tackling his unread books a few tomes at a time in Shelf Defense. (I am a sucker for a good pun.) For each book he addresses it contents and whether he wants to keep or sell it. It's systematic and elegant, particular the hallmark photo he uses to show the progress he's making.

INTERVIEWER

Did you read as a child?

DeLILLO

No, not at all. Comic books. This is probably why I don’t have a storytelling drive, a drive to follow a certain kind of narrative rhythm.

--I've been reading about Don DeLillo after finishing THE NAMES last week and, I don't really know what to say about this exchange from a Paris Review interview. I want to say "Well, of course you're kidding," but it seems sort of disrespectful. (He does talk about what he read later, though. This interview is also where his quote that I love "The novel’s not dead, it’s not even seriously injured" comes from.)

Even though music was my bag

This may be too dark for some of you to listen to during the workday, but someone recommended this interview with Meghan Daum to me and I'm finding it really fascinating. Pairs great with her recent Believer essay (although it's not available online now due to the McSweeney's SOPA blackout) "Haterade."

Filmbook: "Hugo" (2011)

I reviewed THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET for a now-defunct (but trust me it was awesome) geek-culture magazine, more or less on reputation alone. I wasn't sure if Brian Selznick's young-adult Caldecott winner would even appeal to an adult audience, but so rarely does the Caldecott (as an award for artistry in children's books) go to a YA book I thought it was worth looking into. I was taken in by how Selznick's illustrations of Hugo, an orphan in the 1930s who works the clocks in a Paris train station, used cinematic angles and tropes to illuminate the story, and as I got deeper into the plot I understood why: Not only has Hugo been instilled with a love of the movies, he develops a relationship with an old man who works at the station with his own history in film. Maybe I was one of the only people who wasn't surprised that director Martin Scorsese would take on an adaptation like this.

"Hugo" lags a little in its first half, but by the end of the movie, to employ the cliché, I had completely fallen under its spell. The double mysteries of what Hugo has been up to in his room above the train station, and what happened to the embittered old man who takes him on as some kind of apprentice, were completely enthralling, highlighted by a few amazing setpieces. Asa Butterfield as Hugo provided just the right amount of pathos without mugging, and leave it to Scorsese to wring out of Ben Kingsley (as the embittered old man) his best performance since 2000's "Sexy Beast," in a role that could not be more different in terms of overall volume. 

When the movie comes to show us some of the old movies Hugo loved, a hush fell over the theatre; imagine how magical these things could be, when they didn't have the tricks to make them look seamless like they do now. The simple delights of camera foolery like making an actor "disappear" by stopping the film, are still delightful now. And speaking of foolery, I'm not sure what the 3-D adds to the element of the film, although in a few instances this really stands out. This is Scorsese's shiniest movie (at least among the ones I've seen) and to be honest I had expected him to insert a little more grit into the story of Hugo. (Though, Scorsese fans, try to spot the Steadicam-Copacabana equivalent sequence early in this film.) I think it's an output of the combination of 3-D CGI that characters often seem to have a glowy aura around them; sometimes I found it fitting, sometimes distracting. As was pointed out by another critic, Scorsese is dabbling in new technology to honor a film innovator who did the same; I'm just not convinced he needed those tricks to bring his marvelous illusion across.

Watching "Hugo" made me think a lot about the other major award contender this season honoring the history of cinema, "The Artist," about the silent-film era and the move to "talkies." For me there's no question that "Hugo" is a better movie, because it doesn't just recreate the art it's trying to honor, it transcends it using the budget and powers that we have. It doesn't just say, "Remember that bygone era? That was awesome." Additionally, I liked "The Artist" but I never bought its characters as truly in danger; they were just figures of whimsy enacting an homage, whereas for all the comedic moments Hugo's nemesis the stationmaster (played by Sasha Baron Cohen, with many echoes of the Childcatcher in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang") gives to the movie, he is a real threat. (Also, really happy for you, gonna let you finish, but "Singin' In The Rain" is the best movie about the end of silent film of all time. Of all time!) If critics aren't taking "Hugo" seriously because it's ostensibly a children's movie, and it didn't screen at Cannes, that's a real shame. 

Filmbook verdict: See the movie even if you haven't read the book, but if you have the chance to read the book, also do that.

Forthcoming in this space: Reviews of "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," "We Need To Talk About Kevin" and the 2011 "Jane Eyre."

Linked without comment: Ten Aspects of THE GREAT GATSBY We Can't Wait For Baz Luhrmann To Film In 3-D

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.

Thanks for the assistance!

I feel slightly more fired up about my resolution to read more biographies after reading about a teenage Lev Grossman's obsession with them. (Bonus points for the Plath biting story. Never goes out of style!) One of my Christmas presents was a copy of the new Vonnegut biography he mentions.

Clutter

Of all the tchotchkes I've seen sold at bookstores near the front register, I think this is the most pointless:

I get why bookstores sell non-book items, not just from a profit standpoint. I have bought many of them myself. That said, what is this? It's not a game... it's not really a toy. It's a bunch of junk related to an overrated movie, in a box, for $9. Everything in the clearance bin was more useful than this (including those creepy Elf on a Shelf coffee mugs). Someone had to make the decision to sell this and I can only ask: why?

(See, I can get mad about trivial stuff too. [I'm not actually mad.])

Flanagan, Didion and the G-word (and the F-word)

Caitlin Flanagan puts forth several legitimate criticisms of the work of Joan Didion in her latest Atlantic article, yet for a takedown, it's surprisingly sentimental. Dismantling her argument, though, is as easy as pulling the chord on a parachute thanks to a personal digression that not only goes on far too long but also conveniently reveals her underminer's agenda.

The heart of "The Autumn of Joan Didion" is a painfully detailed description of the time Flanagan actually met Didion when the latter was already two books into her career, and the former was the teenage daughter of a UC-Berkeley professor (one imagines her as the Alex P. Keaton of the house, or whatever the '60s equivalent would be) prompted to make small talk with a stranger. Didion doesn't say much, and despite parental prompting young Caitlin didn't really take a shine to her. Years later, she picks up SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM and is transformed.

Why does Flanagan dwell on this as a starting point to her own Didion experience? By her own admission she and the author swapped few words and began neither a kind of great mentorship nor a bitter feud. This is how Flanagan shows us how, despite the works of art that followed, her opinion hardened against the writer at fourteen and no book, let alone THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING or BLUE NIGHTS, could change it. And somehow, that girl's opinion has enough merit for her to chase down the Didion legacy with a butterfly net and try to preserve it by killing it in flight.

At the core of Flanagan's argument that Didion is overrated and irrationally defended is this concept that fans of Joan Didion are attracted to her as a symbol of eternal girlhood, fragile, in need of protection -- a particularly female attraction. (That the author appeals to women in somewhat greater proportions than men, I will accept, although maybe not to the degree that is described here.) This view is based on her own admitted admiration of Didion's work, and the author must be given some credit for throwing in her lot with the fans she later turns on -- but only a smidge, because the way she goes about it is petty in the short game and nonsensically sexist in the long game. If that long-ago dinner guest had gently nurtured young Caitlin's literary bent, would we-- actually, I don't care, and neither should you.

Flanagan has been flying this protectionist flag over teenage girls, including reaching back into the past for her younger self, for several years, and her new book GIRL LAND (which I haven't had opportunity to read yet) elaborates on this theme. There are a lot of forces these "girls" need to be protected from, but it is understood that the "code of feminism" and the desires of men are among them as I alluded to two days ago. Being a girl means being "someone’s star student and someone else’s star daughter," not someone in yourself; to give up one's agency in favor of the cushiness of belonging. As to which parts of Joan Didion correlate to this behavior, Flanagan cites the author's preoccupation with interior decoration and fashion, and to a series of vacations she took at significant junctures in her marriage that may have offered her solace. Ladies love travel and clothes, am I right?! It is at once something to be desired and something to be feared, but if you can't be one, you seem to owe it to others to help them be one.

In "The Autumn of Joan Didion" Flanagan views Didion fandom (as it were) as a means for grown women to express that they still want to be part of that protected class of girls, but even the way she designates that is problematic: Of what does Flanagan's description of "the eternal-girl impulse" remind us, with its "desire to retreat to our room, to close the door," than Virginia Woolf, who would have bristled at the idea that she needs to be protected? Conflating the desire for solitude and introspection with an essential immaturity, Flanagan infers that only women acting in the spheres she finds appropriate -- implied, full participation in wifehood and motherhood -- are truly self-actualized, and that any woman who wants something different (like, oh, a job at Vogue, a New York apartment and a celebrated book of nonfiction work) is shying away from her real destiny.

Her indictment of Didion as a bad mother comes as a surprise mostly in how clichéd it is; is this not the first line of attack against any public woman? Maybe second to what she looks like and whether the viewer considers her attractive! No worries, Flanagan has covered that too, snubbing Didion for wearing an inappropriate Chanel suit to her parents' dinner party. (This is the only place, ever, where the word "inappropriate" will be used to modify "Chanel suit.")

This liberal usage of the g-word reminds me of a public-service ad my mom had framed in her home office for years, whose full text I am posting here because it took me long enough to dig it up (source: United Technologies): 

Wouldn't 1980 be a great year to take one giant step forward for womankind and get rid of "the girl"?
Your attorney says, "If I'm not here just leave it with the girl."
The purchasing agent says, "Drop off your bid with the girl."
A manager says, "My girl will get back to your girl."

What girl?
Do they mean Miss Rose?
Do they mean Ms. Torres?
Do they mean Mrs. McCullough?
Do they mean Joy Jackson?

"The girl" is certainly a woman when she's out of her teens.
Like you, she has a name. Use it.

The reclamation of the word "girls," if it happens, is still a long way off, despite 2011's gift of "girls (who run the world," but striving to avoid the G-word becomes in itself a feminist act. (Well, also, the dodge of using the collegiate "dude" for people of all genders can only function for so long.) I didn't understand that the first, oh, hundred times I saw this ad, hanging in the office where my mom took her consulting projects home, later prepped for the classes she taught; where, when she stopped working outside of the home, she assembled the family Christmas letter and planned our (Girl) Scout meetings; and where she now, having returned to work, transcribes interviews and takes conference calls.

Nowhere does Flanagan underline this treasured image of the protected G-word so much as in, at the end of her tortured introduction featuring a number of other New York critics (none of whom she courteously describes as "girls"), she makes the claim that what Joan Didion is to girls, Hunter S. Thompson is to boys: "He gave the boys twisted pig-fuckers and quarts of tequila; she gave us quiet days in Malibu and flowers in our hair." Not particularly wanting to drag the good Doctor into it, I am still repelled by the expressed polarity, the same kind that says "Sorry, my magazine doesn't care about diversity and I didn't take the TIME to correct it," or more nastily writes in to review outlets and says "Why are you covering this book that is by a woman and has a pair of shoes on the cover?" The kind that is all too ready to take any opportunity, when a woman encourages the pigeonholing of other female writers, to shove all of them into that pigeonhole and say "Be thankful you have shelter at all, why, back in the twenties..."

If girls should be protected from anything, it's from role models like this who teach women writers -- well, all writers, really -- that sniping at manners (“She never took her purse off her lap!”) and armchair diagnosis ("profound—crippling—social-anxiety disorder") carry the same weight as literary criticism. That laments that a woman can get old and write about being old, instead of endlessly re-treading the past. She can sharpen the claws as much as she wants on Didion, who seems aloof to the jabs of mere mortals these days, but it's a curious thing to argue that all teenage girls need to be protected against their lapses in judgment, except yourself at fourteen.

To dislike Didion based on her writing, to say that she has leaned too much on pat phrases and that her "schtick got old" late in her career is one thing, but Flanagan is so knotted up in protecting all the girls (and all the women who would be girls) she just needed to make it personal, to apply the attitude she developed as a fourteen-year-old (in other words, legitimately a girl) to a woman with a storied career and to accuse her of dragging the world back into adolescence. To do so serves the masters who would separate literature by and about women from Great Literature, who don't care about the Bechdel test, who would indeed argue (as Flanagan comes perilously close, on the side of an either/or) that Didion is a narcissist just for writing a memoir at all. This, of course, from a memoirist herself, always attacking from the inside.

Filmbook: "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" (2011)

Tomas Alfredson's adaptation of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" begins, literally, in darkness, as two British intelligence agents are meeting to discuss a private assignment. There are long pauses, and allusions to things that don't make any sense, and then we get two enduring images: A man felled on a cobblestone street, his arms splayed out like a swastika, and the unreadable face of a man whose boss has just resigned for him from a lifelong career. John le Carre's Cold War conspiracy thriller, beloved by many, is short on conventional action and long on recollections and revelations through deduction -- necessary on the page, but would be impossible onscreen. This film is also long, but well paced, quiet but not monotonous (and when we hear it, well scored), and retro without being cutesy. The more I think about it the more I liked it, but I went in prepared.

Gary Oldman as Smiley, the British former agent who loses his job in the opening minutes of the film but is recruited by some of his old coworkers to help root out a mole among the agents, may well be in the most taciturn role to win the Best Actor Oscar. (Unless there's a heartwarming acclaimed story about a mute that I'm forgetting. There probably is.) My favorite "Smiley moment" is when he visits the former secretary at the Circus who was let go just after him, to see if she remembered anything useful, and nothing that happens during that peculiar social call brings up a reaction in him. Nothing! The man barely blinks let alone talks, but something about his glassed-in stare prompts people to keep talking until they've given him the information they want. From what I've read it seems that his performance is a direct acknowlegment of Alec Guinness's turn in the British "Tinker, Tailor" miniseries, although not a complete recreation. I was reminded of Oldman's cop rule in the rebooted "Batman" franchise as the guy who is wiser and sadder than everyone, and what a terrible burden that can be to a man.

Along with Smiley the movie takes a special interest in Peter Guillam, played by Britishest Named Actor Ever Benedict Cumberbatch, who is a lower-ranking agent in the Circus who assists Smiley (though the book gets into why he does a little bit more than the movie). Cumberbatch is a lanky 35 but looks about 19, and between his blonde '70s shag and his weird blue eyes he looks unearthly, like a space alien, or David Bowie in his cocaine and milk phase. There's a scene where he emerges from behind a door to meet someone, and you don't see the the moment of startle on the other person's face, but you can viscerally feel it like it's happening to you. He's terrific, and I regret that people may give up on this movie based on the first hour and not see the best aspects of his performance.

Which is not to say that Oldman and Cumberbatch are the only good actors here, because this movie is like a showcase for British male actors. Toby Jones is at his sniveling best as one of the Circus top brass, Percy Alleline (who I never liked, for the record), and Colin Firth sheds some of his charm as another, Bill Haydon. If we want to talk about people disappearing into roles, let's talk about Tom Hardy, with none of the bravado of his character in "Inception," nor any of the brawn he packed on to play an MMA fighter in "Warrior," as the rogue agent who tries to expose the mole in his own way. Mark Strong is essential as Jim Prideaux, and keep an eye out for Swedish actor David Dencik who is all shifting eyes and flop sweat as Esterhase.

Purists will probably mind, and why shouldn't they? A fair amount of chronology has been shifted from the novel, with le Carre's opening scene of a schoolteacher (the forcibly retired Jim Prideaux, as it turns out) befriending a lonely kid pushed well into the first hour of the film. Even having no great love for the book (which I read about six weeks ago and was startled by the lack of action in it) I was irritated by some of the minor changes made to the book, and one major change I'm not positive of but is still confusing me a little. Here's where I think the adaptation may be a double-edged sword: While I didn't get lost in "Tinker Tailor" I was confused enough, particularly at the beginning, to wonder whether people who hadn't read the book would be lost. On the other hand, familiarity with the source material may interfere with other viewers' enjoyment.  My test case (the friend I went with, familiar with neither book nor movie) reported that the first hour was confusing, and then it all fell into place for him, but your mileage may vary. (He did also point out that the trailer makes this look like more of an action thriller than it actually is... sic semper Hollywoodis?)

Yet I have to give the movie credit for its strongest scene, delivered in flashback, that I'm almost certain was not in the original material but should have been -- snippets of a Christmas party, before the secret mission, before Smiley got fired and as the doubts are setting in. I could watch an entire movie of just that party, but what I was shown was enough. Between that scene and the goosebump-inducing closing montage*, I was reminded that a great adaptation transcends the weaknesses of its source while employing its strengths to make something new and memorable. It can give you chills.

Filmbook Verdict: Read the book, then see the movie. And after you see the movie, you should listen to this great interview with Tomas Alfredson from the Filmspotting podcast.

*Note: While not the last movie I saw in theatres, there are a lot of parallels between this and the Fincher "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" I just sat through. A somewhat spoilery, disorganized list:  
David Dencik has a small role in "Dragon Tattoo" and a larger role here
Symbolic emphasis placed on a woman who is hardly in the movie (Ann Smiley, George's wife, vs Harriet Vanger in "Dragon Tattoo")
Directors known for horror (Alfredson's last movie was the vampire thriller "Let The Right One In")
The yellow wash on the flashbacks, for that nostalgic tint
Device of flipping through old photos/ microfilm in order to "see" a clue from the past
Importance to the plot, and specifically the denoument, of a cabin in the woods
Character isolating himself to go back decades to uncover something [yeah, I realize that's pretty general]
Looming shadow of World War II as glory days 
Surprising juxtaposition of song + scene near the end 

With extra hatesauce please

And lo, on the tenth day of that new year, the Atlantic did bring forth Caitlin Flanagan calling Joan Didion "a triumph—and a disaster," and there was much rejoicing. And the BHDs cackled and rubbed their palms together waiting for the printer to spit the article out, and they commuted back to their home boroughs eagerly awaiting the crackling fire of Flanagan's surely inaccurate* summation of her fellow writer according to her straw woman arguments. (Via PWK.)

*Here are a few Caitlin Flanagan arguments (paraphrased for time) I have disagreed with: 
1. "The purpose of all teenage girls is to fall in love and that is all they are suited for and but so something about TWILIGHT"
2. "All women should be stay at home mothers because that is the purpose of womanhood, even though I have nannies so I can write full-time but I don't see how that is relevant"
3. "No women truly want to hook up, they just all want boyyyyyyyfriends and I am basing that belief on a YA book I saw in a store once, and also Taylor Swift..."
4. "... And if a woman says otherwise she has clearly been brainwashed by evil cultural forces! And we have to protect her! By telling her what to do."

This week, in Meetup invites that probably went to the wrong person...

What it's like to read books on an iPad

The first book I finished in 2012 was Matt Bondurant's THE NIGHT SWIMMER (liked it!) Because I had an e-galley it was also the first book I started and finished on my new-to-me iPad.

I love gadgets but had held off on buying myself an iPad for the usual reasons -- cost, wariness of what the first few generations would be able and unable to do, lack of pressing need for another consumptive media device. I'm also not a huge touchscreen person, as the last person in New York to voluntarily get a Blackberry (and you know what it does really well? It makes phone calls ahem). Playing with it has definitely reignited that sense of fun I had when I got my first mp3 player, and I haven't even gotten addicted to Angry Birds yet -- but, as everyone warned, it is better suited to consuming media than creating, as I struggle through composing an email longer than three sentences.

Kindle books on an iPad can be accessed through the free Amazon app and downloaded manually one-by-one from your existing Kindle library. So far I haven't bought any books through the Kindle app on the iPad or iBooks, just taught myself how to sync the app and the Kindle (a process in itself). Once I did that I was able to ping-pong back and forth between both with the same book, a trick that probably delighted only me, but if both devices are on and connected to wireless internet, one will alert you if you are on a further location with the other and prompt you to jump ahead. It only gets confusing if you remember a paragraph being at a particular location on one page, and then find it in a different place on the other device.

The major advantage I see so far in reading in Kindle for iPad over Kindle itself is the backlit screen, making it unnecessary to turn another light on; the major disadvantage, the attraction that an iPad might have to people on the subway who would not consider a Kindle worth stealing. Being able to flip back and forth while reading to my email or Google Reader is a draw; I don't need the interruption, although it was nice to manage both in one device.

I haven't done a really thorough exploration of the literary or reading-related apps out there, so I'd welcome your suggestions. I will say that the Goodreads app is lovely and so easy to refresh I almost wished that I had more Goodreads friends.

Besides being white and male, obvs

Michael Chabon, John Irving, Tom Wolfe, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen. What do these five guys have in common?

ETA - Sunday afternoon - really, no one had a guess? Is it because there was no giveaway? Well anyway, they all have new books due out in 2012. Fall, May, fall, May and I think April, respectively. 

Next year in Dublin

On Tuesday night I met some friends at The Ginger Man, a pub in midtown I see that there are many pubs the world over named The Ginger Man, appropriate for a book about the lighter side of drinking yourself into oblivion. I appreciated that the bar's Twitter feed (of course it has one) pays tribute to the protagonist of J.P. Donleavy's book in its identity.

I didn't find it terribly authentic to the book, as I am sure you are surprised to find out. The impressive array of taps behind the bar are undoubtedly appreciated by its present-day clientele but would probably be seen as a frill in post-World War II Dublin. The bar is very well lit in places, a terrible place to hide from your creditors. It was playing kind of a downtempo mix of music better suited to staring out the window than enjoying happy hour (unless you normally clink glasses to Grizzly Bear and/or the Postal Service).

In the end I think the most GINGER MAN-esque aspect of the Ginger Man was the indifference of the waitstaff to my desire to get a drink. I eventually gave up trying because I was attempting to interact more with them than I was with my actual-factual friends. If I want to be ignored by bartenders I'll just go to Murray Hill. (There's one for my fellow New Yorkers!) On the other hand, Sebastian Dangerfield would probably just fall over the bar and serve himself, and maybe that's the lesson.

Christopher Hitchens' last column pays tribute to Charles Dickens.

Unbookening with the help of Jonathan Ames

"Anthony Powell once titled one of his novels BOOKS DO FURNISH A ROOM. In my case, it’s more like BOOKS DO OVERWHELM A ROOM. I have a thousand or more novels and works of nonfiction, but not enough shelves, so I have uneven stacks of tomes everywhere, all teetering in an intoxicated manner. But I don’t care. I’m a middle-aged old fart who steadfastly refuses to ever read on an electronic device, if for no other reason than I’m a frightened, small-minded technophobe. Also, these gadgets are going to change the way novels are written and conceived, and I’m against change when it comes to things I do." --Jonathan Ames, "The Mess I'm In"

Never mind that we came to opposite conclusions on the matter. Anyway:

Checked out 4 books from the library
Bought 1 book on Kindle
Received 3 to review
Had 1 I loaned out returned to me (THE ASTRAL, so who wants it next?)
Got 13 books for Christmas
22 in

Returned 8 books to the library -- I started the new year with none borrowed, although that changed quickly
Deleted 5 off the Kindle
Donated 3
16 out

One thing in James Franco's dubious favor on the sale of his first novel ACTORS ANONYMOUS? The acquiring editor is Ed Park, who will hopefully put his wordsmithery powers to work to convince Franco to go for a title besides ACTORS ANONYMOUS. I mean, seriously, now.

"Portlandia" shows how not to handsell

I've been catching up on the IFC hipster-mocking sketch show "Portlandia" before the second season premieres on Friday. I haven't found their feminist bookstore skits set at the fictional "Women and Women First" to be the best of Armisen, Brownstein et al's material -- and sometimes I get the creeping feeling that people enjoy them because there's something inherently funny about a feminist bookstore, not because of the Actual Jokes -- but this one provides a solid example of how not to make a customer for life.

A recent article about the show in the New Yorker mentioned that Brownstein's long-lost memoir THE SOUND OF WHERE YOU ARE will be published (Ecco/ HarperCollins) in 2013.

Following in the footsteps of its successful album flash sales, Amazon has 100 Kindle books on sale for $3.99 or less right now. My pick: the creepy grown-up-Nancy-Drew suspense novel A FIELD OF DARKNESS.

The first books I bought from Amazon were...

This blog post, The last 13 years of my life in Amazon orders, made me want to track down what my first Amazon purchase was. Now, in my case the stat is slightly misleading because it wasn't the first time I had ordered from the site -- just the first time I did so using my own account. Prior to, looks like, fall of 2001, I would decide what I wanted and give the right amount of babysitting money to my dad, who was The Person Who Used Amazon In The House, and then he would order it.

Anyway:

These were for an independent study I did in high school. If we had a foreign-language bookstore (or even a section) in Milwaukee at the time, I didn't know where it was. (I could have tried the UWM bookstore, although I remember it as being kind of light on non-course books.) I'm not a huge Alberti fan, but I think I was encouraged to not just read Lorca for a full year and call it done. I later lent that biography to a tour guide based in southern Spain; I can't remember whether he mailed it back to me or I gave in and ordered another copy.

Now go look up yours and tell me what you found.

All the books I read in 2011

Well, creepy. I read exactly the same number as last year. Again, I took a few out before I posted the list (for secrets) but this is about as complete as it's going to get.

January

David Foster Wallace, THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM

David Vann, CARIBOU ISLAND

Kathrine Switzer, MARATHON WOMAN

Diana Spechler, SKINNY: A NOVEL

Hannah Pittard, THE FATES WILL FIND THEIR WAY

Brooke Berman, NO PLACE LIKE HOME

Reread: Margaret Atwood, THE BLIND ASSASSIN 

Kevin Brockmeier, THE ILLUMINATION

Ted Conover, WHITEOUT

Urban Waite, THE TERROR OF LIVING

February

Kristin Gore, SWEET JIMINY

Benjamin Hale, THE EVOLUTION OF BRUNO LITTLEMORE

Louise Dean, THE OLD ROMANTIC

Neal Pollack, STRETCH

Tom Holt, LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF SAUSAGES

Anonymous, O: A PRESIDENTIAL NOVEL

Dan DeWeese, YOU DON’T LOVE THIS MAN

Glen David Gold, CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL

March

J.P. Donleavy, THE GINGER MAN

Laura Kasischke, THE RAISING

Reread: David Mitchell, CLOUD ATLAS

Daniel Akst, WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY

Sarah Vowell, UNFAMILIAR FISHES

Lee Martin, BREAK THE SKIN

Georges Simenon, THREE BEDROOMS IN MANHATTAN

Charles Portis, TRUE GRIT

Susan Yager, THE HUNDRED-YEAR DIET

William Lychack, THE ARCHITECT OF FLOWERS

Cara Hoffman, SO MUCH PRETTY

Manuel Munoz, WHAT YOU SEE IN THE DARK

Elaine Dundy, THE DUD AVOCADO

April

Jen Trynin, EVERYTHING I’M CRACKED UP TO BE

David Foster Wallace, THE PALE KING 

Teddy Wayne, KAPITOIL 

Sara Gruen, WATER FOR ELEPHANTS

Steven Levy, IN THE PLEX 

Tina Fey, BOSSYPANTS 

Jim Knipfel, THE BLOW-OFF 

Jennifer Egan, A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD 

Gary Taubes, WHY WE GET FAT 

Arthur Phillips, THE TRAGEDY OF ARTHUR

Jen Lancaster, IF YOU WERE HERE

May

Chris Adrian, THE GREAT NIGHT

Hilary Winston, MY BOYFRIEND WROTE A BOOK ABOUT ME

Marcelo Figueras, KAMCHATKA

Diana Abu-Jaber, BIRDS OF PARADISE

Douglas Kennedy, THE MOMENT

Delphine de Vigan, UNDERGROUND TIME

Jancee Dunn, WHY IS MY MOTHER GETTING A TATTOO?

Manisha Thakor, MY OWN TWO FEET

Dean Bakopoulos, MY AMERICAN UNHAPPINESS

Alison Espach, THE ADULTS

James Hynes, NEXT

William Lychach, THE WASP EATER

Eleanor Henderson, TEN THOUSAND SAINTS

June

Jon-Jon Goulian, THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SKIRT

Jesse Ball, THE CURFEW

Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, ALL THINGS SHINING

Kate Christensen, THE ASTRAL

Vera Brittain, TESTAMENT OF YOUTH

Patton Oswalt, ZOMBIE SPACESHIP WASTELAND

David Kaiser, HOW THE HIPPIES SAVED PHYSICS

Libba Bray, GOING BOVINE

Gary Shteyngart, SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY

Joseph Conrad, LORD JIM

Greg Hrbek, DESTROY ALL MONSTERS

July

Bonnie Jo Campbell, ONCE UPON A RIVER

Edie Meidav, LOLA, CALIFORNIA

J. Courtney Sullivan, MAINE

Kathryn Stockett, THE HELP

Bella Pollen, THE SUMMER OF THE BEAR

Tom Rachman, THE IMPERFECTIONISTS

Stephen Kelman, PIGEON ENGLISH 

Laura Lippmann, THE GIRL IN THE GREEN RAINCOAT

V.S. Naipaul, A BEND IN THE RIVER

Molly Birnbaum, SEASON TO TASTE 

John O’Hara, A RAGE TO LIVE 

Jennifer Weiner, THEN CAME YOU 

Kurt Vonnegut, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

Tom Scocca, BEIJING WELCOMES YOU

Richard Ford, THE SPORTSWRITER

Eva Gabrielsson, THERE ARE THINGS I WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT STIEG LARSSON AND ME

Caitlin Shetterly, MADE FOR YOU AND ME

Tom Perrotta, BAD HAIRCUT

Reread: Daniel Quinn, ISHMAEL

Amy Waldman, THE SUBMISSION

August

Anita Desai, THE ARTIST OF DISAPPEARANCE

Rick Moody, THE BLACK VEIL

Jason Mulgrew, EVERYTHING IS WRONG WITH ME

Max Barry, MACHINE MAN

Richard Russo, THAT OLD CAPE MAGIC

Tom Perrotta, THE LEFTOVERS

Drew Magary, THE POSTMORTAL

Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti, THE CHAIRS ARE WHERE THE PEOPLE GO

Tea Obreht, THE TIGER’S WIFE

Joseph Heller, CATCH-22 

Chad Harbach, THE ART OF FIELDING 

Ernest Hemingway, THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

September

Nicholson Baker, HOUSE OF HOLES

Kevin Mitnick, GHOST IN THE WIRES 

Jesmyn Ward, SALVAGE THE BONES

Guy Vanderhaeghe, A GOOD MAN 

Anne Enright, THE FORGOTTEN WALTZ 

Suzanne Collins, THE HUNGER GAMES

October

Alan Hollinghurst, THE STRANGER’S CHILD

Suzanne Collins, CATCHING FIRE 

Susanna Daniel, STILTSVILLE 

Jennifer Egan, THE INVISIBLE CIRCUS 

Jeffrey Eugenides, THE MARRIAGE PLOT

Susan Orlean, RIN TIN TIN 

Benjamin Buchholz, ONE HUNDRED AND ONE NIGHTS

Jeanne Darst, FICTION RUINED MY FAMILY 

David McRaney, YOU ARE NOT SO SMART 

Kelly Cutrone, NORMAL GETS YOU NOWHERE 

Karen Russell, SWAMPLANDIA! 

Howard Jacobsen, NO MORE MR. NICE GUY 

Colson Whitehead, ZONE ONE 

Charles Seife, ZERO: THE BIOGRAPHY OF A DANGEROUS IDEA 

Suzanne Morrison, YOGA BITCH 

November

Lily Tuck, I MARRIED YOU FOR HAPPINESS 

Laura Lippmann, I’D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE 

Raymond Beauchemain, EVERYTHING I OWN 

Suzanne Collins, MOCKINJAY

Peter Nadas, PARALLEL STORIES

Roberto Bolaño, 2666

Rashad Harrison, OUR MAN IN THE DARK

Jennifer Close, GIRLS IN WHITE DRESSES 

Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi, THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE

Audrey Schulman, THREE WEEKS IN DECEMBER

Kaui Hart Hemmings, THE DESCENDANTS

John Le Carre, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

Michael Ondaatje, THE ENGLISH PATIENT

December

Lan Samantha Chang, ALL IS FORGOTTEN, NOTHING IS LOST

Luis Alberto Urrea, QUEEN OF AMERICA

Donald Miller, A MILLION MILES IN A THOUSAND YEARS

Jacques Steinberg, YOU ARE AN IRONMAN

Jennifer Egan, LOOK AT ME

Craig McDonald, EL GAVILAN

Jen Miller, BOOK A WEEK WITH JEN

Alex Gilvarry, FROM THE MEMOIRS OF A NON-ENEMY COMBATANT

Graciela Limon, THE MADNESS OF MAMA CARLOTA

Paula Fox, THE COLDEST WINTER

"Be regular and ordinary in your habits, so that you can be violent and original in your work."
-Gustave Flaubert

2012 Resolutions for Reading

For once, setting realistic resolutions really paid off in 2011:

• Read 2666. Yes! I started it in July and read it on and off till November, but I finally did it. 
• Knock 3 books off the Modern Library list.  How about four?! And two of them were books I would gladly recommend to others (CATCH-22, A BEND IN THE RIVER).
  
• Read the 3 David Foster Wallace short-story collections. All right, I didn't do this. I didn't even read one, although I now own one. Maybe I'll do this this year, but I won't resolve to do it, because I don't know if short-story collections are my favorite thing in general. (That awkward moment when!)

Here's what I will resolve to do in 2012: 

• Read more nonfiction. I own plenty and I'm interested in it, but it wasn't until looking through my entire list of books in 2011 that I found a hole there. Most of the nonfiction I did read, although I enjoyed it, was fairly niche. I think this one will complete itself without a problem. 
• Knock 6 books off the Modern Library list. Aiming higher. 
• Continue to strive to actually read the books I own. Not surprisingly, there are still a lot! Christmas was really good to me in this regard, not that I'm complaining, but now I'm going to read those books. 
• Change my blogging process a little. Just going to leave this here since I'm sure the minutiae will just put to sleep. But, see if you notice anything!