National Book Award nominees: Lahiri, Pynchon, Wright already winners to me

I mean, who cares if the entire country is going into default and world crisis and all that, but the nominees for next month's National Book Awards were released this morning. In Fiction Jhumpa Lahiri and Thomas Pynchon will be duking it out with George Saunders, James McBride and relative newcomer Rachel Kushner -- really, there are no losers here. In Nonfiction, Lawrence Wright's Scientology expose GOING CLEAR faces Jill Lepore's biography of Jane Franklin (sounds fascinating based on the New Yorker excerpt), BEA darling HITLER'S FURIES (by Wendy Lower, about Nazi women), George Packer's new-economy tome THE UNWINDING and Alan Taylor's THE INTERNAL ENEMY: SLAVERY AND WAR IN VIRGINIA.

See poetry and YA categories here. Ready your library requests!

In the future, we will all be Thomas Pynchons

It may be impossible to get a current photograph of him, but the famously reclusive author will publish his first new book since 2009. To the woods, everyone! (Oh wait, he lives here in New York? Never mind.)

Bonnie made a joke now as she served him his martini.

When I was a freshman in college I was assigned THE CRYING OF LOT 49 in my fiction-writing class. The instructor was terrific but he didn't understand why we didn't warm more to Pynchon's most accessible work.

"The last time I taught this, my students were drawing the [not really a spoiler] post horn on everything," he said, with a head-tilt of disappointment. 

For about two-thirds of BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS I did not see what the fuss was about, but when the final character was added to the mix -- one who in a sense had been there all along, but not participating -- it finally clicked for me, and it was so good. And the next day I found myself in a meeting doodling "Goodbye, Blue Monday" at the top of my to-do list. Like a symphonic motif, it recurs until you realize its function all along.

The skeleton of BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS is the gradual unraveling of car dealer Dwayne Hoover under the influence of little known pulp novelist Kilgore Trout. Trout began his career writing science-fiction filler for pornographic magazines; since it was assumed no one was reading his work, his style evolved along its own weird but highly allegorical path. Trout comes to Midland City, where Dwayne Hoover lives, at the behest of a local millionaire who wants him to speak at their arts festival -- even though he's fairly sure they're making fun of him.

Vonnegut's satiric target in this one is much wider than SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, almost too diffuse -- probably the reason I had trouble gripping onto this one. I'm not saying any of them were unjustified, but it tends to dilute the power. Which is interesting in light of the author's recent book ban in Republic, Missouri, in which school board member Wesley Scroggins criticizes SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE for basically that, containing a wide range of offensive material (and profanity!) while not even mentioning what the book is about which is, at its heart, wartime atrocities specifically those committed by the Allies. I learned more about the bombing of Dresden from Vonnegut than from either AP US or European History. Might as well shear those off, too.

The turn in BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS doesn't promise (threaten?) the same realization, but it's almost as powerful.

The Internets inform me that this book has been made into a movie with the oddest-looking cast ever. (Barbara Hershey and Omar Epps? Forsooth!) There is also a bar in Bushwick called Goodbye Blue Monday and I will probably have to go there.


Illustration: Well Said

Rainy September

A blogger called Editorial Ass is leading a group read of GRAVITY'S RAINBOW beginning this week. Surf on over to get the full details and sign up.

Much as I cannot resist ambitious reading projects and the chance to knock off another major book I have never read, I am more on the fence with this one than usual. First, I am not done with INFINITE JEST yet, and fear that if I put both of those books on my nightstand together they might spontaneously combust. Second, I'm readying my pick for Wrapped Up in Books which goes up in less than a week. Third, once I do those two things I have a lot of other reading to get to which I've been putting off, as my sedimentary nightstand ought to attest. But if you sign up, let me know how it goes.

ETA: The folks behind Infinite Summer have also announced their next group read; it's DRACULA for October. I think I'll jump in for their not-officially-confirmed next pick of 2666 in January, but again: if you sign up, let me know how it goes!

Harper Perennial's newest Olive Editions, out November 3

Wry in-joke about the totemic images of chick lit and the struggle to escape those trailing associations, or lazypants joke inappropriate for the first female author in a series carrying a certain amount of hipster prestige? You decide!

Check out the others (with which I really have no argument) below:


Cute, and definitely aligns with the subject matter.


A terrific in-joke if you've read it, and still rather striking if you haven't.

Images via HarperCollinscatalog.com

Post-Its: Representing at least three of the seven deadly sins

Entertainment Weekly's Shelf Life: EW recently started a books blog and at first I was underwhelmed, but I appreciate that after the authors posted a trailer for Thomas Pynchon's new book INHERENT VICE, they did some research and found the narrator is Pynchon himself. (He sounds like a cross between Allen Ginsberg and The Dude.)

S.F. Chronicle's City Brights: I want to read all 100 books on the Modern Library list; John Gilkey wanted to steal first editions of all 100, according to the new true-crime thriller THE MAN WHO LOVED BOOKS TOO MUCH. Yup, that's too much all right.

GalleyCat: Julia Roberts was spotted filming a scene yesterday at Brooklyn's BookCourt bookstore for the forthcoming adaptation of EAT, PRAY, LOVE. (Still haven't been there; what is wrong with me?) Between that and the Strand dollar-cart cameo in "Julie & Julia" -- about which more tomorrow, but I believe that scene was also shot on location -- the gesture is appreciated.

Slate's DoubleX: The death of chick lit has been wildly overreported, but usually not from an author working in the genre. Sarah Bilston's first book came out before the credit crisis; in editing her second, she questions what yesterday's blithe heroines need to do to still be relatable for readers.

Infinite Summer corner! Huffington Post: Mike Miley finished INFINITE JEST ahead of schedule (well done, sir). Now he shares what it's like to have finished and be "free to play the field and flirt with all those other books on the shelf that had been giving me the eye."