February 2012
20 posts
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A Review: Red Plenty by Francis Spufford
I am thinking of riddles. When is a fairy tale both fiction and history? How does a fiction become truth? What has the power to alter the past? The answer to all is Red Plenty, a book that spans 32 years of Soviet history, a book that is fairy tale, fiction, and history.
Spufford mingles several fictional narratives—albeit featuring some real, historical figures—with dryer chapters about the...
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“But occasionally a woman is interested in a Houellebecq hero. If he is also...”
– Elaine Blair, “Work, Not Sex, At Last,” on Michel Houellebecq and his latest, The Map and the Territory
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Not on Geoff Dyer Day!
In honor of the U.S. publication of Geoff Dyer’s latest book, Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room, enjoy these Dyer-centric reads:
“Like a tired person trying to get to sleep who is kept awake by sounds from the street that he or she has for years scarcely noticed, I found that the word had become suddenly unignorable.” Dyer on the intrusiveness of the adjective...
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"Extricating Young Gussie"
Because it’s Friday, and you should be laughing.
P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) was a British humorist and prolific writer. He is best remembered for his Bertie Wooster and Jeeves stories, which narrate the escapades of an incompetent young man and his rather brilliant valet. Enjoy this story—the very first—about the pair’s antics.
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She sprang it on me before breakfast....
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A Review: Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman
At first, the storyline of Girlchild may seem a bit worn-out: a young girl, raised by a single mother in a trailer park, suffers from her family’s mistakes and struggles to comprehend them.
But within a few pages, readers will realize how unique Hassman’s novel is. It reaches dizzying heights of devastation, weaves an prodigious collage of stories and voices, and begets Rory Hendrix, one of...
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“‘Look, I’m not saying your plenty is impossible,’ jabbed the...”
– from Red Plenty by Francis Spufford
* * * This book is history, fiction, intertwined narratives, tableaux of 1960s USSR. Spufford’s prose and his ambition should be admired. But, like many an editor, I have a hunch that Red Plenty is “not for me.”
Look for a full...
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Literary Gossip: Shirley Temple was the real...
In 1937 [Graham] Greene was a film reviewer for Night and Day magazine. In a review of the Shirley Temple vehicle Wee Willie Winkie, he wrote: “Her admirers – middle-aged men and clergymen – respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their...
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A Brief Review: Other People We Married by Emma...
For months before reading this story collection, I thought about its title. I thought about the possibility that all souls were once splintered so that we continually encounter parts of ourselves in others and about anam cara, which is Celtic for “soul friend,” and about Plato’s postulation that every person was once two.
These are things I continued to consider as I read Emma Straub’s stories,...
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Sixteen Things Calvin and Hobbes Said Better Than... →
A sampling:
On life’s constant little limitations
Calvin: You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don’t help.
On expectations
Calvin: Everybody seeks happiness! Not me, though! That’s the difference between me and the rest of the world. Happiness isn’t good enough for me! I demand euphoria!
On the evils of mangling words
Calvin: Verbing weird language.
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A Review: Monstress by Lysley Tenorio
In Tenorio’s story “The View from Culion,” a longtime resident of an island leprosarium befriends the newest arrival, an American solider gone AWOL in the Philippines. They have one physical encounter, rare on their ill island:
He fits his fingers in between my own, explores the curve of my wrist, the deep lines of my palm. I press my thumb into his hand, feel his skin move over bone. Then the...
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ONE DAY ALL YOUR TEETH WILL BE MINE by Sasha...
Outside the windows were trees and in front of the windows were plants and on the windows were blinds. The plants were buried in dirt up to their necks. I will bury you up to your neck she said. I said But where. She said The Bathtub. But then I said You’d have to clean the bathtub. Or bathe in the sink. Nothing She said Would make me happier. Except this she said. One day I will possess...
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The New York Times Top 5 Best Sellers in Fiction,... →
In 1962:
Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Little Me, Patrick Dennis
A Prologue to Love, Taylor Caldwell
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January 2012
22 posts
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A Review: The Letter All Your Friends Have Written...
The distinguishing feature of this poetry collection is not, in fact, the poems—though they are good—but the book’s genesis. As Tishon and Meissner explain in the introduction: “…we’ve been friends for roughly five years. In those five years we’ve shared countless letters. These letters aren’t letters in the true sense of the word. They are poems….” Born from the intimacy of friendship and given...
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“I can hear all I want about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll on the...”
– * * * As Jaimy Gordon describes it: “Something between a shocking exposé, a defiant treatise, a prose poem, and an exuberant Girl Scout manual.”
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, February 2012 Pre-order Girlchild today
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A Review: Heft by Liz Moore
What if you were entirely alone and just let go, released the restraints by which you limit yourself?
Liz Moore’s novel asks this question repeatedly and variedly. The title, Heft, most apparently refers to Arthur Opp, who has not left his Park Slope brownstone since September 11, 2001 and has grown “colossally fat.” That day’s tragedy provoked the realization that he had no one to...
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WatchAnyone have an hour and sixteen minutes to kill? I spent a raucous Friday night at the Center for Fiction, absorbing the wit of the “Criticism Beyond Itself” panel, and loved every minute of it.
Tune in for the panel’s thoughts on Viktor Shklovsky, Geoff Dyer, writing for Harper’s vs. The New Yorker, spaghettini, and switching hospital beds.
From left to right: moderator...
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Some 2012 books I'm excited about
And surprise: they’re all by women.
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Threats: A Novel by Amelia Gray (FSG, February 2012)
I’d admired Gray’s experimental writing (AM/PM !!) for years, and her debut novel promises quite a lot: part mystery, part love story, part tragedy and all written in gripping, poetic prose.
When I Was A Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson (FSG, March 2012)
...
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A Review: The Ruins of Us by Keija Parssinen
For those who choose to remove themselves from the Western world, the expatriate experience is singular and, often, inexpressible. The experience varies by country and the time spent there, by finances and by open-mindedness, but the expatriate will always be an outsider. After a year of wandering village markets in Africa and staring over the Atlantic from the wrong side, I have continually tried...
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Happy Friday the 13th!
He appeared before me, rolling his eyes dreadfully, and sticking out a tongue as red as an iron drawn from the fire. I begged for mercy; in vain. With one hand he grabbed me by the throat, and with the other he tore out the eye I am now missing. In the place where my eye had been, he stuck his burning-hot tongue. With it he licked my brain and made me howl with pain.
Then the other hanged man,...
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A Review: Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander
Far above many things—natural athletic ability, green thumbs, fast cars—I admire funny writers. Writers who can make readers smile or, even, laugh, who know how to balance humor and heft, deserve great praise.
Shalom Auslander, a rare writer, has a keen sense of humor that seems to rise effortlessly from his prose and his characters. But he is far more than funny: Auslander is terrifying. If there...
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“I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen,
and so I swung into action and...”
– * * * William Matthews, “Mingus at the Showplace” from Time and Money: New Poems. © 1995 by William Matthews.
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A Review: The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
Pak Jun Do, aka The Orphan Master’s Son, is told that the greatest American film, the one he must see, is Casablanca. “‘They say it’s about love,’” his friend and cohort, Comrade Buc, explains.
But no one Jun Do encounters has ever watched the film. Not Buc, who recommends and procures it, not the famous North Korean actress, Sun Moon, who worries that viewing films will taint her acting. Despite...
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10 great literary epigraphs
Flavorpill recently published The 25 Greatest Epigraphs in Literature. Here is my counter offer.
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What is past is prologue. —Inscription in Washington, D.C., museum from White Teeth by Zadie Smith
This is the patent age of new inventions For killing bodies, and for saving souls, All propagated with the best intentions. —Byron from The Quiet American by Graham Greene
...
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A Review: The Fallback Plan by Leigh Stein
When a person “of a certain age” reaches said age, various reactions have been known to ensue. Among the more traditional: depression, extramarital affairs, the purchasing of impractical items (e.g. little red sports cars), dramatic career changes, food or alcohol abuse. The non-traditional but possible: deciding to climb Mt. Everest, joining the Peace Corps, taking up improvisational comedy. Yes,...
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The Lit Pub on Twittering Poets →
Shameless self-promotion: the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Blog picked up on my Twittering Author post over at the Lit Pub. They liked it! You will, too!
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“In America, we believe that each person is the central character in his or her...”
– —Adam Johnson, “Adam Johnson Recalls North Korea: A Country with No Books”
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Johnson’s first novel, The Orphan Master’s Son, tells the story of one man living in such a world—North Korea. It was my first 2012 read, and I am still reeling. Look for my review...
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A Review: Smut by Alan Bennett
In reading the two stories contained in Smut—”The Greening of Mrs Donaldson” and “The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes”—most Americans will probably concur that Bennett’s writing is “very British.” What characteristics do I think of as traditionally British? A certain detachment and concern with propriety. These elements are obvious throughout the stories, even in more affecting...
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Miracle Fair
The commonplace miracle: that so many common miracles take place.
The usual miracles: invisible dogs barking in the dead of night. One of many miracles: a small and airy cloud is able to upstage the massive moon. Several miracles in one: an alder is reflected in the water and is reversed from left to right and grows from crown to root and never hits bottom though the water isn’t deep. A...
December 2011
12 posts
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The Twittering Author →
Click-through the above link for “The Twittering Author,” a little bit I wrote for The Lit Pub about poets who tweet (specifically, D.A. Powell and Arda Collins).
The particularity of a writer on Twitter: this is not People magazine’s best-dressed listor a dance competition, an improv comedy show or a submarine mission. These are words, the fodder and folly of writers and the element...
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A Review: You Deserve Nothing by Alexander Maksik
Big parts of this piece I made up. I didn’t want to say that, but the editors are making me, because of certain scandals in the past with made-up stories, and because they want to distance themselves from me. Fine.
— John Jeremiah Sullivan, “Violence of the Lambs”
——
I purchased You Deserve Nothing a few days before the troublesome Jezebel story broke: it’s not fiction, it’s...
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Watch
In each and every narrative, there is some person or some driving voice that lacks innocence. Really, the book is a lot about the struggle between innocence and its opposite.
Bradford Morrow discusses his new short story collection, The Uninnocent, which I recently reviewed.
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“Say what you will, say even worse but, in truth, poetry is revolution without...”
– Frederic Tuten, The Adventures of Mao on the Long March
©Mark Iantosca. From the December 4th marathon reading of Tuten’s novel.
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A Review: The Uninnocent by Bradford Morrow
It is difficult to read Biblical stories unattached, without religious sentiment—positive, negative, ambivalent—creeping in. But, Christian or not, they are stories and great ones. In college, I took a Religion class titled “The Genesis Narrative,” the name implying a kinship with my English Literature studies. In it, we studied the Book of Genesis as a text, a semester of Biblical...
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