Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
J. D. Salinger didn’t care for Raiders of the Lost Ark. . . . I agree with almost every word of Levi Asher’s take on the e-books “revolution,” and whether it will ever happen in full. A small piece: “The sensory/physical equation of music listening is really very different from that of reading. An MP3 player disappears when you’re listening to music. But a book does not disappear—not in the digital or the print realm.” . . . The web has already covered this news thoroughly, as the web tends to do, but let me add my congratulations to Lorin Stein for being named editor of The Paris Review. Smart choice by a smart magazine. . . . A database of 337 20th-century bestsellers, with “an extremely detailed description of the book’s history; a mini-essay on its reception; images of covers, page layouts, and even some ads; and more.” (Via The Millions) . . . The first match of the Tournament of Books is in the, er, books, and we’ll have to wait for our first upset. . . . Peter Straub writes at length about the genre wars, including this: (continues) READ MORE >
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin is home to the collected papers of Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Norman Mailer, Doris Lessing, James Salter, and many others. Now it’s also home to the archive of David Foster Wallace. The press release announcing the news says:
The archive contains manuscript materials for Wallace’s books, stories and essays; research materials; Wallace’s college and graduate school writings; juvenilia, including poems, stories and letters; teaching materials and books.
Highlights include handwritten notes and drafts of his critically acclaimed “Infinite Jest,” the earliest appearance of his signature “David Foster Wallace” on “Viking Poem,” written when he was six or seven years old, a copy of his dictionary with words circled throughout and his heavily annotated books by Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, John Updike and more than 40 other authors.
The Center already offers a great preview of the material online, including an essay by Molly Schwartzburg about Wallace’s Infinite Jest-related annotations in a book about cinema; a partial list of the words Wallace circled in the dictionary; and a great selection of the insides of his books, including a hilarious copy of Suttree by Cormac McCarthy, in which Wallace not only wrote on the inside cover “set-up is slow — does not set stage” but mischievously drew eyeglasses, a mustache, and fangs on McCarthy’s author photo.
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Monday, March 8th, 2010
A weekly roundup of noteworthy reviews from other sources.
James Wood writes about realism and David Shields’ recent “manifesto” about, among other things, his distaste for conventional fiction, before settling into a review of Chang-Rae Lee’s latest novel, The Surrendered—“a book that is commendably ambitious, extremely well written, powerfully moving in places, and, alas, utterly conventional.” . . . Pagan Kennedy reviews Marilyn Johnson’s new book about librarians in the digital age: “This is one of those books, in the vein of Mary Roach’s Stiff (about human cadavers), that tackle a big topic by taking readers on a chapter-by-chapter tour of eccentric characters and unlikely locations. Given Johnson’s attractions to wild tangents, the journey often dissolves into a jumble. It is a testament to her skill as a writer that she remains fascinating, even in the throes of A.D.D.” . . . Stephen Burt reviews a collection of the great Kay Ryan’s poetry: “If you are the sort of reader who underlines witty, widely applicable remarks, you may underline something on every page. You may even get tired of underlining: Sage, mordant general claims about life are almost the only kind of poem she writes.” . . . Christopher Tayler with a long look at the five volumes of memoirs by Clive James, culminating in a review of the newest, which covers James’ years in TV. . . . Ian McEwan’s latest, Solar, will be published in the U.S. at the end of this month. Early reviews from the UK are quite positive. Peter Kemp says that “sizzling lucidity distinguishes this enormously entertaining novel about rationality and unreason,” which is “a comedy every bit as brilliant as its title might suggest.”
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Monday, March 8th, 2010
The Tournament of Books is upon us. Today, Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner assume their usual seats in the peanut gallery and start things off with a preview. Guilfoile says, “I finished better than half of this year’s contenders, and if I can inject some early optimism into the proceedings, I personally found this year’s field to be very strong. It might not have as many novels coming in with as much hype as we had in past years, but there’s a lot of parity here.”
The competition proper starts tomorrow, when Morning News editor Rosecrans Baldwin judges a match-up between Let the Great World Spin
by Colum McCann and Miles from Nowhere
by Nami Mun.
Enjoy the action.
READ MORE >
Monday, March 8th, 2010
A continuing series that highlights books recently acquired by publishing houses for future release. Each post features a book we’re looking forward to, and a book we’re . . . not.
I too often allow a lack of cherries to keep me from posting a new entry in this series. So I’ll occasionally post a couple of pits; they’re more fun, anyway.
The Pit:
Dena Harris’ Who Moved My Mouse?: A Self Help Book For Cats (Who Don’t Need Any Help), which addresses the low self-esteem issues facing cats across the globe, and includes A Cat’s Conversations with God, and Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, But Feel Free to Freak Out Over Anything That Moves Suddenly or Without Warning.
Another Pit:
Marilyn Brant’s The Grand European, the story of a conservative young woman’s journey of self-discovery as she travels abroad with her adventurous aunt’s sudoku-and-mahjong club.
READ MORE >
Saturday, March 6th, 2010
Just a quick note for the weekend: It’s not too late (but it’s almost too late) to vote at 3 Quarks Daily for the site’s Arts & Literature Prize. You can only vote once, but if you haven’t yet, go to this page. There are many fine nominees, so please vote your conscience. But of course, I strongly recommend choosing Carlene Bauer’s review of Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch. (You can read it here.) You’ll find it near the end of the list of nominees (10th from the bottom), under “The Second Pass: Mary Flannery, Quite Contrary.”
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