Wednesday, July 20th, 2011
In the Ether (The Blog)
David Gee shares a few rejected book cover designs, without their titles or any other text. . . . Rick Poynor writes about how much originality is even possible in book design, and lands on a line that could apply to so many things: “The notion of continual reinvention as a worthwhile or attainable goal is particularly misplaced here…” . . . The Millions shares the opening lines of Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84, his new 928-page novel due in October. . . . John Self writes about authors with a gap between their best work and their best-known work (he prefers Joseph Heller’s Something Happened to Catch-22, etc.), and kicks off a spirited string of comments with further suggestions. . . . A list of 10 unconventional bookstores, most of which I feel the need to visit immediately. . . . The inspiring story of one man’s quest to publish a book with the permission of both Nick Hornby and Bruce Springsteen. (via Pete Lit) . . . An editor’s exchange with Stuart Dybek about what to name a Chicago housing project in one of Dybek’s stories. . . . Nicole Rudick talks to Paul Hornschemeier about his new graphic novel, Life with Mr. Dangerous. (“My mother reared me to be an eighty-year-old, gay man from England, so I think I had some identity issues.”) . . . Elizabeth Gumport, who has written some good book reviews herself, argues that perhaps book reviews shouldn’t exist.
Thursday, April 28th, 2011
In the Ether (The Blog)
Christopher Hitchens writes both movingly and caustically about Philip Larkin’s long-running relationship with Monica Jones: “[Larkin] once described the sexual act as a futile attempt to get ‘someone else to blow your own nose for you.’ These collected letters reflect his contribution to a distraught and barren four-decade relationship with Monica Jones, an evidently insufferable yet gifted woman who was a constant friend and intermittent partner (one can barely rise to saying mistress, let alone lover) until Larkin’s death in 1985.” . . . And Martin Amis writes an appreciation of his friend Hitchens that reads disconcertingly (if understandably) like an advance eulogy. . . . Christian Lorentzen cheekily considers Martin Amis’ impending move to Brooklyn, and the saturation of writers already there. (”They’re like bedbugs with bylines, and there’ll soon be a new bug in town, who might just be the biggest bug of all.”) . . . Here’s the type of contest that doesn’t come along every day: “Design the Polish edition of your favorite book.” . . . I haven’t even listened to this myself yet, but how could it not be worth sharing? Werner Herzog and Cormac McCarthy on the same panel about the connections between science and art. I only thought those two would ever join forces to announce the apocalypse on national television. . . . Robert Lane Greene writes about his role as his office’s unofficial language nerd: “When someone asks me, ‘Is such-and-such a verb?’ My answer is usually, ‘Well, a lot of people are using it as one, including in professionally edited writing, so yes.’ Still nervous, they might ask, ‘But is it in the dictionary?’ The answer is probably ‘not yet,’ but that doesn’t mean much.” . . . Ian McEwan talks to The Browser about the books that have “helped shape” his own.
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011
In the Ether (The Blog)
Sammy Hagar’s got a memoir out and, um, like many chronicles of rock n’ roll, it seems to come with an inherent warning about staying off the hard stuff: “I just knew that there were two intelligent creatures, sitting up in a craft in the Lytle Creek forest area about twelve miles away in the foothills above Fontana. And they were connected to me, tapped into my mind through some kind of mysterious wireless connection.” . . . The Caustic Cover Critic discovers James Joyce books designed with a disco-era feel, and also points to some lovely work by a designer named Jenny Grigg. . . . I picked up Sigrid Nunez’s new memoir about Susan Sontag in a store the other day, and it didn’t take long to find some colorful and unflattering quotes flying from Sontag. If I were more interested in her, I might read the whole short book. The Times has an excerpt. . . . Michael Bourne considers a Hunter S. Thompson classic 40 years on: “The first thing that strikes you when you read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in 2011, beyond the rotary phones and the 29-cent burgers, is what a sad story it is.” . . . Levi Stahl compares J. G. Ballard to Conrad: “Ballard’s scientists, marooned on far-flung outposts throughout the galaxy, are merely Conrad’s company agents and traders thrown into the future.” He also asks for sci-fi suggestions, something I can’t really help with. . . . The Reading Ape offers “10 Observations on Male Sexual Violence in the Contemporary Novel,” and asks for additional thoughts on the subject. . . . And lastly, Dan Kois had an essay in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago about novels that writers have abandoned. I’ve been meaning to link to it. Here’s a piece: (continues after the jump)
Friday, March 4th, 2011
In the Ether (The Blog)
Luc Sante (on John Gall’s blog) shares some of the earliest examples of photography on French novel covers. . . . Go here to find out who said this: “Fiction is so autoerotic! That’s why we all want to keep on doing it.” . . . The Reading Ape boldly lists The 100 Great American Novels, 1891-1991. (“I did my best to put my own reading taste to the side: there are many works here that I actively dislike, but the goal isn’t pleasure here but knowledge of the major voices, concerns, movements, innovations, and ideas of the era.”) . . . The Caustic Cover Critic shares a rather underwhelming cover for a Spanish edition of Crime and Punishment: “I’ve never scene a less dynamic representation of the act of murder.” . . . The Believer has announced the five finalists for its annual book award. . . . C.S. Lewis’ translation of the Aeneid, thought lost to a bonfire, has been discovered and appears scheduled for a May release in the U.S. . . . A quite belated link to a year-ender: Chris Flynn lists his 20 favorite short stories of 2010. (Via) . . . Ted Ross writes about being fired from Harper’s, the importance of having liquor in an editorial office, and having lunch with the young upstart who replaced him: “We ate noodles, traded ideas about his new responsibilities and split the check. This could have proven awkward, I imagine, except that I like and respect the guy and feel strongly that he’s worse off than me.”
Monday, February 21st, 2011
In the Ether (The Blog)
OK, this is getting serious. The Tournament of Books (for which I’m lucky enough to be a judge this year) tips off on March 7, and a poster of the brackets with first-round match-ups is now available. Begin your office pools now. . . . Salon recently named the winners of its first Good Sex Awards. As Laura Miller once wrote, “It doesn’t take much nerve to stand up in front of a boozy crowd and read sex passages from other people’s books in a mocking tone of voice while everybody sneers and groans. Doing the opposite, however, amounts to admitting that you’ve found something arousing, and thereby risking the British equivalent of the ninth circle of hell: embarrassment.” True enough. The four judges (Miller, Maud Newton, Walter Kirn, and Louis Bayard) discuss the process here, and you can find the first-place excerpt here. . . . At the Guardian, William Skidelsky profiles historian Niall Ferguson, who seems intent on ruffling the feathers of those who would read the Guardian: “Something that’s seldom appreciated about me is that I am in sympathy with a great deal of what Marx wrote, except that I’m on the side of the bourgeoisie.” . . . A month’s worth of literary facts from the Reading Ape. An example: “Leather ball beats leatherbound: the total revenue for the NFL was $8 billion in 2009. The total book market in 2009 was $5.1 billion.” . . . Carlene Bauer talks to Joyce Carol Oates about Oates’ new memoir, about the death of her husband, and situates Oates among this country’s female writers: “In the book’s unashamed display of feelings, sometimes so strong that they may not make sense to anyone else, in her insistence on the exclamation point, she reminds us that very few American women fiction writers have been acclaimed for making outsize emotions their terrain.” . . . D.G. Myers considers Nicole Krauss’ Great House and its vision of the Jew as “the symbol of man’s unhappiness, his estrangement from a world that (only recently) he has discovered is monstrous and bitter.” . . . A new site asks acclaimed designers to list the books they find “personally important, meaningful, and formative — books that have shaped their values, their worldview, and their ideas about design.” . . . Alexander Nazaryan says the bankruptcy of Borders is just a larger publishing bill coming due: “If there is hope for publishing, it is with modest presses and modest books, putting out titles for small but loyal audiences. But that’s not something that’s going to warm the heart of Penguin’s CEO.”
Thursday, January 13th, 2011
In the Ether (The Blog)
Edmund White chooses his top 10 New York books. I love that he chooses Amis’ Money. Of another book on his list, he writes, “I can think of no other novel that is so agreeable and so devoid of incident.” . . . Levi Stahl has a smart consideration of opening lines in novels, and heretically (but convincingly) says Anna Karenina would have benefited from something different. . . . I recently linked to an appreciation of Barbara Comyns. Now, John Self reviews one of her books, an “eccentric, charming, ambiguous little gem.” . . . George Orwell had some experience with — and some choice words for — people who shop at used bookstores. (Something I happily do myself.) . . . Critic, author, editor, and master anthologizer John Gross died this week at 75. . . . Patrick Brown says the new book by the brains at basketball blog Free Darko is “a work of literature that happens to be about the NBA.” . . . A newly published edition of the Bible includes excerpts of C.S. Lewis’ work throughout. . . . On their new show Portlandia, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein (of Sleater-Kinney fame) ask, “did you read that?”
Thursday, January 6th, 2011
In the Ether (The Blog)
James Morrison (aka Caustic Cover Critic) has begun designing and publishing an eclectic mix of books whose copyrights have expired. The one that stood out to me was Eugene Batchelder’s A Romance of the Sea-Serpent, “an 1850 book-length Monty Python-style doggerel poem about a socially aspirant sea serpent.” Morrison quotes David S. Reynolds’ description of the book from an essay about Moby-Dick: “The largest monster in antebellum literature was the kraken depicted in [Batchelder's book], a bizarre narrative poem about a sea serpent that terrorizes the coast of Massachusetts, destroys a huge ship in mid-ocean, repasts on human remains gruesomely with sharks and whales, attends a Harvard commencement (where he has been asked to speak), [and] shocks partygoers by appearing at a Newport ball.” Sign me up. . . . I read Richard Ben Cramer’s massive and entertaining What It Takes, about the 1988 presidential election, a couple of years ago. Ben Smith at Politico writes about the doorstop’s initial chilly reception and eventual fan base, “a case study in how a book enters the canon.” (Via) . . . John Gall shares some work by his talented design students. . . . For the new year, Scott Pack has started a new blog, where he will write about one short story per day. . . . David L. Ulin champions one of my favorite books when I was a kid, The Cricket in Times Square. . . . Tin House has redesigned its home page, its blog, and its everything else.
Friday, November 19th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Dan Wagstaff interviews book designer Clare Skeats. (“Its always a thrill to get asked to do a classic. I also like first-time authors (as there’s no baggage), and books about really odd subjects: invisible dogs, menopause, suicide, unicorns … bring it on.”) . . .James Morrison interviews Nick Morley, an artist who works with linocuts and etchings and is getting more involved in book illustration. . . . Maud Newton packs a lot of interesting objects onto her spare, neatly organized desk. . . . Publisher Scott Pack has an idea this site can get behind: The Library of Lost Books. . . . The Paris Review talks to Christopher Sorrentino about his entry in a new series of books about popular films. Sorrentino wrote about Death Wish. In the interview, The French Connection is mentioned, and Sorrentino says, “I really don’t like that movie.” Does. Not. Compute. . . . Jonathan Safran Foer has a new book coming out in January. It’s really an old book, The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz, literally cut up into a new book by Foer. The production looks quite innovative. Foer’s discussion of it, unsurprisingly, is quite precious. (”Q: What is it about the die-cutting method that appealed to you? A: That’s like saying to somebody, ‘What about the way that you just kissed me was good?’”) . . . In the wake of Patti Smith winning the National Book Award, Macy Halford links to a profile of the musician and writer in The New Yorker.
Monday, November 8th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
On the 100th anniversary of Leo Tolstoy’s death, The Atlantic digs out an 1891 profile of him from its archives. . . . Craig Fehrman profiles historian Jill Lepore for the Boston Globe on the occasion of her new book about the Tea Party. He writes a follow-up post, about other historians’ opinions of Lepore, on his blog. . . . Carlene Bauer writes about Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Rilke, Simone Weil, and religious doubt. . . . Belated birthday wishes for D.G. Myers’ A Commonplace Blog, which recently turned two. Myers also recently linked to a piece reconsidering a 1978 novel by Stanley Crawford; a novel with the amazing title Some Instructions to my Wife Concerning the Upkeep of the House and Marriage, and to my Son and Daughter, Concerning the Conduct of their Childhood. The book deals, in part, with metaphors for marriage, as does another Crawford book that I wrote about here a while back. . . . Pauline Kael on not watching a movie more than once. . . . A San Francisco newspaper sent Dave Eggers to the World Series with a sketchbook. This is what he saw. . . . A bit of philosophy to round things out: 91-year-old Mary Midgley has a must-read at The New Humanist called “Against Humanism.” I found it provocative, clear, and pithy: “Materialists take matter to be what is typically real, but matter itself is not at all what it used to be.” I’m strongly agnostic myself, but have to bristle (yet again) at the smug shallowness of today’s atheists, some of whom quickly dismiss Midgley’s work in the comments.
Thursday, October 28th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Readers of a certain musical bent will likely be charmed by these prints imagining songs by The Smiths as vintage Penguin paperbacks. . . . A fun interview with Jonathan Lethem about movies: his new book about the cult classic They Live, his opinion of Christopher Nolan’s movies, and which of his novels David Cronenberg has shown interest in bringing to the screen. . . . Patrick Kurp shares more than one piece of wisdom from Marianne Moore in a piece she wrote called “If I Were Sixteen Today” when she was 70. . . . Learn why, “You should avoid the culture pages of the New Yorker if you are a teenage boy already terrified that you’re never going to have sex.” . . . I don’t have any interest in actually reading this, but seeing as how my undefeated fantasy football team is named the Fighting Roger Sterlings, I feel obligated to pass it on. . . . Dinaw Mengestu talks to the Paris Review about his new novel. (“I wanted to show how two people can be attached to each another and still feel completely alienated.”) . . . Not technically book-related, but still amazing: In 1916, a respected engineer and urban planner proposed “A Really Greater New York” in an article for Popular Science. The plan included filling in the East River.
Thursday, October 21st, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Thomas McGuane’s new novel, Driving on the Rim
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Lane Smith writes a charming (and charmingly illustrated) post about writing his new children’s book, It’s a Book
Tuesday, October 12th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
I had no idea there was such a variety of looks for phone books. Astonishing. . . . If you’re looking for the quickest way to become familiar with literature’s newest Nobel winner, the Guardian lists his five most essential novels. This, about the 1977 novel Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, made me laugh: “The plot is loosely based on the story of Vargas Llosa’s own first marriage, at the age of 19, to the then 32-year-old Julia Urquidi, who was indeed his aunt by marriage. Urquidi later gave a rather different account of her relationship with Vargas Llosa in a memoir, Lo que Varguitas no dijo (What Little Vargas Didn’t Say).” . . . A.N. Devers goes looking for Edgar Allan Poe’s house, which is inside the boundaries of the oldest housing projects in Baltimore: “Our romantic need to idealize historic places presents a particular challenge for writers’ homes, for so many of our best writers lived in obscurity or led notoriously dysfunctional lives.” . . . Ellen Handler Spitz reads a new edition of the Brothers Grimm, and wonders why anyone would suggest that children should be “protected” from their tales. . . . The New Yorker’s Book Bench starts a new series of interviews with book designers, about specific books. First up: Rodrigo Corral on his cover for Gary Shteyngart’s latest. . . . A few translators respond to a series of recent posts by Lydia Davis, and then Davis responds back in the comments. Got that? . . . John Eklund considers the best way to shelve biographies, and then lists several notable bios being published by Yale this season.
Thursday, September 30th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Last year, I pointed to an essay about the work of Gilbert Rogin, who wrote comic fiction that was praised by John Updike and John Cheever, among others. Now, his two novels are being republished
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Mark Pilkington recommends 10 books about UFOs that are “either informative, entertaining, puzzling or all three at once.” . . . Lorin Stein discusses the art of the Paris Review’s famous interviews, and offers a peek at a few future subjects. . . . Penguin launches a new monthly radio series, “The Literary Life,” with guests Rosanne Cash, Maile Meloy, Doug Dorst, and Sloane Crosley. . . . Independent book sellers recommend 40 books from independent publishers that they will be recommending to customers over the next few months. . . . Andrew Pettegree is interviewed about the advent of printed books. (“There’s quite a little similarity in the first generation of print with the dot-com boom and bust of the ’90s.”) . . . Sad news to long-live-print folks like myself: The next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary will be available only in e-form. . . . Jonathan Lethem talks about leaving his beloved Brooklyn for California. . . . I’m going to start reading the work of Thomas Bernhard soon; perhaps as soon as this afternoon. Scott Bryan Wilson offers a checklist of his work. . . . Rick Gekoski on “how to be a good literary loser.” . . . Ian Hocking, novelist, writes movingly about the decision to stop writing fiction. (“Someone wrote – [Stephen] King again, I think – that a writer is a person who will write no matter what. In other words, if you lock them up in a cell without pen or pencil, they’ll write on the wall in their own blood. I didn’t believe that when I read it and I don’t believe it now. Even Stephen King comes to a point when the blood dries up.”)
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
At The Millions, Craig Fehrman presents the history of authors on the cover of Time magazine, in honor of Jonathan Franzen’s appearance this week. It does seem like a (very broad) argument for the decline of the author in pop culture: Just five have been on the cover since Bill Clinton took office. You’ve got to hand it to Time, though — more than three years before Miami Vice premiered, they had John Irving doing a pretty decent Sonny Crockett impersonation. . . . If you think a better title for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein would have been A Zombie Learns French, then this site is for you. . . . Lewis Lapham gets big points for this: “I’m extremely fond of Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me. I love Car Talk.” . . . This 2007 piece about writers and the fonts they love is making the rounds again. (Caleb Crain: “My goal has always been a legible font with a neutral personality, as appropriate to flower arranging as to triple homicides.”) Several prefer Courier or Courier New. I’m a Georgia guy myself these days. . . . A snazzy proposed cover for the screenplay of Reservoir Dogs. . . . If you’re in New York and looking something to do on Friday night, the online literary journal Open Letters will have a reading at Housing Works to celebrate the recent publication of an anthology of the site’s writing.
Thursday, August 12th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Tom Nissley remembers historian Tony Judt, who passed away last week after publicly and bravely suffering from ALS, and also re-posts a list of Judt’s recommendations for the best 10 books to read about 20th century Europe. . . . Sona Avakian interviews Allison Hoover Bartlett, the author of The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession: “I hadn’t even considered that thieves might be attracted to my readings, but I’ve seen other suspicious looking men (book thieves are almost always men), so I do wonder about them.” . . . Peter Anderson offers an idea for a novel, free of charge. (“Thrillers aren’t my thing, and I could never do justice to the complicated science of cold fusion.”) . . . John Gall shares a few “French pulp covers collected across the internet that have been occupying a small but strategic portion of my hard drive.” . . . Eileen Reynolds is thrilled by the new edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. . . . In 1989, Kurt Vonnegut wrote to a first-time novelist who had reached out to him. (“I have not read your Sad Movies, and Dos Passos surely never read anything by me. About twenty new books a week arrive at this house, most of them no doubt marvelous. I simply can’t keep up.”) . . . Taylor Antrim says the novella is making a comeback, and Flavorwire rounds up some of the classics.
Wednesday, August 4th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Jimmy Chen at HTML Giant has been tracking trends in the book cover industry: covers with birds on them; covers that hide people behind white boxes; and meta-covers that feature books and pages. . . . Disappointed in the publicity efforts for her book, Jennifer Belle paid actresses to read it (and laugh) in public. . . . NPR releases its list, as chosen by its audience, of the 100 best thrillers ever written. (No. 1 is best read with a glass of chianti.) . . . Michael Dirda writes about his earliest days writing reviews for the Washington Post Book World. (“Thirty or so years ago, with my usual prescience, I could see that computers were going nowhere.”) . . . John Eklund defends the middle men in the world of books. (“A misconception has been allowed to fester and take root—the idea that the main cost of publishing a book is the printing and delivery of it.”) . . . Seth Colter Walls at Newsweek “almost threw up in disgust” when considering that David Markson’s book collection ended up at the Strand, rather than preserved in one place for further study of his marginalia, etc. And I’ve seen other similar reactions. But I’ve yet to read anyone who has asked what Markson’s intentions were. I assume, having loved the Strand while he was alive, that this was his plan. Just an assumption, though.
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Rachel Cooke writes smartly, at length, about Philip Larkin’s posthumous reputation. (“Beyond noting that his private utterances were in marked contrast to his public behaviour, which was ever polite, Larkin’s racism is uncomfortable and indefensible, even when you put it in the context of his times. The charges of misogyny, though, are about to start looking a whole lot more flimsy.”) . . . The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest asks participants to write the worst opening sentence to an imaginary novel. The 2010 winner has been announced. . . . David Grossman’s new novel
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Mary Gaitskill walks around a bookstore, filmed by the folks at Stacked Up. She’s very candid and charming. And she gets big points from me for lifting up a copy of DeLillo’s White Noise and saying: “Actually, I didn’t like it so much. I feel free to say that because it’s like shooting spitballs at a tank.” She also praises what she’s currently reading, “one of the best things I’ve read in the last decade.” [OK, a reader took issue with my teasing Gaitskill's pick rather than naming it: The book she loves is Agaat
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Bloomsday is a week from today, and that means fans of James Joyce’s Ulysses are planning their celebrations to mark the event. Tablet Magazine is hosting a night at Solas, a very nice bar in New York’s East Village, to celebrate Leopold Bloom’s Jewishness. Novelists Ben Greenman and Joshua Cohen will read, actors from the New Yiddish Repertory Theater will perform a scene from the novel that they have translated into Yiddish, and “Ulysses in Five Minutes” will sum things up for those who haven’t read the book. (Like, somewhat embarrassingly, me.) . . . And WBAI in New York will broadcast a night of readings from the book, featuring Alec Baldwin, Paul Muldoon, Bob Odenkirk, and many others. . . . Nicholas Carr answers a few questions about his new book, and about his writing life in general: “My dream is to disappear for ten years and then reappear, in sandals and a beard, with a strange and wondrous thousand-page manuscript written in longhand. Something tells me that’s not going to happen.” . . . John Eklund advises not to be fooled by the title of The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, which Yale has just republished: “Lurking beneath the bland, academic sounding title is one of the wisest, slyest, wittiest pieces of writing on books and readers I’ve ever encountered.” . . . Austin Ratner considers how and why historical fiction can work: “What matters is not whether a novel or story’s setting precedes the date of writing, but whether the writer’s research into setting has upset the balance of narrative elements so that structure, character, etcetera become subordinate to large hair balls of superfluous detail . . .” . . . Inspired by a book by Henry Houdini, the Caustic Cover Critic went looking for more and found “a number of funky old books intended to draw back the veil and expose the craft [of magic] to the general public.”
Friday, May 28th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Columbia University Press plans to publish David Foster Wallace’s undergraduate thesis, “a brilliant philosophical critique of Richard Taylor’s argument for fatalism.” The book will include contextual essays by other philosophers, and an introduction by James Ryerson, a friend to this site. . . . John Gall unearths some great photographs of models posing for book illustrations. . . . John Self interviews David Mitchell at Asylum: “[M]y ideal would be that, in a blindfold test (shades of the Pepsi Challenge here), prose from two of my books could not be identifiable as having been written by the same person.” . . . I really wanted to attend (and report on) an event last weekend about Robert Walser’s “microscripts,” but couldn’t make it. At the Book Bench, Deirdre Foley-Mendelssohn writes about these “letters from a lost civilization—amazingly archaic, runes of a remarkable mind.” . . . At the Daily Beast, Sarah Weinman talks to Charles Yu, whose forthcoming novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
Thursday, May 20th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
The Caustic Cover Critic admires the “big, bold” work of Andy Smith, who designed the UK cover for Brady Udall’s latest (which I reviewed here). . . . Omnivoracious interviews my old buddy and soccer fanatic David Hirshey about his new book previewing the World Cup. . . . John Crace gives Christopher Hitchens’ new memoir the Digested Read treatment: “At the age of three I entered a dialogue with TS Eliot on his misuse of myth, so it was a shock to arrive at Balliol and hear from my esteemed friend, James Fenton, that I was only the second cleverest person in the world.” . . . At the New Yorker’s Book Bench, Macy Halford and Jon Michaud exchange ideas about the role of love in Amy Bloom’s new collection of stories, whether it’s a conqueror/destroyer or an “amoral force.” . . . A friend of this site, Jim Hanas, has a story (with a cover designed by Patrick Borelli, another friend) being auctioned off to benefit the literary mag One Story. . . . Mark Athitakis takes up the issue of why (and whether) American novelists don’t devote themselves to exploring one place anymore, and he cites a remarkable statistic: 37% of respondents to a poll say they’ve never lived outside their hometown. . . . The real-life pendulum featured in Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum has been “irreparably damaged” by a crash to the floor. . . . John Eklund previews some fall book releases with a quiz. Sample question: “What did Shelley describe as ‘profuse strains of unpremeditated art?’” . . . I came across this a little while ago, but I was just reminded of it: Where’s Waldo? as read by Warner Herzog. One of the funniest things I’ve recently seen.
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
We start with a clip of Flannery O’Connor at 5 years old, with her chickens. She’s only on screen for a couple of seconds, but it’s a great glimpse — and the narration of the entire clip is hilariously terrific. (Via Maud Newton and Terry Teachout.) . . . Speaking of Maud, she reflects on eight years (!) of blogging, and kindly mentions The Second Pass among recommendations of several other sites. . . . Ariel Levy selects the latest book for The New Yorker’s Book Bench book club, and, not to give anything away, but the Bench also interviews Amy Bloom. . . . Michael Cho’s cover design and illustration for this year’s edition of the always beautiful Best American Comics is pretty great. . . . As Laura Bush’s memoir hits bookstores, Craig Fehrman unearths an old ad in McCall’s for Eleanor Roosevelt’s reminiscences. . . . Dedi Felman reports from a panel about translating books into films at the PEN World Voices Festival, and finds a gap between the American participants, like Richard Price, and the French, like Philippe Djian. “When asked what was lost and what was gained by the cinematic translation of his work, Djian responds, ‘All was lost.’ ” . . . The May issue of Open Letters is up, and the site has also published a book of “the best from our first three years.” . . . A very sad event in Oregon: a fire that destroyed a used-book store. . . . Neglected Books Page says that Gene Lees, “one of the finest jazz writers ever,” who recently passed away, was wise to give up fiction after a couple of early novels.
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Matt Kish, a librarian in Ohio, is illustrating one passage from each page of his copy of Moby-Dick. The Book Bench has an interview with Kish and a slide show of seven diverse examples. (The home page for the project is here.) . . . Blake Wilson at Paper Cuts writes about a “forgotten hippie novel” in a way that, against all odds, gets me interested: “The story follows the young drug slinger D. R. Davenport (Divine Right) and his girlfriend, Estelle, as they roll across the country. The introduction is written from the perspective of their 1963 Volkswagen microbus, Urge.” . . . I read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist/Gothic classic The Yellow Wallpaper in college. Nancy Mattoon summarizes the book’s history, including this terse rejection letter from the editor of The Atlantic Monthly: “Mr. Howells has handed me this story. I could not forgive myself if I made others as miserable as I have made myself.” . . . Simon Akam examined secondhand book tables on the streets of New York to determine which titles and authors popped up most often. Stephen King and Ian McEwan were #2 and #3 on the author list, respectively. Who topped them? Go here. . . . Nina MacLaughlin was underwhelmed by Rabbit, Run, an opinion I have to admit I share. . . . Alan Sillitoe, a prolific writer best known for two books that were turned into movies, died earlier this week at 82. . . . Ian Wolcott wonders how to teach a child about the Holocaust, and figures you could do worse than Charlie Chaplin. “We want to protect our children from damaging knowledge. We also want them to understand the kind of world they live in.”
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
To celebrate Penguin’s 75th anniversary, Douglas Coupland designs some funny imaginary books for a “speaking to the past” series. . . . Penguin also redesigns some of its vintage books by decade. Here’s the 1960s, with links to the others on the same page. . . . Tom Nissley asks for help remembering the books that took up entire issues of The New Yorker, a la John Hersey’s Hiroshima. And he asks David Remnick why it never really happens anymore. . . . Forbes profiles the great New York Review of Books imprint. One reader calls being a fan of the series, “almost like a fraternity or sorority for folks who hate the idea of fraternities.” . . . Five Chapters is running a lengthy five-part excerpt of Julie Orringer’s forthcoming novel, The Invisible Bridge
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
This post about a new book starring Lyle the Crocodile sent me zooming back in time, to the library in my Oceanside, New York, elementary school, where I would sit near the large windows and read Lyle’s adventures. I can’t believe he’s still around. Made my day. . . . I didn’t notice it at the time, but NYRB posted a passage from Robert Walser to mark spring. . . . Lorin Stein, recently minted editor of The Paris Review, admits to never having finished a John Updike novel. And he either loves Merle Haggard, or loves joking about Merle Haggard. Maybe a little of both. . . . Ned Beauman says novelists should be paying more attention to waste: “The age of compulsory recycling, plastic bag taxes, and shrinkwrapped cucumbers has not yet found its poet.” . . . Stephen Gertz points out that an anarchist book fair scheduled for this Saturday in New York is maybe not in keeping with the anarchic spirit. . . . Stefan Beck really doesn’t like William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch: “[It] is one of those regrettable works that must be defended on the grounds that it does well what it set out to do, with no consideration given to whether what it set out to do is worth doing.” . . . Speaking of Burroughs, he appears (duh) on this chart of who was on what when they wrote what. . . . The fascinating career of Nina Bourne, a publishing executive who recently died at 93. She was a great champion of Catch-22. When she wrote to Evelyn Waugh seeking a blurb for it, Waugh wrote back: “I am sorry that the book fascinates you so much. It has many passages quite unsuitable to a lady’s reading.”
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
John Gall shares a slew of great “anonymous photos, usually found at flea markets, garage sales, on ebay, etc.” He was going to collect them in a book, but thinks the market is now “flooded with similar material.” I don’t know. I’d still buy it. . . . Roger Lathbury tells the riveting story of how he almost published a book by J. D. Salinger in the mid-1990s. (“There was never talk of an advance, and although he did not want the book aggressively priced, he had told his agent, generously, to let me make some money on it.”) . . . Caustic Cover Critic previews four books, brief histories of various literary genres. They sound interesting, but it sounds like their publisher isn’t reliable about hitting announced release dates. . . . Also via the CCC, this terrific cover, which follows in the footsteps of this terrific cover. . . . Keith Richards owns thousands of books, thinks about organizing them by the Dewey Decimal system, and wants to be a librarian. I’m not kidding. . . . Speaking of thousands of books, this thought from Augustine Birrell: “To be proud of having two thousand books would be absurd. You might as well be proud of having two top-coats. After your first two thousand difficulty begins, but until you have ten thousand volumes the less you say about your library the better. Then you may begin to speak.” . . . Elijah Jenkins at Flatmancrooked recommends 10 indie publishers (and 10 books by them).
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Andrew Adler remembers the writer Robert Bingham, who died 10 years ago at the age of 33. . . . Andrew W.K.’s performance as a judge (in the semifinals, no less) in the Tournament of Books has the event’s readers up in arms, or at least scratching their heads, and I can’t say I blame them. . . . Lorrie Moore has made the latest book-club choice for the New Yorker’s Book Bench. She calls her selection a “stunning novel-in-stories,” in which the writing is “informed by both the empirical and the lyrical, is heart-wrenching and gorgeous and its several voices are done indelibly and with unwavering authority.” . . . Creative Nonfiction gathers some memorable opening lines. (“The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call ‘out there.’ ” –In Cold Blood) . . . At The Valve, Adam Roberts reads Podvig by Nabokov. (”The novel as a whole makes a salutary counterexample to those who think Nabokov’s schtick was an ‘aesthetics of cruelty’; for it is a novel about goodness, and beauty…”) . . . A belated happy seventh birthday to The Millions. Seven years on the Internet is a long time. . . . Open Letters has added another blog to its family: Novel Readings, written by Rohan Maitzen, an English professor in Nova Scotia. . . . Terry Teachout shares 10 books that influenced him. . . . A new book causes Gregory Cowles to wonder: “[I]f a brilliant and prominent novelist — a Nobel laureate, say — were to record his thoughts and observations in a blog, might it amount to literature?”
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Michael Chabon writes about the music of Big Star. (“Power pop is a prayer offered by atheists to a God who exists but doesn’t hear.”) . . . The six finalists for Oddest Book Title of the Year have been announced. I’m betting on Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots. . . . This list of reviewer clichés (in the form of a Bingo card) has been making the rounds. I’m sure I’ve been guilty of some, but I would never, ever use the word “unputdownable.” That is awful. I’ve probably used “readable” a couple of times, but I hate that, too. Doesn’t it just mean “capable of being read”? It’s like those beer ads that trumpet “drinkability.” I would hope the stuff is drinkable, as a bare minimum. . . . Laurie Abraham discusses the year she spent watching couples in therapy as research for her new book. (“[T]here are aspects of our culture that make it seem like marriage is the only way to find emotional sustenance in life.”) . . . The most beautiful bookstore in the world? . . . 10 books to help celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. . . . C. Max Magee judges between Lorrie Moore and Marlon James at the Tournament of Books, and the (always entertaining) peanut gallery reflects on the contest.
Friday, March 12th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Cy Fox spent 50 years building a collection of work by writer and artist Wyndham Lewis. He then donated it all to the University of Victoria in British Columbia. A look at the collection and the renewed interest in Lewis. (Via Books, Inq.) . . . The top 13 novels about drugs. Commenters at HTML Giant rightly point out that Jesus’ Son is missing; though it might just be that it doesn’t qualify as a novel. . . . In a world of Dancing with the Stars and Jersey Shore, it’s worth remembering that some people are deservedly famous, and Michael Lewis is one of them. Robert Birnbaum praises his “unerring sense of story, his investigative skills, and clear, concise reportorial prose,” and recommends his latest, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
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)
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
In 1975, a woman named P. M. Doucé, believing a psychic who told her she was “the conduit for the posthumous creations of none other than T. S. Eliot,” self-published a book of poems called Incredible Alliance. . . . The Rumpus interviews Sam Lipsyte on the publication date of his new novel, The Ask. (Second Pass review coming soon-ish.) Find out about whom Lipsyte hilariously says, “He’s doing groundbreaking blurb work.” . . . Meredith Blake summarizes the history of opinions about Eva Braun, Hitler’s boo, and looks at a new book that “tackles some of the more persistent Braun myths head-on.” . . . The Believer has announced the list of finalists for its annual book award. . . . An art student designed four lovely covers for Jules Verne novels. . . . The book world’s version of March Madness, the Morning News’ Tournament of Books, is right around the corner. (My choice for best first-round matchup: Wells Tower vs. Nicholson Baker.) To get us ready, Andrew Seal crunches some stats from past tourneys for clues to this year’s possible results. . . . The Los Angeles Times is granted a rare visit with John McPhee. . . . This has nothing to do with books, but it seems worth noting that the recent earthquake in Chile may have shortened the average day on Earth by 1.26 milliseconds.
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
As always, Dan Wagstaff provides endlessly rewarding links—this time, to 10 great Flickr groups for book design and inspiration. . . . These rules for writing fiction by luminaries have been making the rounds. Many are entertaining, though maybe only this one by P. D. James strikes me as universally applicable: “Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.” . . . The Millions interviews John Banville. (“There’s no message. I constantly say one of my absolute mottos is from Kafka, where he says the artist is the man who has nothing to say. I have nothing to say.”) . . . The New Statesman interviews Clive James. (“They say the first person who’ll live to 150 is already alive, but I’ve got a feeling it’s probably not going to be me.”) . . . Independent publishers crow about some of their upcoming spring releases. . . . The Los Angeles Times has announced the nominees for its annual book prizes. . . . Elif Batuman says the latest literary mash-up, Android Karenina, isn’t as far from Tolstoy’s original intentions as you may think. . . . Alex Ross has unveiled the cover for his next book, out in September. . . . David Alpaugh laments the surfeit of poetry these days.
Friday, February 19th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Jeff VanderMeer highly recommends a new graphic novel about imaginary beasts, influenced by Bruegel and Bosch. (“With names like the Long Necked Lotus Loris, Northern BaronBeest, and Spangled Swamp Horse we should be well into dangerous ‘whiimsy’ territory, but somehow even the floating creatures seem fully grounded in something real.”) . . . The more I read about David Shields’ new book, the more I want to read it, to see if it could possibly annoy me as much as I think it will. . . . In 1978, Nicola Nikolov, a writer who had fled communist Bulgaria to come to the U.S., wrote letters to John Cheever, J. D. Salinger, Ray Bradbury, and Kurt Vonnegut asking them to evaluate some of his work. He kept their responses. . . . If you’re in the market for the worst novel ever written, be patient: I believe it’s on its way. . . . Peter Terzian looks at the thriving art of painting book covers and some of the top practitioners. (“It’s surely no coincidence that artists are choosing the book as a subject in this era of new reading technologies. But these paintings are too joyous and affectionate to be memento mori for the printed word.”) . . . Chad Post writes about eight Latin American novels that deserve to benefit from “Bolañomania.” . . . To mark Presidents’ Day, the Daily Beast ranks the 19 best-read presidents. Millard Fillmore is No. 12. I won’t spoil any more than that. . . . Sarah Weinman rounds up reaction to the death of Dick Francis.
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
John Gall shares a few selections from a “huge and varied archive of Philip K. Dick covers.” . . . Book Lovers Never Go to Bed Alone, a blog devoted to photos of people’s bookshelves. . . . Levi Stahl is coping with shelves that are unusually bare. . . . Someone has a bookcase in the form of Pac-Man. . . . I’m always happy to be reminded of David Brent’s reading of John Betjeman. . . . Mark Sarvas recently helped judge a prize for first novels, and he came away from the experience with several tips for writers. . . . Speaking of debut novels, this week Lit Drift is giving away a copy of The Children’s Day by Michiel Heyns, about a South African boy’s coming of age in the 1960s. . . . Later this month, bookmark collectors are holding their first convention. It’s being staged online, which seems a bit odd for such a tactile pursuit. . . . Mark Athitakis says it’s only time to panic about the waning influence of book reviews “if you figure this is something new—or if you figure that getting readers to buy books is the reviewer’s job.”
Thursday, February 4th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Joanna Smith Rakoff remembers her time answering J. D. Salinger’s fan mail. . . . John Seabrook once went to Salinger’s house to watch a movie. . . . And editor Tim Bates recounts communicating with Salinger in the 1990s when his books were being repackaged in the UK. . . . Lord, how I love Jill Lepore. (“I suspect that reading A People’s History at fourteen is a bit like reading The Catcher in the Rye at the same age.”) Some commenters take umbrage, but I think they’re (slightly) twisting Lepore’s point in order to take umbrage. . . . Abe Books gathers its top ten books about drink. Some priceless covers in the batch. . . . John Scalzi writes a scathing, very funny post about being on the author end of the Amazon-Macmillan dustup. (“Hey, you want to know how to piss off an author? It’s easy: Keep people from buying their books. You want to know how to really piss them off? Keep people from buying their books for reasons that have nothing to do with them.”) . . . On the same subject, Caleb Crain with a customarily thoughtful look at the possible future of book publishing. . . . Jessa Crispin writes about “spinster fear” and defends the books of Elizabeth Gilbert. . . . Charles McGrath profiles Don DeLillo, and elicits this quote, which both confirms DeLillo’s humorlessness and cements his lifetime ban from any parties I throw: “I only smile when I’m alone.” . . . A new blog interviews designer Carin Goldberg. (Via Casual Optimist)
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
If you haven’t bookmarked the site Letters of Note, you should. This recent entry by Mark Twain was written to a salesman who had attempted to sell Twain bogus medicine. It includes this line: “The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link.” . . . A 1973 book of photos of New York City graffiti (with an essay by Norman Mailer) is being reissued. . . . It takes six people to lift the world’s biggest book, and it will be on display this summer at the British Library. . . . Maud Newton has opened a comments thread to ask writers what they did before they wrote, or while they wrote, or what they would like to do if they didn’t write. (Newton herself has an idea for a private eye firm with the TV-series-ready name of Grasso & Neutron.) . . . Lawrence Lessig on “Google, copyright, and our future.” . . . Flavorwire lists five good sites for book-related videos. . . . Mark Athitakis investigates the long-standing notion of a “typical New Yorker short story.” . . . A very creepy, but very effective book cover (via Casual Optimist).
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
Robert B. Parker, best known for a series of novels starring Boston private eye Spenser, has died at 77. Sarah Weinman has quickly gathered an excellent list of relevant links. . . . M.A. Orthofer reacts to the recent and widely-linked-to Wall Street Journal piece about the “death of the slush pile.” . . . How would you like to be a famous author in the early 20th century named Winston Churchill? Bummer. . . . Book Patrol unearths a book about the sex lives of Civil War soldiers, a side of their lives “that they and their families tried to hide from posterity and Ken Burns.” . . . In 1967, Leonard Woolf was sounding a pre-Hitchens note. . . . I’ve been meaning to see An Education for a long time now. After reading Maud Newton’s description, I’d also like to read the book on which it was based. . . . Blake Morrison on the art of the first sentence. (Via Books, Inq.) . . . Illustrations from French children’s books, 1900-1949. (Via Bookslut) . . . Garth Risk Hallberg wonders if there are too many literary prizes.
Thursday, January 14th, 2010
In the Ether (The Blog)
The Caustic Cover Critic’s hilarious series of posts about Tutis, a publisher that takes public-domain works and puts ridiculously inappropriate covers on them. Lots of laughs. . . . Daily Design Discoveries has a slide show of a prettier bunch. . . . Elvis would have been 75 last week. To mark the anniversary, John Gall posts a whole mess of book covers featuring The King, including Invasion of the Elvis Zombies. . . . Sadly, the Book Design Review has gone on “indefinite hiatus.” A good excuse to look through its archives. . . . A ship that had been “carrying affordable books to ports throughout the world” since 1978 has been grounded by a new law. . . . Peter Ginna, now at Bloomsbury Press, once received a manuscript along with a pair of shoes he had ordered from Land’s End. . . . Surely, we can’t do worse than Android Karenina, so now this nonsense can stop, right? Right?
