MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

BEST SMALL PRESSES

Barking at the Moon


  • ** Recently Updated

TEV DEFINED


  • The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."
Subscribe to this blog's feed

SEARCH ME

Other Stuff

About

« NOTA BENE: SELECTED LETTERS OF REBECCA WEST | Main | TODAY'S LATBR RIDDLE »

March 13, 2007

TUESDAY MARGINALIA

* The Millions justly takes n+1 to task for its unsigned jeremiad "The Blog Reflex," about which more anon.  What neither piece notes is how assiduously n+1 courted bloggers at its inception, and how thin-skinned its editors have been concering any criticism of their efforts.  Also more of which, anon. Finally, it's worth noting that:

The lit-bloggers become a self-sustaining community, minutemen ready to rise up in defense of their niches. So it is when people have only their precarious self-respect. But responses - fillips of contempt, wet kisses - aren't criticism.

... can be said, almost word for word, for the n+1 gang and "The Blog Relfex."

* The Business Standard asks a few pointed questions about the Man Asian Literary Prize.

* Everyone else seems to like Kundera's latest essays more than we do.  We find his gnomic utterances tedious and straining under Mitteleuropa self-indulgence.  But clearly, we're in the minority.  (Though the Philadelphia Inquirer sees it more as we do.)

* Reviews of Christine Falls come in from all quarters.  Reports from Bloomberg,  Frank Wilson and, finally, Gideon Lewis-Kraus' excellent Slate essay, all awaiting your attention.  Banville's agent, Ed Victor, is profiled at the Guardian.

* We're not, as is probably well known, great thriller fans.  Nothing against the form, we just prefer other pleasures.  But Jed Mercurio's Ascent - which we've hung onto around here somewhere - does sound interesting.

* Huh.  We didn't think any of Nick Hornby's books were written for adults.  (OK, we're being a bit glib.  We liked High Fidelity well enough but after that, oh my.)

* It's ironic that a piece extolling Clive James' virtues as an essayist should include a sentence like "By common consent, Clive James is one of the few master wordsmiths alive today ..."

* The British have released their list of the Top 10 Books No One Ever Finishes.  Ed will no doubt be apoplectic at the inclusion of his beloved Cloud Atlas.  The Guardian offers a handy digest of the top five fiction titles:

Cloud Atlas
David Mitchell

Beyond the Indian hamlet I happened on footprints in 1850, and in the next chapter my diaries were read 80 years later by an English musician who wrote letters to his friend, Rufus Sixsmith, who 35 years later lives next door to Luisa Reyes, who is investigating a murder at a nuclear power station, and her story was sent to Timothy Cavendish, who was being chased by gangsters, and his story was seen through an orison some time in the future by a clone on death row, whose story was told round a camp fire to some bloke in a post-apocalyptic future, and then we work back to the beginning.

Verdict Not as pretentious as it sounds

* Like everyone else, PopMatters notices David Foster Wallace's incongruous offering to The Top Ten collection. 

David Foster Wallace, of all people, includes books by C.S. Lewis, Stephen King, Robert Heinlein, Thomas Harris, Ed McBain and Tom Clancy. This eclectic and populist selection, by a writer of ostentatious learning, approaches the condescendingly perverse, and suggests Wallace does not play well with others

* Francine Prose is set to be named the new president of the PEN American Center.

* Finally, it's always a great day when we can offer up some James Wood, most recently, his take on Against the Day in The New Republic. (Merci a Dave Lull)

There are huge pleasures to be had from these amiable, peopled canvases, and there are passages of great beauty, but, as in farce, the cost to final seriousness is considerable: everyone is ultimately protected from real menace because no one really exists. The massive turbines of the incessant story-making produce so much noise that no one can be heard. The Nazi Captain Blicero in Gravity's Rainbow and the ruthless financier Scarsdale Vibe in Against the Day are not truly frightening figures, because they are not true figures. But Gilbert Osmond, Herr Naphta, Peter Verkhovensky, and Conrad's anarchist professor are very frightening indeed.

Which will surprise no one who has read Wood's essay on Pynchon in The Broken Estate.

Posted by TEV at 12:15 AM in Marginalia |

Comments

janitorman

I'm surprised "Crime and Punishment" made the top ten of unfinished novels in the UK. It was one of those books one is compelled to read by one's own self-sustaining literary ego complex that I was delighted to discover was so damn good.

I think Wallace purposely confused top ten works of literary merit with top ten books he liked -- in an effort to turn his nose up at literary snobbery, he committed the exact crime he tried to avoid.

"Annie Proulx, of Brokeback Mountain fame, finds Zane’s project 'difficult, pointless and wrong-headed.'"

I think Proulx confused a description of Zane's project with a description of herself. Witness the Oscar debacle a few years ago. Okay, I hated "Crash", too, but so much has been made of the venerable -- meaning, you know, "old" -- Proulx's still tack-sharp writing, you'd think she'd recall she hails from a generation that didn't whine when they lost.

Posted by: janitorman | March 13, 2007 at 05:49 AM

Drew North

Pertaining to James Wood -

I recently picked up The Broken Estate at the library and read the intro as well as his criticism of Pynchon and DeLillo. I admire his writing and insight (Wood's), and he is one of the better literary reviewers (I use that term in the best sense of the word) out there. But, if I had a picture of a dead horse being beaten at my fingertips, I would post that picture here now.

This lowest common denominator Wood returns to again and again - that of character strength above all else - misses the mark when it comes to Pynchon and it simply will not work. I found the major players of the Traverse family all "well-rounded" portrayals, and when you have 100+ characters in the cast, so to speak, they can't ALL be right out of a Henry James novel.

Wood has also leveled this same criticism against Coetzee in a review about Disgrace. Brilliant review, but, again, misses the mark completely because he (Wood) is attempting to put square pegs into round holes. Oddly, in The Broken Estate, he touchs on nothing about Cormac McCarthy. Not one single mention. I wonder why that is?

Thanks for the link to the review and congrats on your recent nuptials! However, if it a choice between Wood or Pynchon and Coetzee, I think I'll take Pynchon and Coetzee.

Posted by: Drew North | March 13, 2007 at 07:44 AM

Steven Augustine

Wood needs to widen the focus of the loupe through which he views Literary Art. Or, better yet, open both eyes. We don't all turn to the novel for instruction... nor to be 'frightened', uplifted or to have any of our emotional settings otherwise tweaked or redeemed; some of us come for the Art and that's what we stay for (if Art is in evidence).

Time and again, Wood imposes the technological limits of a sub-genre (the 19th century Bildungsroman?) upon the vast, wild, and not-entirely-defined possibilities of The Novel...very much how a man who knows almost everything about tax laws, say, will tend to steer all conversation (in a queue at the bank, or chatting at a cocktail party) in that direction.

Are the figures on the canvas in 'Guernica' convincing as horses and people? Are they 'true'? If 'true', are they more, or less, 'true' than Freud's masticated nudes or Miro's biomorphs? Was Chagall doing his best to get us to suspend disbelief in the reality of flying green-faced orthodox fiddlers? No, Mr. Wood: no. The draw is the power (and inspiration) of formal mastery; the delights are in the quirky codes and puzzles of the artist's personal vision.

Are the visual Arts *so* far ahead of their Literary siblings...or is it merely the reviewers (even the educated ones) who are terribly far behind?

Posted by: Steven Augustine | March 13, 2007 at 09:05 AM

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

Posted by:  | 

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been posted. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment

RECOMMENDED

  • Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal by Rob Riemen

    NoS PB SM

    This slim volume by the president and founder of the Nexus Institute, a European-based humanist think-tank, stands as the most stirring redoubt against the ascendant forces of know-nothingness that we've come across in a long time. A full-throated, unapologetic defense of the virtues of Western Civ – in which "elite" is not and never should be a dirty word – this inspiring exploration of high art and high ideals is divided into three sections: The first looks at the life of Riemen's great hero Thomas Mann as a model for the examined life. The second imagines a series of conversations from turning points in European intellectual history, populated with the likes of Socrates, Nietzsche and others. The final section, "Be Brave," is nothing less than an exhortation to dig deep, especially in times of risk. The notion of nobility of the spirit might strike some modern ears as quaint but it seems more desperately necessary than ever before, and there are worse ways to read the accessible Nobility of Spirit than as a crash refresher in the Great Thinkers, free of academic jargon and cant. As a meditation on what is at stake when the pursuit of high ideals is elbowed aside by the pursuit of fleeting material gain, however, Nobility of Spirit might well be the most prescient book we've yet read on what's at stake in the current election cycle and in the developing global situation. Agree or disagree with Riemen's profound, ambitious and high-minded plea, you will be thinking about his words for a long time. It's been ages since a work of non-fiction moved us this way. Read it. Discuss it. Argue about it.
  • Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

    Netherland_2

    With rave reviews from James Wood, Michiko Kakutani and Dwight Garner, it might not seem like we need to tell you to drop everything and go read Netherland, but we are telling you, and here's why: The way book coverage works these days, everyone talks about the same book for about two or three weeks, and then they move on and the book is more or less forgotten. Whereas a berth here in the Recommended sidebar keeps noteworthy titles in view for a good, long time, which is the sort of sustained attention this marvelous novel deserves. A Gatsby-like meditation on exclusion and otherness, it's an unforgettable New York story in which the post 9/11 lives of Hans, a Dutch banker estranged from his English wife, and Chuck Ramkissoon, a mysterious cricket entrepreneur, intertwine. The New York City of the immigrant margins is unforgettably invoked in gorgeous, precise prose, and the novel's luminous conclusion is a radiant beacon illuminating one of our essential questions, the question of belonging. Our strongest possible recommendation.
  • Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick

    Dictation

    "History," wrote Henry James in a 1910 letter to his amanuensis Theodora Bosanquet, "is strangely written." This casual aside could easily serve as the epigraph of Cynthia Ozick's superb new collection Dictation, which concerns itself with lost worlds evoked by languages -- languages which separate and obscure as readily as they bind. It can be risky to look for connective tissue between stories written years apart and published in magazines ranging from The Conradian to The New Yorker. But themes of deception, posterity, and above all, the glory of language -- at once malleable and intractable -- knit together this quartet, recasting the whole as the harmonious product of Ozick's formidable talent. Read the entire review here

  • Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee

    Yr

    Now, on the one hand, you scarcely need us to alert you to the existence of a new J.M. Coetzee novel, or even to have us tell you it's worth reading. But we can tell you - we insist on telling you that Diary of a Bad Year is a triumph, easily Coetzee's most affecting and fully wrought work since Disgrace. Formally inventive, the book intertwines two narratives with the author's own Strong Opinions, a series of seemingly discrete philosophical and political essays. The cumulative effect of this strange trio is deeply moving and thought provoking. It's increasingly rare in this thoroughly post-post-modern age to raise the kind of questions in fiction Coetzee handles so masterfully - right down to what is it, exactly, that we expect (or need) from our novels. It's telling that, for all of his serious pronouncements on subjects ranging from censorship to pedophilia to the use of torture, it's finally a few pages from The Brothers Karamazov that brings him to tears. Moving, wise and - how's this for a surprise - funny and lightly self-mocking, Diary of a Bad Year might well be the book of the year and Coetzee is surely our essential novelist. We haven't stopped thinking about it since we set it down.
  • The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt

    Tic_2

    David Leavitt's magnificent new novel tells the story of the unlikely friendship between the British mathematician G.H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan, mathematical autodidact and prodigy who had been working as a clerk in Madras, and who would turn out to be one of the great mathematical minds of the century. Ramanujan reluctantly joined Hardy in England - a move that would ultimately prove to his detriment - and the men set to work on proving the Riemann Hypothesis, one of mathematics' great unsolved problems. The Indian Clerk, an epic and elegant work which spans continents and decades, encompasses a World War, and boasts a cast of characters that includes Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Lytton Strachey. Leavitt renders the complex mathematics in a manner that resonates emotionally as well as intellectually, and writes with crystalline elegance. The metaphor of the prime number – divisible only by one and itself – is beautifully apt for this tale of these two isolated geniuses. Leavitt's control of this dense, sprawling material is impressive – astonishing, at times – and yet despite its scope, he keeps us focused on his great themes of unknowability and identity. The Indian Clerk might be set in the past but it doesn't resemble most so-called "historical fiction." Rather, it's an ageless meditation on the quests for knowledge and for the self – and how frequently the two are intertwined – that is, finally, as timeless as the music of the primes. (View our full week of coverage here.)
  • Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

    Jf

    Joshua Ferris' warm and funny debut novel is an antidote to the sneering likes of The Office and Max Barry's Company. Treating his characters with both affection and respect, Ferris takes us into a Chicago ad agency at the onset of the dot-bomb. Careers are in jeopardy, nerves are frayed and petty turf wars are fought. But there are bigger stakes in the balance, and Ferris' weirdly indeterminate point of view that's mostly first person plural, underscores the shared humanity of everyone who has ever had to sit behind a desk. It's a luminous, affecting debut and you can read the first chapter right here.
  • Christine Falls by Benjamin Black

    Cf

    Coming to these shores at last, John Banville's thriller, written under the nom de plume Benjamin Black, has drawn rave reviews across the pond since it first appeared last October. Those who feared Banville might turn in an overly literary effort needn't worry. Influenced by Simenon's romans durs (hard stories), Banville unspools a dark mystery set in 1950s Dublin concerning itself with, among other things, the church's trade in orphans. At the heart of the book is the coroner Quirke, a Banvillean creation on par with Alex Cleave and Freddie Montgomery. Dublin is rendered with a damp, creaky specificity – you can almost taste the whisky.
  • The Paris Review Interviews, I by The Paris Review and Philip Gourevitch

    Pri

    Scanning our Recommended selections, one might conclude we're addicted to interviews, and one would be correct. If author interviews are like crack to us, then the Paris Review author interviews must surely be the gold standard of crack (a comparison Plimpton might not have embraced). The newly issued The Paris Review Interviews, Volume I (Picador) rolls out the heavy hitters. Who can possibly turn away from the likes of Saul Bellow, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Jorge Luis Borges, Dorothy Parker, Robert Gottlieb and others? The interviews are formal and thoughtful but never dry and can replace any dozen "how-to" books on writing. What can be more comforting than hearing Bellow, answering a question on preparations and conception, admit "Well, I don't know exactly how it's done.” The best part of this collection? The "Volume I" in the title, with its promise of more volumes to come.
  • Above Paris

    Ap_3

    See, we’re not all literary fiction here. Princeton Architectural Press’s absolutely breathtaking Above Paris is very much the kind of thing we’re eager to bring to your attention. Between 1950 and 1972, pilot and photographer Roger Henrard recorded more than 350 images of Paris from the seat of a single-engine Piper cub, documenting Paris from its outskirts to its center. His photographs show not only Paris's famous landmarks - they also give you a sense of the way the city is interconnected: the tight-knit medieval districts as well as the expansive geometry of the grand boulevards. Maps at the beginning of each chapter and fine captions and essays by Jean-Louis Cohen help you navigate the City of Light as never before. Just glorious.
  • The Dead Fish Museum: Stories by Charles D'Ambrosio

    Dfm

    The best short story collection we've read since ... well, certainly since we've started this blog. And we might even say "ever" if Dubliners didn't cast such a long shadow. The short story is not our preferred form but D'Ambrosio's eight brilliant stories are almost enough to convert us. Defy the conventional wisdom that short story collections don't sell and treat yourself to this marvel. (We're especially partial, naturally, to "Screenwriter".)
  • The Mystery Guest by Grégoire Bouillier
    *Now in Paperback*

    Mg

    What would you do if the woman who’d left you high and dry ten years ago called out of the blue to invite you to a party without any further explanation? If you’re French, you’d probably spend a lot of time pondering the Deeper Significance Of It All, which is exactly what Grégoire Bouillier does for the 120 hilarious pages of The Mystery Guest. This slim, witty memoir follows Bouillier through the party from hell, and is a case study in Gallic self-abasement. Before it’s all done, you’ll set fire to any turtleneck hanging in your closet and think twice before buying an expensive Bordeaux as a gift. But fear not – just when it seems that all is, indeed, random and pointless and there is no Deeper Significance, salvation arrives in the unlikely form of Virginia Woolf, and the tale ends on a note of unforced optimism. Parfait.
  • Ticknor by Sheila Heti

    Ticknor

    When George Ticknor's Life of William Hickling Prescott was published in 1864, it received rapturous notices, and reviewers were quick to point out that the long-standing friendship between Prescott and Ticknor made the latter an ideal Boswell. Sheila Heti has pulled this obscure leaf from the literary archives and fashioned a mordantly funny anti-history; a pungent and hilarious study of bitterness and promise unfulfilled. As a fretful Ticknor navigates his way through the rain-soaked streets of Boston to Prescott's house ("But I am not a late man. I hate to be late."), he recalls his decidedly one-sided lifelong friendship with his great subject. Unlike the real-life Ticknor, this one is an embittered also-ran, full of plans and intentions never realized, always alive to the fashionable whispers behind his back. Heti seamlessly inhabits Ticknor's fussy 19th-century diction with a feat of virtuoso ventriloquism that puts one in mind of The Remains of the Day. Heti's Ticknor would be insufferable if he weren't so funny, and in the end, the black humor brings a leavening poignancy to this brief tale. But don't let the size fool you — this 109-page first novel is small but scarcely slight; it is as dense and textured as a truffle.
  • The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers by Vendela Vida

    Bbk

    No, your eyes aren't deceiving you and yes, we are recommending a Believer product. Twenty-three interviews (a third presented for the first time) pairing the likes of Zadie Smith with Ian McEwan, Jonathan Lethem with Paul Auster, Edward P. Jones and ZZ Packer, and Adam Thirwell with Tom Stoppard make this collection a must-read. Lifted out of the context of some of the magazine's worst twee excesses, the interviews stand admirably on their own as largely thoughtful dialogues on craft. A handful of interviewers seem more interested in themselves than in their subjects but in the main this collection will prove irresistible to writers of any stripe - struggling or established - and to readers seeking a window into the creative process.
  • The Sea by John Banville

    Sea_1

    John Banville's latest novel returns him to the Booker Prize shortlist for the first time since 1989's The Book of Evidence. In The Sea, we find Banville in transition, moving from the icy, restrained narrators of The Untouchable, Eclipse and Shroud toward warmer climes. Max Morden has returned to the vacation spot of his youth as he grieves the death of his wife. Remembering his first, fatal love, Morden works to reconcile himself to his loss. Banville's trademark linguistic virtuosity is everpresent but some of the chilly control is relinquished and Max mourns and rages in ways that mark a new direction for Banville - and there's at least one great twist which you'll never see coming. Given the politicized nature of the British literary scene, Banville's shot at the prize might be hobbled by his controversial McEwan review but we're rooting for our longtime favorite to go all the way at last. UPDATE: Our man won!
  • Here Is Where We Meet by John Berger

    Berger

    We've been fans of Booker Prize winner John Berger for ages, and we're delighted to have received an early copy of his latest work, Here is Where We Meet. In this lovely, elliptical, melancholy "fictional memoir," Berger traverses European cities from Libson to Geneva to Islington, conversing with shades from his past – He encounters his dead mother on a Lisbon tram, a beloved mentor in a Krakow market. Along the way, we're treated to marvelous and occasionally heart-rending glimpses of an extraordinary life, a lyrical elegy to the 20th century from a man who - in his eighth decade - remains committed to his political beliefs and almost childlike in his openness to people, places and experiences. There's no conventional narrative here, and those seeking plot are advised to look elsewhere. But Here is Where We Meet offers a wise, moving and poetic look at the life of an artist traversing the European century from a novelist whose talent remains undimmed in his twilight years.
  • Home Land by Sam Lipsyte

    Slc

    In his recent TEV guest review of Home Land, Jim Ruland called Sam Lipsyte the "funniest writer of his generation," and we're quite inclined to agree.  We tore through Home Land in two joyful sittings and can't remember the last time we've laughed so hard.   Lipsyte's constellation of oddly sympathetic losers is rendered with a sparkling, inspired prose style that's sent us off in search of all his prior work. In Lewis Miner's (a.k.a Teabag) woeful epistolary dispatches to his high school alumni newsletter ("I did not pan out."), we find an anti-hero for the age.  Highly, highly recommended.

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

  • The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

    Bs

    Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel is the tale of Florence Green, a widow who seeks, in the late 1950s, to bring a bookstore to an isolated British town, encountering all manner of obstacles, including incompetent builders, vindictive gentry, small minded bankers, an irritable poltergeist, but, above all, a town that might not, in fact, want a bookshop. Fitzgerald's prose is spare but evocative – there's no wasted effort and her work reminds one of Hemingway's dictum that every word should fight for its right to be on the page. Florence is an engaging creation, stubbornly committed to her plan even as uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the enterprise gnaws at her. But The Bookshop concerns itself, finally, with the astonishing vindictiveness of which provincials are capable, and, as so much English fiction must, it grapples with the inevitabilities of class. It's a dense marvel at 123 pages, a book you won't want to – or be able to – rush through.
  • The Rider by Tim Krabbe

    Rider_4

    Tim Krabbé's superb 1978 memoir-cum-novel is the single best book we've read about cycling, a book that will come closer to bringing you inside a grueling road race than anything else out there. A kilometer-by-kilometer look at just what is required to endure some of the most grueling terrain in the world, Krabbé explains the tactics, the choices and – above all – the grinding, endless, excruciating pain that every cyclist faces and makes it heart-pounding rather than expository or tedious. No writer has better captured both the agony and the determination to ride through the agony. He's an elegant stylist (ably served by Sam Garrett's fine translation) and The Rider manages to be that rarest hybrid – an authentic, accurate book about cycling that's a pleasure to read. "Non-racers," he writes. "The emptiness of those lives shocks me."

Categories

LITERARY LOS ANGELES

BUY INDEPENDENT!


Archives

More...