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June 30, 2009

TUESDAY MARGINALIA

* The tweet heard 'round the world.  Alice Hoffman is the latest writer to wish for some sort of global undo button.  We will never understand - and we oughtta know - why writers think there's an upside in taking on one's critics.  (Though we kinda like Stanley Crouch's style ... )

* It's that wonderful time of the year - the winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is announced.

"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."

* Emma Garman, whose criticism we've long admired, looks at Nathalie Abi-Ezzi's A Girl Made of Dust for Words Without Borders.

* Hanif Kureishi on turning his second novel, The Black Album, into a stage play.

* Jens Petersen wins the Bachmann Prize for best German language novel.

* Maud Newton returns to give Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain another try. 

* Apropos of nothing at all, just saying - a reporter on NPR tonight actually said "razed to the ground."  If we tweeted, this is probably the sort of thing we'd tweet, but we don't, so it's stuck in here.  Seriously.  Razed to the ground.

* Making An Elephant, Graham Swift's collection of essays on writing, is reviewed in The Star.

"I find distasteful the idea that writers are on a permanent reconnaissance trip, one eye always on the lookout for what might fuel their work, he retorts.

* Lloyd Lockhart, the last man to interview Hemingway, has died at 89.

* And, finally ... Michael Bay ... James Frey ... the headlines just sort of write themselves, don't they?

Posted by TEV at 12:58 AM in Marginalia |

Comments

t

can you please explain the 'raze to the ground' thing and why it's noteworthy - i see this term all the time, is it incorrect?

Posted by: t | June 30, 2009 at 06:34 AM

TEV

Defintion of raze:

"raze - level: tear down so as to make flat with the ground; "The building was levelled" "

It's rather like saying someone was murdered to death ...

Posted by: TEV | June 30, 2009 at 08:26 AM

Niall

Kureishi's "The Black Album" is an underrated book. It anticipated by about a decade the issues with Muslim integration that the UK and Europe are facing now. It's also quite fun. Highly recommended.

The problem with Alice Hoffmann's ranting meltdown wasn't simply that she was responding to a critic. She did so very stupidly - claiming the critic wasn't a writer, when a simple google would have shown that she was. Then publishing her phone number is just batshit crazy.

How long until someone publish's Hoffman's phone number? I wonder...

Posted by: Niall | June 30, 2009 at 09:46 AM

Niall

In re Die Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain): Don't waste your time. It's just not worth it. The problem isn't that it's a "novel of ideas". The problem is that it's a poorly written novel of ideas. It's as though William Buckley and Norman Mailer collaborated on a novel about the meaning of European history, working from an outline by Will and Ariel Durant. Really, really bad.

On the other hand, if you want to see Mann at his very (and very rare) best, read his short story "Disorder and Early Sorrow". It's really one of the best short stories ever written, and one that showcases how well, and how delicately, Mann could work with grand ideas in a human context when he fancied. And it's much, much shorter than the Magic Mountain.

Posted by: Niall | June 30, 2009 at 09:55 AM

Pete

That Bulwer-Lytton winner isn't nearly horrible enough to warrant the prize. That's actually a pretty good opener - I might even want to read a book that starts out that way.

Posted by: Pete | June 30, 2009 at 11:25 AM

rachel kushner

Hi Mark,

Wells Tower is reading tonight (wed) at the Hammer. I don't see it posted but thought you might like to know. I for one will be there!
Yours, Rachel

Posted by: rachel kushner | July 01, 2009 at 11:29 AM

blah

"Razed to the ground" gets 228,000 hits on google.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22razed+to+the+ground%22&hl=en&rlz=1T4ACAW_enUS334US334&start=10&sa=N

It's like "arrogate to oneself" - a redundant phrase, but now so commonly used that there is little point in resisting.

Posted by: blah | August 01, 2009 at 03:09 AM

TEV

Well, "irregardless" garners 481,000 Google hits. If that's going to be your measure of literacy, we're all pretty much screwed with our pants on ...

Posted by: TEV | August 01, 2009 at 05:06 PM

blah

It's not a measure of literacy. But the widespread use should be little cause for surprise.

Posted by: blah | August 03, 2009 at 05:52 PM

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