The Elegant Variation

TEV GIVEAWAY: THE WAR AGAINST CLICHE

One of our recent commentors challenged us for having joined the Martin Amis "pile-on."  We respectfully challenge that assertion on a few levels, the key being that "pile-on" has a connotation of an unfair wrong perpetrated against a defenseless creature.  If there is a critical mass of folks criticizing Amis (and we're scarcely alone), we suspect it has a good deal to do with the frequency and the idiocy of his public pronouncements on global politics.  Now, to some extent, this is unsurprising.  Anyone who even skimmed Amis's risible Koba the Dread came away with a sense that when Amis ventured into global politics, he was on decidedly unsure footing.

But what makes it all the more disappointing (for us, at least) is as a measure of how far he's fallen.  Although he might attribute his lapses to "thought experiments," we continue to come across tin-eared sound bite after tin-eared sound bite from a man who has so publicly and intelligently declared war on the cliche - cliches that now constitute his armaments.  Put another way, if his literary criticism weren't so goddammned wonderful, his recent foolishness wouldn't disturb us quite as much as it does.  But he is capable of wondrousness.  Consider, for example, his wonderful review of Underworld, included in his magnificent collection The War Against Cliche:

''Underworld'' surges with magisterial confidence through time (the last half century) and through space (Harlem, Phoenix, Vietnam, Kazakstan, Texas, the Bronx), mingling fictional characters with various heroes of cultural history (Sinatra, Hoover, Lenny Bruce). But its true loci are ''the white spaces on the map,'' the test sites, and its main actors are psychological ''downwinders,'' victims of the fallout from all the blasts -- blasts actual and imagined. DeLillo, the poet of paranoia and the ''world hum,'' pursues his theme unstridently; he is tenacious without being tendentious. Yet even his portraits of bland, hopeful, pre-postmodern American life -- his Americana -- glow with the sick light of betrayal, of innocence traduced or abused. The ''great thrown shadow'' has now receded and terror has returned to the merely local. MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) was exploded; and the bombs did not detonate. Still, the press-ganged children who wore the dog tags must live with a discontinuity in their minds and hearts. DeLillo's prologue is called ''The Triumph of Death,'' after the Breughel painting. In the end, death didn't triumph. It just ruled, for 50 years. I take DeLillo to be saying that all our better feelings took a beating during those decades. An ambient mortal fear constrained us. Love, even parental love, got harder to do.

Breathtaking.  From there, we've somehow come around to "Islam must get its house in order."  Hence our profound and continued irritation with the 2008 edition of Martin Amis.  He has, it seems, fallen on the battleground of his own war against cliche.

But we prefer our fond memories of the Amis continued in this volume (and in Experience), and so we are happy to offer up a lovely hardcover edition of this excellent collection of literary essays for your enjoyment.  Rules, rules, rules.  We'll take all emails, subject line "A HIT OR AMIS" (ouch, sorry), until 9 p.m. PST.  Please include your full mailing address, and previous winners are ineligible.  We'll turn to the RNG to select a winner and post the details when we're back from the trip.

TEV GIVEAWAY: HIS ILLEGAL SELF

Now, it's true as some of you might recall, that we didn't exactly love Peter Carey's His Illegal Self and we more or less said so (albeit respectfully) in the Dallas Morning News.  But plenty of others did love it and, after all, every review is just one person's opinion.  And we know there is no shortage of Peter Carey fans out there - among whom we would still happily stand and be counted - and so we're pleased to offer a copy of His Illegal Self for this week's TEV giveaway.  Here's what James Wood had to say in the New Yorker:

Carey’s often beautiful novel, one of his best recent works, has the bruising tang of all his fiction, in which crooked colloquialism (frequently Australian vernacular), and poetic formality combine. The result is brilliantly vital: the world bulges out of the sentences. A man is described as “not hurrying, but prancy in bare feet.” A boy feels “squiffy in the stomach.” A beat-up car has a “busted sunken boneless backseat.”An Upper East Side matron brings back to her apartment her “powdery friends from the English-Speaking Union.” An Australian shack has a veranda “where bats hung like broken rags.” When the novel’s heroine is unhappy, her mouth turns down: “She didn’t know he saw that, the way the whole of her lower face could lose its bones.”

And so, you know the drill.  Drop us an email, subject line "WHAT THE HECK DO YOU KNOW, ANYWAY?"  Please be sure to include your full mailing address and, yes, previous winners are once again ineligible.  (We forgot that one last time.)  We'll take all entries until 7 p.m. PST and then the Random Number Generator will do the deed.

Until then, please do check out the post below and try to come by for one of the Harry, Revised events around town this weekend.

UPDATE: The RNG anoints Cheryl Klein of Los Angeles - congratulations!

TEV GIVEAWAY: TINTIN AND THE SECRET OF LITERATURE

Did you think we'd forgotten about you?  Not all, just a bit busy here as festival weekend gets underway.  But before we disappear into panel-and-party-land, we are happy to be able to offer a copy of Tom McCarthy's superb Tintin and the Secret of Literature for this week's giveaway.

Regular readers will know that we are great Tintin fans, and when we learned that the book hadn't found a US publisher, we contacted Richard Nash, who is doing God's work in Brooklyn, who showed his usual excellent taste and acquired the book. You can find our discussion from last July here.

Here's what the Guardian had to say about the 2006 UK release:

One of the remarkable strengths of Tintin, McCarthy explains, is that 'within a simple medium for children is a mastery of plot and symbol, theme and subtext far superior to that displayed by most "real" novelists. If you want to be a writer,' he says, 'study The Castafiore Emerald' (his favourite of the series). 'It holds all of literature's formal keys, its trade secrets.'

Who can resist that, right?  OK, then, you know what to do.  Drop us an email, subject line "BILLIONS OF BLUE BLISTERING BARNACLES" and please be sure to include your full mailing address.  Due to the late start we are taking all entries until noon PST on Saturday, and some time before the weekend is out, the Random Number Generator will pick a lucky winner.  Until then, see you around UCLA.

UPDATE: Congratulations to winners Lillian Heytvelt and Jeff Carroll!

GIVEAWAY WINNERS POSTED

Apologies for the delay but in light of the popularity of Friday's giveaway, Norton has been kind enough to increase the winning pool of books from five to seven.  The winners have just been posted.

TEV GIVEAWAY: WRACK AND RUIN

Don Lee is probably best known to many of you for his time spent at Ploughshares.  His novel Country of Origin won an American Book Award, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and a Mixed Media Watch Image Award for Outstanding Fiction, and his story collection Yellow won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Members Choice Award from the Asian American Writers' Workshop.

He's got a new novel out this month called Wrack and Ruin, and here's some of the advance praise the book has garnered:

"Don Lee is a gift, and his latest novel, Wrack and Ruin, is magnificent: bold, beautiful, heartfelt, witty, broad of scope, and yet as intimate as love given, or love received" - Junot Diaz

"Wrack and Ruin is a spectacular romp, one of those rare novels whose goofiness is matched by its gravitas. Don Lee is a master of the tightly woven plot; this book is nearly impossible to put down, though at times you may have to pause out of sheer hilarity." - Jennifer Egan

We suspect that many of you will be as eager to read this as we are, so thanks to the kind folks at Norton, we are offering not one but five copies, each signed by the author, for today's TEV giveaway.  So we all know the drill by now - please stand, put your right hand over your heart and recite with us: Drop us an email, subject line "RUIN ME".  Previous winners ineligible.  Please include your full mailing address. Entries will be accepted until 7 p.m. PST, at which time the Random Number Generator will have its way with five of you.  While you're waiting for the outcome, you can check out this interesting interview with Lee.

UPDATE: We're a bit delayed this weekend on selecting a winner but expect to have something here for you come Monday.

UPDATE REDUX:  Thanks to Norton for increasing our winning pool to seven copies!  Congratulations go to: Sue Buchman, Leslie deVries, Peter Erichsen, David Remy, Brett Beach, Casey Kittrell and Gonzalo Baeza.

TEV GIVEAWAY: ROOSTER TROIKA

This year's regrettable Rooster contretemps should not obscure the fact that some truly wonderful books were considered, and two extraordinary titles made it to the final round.  Now, for the vast majority of you who didn't get to participate as a judge, we are happy to offer a special TEV giveaway: The final round of the Tournament of Books - Junot Diaz's newly anointed Pulitzer Prize winner The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and zombie round dark horse Remainder by Tom McCarthy.  And to sweeten an already sweet pot, we're throwing in the book you know we were rooting for all along - The Savage Detectives.  The lucky winner of this package will swear they're a Rooster judge, you'll see.

So, we all know the drill.  Please drop us an email, subject line: "HOLY CRAP THAT'S AN AWESOME GIVEAWAY" and, as always, include your mailing address, please.  We regret that previous winners ineligible.  We'll take all entries until 8:00 p.m. PST at which time the Random Number Generator will crow.  And don't forget that Harry, Revised is supposed to be in the stores on Tuesday, April 15.  Until then ...

UPDATE: And this staggering popular giveaway has been won by Kyle McClure of Grey Eagle, MN.  Thanks to the many who entered!

TEV GIVEAWAY: LAST LAST CHANCE

First and foremost - many thanks to Fiona Maazel for a terrific turn as guest blogger.  We hope you all enjoyed the show.

Second, we're off next week on a retreat to focus on the new novel, so posting is likely to be light around here.

Now on to the main business.  You've met the guest blogger, now win the book.  We are happy to offer a signed copy of Last Last Chance - about which our crystal ball suggests you're all about to hear more - to a lucky TEV reader (though, really, aren't you all lucky?) ... You know the routine.  We're taking all emails, subject line "I'M A LOSER" and, as always, include your full mailing address please.  We'll take all entries until 6 p.m. PST at which time the mighty Random Number Generator shall declare a winner.  Until then, mes amis ...

UPDATE: We love, love, love it when a regular reader/entrant wins.  After seeing L.A. resident Alan Cranis in our inbox for many, many months, his number has finally (literally!) come up.  Well done, Alan!  (And it's heartening to see how many of you, in your emails, embrace your inner loser.)

L.A. EVENT & SPECIAL GIVEAWAY: JOSHUA FERRIS

Joshua Ferris's superb debut novel Then We Came to the End no longer needs any real introduction - it's been a National Book Award finalist, landed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review, has won a slew of awards and been on more Best of lists than we knew existed.  But we were early fans of the book, bringing it to your attention back in December of 2006, and TEV readers have fond memories of Ferris's guest blogging stint last year.

So it's with considerable pleasure that we alert you to his one Los Angeles area reading in support of the newly released paperback edition of Then We Came to the End.  Ferris will be reading and signing this evening at 7 p.m. at the Santa Monica Barnes & Noble, and we'll be in the audience and hope many of you are there, too.  Come check out the novel that moved two steps closer to Rooster-hood in recent days, first when Maud Newton advanced it, calling it "insightful, expansive, and often hilarious," and then when Gary Shteyngart praised it - quite accurately, we think - as "one of the most humane and sympathetic books of the last decade."

Now, for those of you unable to make it this evening - which means this special giveaway is closed to L.A. residents, that's right closed (just get in the car and come to Santa Monica) unless you've got a doctor's note or a damned fine excuse - we are offering not one, not two but three signed copies of Then We Came to the End.  As ever, as always, drop us a line, subject line "GET ME ON THE FERRIS WHEEL" (sorry, Joshua) or, for select L.A. residents "HERE'S MY TRULY EXCELLENT REASON FOR NOT BEING IN SANTA MONICA TONIGHT."  Include your full mailing address, please.  We'll take all comers until precisely 7 p.m. PST, when the reading commences, and then the Random Number Generator will anoint three winners.

As for the rest of you, hope to see you there.

UPDATE: Congratulations to winners Walter Biggins, Benjamin Percy and Alex Yera.

TEV GIVEAWAY: LIFE CLASS

Longtime TEV readers will know all too well our devotion to Pat Barker's superb Regeneration trilogy.  With her new novel, Life Class, she returns to the World War I milieu she so memorably depicted in those earlier novels.  Alan Cheuse has called her "the peacetime novelist who knows best how to write about war" and the San Francisco Chronicle thinks that "Here, as in her best fiction, Barker unveils psychologically rich characters…and resists the trappings of a neat love story, reminding us once again that in art and life we remain infinitely mysterious."  Here's the Independent:

Barker's evocation of the front-line hospital is masterly, gripping in its narrative thrust and judicious in its use of detail - the twitching stump of an amputated leg, gunfire rocking water in a glass. If there is a whiff of the card-index, she herself briskly acknowledges that with the comprehensive list of sources, from Henry Tonks's Art and Surgery to Vera Brittain's diary. It is no criticism to say that I at once wanted to get hold of those titles that I did not know; simply a recognition of this divide: there is the reality, and there is the invention it has generated.

So, as before, as always the song remains the same.  Drop us an email, subject line "I GOT CLASS"  Prior winners ineligible.  And please be certain to include your full mailing address.  We'll take all entries until 7 p.m. P.S.T and then the Random Number Generator - which we assure you is neither slight nor sexist - will anoint a winner.  Until then, enjoy this glimpse of the fine Barker profile in the New Yorker.

UPDATE: Congratulations to winner Theodore Blackston on NY, NY.

TEV GIVEAWAY: PETROPOLIS

First off, apologies: If you are a winner waiting for a book, it's coming, we promise.  We are a bit behind, once again.

In the weeks ahead, we'll be giving away some (though by no means all) of the books featured in this year's Tournament of Books.  First up is Anya Ulinich's Petropolis, which Antoine Wilson, writing for the Los Angeles Times, described as "engaging, funny and genuinely moving in all the right places. It is a sparkling debut, a unique comic novel of Homo post-Sovieticus."  And Stephan Clark reviewed it right here at TEV:

Like Zadie Smith or John Irving, other novelists who work on a large canvas, the author of Petropolis moves through and credibly evokes many locales and times, and often interests the reader most when she goes on a narrative detour that takes us into the consciousness of someone other than the main character. She's got a controlled voice that can hit the notes between tragedy and comedy, many of her characters have lives as full as those found in a history book, and her background as a painter can be seen in the precise arrangements of her verbal imagery.

We've got a copy of the new paperback edition, courtesy of Penguin, which we'll dispatch (promptly) to one lucky winner per the usual dance steps: Drop us an email, subject line "GOOD ANYA" (sorry), and, as always, include yer freakin' mailing address.  Previous winners are ineligible.  We'll take all emails until, let's call it 6:00 p.m. PST, and then it's Random Number Generator time.  Until then ...