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

May 08, 2008

TOUR DISPATCH: SEATTLE

Checking in very quickly from a pleasant cafe near the University of Washington on my only two-fer day of the tour - I had morning event in Pleasanton and I read tonight here in Seattle.  But I wanted to send you over to the Powells Blog, where I recently answered a question sent over by the wonderful folks there - namely, tell us something you're passionate about.  My answer - which has nothing to do with books - is up there now.

Elsewhere, Time Out New York gives Harry a little bit of love.

Finally, two items of note.  Next week, as I am tooling around the US, TEV guest host/reviewer/interviewer Jim Ruland has a load of interviews, reviews and other surprises planned.  Those who know him will attest that Jim always shows you a good time, so please do make him welcome.

Also, tomorrow's giveaway (yes, I will manage them even from the road) will address the Martin Amis question that continues to roil the backblog, so do come on by.

Posted by TEV at 05:48 PM in Harry, Revised | | Comments (5)

May 07, 2008

TRAVEL DAY

I'm on the road now, first to San Francisco and then Seattle, for some readings.  I will update as opportunities present from the road, but in the meantime, topping the list of things far worse than recent travails, a writer could have his mother talking smack about him day and night to the press, which is exactly what Madame Houellebecq continues to do, to anyone who will listen:

Then, in 1998, when Houellebecq was at the height of his fame, she says she stumbled upon an article about him winning a literary prize for Atomised. (In the photo he was wearing "the same anorak he had been wearing for years".) She went to a bookshop, picked up Atomised and was furious. "I said, 'Fuck, it's not true.' He described me as a kind of whore, kept by I don't know what American. That's slander. All my life I've toiled to earn money for other people. I want him to apologise. If I was law-suit minded, I would have sued him and won."

I'm not expecting problems, but MOTEV is bound and gagged in the cellar for the duration.  Just to be safe.  (She's Austrian.  It makes a certain kind of sense.)

Posted by TEV at 12:01 AM in Harry, Revised | | Comments (0)

May 05, 2008

LA TIMES & READINGS

You've probably already seen this Q&A in today's LA Times Calendar section but linking to it is a good excuse to remind you to pop out to Vroman's this evening and say hi.  And if you are a westsider, please do make the extra effort to come support Village Books in the Palisades tomorrow - I don't think I can bear losing another westside independent.  Details here.

Posted by TEV at 04:08 PM in Harry, Revised | | Comments (3)

May 01, 2008

TOUR BEGINS

Well, the official Harry, Revised tour gets underway these weekend with four events here in town before I hit the road, and I'm hoping to see as many of you as possible.  Here's the skinny:

For Hollywood and Central L.A. - I'm kicking off the tour with a reading at Skylight Books on Saturday, May 3 at 7:30 p.m.  I hear there might be cupcakes in the house ...

For Pasadena and the Eastside - I'll be reading at the venerable Vroman's on Monday, May 5 at 7 p.m. 

For the Westside - I will be reading right here in my home neighborhood on Tuesday May 6, when I appear at Village Books in the Palisades at 7:30 p.m.  I'd like to make a special pleading to my westside friends and readers - Village Books has been having a rough time of it, and we can't afford to lose another westside bookstore.  The Palisades only seems far - it's really just up the hill from Santa Monica.  And I was in there today and they have a nice big pile of books waiting for you - so please, all of you in Venice, Palms, the Marina, Brentwood, Santa Monica - do make the extra effort for them.

The Launch Party - And all of you, no matter what part of town you live in, are invited to a very special installment of Vermin on the Mount, which Jim Ruland has rechristened Vermin, Revised. There is a great lineup of really interesting readers who I had a hand in selecting - Marisa Silver, Marianne Meyerhoff and Teresa Carmody.  The wonderful artwork is below, and I'm told there will be cake and all sorts of planned merriment and embarrassment, so please do come on out to celebrate on Sunday night.

Details on all the tour stops can be found here.  I'm off to the races ...

Verminrevised

Posted by TEV at 12:30 AM in Harry, Revised | | Comments (0)

April 24, 2008

LOS ANGELES TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS

Latfob It is that time of year once again - the nation's biggest literary festival, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, is upon us.  You can stll score some tickets for events through Ticketmaster, or else take your chances waiting on line as you puzzle over whether to see Lee Siegel foam at the mouth or Tod Goldberg say "fucktard" in a crowded room.  (We actually don't care where you go as long as you please please please come to our First Novel panel on Sunday morning and say hello.)

There are tips and roundups and fretting at various blogs around the web, notably from Tod, Callie and Pinky.  See you this weekend and don't forget the sunblock - we always do and come home looking like a rhubarb.  We won't be live-blogging the awards or the festival - we're going to enjoy our first run through as an author - but we absolutely will provide reports as the weekend progresses.

Posted by TEV at 12:30 AM in Events, Harry, Revised | | Comments (0)

April 22, 2008

TITLEPAGE NUMBER FOUR

The latest episode of Titlepage, featuring Edward Hirsch, Elizabeth Strout, Meg Wolitzer and a certain blogger-turned-novelist you may have heard of, is now available for your viewing pleasure.

It's a pleasantly lively conversation with considerably more interplay than you've seen on previous episodes, and includes an interesting to-and-fro about how poetry and fiction complement one another.  Do check it out.

(Incidentally, don't miss Hirsch's lovely essay on the writing life from Sunday's Washington Post.)

Posted by TEV at 12:30 AM in Harry, Revised | | Comments (4)

April 21, 2008

AND SO IT BEGINS

In what appears to be the first mainstream press mention, New York magazine rates Harry, Revised a "BUY IT". 

Exhaling in grateful relief.

Posted by TEV at 03:40 PM in Harry, Revised | | Comments (5)

April 15, 2008

THE BIG DAY

I'm going to spend this day, the official release date of my novel, quietly visiting with some friends, enjoying some nice meals and visiting the odd book store to take in the sights.  And, of course, filing my taxes ...

I'll return with vigor to the literary news of the day tomorrow, but for today, there's some celebrating and some reflection to be done.  And to everyone who has written in to tell me you've already bought, pre-ordered, or gotten your book shipped - sincere, heartfelt thanks.  It's the calm before the storm.

UPDATE: You would think there's only so much joy a man can take in one day, but I have also been officially Segundo'd ... (and helped Ed cross the 200 mark in the process)

Posted by TEV at 12:01 AM in Harry, Revised | | Comments (22)

April 14, 2008

TITLEPAGE TRAILER

The gang over at Titlepage has posted a trailer for episode number 4, in which we join Ed Hirsch, Elizabeth Strout and Meg Wolitzer.  The actual episode is set to air on April 22.

Posted by TEV at 12:08 PM in Harry, Revised | | Comments (0)

April 12, 2008

HARRY SIGHTING

Los Angeles Times writer and FOTEV Scott Martelle dropped me the following line yesterday morning:

"just bought your book -- Border's at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. Does that make me the first to plunk down dollars and have a copy in hand?"

As far as I know it does.  Reports (and cell phone photos) of any sightings in the wild are welcome, even though Tuesday remains the official release date.  And if you don't see the book, please do consider asking them to stock it.

Posted by TEV at 01:42 PM in Harry, Revised | | Comments (8)

Next »

RECOMMENDED

  • 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 is reminiscent 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."

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Categories

LITERARY LOS ANGELES

BUY INDEPENDENT!


Archives

More...