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  • 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."
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May 11, 2008

REMINDER

This week I am in Portland, New York and Boston and so will only be posting intermittently from the road.  But Jim Ruland has some real goodies lined up for the week, so do make sure to check in on what he's doing.  Hope to continue to see you all out there on the road.  I only wish I had time to swing by Philadelphia, too (if only to say thank you in person).  Dispatches and updates to follow.

Posted by TEV at 10:29 PM in Housekeeping | | Comments (1)

May 06, 2008

PANT, PANT

Clearly, there's a pattern emerging here and it's likely to afflict us throughout May - book signing the night before, mad delayed scramble to get posts up the next day.  We've got to make a quick DMV-related court appearance (speeding, traffic school) and then we'll be back here posting away in the late morning.  Until then, drive safely ...

Posted by TEV at 08:10 AM in Housekeeping | | Comments (0)

May 05, 2008

DEEP BREATH

We are totally fried from a wonderful weekend of book fun, including Saturday night's Skylight reading and last night's Vermin on the Mount launch, which featured some truly memorable readings by Marisa Silver, Marianne Meyerhoff and Teresa Carmody.  Many thanks to all those who attended.

There's plenty of literary news beyond the Times, but we're completely exhausted from celebrating, so posts will be delayed until around lunch.  Until then, however, David Milofsky namechecks a few familiar blogs in his column on what the web can offer to the future of reviewing, but of special note is the attention he pays to the Barnes and Noble review:

Perhaps the most significant new outlet for reviews is the Barnes & Noble Review, which was launched just last October. In addition to being more nicely designed, the Review has the added advantage of many brick-and-mortar B&N bookstores to help promote it.

Jim Mustich, editor in chief of the B&N Review, said in an e-mail message, "We run one new 1,000- word review every weekday. In addition, we also review six titles in our Spotlight section and feature 50 titles with brief annotations in our Long List Section."

We've said it before, we'll say it again - this is the future, so pay attention.  Back in a few hours, bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Posted by TEV at 12:16 AM in Housekeeping | | Comments (4)

April 07, 2008

THE VIEW FROM OUR WINDOW

(With apologies to Andrew Sullivan ... )

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This is the view from our lovely perch in Mineral Wells, TX where we're working on the new novel.  Internet connection is indifferent, so don't expect much this week but we'll do what we can when we can.

Oh, we've been asked to say that "Texas isn't as bad as y'all think it is."  That Texans have asked us to say this should put things in some perspective.

Posted by TEV at 09:02 AM in Housekeeping | | Comments (8)

March 28, 2008

SSHHHHH ...

Since we gave away three books on Wednesday, we're taking some extended quiet time starting now.  We'll be back in these parts on Monday but until then, don't forget to come by the Dutton's party on Sunday.  We'll be looking for you there!

Posted by TEV at 12:01 AM in Housekeeping | | Comments (0)

February 14, 2008

BACK IN L.A.

We're back.  We're jet-lagged.  We're tired.  We're facing a terrifyingly overstuffed inbox and a mountainous pile of book deliveries to go through. 

But we're not cold any more.

All of which is to say that if you've sent an email and haven't heard back yet, please give us a few more days to get caught up.  And we'll shoot to have a few posts pop up here today as the day wears on.

As for NY, the biggest news was not the conference, nor the new wonderful friends we made.  Rather, it's that MOTEV has entered the 21st century with a laptop, internet access and her first email account.  Which means she can now read this blog.  Which means we can't say what we were planning to say about her driving, other than that the old maxim that the drive to the airport is more dangerous than any flight, which once comforted this nervous flier, never felt truer.

More anon.

Posted by TEV at 07:27 AM in Housekeeping | | Comments (3)

February 12, 2008

STILL TRAVELING

Two quick thoughts about New York, neither revelatory:

1) It is cold.  We're talking ass cold, people.

2) There should be a website of the locations of public restrooms in NYC, especially in the Village.

Regular posting to resume tonight or tomorrow but until then, Ron has been covering the entire TOC conference for Galleycat.

Posted by TEV at 02:04 PM in Housekeeping | | Comments (10)

January 31, 2008

SICK DAY

It's going around, and we've got it.  We'll try to rally a bit later and post some updates, especially regarding our Skylight panel next week.

Posted by TEV at 10:02 AM in Housekeeping | | Comments (0)

January 23, 2008

POST GAME POST

I am far too exhausted to post coherently right now but I would like to thank everyone who came out tonight and made for a memorable NY debut - a packed house at Boxcar.  Details to follow but I couldn't have been happier to see so many friendly faces.  And the galley went to the wonderfully deserving Lauren Cerand.

I hope the rest of you will forgive the paucity of literary action around here this week but I do promise to be back in good form as soon as I get back to L.A. on Friday.

Posted by TEV at 09:04 PM in Housekeeping | | Comments (1)

January 22, 2008

RADIO SILENCE

Running around NY, not much blogging time.  It's cold - damned cold - and we'll try to give you our impressions of the Stoppard play, which we took in with MOTEV this evening.  But for now, lights out.  Updates as soon as humanly possible.

And if  you are in NY, really, truly - please do come by tomorrow night.

Posted by TEV at 08:56 PM in Housekeeping | | Comments (3)

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RECOMMENDED

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

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    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

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    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.
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    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.
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    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

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  • Ticknor by Sheila Heti

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    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.
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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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."

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