A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR
I am forever urging my students to mark up their books, to scribble, deface and decode. It's only by interacting with the books we admire at the sentence level that writers can begin to unlock the secrets of how one's heroes have accomplished their magic. (I should add this need came painfully to me, as I do have the collector's gene, courtesy of my father, and am always aware of the value of objects. But in the end, I forced myself to pick up a pen, and I've never looked back.)
The annotations are called out on the website, and I found this one most interesting and amusing:
p.88 [on 'succubus'] 'Really should get hold of a dictionary. I'll be interested to see if he/she got to the end of the book before selling it to the second-hand shop. Could have exchanged it for a Chambers or a Shorter Oxford.'
The notion of Banville with a dictionary should resonate for anyone who has read him. I was also struck by this one:
p.244 'Never noticed before the pre-echo of p.264. K[afka] is right, one works in deepest darkness.'
It always fascinates me when writers detect their influences after the fact. In contrast, I suppose I should confess that my second novel is heavily indebted to Banville's own The Book of Evidence - nothing after the fact there. I recently worked my way through the book, taking it apart, trying to figure out how he could break so many rules and still have the book succeed marvelously. Here's a sample of my own, far messier, marginalia:
I cannot figure out why this keeps posting on its side, but you get the general idea. I will leave it to future readers to determine how well I've internalized the lessons of this novel but I remain devoted to my idea that if you are a writer and there is a book you adore, there is no better exercise than stripping the thing down to its foundations to see what it's made of.
In a long and uncharacterstically personal essay in the Daily Mail, John Banville reflects on old age - his own and his parents':
Thinking back on the lives of one's parents and making comparisons with one's own life can be a dizzying exercise. It startles me to realise that when my father was the age I am now, past my mid-60s, he was long retired and preparing with more or less equanimity for his dotage.
The essay includes a remarkable photo of an eight-year-old Banville. You can read it all here.
I've been a chess obsessive for years but it's only thanks to the great Charles Simic that I can begin to justify all the wasted hours ...
There’s something else in my past that I only recently realized contributed to my perseverance in writing poems, and that is my love of chess. I was taught the game in wartime Belgrade by a retired professor of astronomy when I was six years old and over the next few years became good enough to beat not just all the kids my age, but many of the grownups in the neighborhood. My first sleepless nights, I recall, were due to the games I lost and replayed in my head. Chess made me obsessive and tenacious. Already then, I could not forget each wrong move, each humiliating defeat. I adored games in which both sides are reduced to a few figures each and in which every single move is of momentous significance. Even today, when my opponent is a computer program (I call it “God”) that outwits me nine out of ten times, I’m not only in awe of its superior intelligence, but find my losses far more interesting to me than my infrequent wins. The kinds of poems I write—mostly short and requiring endless tinkering—often recall for me games of chess. They depend for their success on word and image being placed in proper order and their endings must have the inevitability and surprise of an elegantly executed checkmate.
Apropos l'affaire D'Agata, I came across this amusing and illuminating bit in John McPhee's paean to fact checkers, Checkpoints, collected in the superb Silk Parachutes (FSG 2010):
In "The Third Man," in the immortal Ferris-wheel scene high above postwar Vienna, Orson Welles as Henry Lime implies that he has been selling diluted penicillin to Viennese hospitals but asks his lifelong friend Joseph Cotten if one of those little moving dots down there (one of those human beings) could really matter in the long scheme of things. On the ground, he adds:
In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.
I learned, or Richard learned - we've forgotten who learned - that Graham Greene, who wrote the screenplay of "The Third Man," only later published ther preliminary treatment as a novella, and the cuckoo-clock speech does not appear either in the novella or in the original screenplay. Greene did not write it. Orson Welles thought it up and said it.
I'm essentially unsympathetic to D'Agata's argument, as I've been to those who came before and forced the rubric "Creative Nonfiction" upon us, which continues to encourage writers to take all sorts of questionable liberties with the facts. If you want to make it up, as I've always said, write a novel. On the other hand don't - I don't need the competition.
Time after time I've taken to these pages to decry the idiocy of Elmore Leonard's inexplicably lauded 10 Rules of Writing, to absolutely no avail. No decent interval can pass before someone out there notes them approvingly, and I'm forced back to the keyboard to object.
The latest offender is Olen Steinhauer, who says the following in his recent review of Leonard's latest novel, Raylan:
In an essay that appeared in The New York Times in 2001, “Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle,” Elmore Leonard listed his 10 rules of writing. The final one — No. 11, actually — the “most important rule . . . that sums up the 10,” is “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” It’s a terrific rule. In fact, I liked it so much that I passed it on to a creative-writing class I once taught.
It's actually a silly, empty rule. If I were to put that rule in front of my students, here's what I'd tell them: That it's one of those bits of seemingly clever writing that, upon actual closer examination, says nothing at all. First of all, what - exactly - is "writing that sounds like writing"? Does Shakespeare sound like writing? Does Ondaatje? Does Zadie Smith? Does Faulkner? Does Pynchon? It is a useless measure.
What one presumes Leonard is saying, given the other dumbed-down rules on his list, is that he eschews what we commonly refer to, for want of a better term, as lyrical prose. One imagines he would have John Banville, Joseph O'Neill and Teju Cole busily erasing their manuscripts. On the other hand, if he doesn't mean that, perhaps he means writing that, because it fails - because it is, essentially bad writing - feels "written". So, basically, fix bad writing. Thanks a whole heap, Elmo.
The point, of course, is that these kind of lists, while sometimes amusing, rarely have anything to do with the real work of writing. (I prefer to paraphrase Deborah Eisenberg to my students - you can do anything you want, provided you can do it.) And it's dispiriting to see people who should know better trot these rules out yet again as some touchstone of great writing. They aren't. As the TLS so wisely pointed out about this list when it first appeared:
The eleventh rule is: If you come across lists such as this, ignore them. The rules may sound sensible enough, but, with the exception of No 5, each could be replaced with its opposite, and still be reasonable advice. Leonard complains that, while reading a book by Mary McCarthy, he had to "stop and get the dictionary" - as if it were a form of pain (William Faulkner, who broke most of these rules whenever he wrote, complained of Hemingway that he "never used a word you had to look up in the dictionary"). And what is meant by "leave out the part that readers tend to skip"? If every writer tried to be as exciting as Leonard, there would be no Brothers Karamazov, no Anna Karenina (remember those exquisitely boring sections on agronomy?), and the shelf reserved for Dickens or Balzac would measure about a foot. Banish patois, and we lose a library of fiction stretching from Huckleberry Finn to Trainspotting. As for dialogue, if Leonard samples Henry James, he will find "remarked", "answered", "interposed", "almost groaned", "wonderingly asked", "said simply", "sagely risked" and many more colourful carriers (these from a page or two of Roderick Hudson). Should they all be ironed out into "said"?
So what do you say, gang? Let's give the rules a rest for the rest of 2012? Because I have, you know, shit to do. I can't be here schooling you every time out. Peace out.
My pal Robert Birnbaum has a nice chat up with John Banville to ease us into the autumn ...
RB: Do the Banville books get more rigorous editing?
JB: No, the Banville books are not edited at all.
RB: Who, ostensibly, is your editor? Sonny Mehta?
JB: Yeah. He would make some suggestions, which I would take or leave. I’ve been working two to five years on this thing. There is nothing that anybody can tell me about it that I don’t already know.
RB: You’re honest with yourself?
JB: Of course. You couldn’t write if you weren’t honest. That’s what makes art so valuable. No matter how dreadful the person, the art is always honest. Art can’t be made dishonestly. It just can’t. I mean, you can do it but it will be bad art.
The latest Black, A Death in Summer, is right here on my desk, but it's queued up behind a few others. It's been a bit of a late summer reading binge around here, about which more presently.
I’m not entirely sure yet. The benign neglect that has characterized the last year or so might well be an indication that it’s time to pack things in. Yet there’s something in me that stops me from pulling the plug. I continue to value the intelligent discussion with smart, committed and opinionated readers and, despite the overwhelming number of book-related sites, I continue to find that sort of dialogue in strangely short supply.
In recent weeks I’ve read a number of posts at lauded sites, sites I admire, written by folks I like, and I’ve been, well, dismayed at how lousy they can be. But that’s nothing, in and of itself – we all have our off days, we’ve all written things we probably would like to take back.
What I found more troubling was the chorus of commenters who would invariably leap in after each post declaiming its virtues. And I’ve come to believe that perhaps the problem with the internet isn’t that it gives voice to every crank with a keyboard and a broadband connection. No, it may be that the insidious thing is the insularity of the waiting chorus of those who champion mediocrity, who validate self-indulgence or unoriginal thinking.
So, what I can say is that the days of daily updates of literary news are probably over. That sort of thing is crazy time-consuming but, more importantly, I’m just not as interested in this prize and that obituary as I once was. Plus I have some considerable life changes to navigate, not to mention a novel to finish.
What I will continue to do is to run interviews with authors of note; to point out books I think are worthy of your attention and to wave you off the overrated ones; to take this piss out of the occasional blowhard; to draw your attention to especially thoughtful essays and discussions online; to continue to post about teaching and share some of my writing lessons; to post longer, random train of thought essays (like this one) and to discuss second novel travails. (A new post on that subject is in the works.)
And, of course, I will continue to advise you on all matters Banville-related.
Speaking of which, I’ve been asked several times about my failure to discuss Banville’s latest novel The Infinites. Some people have taken my relative silence to be somehow damning. Not the case. There are three reasons why I haven’t talked as much about the novel as I might.
First, I’ve come to realize that there is an assumption among my readers that a Banville novel is a pre-sold quantity to me. I’m not sure that’s entirely inaccurate, but at a minimum, I suspect no TEV reader would have been much surprised to see me endorse the novel. (Which, incidentally, I do.)
Second, many of you are likely to remember that Banville was kind enough to blurb Harry, Revised. And so I found myself perhaps a bit oversensitive to accusations of logrolling and the like. On the one hand, I’ve seen enough about the ecology of blurbs that I’ve come to understand they are, as often as not, gestures of friendship as they are of critical respect. (Think of the familiar round-robin of names that routinely surfaces on the back of any novel by Believer alumni.) On the other, a good book is a good book, whether written by a friend or foe, and I’ve come to see it seems excessively fastidious not to say so. Still, I continue to pick up books hopefully, gambling each time against experience that a blurb will be meaningful, and so I’ve been a bit reluctant to further undermine an already debased form.
Finally, and most relevant, I hadn’t actually read the book until last month.
How on earth is that possible? Let me explain. MOTEV called me some weeks ago to inform me that her book group had turned to The Infinities, and she was loving it. She was eager to discuss it with me, when I had to shamefacedly admit I hadn’t read it yet. I had started it when it came out, but I’d set it aside and now I couldn’t remember the reason. The last year really has been tumultuous, and amid my personal travails and focus on my novel, much has fallen by wayside.
So I picked up the book and began it again, and was thrilled anew as I always am by Banville’s prose. After a dozen pages or so, I remembered why I’d put it down. My novel is, among other things, about a character dealing with the death of his father. Which is one of the main themes of The Infinities. I decided that I wanted to avoid any additional Banville influence – as it is, anyone who has read The Book of Evidence will immediately see that my book is a rip-off, um, homage to this earlier work. So I decided to wait.
Unfortunately, Novel 2 has taken much longer than planned – subject of the future post – and I realized at this rate, it might be years before I could read it. And I remembered something Joseph O’Neill said when I interviewed him:
TEV: Do you read fiction while you are writing fiction?
Joseph O’Neill: I do. And I might do a couple of quick laps, and that’s it. It depends. Obviously, I can’t go seven years without reading a book. If I’m stuck for juice, I will go back to certain writers or investigate new writers and find out what’s going on.
TEV: Will there be any risk of seepage when that happens?
Joseph O’Neill: I hope so. I mean, you want a little bit of that. You know, you’ve got be grown up about influences. I think you’ve either got it or you haven’t. By ‘it’ I mean the knack of writing something valuable that’s your own. So if you are worried about being influenced, it’s almost a pointless worry. Either you’re going to be influenced or you’re not going to be influenced—it doesn’t change anything, it’s all about whether you have the knack. Anyway, the alternative is to not read anything. And no one can be a writer without being familiar with other writers.
And so I decided to bring it, and I’m glad I did. The Infinites is superb, and O’Neill is right, it makes a difference. Which makes it a timely moment for Harold Bloom’s latest to land on my desk. About which I intend to say more in the future. For now, I leave things here in a state of fragile equipoise, and I assure you posting here will continue, as the form struggles to make itself known to me.
However sporadic my posting might be these days, you can always count on me for a Banville Bulletin - he's won the Kafka Prize.
An international jury which included German literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki and British publishder John Calder selected Banville for the prize, which is awarded annually and includes $10,000.
John Banville reviews James Attlee's Nocturne for the Guardian.
Nocturne – a term taken over by Chopin from the Irish composer John Field, but frequently employed by painters, too, particularly Whistler – is written in the relaxed, ambulatory tone of an 18th-century rambler's tale. Attlee conducts us on a latterday grand tour that takes in, among many other places, Turner's Thames, Basho's Japan, Pliny's Vesuvius and Rudolf Hess's solitary cell in Spandau prison. We learn little about the author, not necessarily a bad thing in these confessional times, although he does throw us hints as to his predilections and anathemas; for instance, he has a keen interest in painters – Samuel Palmer, Joseph Wright of Derby, the aforementioned Whistler – and in Japanese poetry; he deplores the seemingly unstoppable spread of light pollution yet considers Las Vegas at night one of the wonders of the world; he is not too happy about noise pollution, either – "Why aren't we ever content to just shut the fuck up?" – and declares "a particular hatred for wind chimes, hanging bells and all such paraphernalia".
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."
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.
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.
"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
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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".)
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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."
