The Elegant Variation: POLITICAL ART

« LUCKY JIM REMEMBERED | Main | HAMPTON TO ADAPT MCEWAN »

April 14, 2004

POLITICAL ART

This morning's Literary Saloon points out that two Jonathan Franzen interviews discussing the recent Downtown for Democracy readings are available only from German newspapers. The posting prompts me to blog about something I've been thinking about since my NY visit with Terry Teachout, and that's political art.

Terry and I talked about this subject over lunch and we both agreed that politics generally doesn't make for great art. There are exceptions of course but I do think that art that's pressed into the service of the purely political tends to be didactic and formulaic. (I haven't seen Tim Robbins Embedded, and even though I am completely sympathetic to its - and his - politics, it isn't hard for me to imagine it's probably not a very good play.) On the other hand, art with political underpinnings but a broader vocabulary tends to sustain - think Guernica - even if one can question its efficacy.

I've also mentioned previously that when I told Terry I was off to see an exhibit of German Expressionism, he responded with some disdain. I can understand why one might not warm to such art, but as I visited the exhibit what struck me most was the visceral chronicle of the decaying moments before Europe committed suicide. It's an art that was deeply engaged in its time - without being didactic or reductive.

And it set me wondering about where are today's equivalents to be found among American artists? Who are the chroniclers of this time which, in many ways, is as divisive and radicalized as any period in American history? Perhaps this is just another backwater of the literary/genre high/low serious/entertainment argument but I am hard pressed to think of artists - obviously, novelists in my case - who are responding to these times with more than the superficially didactic (although John Barth's new collection of short stories, The Book of 10 Nights and A Night, has caught my attention). Now there are obvious problems in terms of timing - how long it takes to write and publish a novel - and I suppose that some issues can pass their "sell by" date by the time a book gets out there.

One thinks of The Grapes of Wrath. Whatever your opinion of Steinbeck, he managed to build a literary take on a political agenda. Perhaps that role has been ceded by novelists to other forms and media - hell, rap music presently engages the vagaries of the political situation more directly - but if you accept the notion of the artist as engage (as I do), you can't help but notice something missing out there today. It may be that the European tradition has always been more political than the American, which has tended to tilt toward entertainment. Or it may be that the academic directions in which serious fiction have moved in this country have removed it from engagement with the merely day-to-day.

Discuss.

Posted at 07:54 AM | Permalink

Comments

Politics DO make for good art, but only when the politics are so hidden beneath the structure that you don't notice it.

Posted by: Ed | April 14, 2004 at 08:12 AM

And I'd say that Elizabeth Gaskell or Arthur Miller come immediately to mind.

Posted by: Ed | April 14, 2004 at 08:12 AM

One other thing: It's "Barth." :)

Posted by: Ed | April 14, 2004 at 09:42 AM

Jeez, I'm a fucking name disaster today ... Laila already called me on "Natalie" Gordimer.

It's the drugs. Definitely the drugs.

Posted by: TEV | April 14, 2004 at 11:12 AM

It is an interesting issue. You seem to think that my rant about the philosophical underpinnings of culture was an attempt to force "littary criticism through a narrow political agenda." But isn't a search for relevance and a connection with the big issues of our time the same thing? Why is a discussion of egalitarianism's impact on culture different from an artist's attempt to capture and express a political worldview via literature?

Posted by: Kevin Holtsberry | April 14, 2004 at 01:40 PM

I think you're right (and Terry's wrong) about German Expressionism. That kind of "engagement" with social currents can produce worthwhile art. But those artists weren't really trying consciously to be political or to engage in cultural commentary. They just couldn't help it.

Posted by: Dan Green | April 14, 2004 at 02:54 PM

I'd like to second Arthur Miller (Focus) and certainly Tim O'Brien as work that stands up politically and as excellent prose. Same with Lionel Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin)

Posted by: Dave Worsley | April 15, 2004 at 05:54 AM

"Terry and I talked about this subject over lunch and we both agreed that politics generally doesn't make for great art. There are exceptions of course but I do think that art that's pressed into the service of the purely political tends to be didactic and formulaic."

Hello Mark, interesting site. The position above seems to me to be wholly unsupportable by taking a glance at history: "Antigone," the purposive political comedies of Aristophanes, Erasmus' didactic comedy The Praise of Folly, Gulliver's Travels, the dialogues of Plato, Michael Moore, all the brilliant political cartoons and graphics today, etc...

In 1939 in Forces in Literary Criticism, Bernard Smith noted: “ ‘Propaganda’ is not used here as an invidious term. It is used to describe works consciously written to have an immediate and direct effect upon their readers’ opinions and actions, as distinguished from works that are not consciously written for that purpose or which are written to have a remote and indirect effect. It is possible that conventional critics have learned by now that to call a literary work ‘propaganda’ is to say nothing about its quality as literature. By now enough critics have pointed out that some of the world’s classics were originally ‘propaganda’ for something”) (289-292).

I've recently put together the site "Literature and Social Change" that grew out of my interest in reading, writing and teaching political novels, and propaganda and literature. Lots of excerpts there that comment on the existence and value of political literature.

best regards, Tony Christini

Posted by: Tony Christini | August 14, 2004 at 06:27 PM

I know this is an old post, but i came across it while doing research for an article on a similar topic for a college journalism piece.
You are deeply in error to think that there are no great, well known pieced today that are political, artistic and American. One author since thats what you seemed most interested in is Alice Walker. Then of course there is the recent creation of the movie 'Crash'. Political art can also be seen in cartoons. Today there are numerous cartoons making fun of Bush, or protesting the Iraqi war.

Posted by: melissa | February 25, 2007 at 09:26 AM

March 14, 6 PM - Politically-Charged Art Event at Pace University, NYC

MEDIA ALERT

Pace University/University of Technology, Sydney

Global Art Collaboration

MacDonald’s & Subritzky’s Politically-Charged “Lobby, Fold and Spin” Installations Debut in New York City;

Opening Reception: Wednesday, March 14 at 6 PM at Pace University with the Hon. Robert Hill, Australian Ambassador to the United Nations

OVERVIEW From March 14 to May 5, two Australians, artist Fiona MacDonald and curator Ricky Subritzky, will collaborate on a series of three installations in New York City. Entitled “LOBBY, FOLD and SPIN,” the provocative installations are part of an international project that The Washington Post has called “charged” and “striking” and The Sydney Morning Herald has described as “subtle and beautiful.” The New York showing is a result of a collaboration between Pace and The University of Technology, Sydney, and the Daneyal Mahmood Gallery in Chelsea.

LOBBY (March 14-May 5) – installed in the lobby of the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University, America’s last Liberty Tree forms an immense mandala-like canopy circled by doves and hawks, while the surrounding space is completely wrapped with 900 yards of silk drapery depicting a kaleidoscopic crowd scene. In this installation, MacDonald and Subritzky contemplate relationships between citizens and governments, and the influential sway of lobby groups in the struggle between liberty and authority.

FOLD (March 14 - April 14) – installed at the Peter Fingestin Gallery at Pace University, MacDonald and Subritzky bring home the implications of the accumulation of property. This second installation immerses observers in intricate, insidious and repetitive patterns enfolding the heady mix of capitalism and militarism into domestic flows and architectures. In a disquieting tableau, a rocking chair and light shade merge in a wallpapered flurry of falling leaves and ascending warplanes. A drape repeats a “geophysical survey of lurid magnetic intensity data” overlaid with a crystalline motif of B-1B bombers. A grid of 50 paper shopping bags, a “bag-flag,” is silhouetted with birds of prey. And the last Liberty Tree flutters on a wall covered with US one dollar bills, and looks on a shadowy rug below.

SPIN (March 22 - April 21) – at the Daneyal Mahmood Gallery, a series of lamps are transformed into zoetropes; precursors to cinema, zoetropes use cylinders set in motion to animate still images. Riffing on the mendacity of political “spin,” and satirizing mass media’s problematic predilection for simplification, MacDonald & Subritzky animate imagery drawn from current affairs. As each trope spins erratically – a hand passes a buck; someone does a back flip; somebody else fans the flames; and the canopy of American’s last Liberty Tree spins in perpetuity.

LOBBY & FOLD OPENING RECEPTION – WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2007, 6 - 8pm
Pace University
1 Pace Plaza (across from City Hall)
Lower Manhattan
Enter at Spruce Street (between Gold Street and Park Row)

EXHIBIT HOURS: Tuesday - Saturday, 12 - 6 PM (except during theater events at Pace, call 212-346-1715 to confirm weekly schedule).

FREE ADMISSION

ABOUT FIONA MACDONALD & RICKY SUBRITZKY: MacDonald & Subritzky first collaborated in 1995 at the Museum of Sydney, where they developed work now in public and private collections including the National Gallery of Australia. More recently, they worked together in 2005 on the Strangely Familiar exhibition in Sydney (http://oj.hss.uts.edu.au/strangelyfamiliar/strangelyfamiliar), and in 2006 on the Dream Home exhibition in Washington DC (http://www.hss.uts.edu.au/dreamhome). MacDonald's visual art practice often explores entangled personal, aesthetic and historical storylines. She says she frequently uses modest materials and artisan techniques, including collage, weaving and silhouette, to create visual paradoxes that challenge essentialising narratives and imperialisms. Subritzky's academic and curatorial practice deploys what he calls a 'radical empiricism,’ bridging critical distance to engage with contemporary problems. Beyond ideology critique, he is interested in an actively experimental approach that creates new and productive associations between ideas, materials and texts.

ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT OF FINE ARTS, PACE UNIVERSITY: http://appserv.pace.edu/execute/page.cfm?doc_id=6928

ABOUT PACE UNIVERSITY: One hundred years old in 2006, Pace University is known for an outcome-oriented environment that prepares students to succeed in a wide-range of professions. Pace has facilities in downtown and midtown New York City and in Westchester County at Pleasantville, Briarcliff, and White Plains (a graduate center and law school). A private metropolitan university, Pace enrolls approximately 13,500 students in undergraduate, masters, and doctoral programs in the Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, Ivan G. Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems, Law School, Lienhard School of Nursing, Lubin School of Business, and School of Education. www.pace.edu

DIRECTIONS TO PACE’S DOWNTOWN CAMPUS: http://appserv.pace.edu/execute/page.cfm?doc_id=16157

Posted by: Sammie | March 09, 2007 at 06:01 PM

Tour de France? are you kidding? A cyclist link?

http://www.light-to-dark.com/ocean_park.html

and so, all art, based on intent and conveyance of it, supplants politics. Especially, where only elements are considered.

http://www.light-to-dark.com/Stephen_Pitt_Cartoons.html

I see you are fresh. Happy days for you.

Posted by: Stephen Pitt | May 08, 2007 at 06:07 PM

"politics generally doesn't make for great art."

I respectfully disagree.

Quite to the contrary I'd say that political art is some of the only interesting or pertinent work being made today. Making purely aesthetic based work in a post modern world is a lost cause. All you are doing is supporting the commodification and degradation of the artwork and artists -- and all just to make a quick buck. Nowadays it's all about the prestige and money that can be conveyed by the artwork. The actual artistic merits of the piece are completely irrelevant.

Political artwork, on the other hand, maintains at least some validity. Now I agree that over the top/heavy handed pieces won't accomplish anything -- they are merely preaching to the choir. But there are so many subtle, well thought out, and powerful political works. Check out artists like Nikki S. Lee, Sophie Calle, and Banksy (to a lesser extent) just to name a few.

--Paolo

Posted by: Political Art | June 25, 2008 at 05:02 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

MY NOVEL

HARRY, REVISED - Get all the details here.

TOUR DATES

WORTHY READINGS

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."

Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal by Rob Riemen

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.
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

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.
Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick

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

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

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

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

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

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 Dead Fish Museum: Stories by Charles D'Ambrosio

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*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.
The Rider by Tim Krabbe

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."

The Elegant Variation

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

April 14, 2004

POLITICAL ART

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

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

April 14, 2004

POLITICAL ART

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

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

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism