The Elegant Variation:

« November 2004 | Main | January 2005 »

December 14, 2004

PLUS CA CHANGE ...

Grand independent book stores closing, chains taking away business, libraries sitting empty. No, it's not Santa Monica, it's Kashmir.

"I used to go to the Kashmir Book Shop on Residency Road with my father who bought us a lot of books. The bookshop used to be beaming with people. The young and old Kashmiris had a natural flare for literature in those days," said Isma Sheikh, a woman with a passion for reading.

"Today a multi-purpose departmental store has replaced that grand old bookshop. Vanishing of city's only traditional bookshop is enough commentary on what has happened here," Sheikh told IANS.

Posted at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

WITH A GUILTY START, WE ASSUME HER TITLE REFERS TO US

Way back in the old days (about two years in blogosphere time), before TEV was even a glimmer in our demented little eyes, we were regular readers of Susannah Breslin's Reverse Cowgirl blog. So it was a bit like hearing from Blog Royalty when she dropped us a line the other day to suggest she didn't wholly disapprove of goings-on over here. Tall cotton, indeed.

The upshot is that this Grande Dame of the 'sphere has launched Porn Happy, a new blog devoted to her novel of the same title and the rocky process of bringing it into the world. Stop in and welcome her back.

Posted at 12:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

CHEERING ON OUR FRIENDS

FOTEV Karen Palmer's short story "Virtuoso Mio" (which originally appeared in the Kenyon Review) is included in this year's Pushcart Prize anthology, The Pushcart Prize XXIX: Best of the Small Presses, 2005 Edition. Congratulations, Karen!

Posted at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

December 13, 2004

WE HAVE A WINNER

Well, look at that. The day is over and The Elegant Variation is still in one piece. I’m going to turn the wheel back over to my host now, with many thanks for letting me take it out for a spin. What fun you all were! How generous you were with your most humiliating moments!

It didn’t occur to me, when I suggested a contest, that I would actually have to choose a winner. How can one choose? Your stories are all so good. You really embarrassed yourselves, my friends. Two of you, including our host, lived out my worst fears (change in the coffee cup, a mistaken pregnancy). I especially enjoyed the karmic coda provided by Mr. Daniel Olivas, and the too-awkward-not-to-be-true display of affection described by John Shannon. But in the end, I think, I have to go with the one who didn’t get the girl. A rejected advance in front of your high school classmates + fanged rodents = solid gold. Kudos, Jim Ruland! You’ve made us all feel much better about ourselves.

Posted at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

LINKS BEFORE LIPOSUCTION

I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying your stories of teenage shame. Really. Usually it takes reckless, televised plastic surgery to make me this happy. Keep them coming. And in the meantime, I thought I’d put up some links before I succumb to The Swan.

Steve Almond isn’t crazy about Desperate Housewives.

Have you seen the cover for the forthcoming paperback of Stephen Elliott’s Happy Baby?

. . . or for the forthcoming paperback of Matthue Roth’s Never Mind the Goldbergs?

It’s the ultra-Orthodox Nancy Drew!

Posted at 04:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

MY MOTHER REVIEWS BOOKS GIVEN TO HER BY PEOPLE WHO CLEARLY DON'T KNOW HER VERY WELL

Keep those shameful confessions coming. In the meantime, we return to literary matters with this contribution from my mother.

Puerto Vallarta Squeeze: It’s true that I had a lot to say about the author’s previous work, The Bridges of Madison County, but those of you who were paying attention remember they were mostly threats to buy barfbags by the gross. This book has two good qualities: it reminds me how much I like margaritas; and it makes a fine coaster. Uno mas!

Country Ribbon Crafts: Nothing says “I think you’re special” like a selection from the remainders table. Don't komplain when you get a kartload of kountry krap on your next birthday, kousin!

National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds: What a thoughtful retirement present. Now there’s no chance I’ll slide into a life of daytime drinking and contemplating suicide when I’ve got the little birdies to live for. Thanks, friend!

Get Organized with Heloise: Congratulations, friend, on giving the most passive-aggressive present I’ve ever received. The only way you can outdo yourself this year is with a gift certificate for a full-body wax. Don’t be surprised if Santa brings you Swiffer Sweepers in return.

White Boy Shuffle: I’m not sure why my daughter Victoria thought a novel about a gangbanging poet was an appropriate gift for her mother, but I’m glad she did. A-plus!

Left Behind: My neighbor swears I said I wanted this, but I don’t think I’ve ever been that drunk in my life. Also, I don’t want to hear the “Good News,” and I wish you’d stop leaving pamphlets in our mailbox.

White Oleander: Thanks, Jenny, for marking Mother’s Day with this tale of child abuse. I know you bought it because you wanted to read it yourself but were embarrassed to admit it, and that’s just fine. But if you get me The Surrender for my birthday. . .

Posted at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

LET THE SCHADENFREUDE BEGIN

I can’t believe TEV has so generously offered to let me take over for the day. My friends won’t even let me borrow their cars, and here he is letting me drive his whole website. Let’s hope I’m a better blogger than motorist. Within 24 hours of getting my driver’s license I’d hollowed out the whole left side of a parked Opel.

This shameful story is one of many shared in Devil in the Details, which, among other things, is a compendium of every embarrassing thing that happened to me between the ages of 12 and 18. It is in this spirit that I invite you to share your most embarrassing adolescent stories. Post them below or e-mail me, and check back throughout the day for updates. The most shameful exploit wins a copy of the book. Now spill, and we’ll all feel better.

Posted at 12:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack (1)

December 12, 2004

REPORT: VIRTUAL TOUR DE FRANCE

It's late Sunday night and no one's really reading, so I'm going to break in with a brief rave about this evening's Virtual Tour de France revisited. The ride was everything it advertised, as memorable and exciting as the first of these rides back in October.

The ride took us through a variety of mountain stages, culiminating with a murderous individual time trial up the Alpe d'Huez. (It was in this stage that Lance Armstrong essentially won the 2004 Tour.) It was a grueling but exhilarating ride, and I had to step around the pools of sweat when I was done. (Even my socks were soaked!)

My big problem came early on. I'd made a point to hydrate very carefully during the day to prepare for the two-hour ride. Unfortunately, I have a bladder the size of a cashew, and fifteen minutes into the ride, I had to pee. I mean really pee. This despite a careful pre-ride bathroom visit.

I would like to tell you that I rode through the discomfort egged on by my heroic and competitive spirit. But the truth is shame is an even more powerful motivator - sitting int the front row, there was no way in hell I would allow myself to be seen taking a bathroom break. So I rode on, sweated hard and within an hour, I was more or less out of the woods.

A few statistic for those of you who are interested:

Total time on the bike: 2 hours, 23 minutes.
Maximum heart rate: 182 bpm. (My heart monitor briefly spiked once to 198 but I don't trust that - lots of people riding in that room.)
Consumables: 3 bottles of Gatorade, 2 bottles of water, 4 packets of GU.
Calories burned: 2114 (says the Polar A5)

And that's pretty much all I've got to give. So I'm now heading off, insensate to bed, and I leave TEV in the able hands of Jennifer Traig for the day. Please make sure you make her feel at home.

Oh, and please forgive the goofy picture. It's the endorphins talking ...

Posted at 09:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

December 10, 2004

VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR: JENNIFER TRAIG

Traig We're proud to once again be a stop on Kevin Smokler's Virtual Book Tour. We'll be taking Monday off, and handing the reins to Jennifer Traig, author of Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood.

Jennifer Traig's adventures in obsession began at the age of twelve, when her religious studies introduced her to a body of rules that she hadn't known existed. This unleashed a level of religiosity completely alien to her upbringing. Psychiatrists call this disorder scrupulosity-her family just called it strange. Fervent prayer was only the beginning. On a given day, Jennifer might be putting all her possessions in the washing machine to cleanse them of the pork fumes emanating from the kitchen. Or clipping the lawn according to Old Testament regulations. Or covering her hair with Kleenex while she maintained her constant state of prayer.

Jennifer's family treated her condition with humor ("Ready for your big casserolectomy, Dr. Traig?" her mother asked as she scrubbed her hands for thirty minutes before a meal). But her obsessions wore increasingly on her, her family, and her few friends, leading to a crisis that not even joining every single school club, no matter her level of interest or aptitude, could save her from.

To check out the other stops on the tour, visit the VBT homepage.

Posted at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

L.A. EVENT: HARLAN ELLISON

Hugo-award winning writer Harlan Ellison (just don't say "sci-fi" around him!) will be signing Strange Wine tomorrow at Dutton's in North Hollywood. 5146 Laurel Canyone Blvd., North Hollywood, 3 p.m. (818) 769-3866.

Posted at 12:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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."

RECOMMENDED

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.

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

December 14, 2004

PLUS CA CHANGE ...

WITH A GUILTY START, WE ASSUME HER TITLE REFERS TO US

CHEERING ON OUR FRIENDS

December 13, 2004

WE HAVE A WINNER

LINKS BEFORE LIPOSUCTION

MY MOTHER REVIEWS BOOKS GIVEN TO HER BY PEOPLE WHO CLEARLY DON'T KNOW HER VERY WELL

LET THE SCHADENFREUDE BEGIN

December 12, 2004

REPORT: VIRTUAL TOUR DE FRANCE

December 10, 2004

VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR: JENNIFER TRAIG

L.A. EVENT: HARLAN ELLISON

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

December 14, 2004

December 13, 2004

December 12, 2004

December 10, 2004

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

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