The Elegant Variation:

« January 2007 | Main | March 2007 »

February 26, 2007

OUR STRATEGY FOR DOING SEX IS WAY LESS COMPLICATED

Clearly, there's nothing quite like a healthy dollop of explicit sex to get a literary novelist scads of press time. The Washington Post is the latest outlet to focus on the copious couplings in Jane Smiley's latest novel in this profile.

"As I was coming up with a strategy for doing the sex," Smiley continues, "I thought, well, what's my goal? My goal is that the reader finds the book so interesting that she'll keep reading no matter what the characters are doing." The sex had to be integral to "the feelings of the characters and how they're being portrayed."

Posted at 12:11 AM in Litlinks | Permalink | Comments (2)

ONE GALLEY WE WON'T NEED TO SEE

The Independent checks in on the book progress of La Petite Anglaise, who is a bit too self-absorbed and self-indulgent even for us.

Yesterday, the 34-year-old who shot to internet-based fame last year as La Petite Anglaise was putting the finishing touches to her first manuscript for a six-figure book deal and discussing a film of her life as a hassled ex-patriate with a colourful love life.

Posted at 12:10 AM in Words Fail | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 23, 2007

NEVER AGAIN ... TRULY

Edward Champion's Oscar Blog is up and running again this year. We joined in last year, despite our vow never to watch another Oscar telecast. By the end of the evening, we reaffirmed that stance. So we will be joining Ed's effort this year as we "anti-blog" - a corrective about all the wonderful things that we are able to spend our time on this Sunday evening because we will not be wasting our time with the Oscars.

Posted at 03:15 PM in Personal | Permalink | Comments (3)

CHANGES AT THE LATBR

LA Observed, with its direct pipeline into the Los Angeles Times newsroom, reports that change is afoot at the Book Review:

Newsroom sources at the Times expect the Sunday Book Review will be folded into a new hybrid opinion section and delivered in Saturday papers. The new section that some staffers have seen would be tabloid-sized, with the favored format apparently using dual front pages like the New York City tabs. A reader could pick up the section and begin with the book pages, or flip to the back page — then rotate the whole section 180 degrees — to begin with the opinion pieces. Books fans and readers looking for opinion would both get a section front to draw them in, but those who like to browse through from front to back could be annoyed at having to rotate mid-way through.

Eh. To be frank, we have always been somewhat embarrassed by the wan flimsiness of the Book Review, which always seemed to underscore management's lack of commitment to serious book coverage. This does not, on the face, seem like a positive development but we'll defer judgment until we've seen it. If it means sharing an already wafer-thin supplement with opinion pages, well, that would be unfortunate.

Posted at 03:09 PM in LATBR Thumbnails | Permalink | Comments (0)

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

We are having problems with our www.elegvar.com address, which we are in the process of transferring from our old piece of shit hosting service to our new piece of shit hosting service. Apologies for the problems but the marksarvas.blogs.com address continues to work just fine. Hope to resolve this by next week.

Posted at 11:21 AM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0)

LIBERALISM'S LOST LIBRETTO

Tom Stoppard - about whom we hope to have more to say shortly - is both given to and taken away from in Eric Alterman's look at The Coast of Utopia in The Nation, which posits: theatre ... not so hot; cultural event ... yippeee.

The significance of the Lincoln Center Theater's production of Tom Stoppard's three-part, nearly eight-hour The Coast of Utopia lies in its status as a cultural rather than a literary event. As a dramatic work the play, which follows the lives of a series of Russian intellectuals and would-be revolutionaries across Europe between 1833 and 1866, suffers from all kinds of insoluble problems. For starters, even if you've done all your homework--including the extra credit--it's damn near impossible to remember who everybody is, what they thought and with whom they slept, and why it might matter seven hours (and possibly months) later. But as an occasion for serious political and philosophical argument in a culture bereft of both, Stoppard's magnum opus is cause for celebration.

Although it's not yet available online, Sunday's New York Times Book Review will include a fine back page essay by William Grimes on Alexander Herzen's wonderful memoir My Past and Thoughts. Watch for it this weekend.

Posted at 12:23 AM in Litlinks | Permalink | Comments (0)

BANVILLE TOUR DATES

We're pleased to post the March tour dates for John Banville's US book tour in support of Christine Falls (see Recommended sidebar). Please be sure to confirm local dates.

3/12: Boston	HARVARD BOOK STORE
3/13: Philadelphia	FREE LIBRARY OF PHILADELPHIA -- Talk and Signing
3/14: New York City	BARNES & NOBLE -- Discussion, Signing
3/15: Washington	POLITICS & PROSE
3/17: Pittsburgh	MYSTERY LOVERS BOOKSHOP NEWS
3/18: San Francisco	BOOK PASSAGE
3/19: San Francisco	BOOKS INC. -- Talk & Signing
3/21: Los Angeles	LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY/Aloud Program -- Reading and Signing
3/22: Seattle	ELLIOTT BAY BOOK CO. -- Reading and Signing
3/23: Portland	POWELL'S BURNSIDE -- Talk and Read
3/24: Phoenix	POISONED PEN BOOKSTORE -- Talk & Signing
3/26: Minneapolis	MAGERS & QUINN BOOKSELLERS -- Talk and Signing

Posted at 12:15 AM in Obsessions | Permalink | Comments (0)

MAX, YOU'RE A BETTER MAN THAN WE ARE

C. Max Magee, the proprietor of the excellent litblog The Millions has recapped his year of reading New Yorker short stories in dilligent week-by-week summary format.

My year in reading involved a couple dozen or so books, most of which I wrote about here, but it also involved, to a large extent, my favorite magazine, the New Yorker. I spent three or four out of every seven days this year reading that magazine. So, for my "Year in Reading" post, I thought I'd revisit all the time I spent reading the New Yorker this year, and in particular, the fiction. It turns out that nearly every one of the 52 stories that the New Yorker published this year is available online. I thought it might be fun to briefly revisit each story. It ended up taking quite a while, but it was rewarding to go back through all the stories. What you'll find below is more an exercise in listing and linking than any real attempt at summary, but hopefully some folks will enjoy having links to all of this year's stories on one page.

Posted at 12:15 AM in Litlinks | Permalink | Comments (4)

LETTERS: THE STATE OF PUBLISHING

Every so often, we get letters that are worth publishing here and sharing with you all. Here's a missive I received yesterday from Rabbi David Wolpe of Los Angeles' Sinai Temple:

Dear Mark,

With two quotes I am prepared to answer all those, especially bloggers, who constantly lament the state of publishing, but lack any sort of historical perspective. The first is from the latest NYRB, from Elliot Weinberger's review of James Laughlin's memoir:

"In the 1940s and 1950s -- it seems unimaginable now -- he rescued from oblivion The Great Gatsby, Light in August and books by Forster, Conrad, Evelyn Waugh, Henry James, Nathaniel West, Djuna Barnes, Joyce, Lawrence, Stendahl and Flaubert."

So those who lament because of the computer and the superstore remind me of the the university's official bookseller, Maitre Andry Musnier in Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame: "I tell you Monsieur, it's the end of the world. The students behavior has never been more outrageous. It is all these damnable modern inventions that are the ruin of everything. Artillery, sepentines, bombards and especially printing, that other plague from Germany. Its the end of manuscripts, the end of books! Printing is killing off the book trade. The end of the world is at hand!"

Should you choose to post this, I'd be delighted. It is really enough; we should feel enormous gratitude that more is available now than ever before in history. Will some good things be overlooked? Of course. But at times the insistence on perfection is the enemy of excellence

Best,
David
Rabbi David Wolpe
Sinai Temple

Posted at 12:11 AM in We Get Letters | Permalink | Comments (1)

February 22, 2007

TEV GIVEAWAY: FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM

We recently noted the handsome Harcourt reissue of Umberto Eco's 1988 masterpiece Foucault's Pendulum. We are pleased as punch to offer a copy for today's TEV giveaway. Here's what Anthony Burgess had to say about it in the New York Times:

First, profound obeisances to William Weaver, the marvel of whose translation I am able to confirm, having read much of Umberto Eco's new novel in the original. The mountain of information in it was piled up from sources in many languages and gathered through many centuries, and its characters are masters of such obscure and mystery-laden arts that it is dizzying in any language. Carrying the whole thing over from one to another must have been a monstrous task. Not an easy book, ''Foucault's Pendulum'' is an encyclopedic detective story about a search for the center of an ancient, still-living conspiracy of men who seek not merely power over the earth but the power of the earth itself, and who in the end draw their pursuers into a circle where discovery of the truth is lethal. It is not meant to be easy. But neither was ''The Name of the Rose,'' which became a best seller, even though one wonders how many people actually read all of it. ''Foucault's Pendulum'' will almost certainly become a best seller as well, and great are the rewards for those who actually manage to read it. For while it is not a novel in the strict sense of the word, it is a truly formidable gathering of information delivered playfully by a master manipulating his own invention - in effect, a long, erudite joke.

We'll send of a copy of this intellectual thrill ride that was too difficult for Laura Miller to the first reader who emails us with the subject line "MA GAVTE LA NATA". As always, please include a full mailing address, and previous winners are ineligible. Also, please note - we have a busy morning so the winner will not be posted until after lunch.

UPDATE: We have a winner. Congratulations to Kevin Mattox of Knoxville, TN. And thanks to all who removed the cork ...

Posted at 06:30 AM in Giveaways | Permalink | Comments (3)

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

February 26, 2007

OUR STRATEGY FOR DOING SEX IS WAY LESS COMPLICATED

ONE GALLEY WE WON'T NEED TO SEE

February 23, 2007

NEVER AGAIN ... TRULY

CHANGES AT THE LATBR

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

LIBERALISM'S LOST LIBRETTO

BANVILLE TOUR DATES

MAX, YOU'RE A BETTER MAN THAN WE ARE

LETTERS: THE STATE OF PUBLISHING

February 22, 2007

TEV GIVEAWAY: FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM

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

February 26, 2007

February 23, 2007

February 22, 2007

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