The Elegant Variation

MARGINALIA - THE GONE TO BEA EDITION

Panels!  Meetings!  Parties!  Hangovers!  That's right, it's BEA again and we are outta here.  (And if we meet you and momentarily blank on your face, please forgive us - we're horrible with face recognition but once it's clicked, we'll remember absolutely everything about you.)  Reports to follow whenever internet access becomes available.  Until then, here's a meatier-than-usual collection of links to entertain you ...

* Orhan Pamuk insists he's not a writer in exile.  He's just living somewhere else to, you know, avoid those people who want to kill him.

* Pop Matters looks at On Chesil Beach.

* Wil they call them "McBooks"?  USA Today is entering the publishing game.

USA Today, which is published by Gannett Co., said Tuesday it signed licenses with six U.S. book publishers to extend its brand.

The agreements will include books on various subjects branded with USA Today and featuring graphics and content from the country's biggest paper by circulation.

* Maud Newton offers her typically thoughtful take on Summer Reading for NPR's Talk of the Nation.  Elsewhere, New York Magazine handicaps the summer offerings.

* Talk about pre-apocalytpic: Oprah's Cormac McCarthy interview is nigh.

* The Commonwealth Prize has been awarded to New Zealand's Lloyd Jones.

The award - which recognises writers born in former British colonies - earns Jones £10,000 in prize money.

Mister Pip was described by the chair of the judging panel, the Hon Justice Nicholas Hasluck, as a "mesmerising story" which showed "how books can change lives in utterly surprising ways".

* Some very noteworthy bits in the current New Yorker ... New fiction by TEV favorite William Trevor ... this charming podcast by John Colapinto on interviewing Paul McCartney when he's sixty-four ... and Louis Menand struggles with the novels of Michael Ondaatje.

* M. Allen Cunningham's Rilke novel Lost Son reviewed in the Oregonian.

Cunningham's writing is beautiful and fluid. I found myself torn, lingering over passages and yet eager to rush on. The same is true for his much-praised first book, "The Green Age of Asher Witherow," a compelling historical novel set in a coal mining town in late 19th-century Northern California. For a writer not yet 30, Cunningham has achieved a mature style and authentic voice in "Lost Son." He shows how Rilke cultivated the sense of dislocation that fostered his best work, especially during the years he lived in Paris "namelessly alone," witnessing the terrifying scenes he would mold into the feverish visions of his alter ego Malte, the Prodigal Son, "a man who didn't want to be loved."

* At the Denver Post, David Milofsky reflects on the next generation of great American writers.

* John Banville's excellent second novel Birchwood is about to be reissued.

* Dept. of Handy: We always just called him "Chuck What's-his-name-writes-those-hyper-macho-thingys."

* Samir El-Youssed, Mohsin Hamid and Gabriel Vasquez discuss complexity in fiction at Hay-Upon-Wye.

* Check out LBC Member Carolyn Kellogg's print review debut in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, where she considers Mary Otis's Yes, Yes Cherries.

Otis' characters inhabit unlovely corners of the city — barbecuing at a dingy condo, dallying in a Van Nuys parking lot, renting an apartment underneath a hillside garage and having sex in a basement storage closet. Two teens climb a huge cement tank in the middle of Hollywood, unseen. These are invisible people in pockets of the city that go underchronicled.

* This week's installment at Writers' Rooms - Edna O'Brien.

* And, finally, some awfully good tunes from an old friend.

We'll update when we can from NYC.  Sit tight.

A DAY LATE

Happy 100th birthday to Ian Fleming.

WHAT'S IN YOUR BATHROOM?

We're long-time proponents of what we feel is a vital, overlooked sub-niche of books:  Bathroom Reading.  The qualities that make a perfect bathroom book are, like any other definition of perfection, elusive and subject to change.  But generally speaking, these books consist of easily digestible, standalone bits and don't make too many deep demands - as attention can be at a premium in such moments. 

The pile of reading accumulated in our guest bathroom caught our eye the other day, and we thought we'd offer up this sampling of the kind of thing we think makes ideal bathroom reading:

Read the Beatles.  We've actually blogged about this title before but we find we never tire of re-reading the post-breakup interviews.  Paul actually comes off surprisingly candidly and unguarded in a few of these.

Off to the Races and Up the Road.  A pair of collections of Samuel Abt's excellent cycling coverage.  As tales of doping fill the media today, it's mildly discouraging to go back and read his coverage of the infamous Festina scandal and reflect on how little has changed.

The Top Ten. Another title we've blogged about but there's perhaps nothing more easily digested, ahem, in short reads than this book's series of top ten book lists by notable authors.

The Dangerous Book for Boys.  This one is merely making a pit stop here before being handed off to Nephew Zachary who, at ten, is the ideal audience for this book.  But we'll suspect he'll enjoy it only slightly more than we have (though we've been accused of arrested development before.)  We can finally learn how to play Texas Hold 'Em ...

Interfictions.  Billed as an anthology of interstitial writing, we have it primarily to check out Matt Cheney's excellent story "A Map of the Everywhere," and we found ourselves unexpectedly pulled in.

Found II.  Perfect bathroom reading - visual, visual, visual.  Loads of images and text, Found II is the second collection of "lost, tossed, and forgotten items -- love notes, shopping lists, doodles, and diary entries -- from around the world."  Engrossing, endlessly diverting. 

Time to go.  Mrs. TEV is knocking at the door ... Any good books in yours?

TEV GIVEAWAY: DUCHESS OF NOTHING

First off, if you're waiting for a promised giveaway book, please bear with us.  We're seriously behind in our planned Post Office run.  All books will ship next week.

Courtesy of our publisher Bloomsbury (we never tire of saying that), we're happy to offer up a copy of Heather McGowan's highly praised novel Duchess of Nothing, now available in paperback.  Here's what the New York Times had to say about it:

HEATHER McGOWAN'S new novel is unrepentantly difficult. In fact, it has all the elements required by the most demanding graduate student: an unreliable narrator, slippery wordplay, obsessive references to "Moby-Dick." But it also has a sneaky, irresistible charm.

You know the drill. Send us an email with subject line: NOTHING FOR SOMETHING and please please please include your full mailing address. (Every week, at least one of you forgets.)  We'll stop taking names at 3 p.m. PST and run the random number generator and announce a winner. As always, previous winners are ineligible.

As for next week, we're heading off on Wednesday to NY for BEA, so posting will be light until we get situated.  And in view of the Monday holiday, when traffic around here tends to plummet, we plan a short post on an underappreciated genre - bathroom reading.

UPDATE: We're heading out for an appointment, so we're pulling the pin a bit earlier than planned.  Congratulations to Jonathan Schumann, who's right here in L.A.  Enjoy the holiday weekend, y'all.

GUEST REVIEW: LOS ANGELES NOIR

Los Angeles Noir
Edited by Denise Hamilton
Akashic Books
348 pp.;
$15.95 paperback

GUEST REVIEW BY DANIEL A. OLIVAS

In 2004, New York-based Akashic Books launched a delightfully audacious noir series with each volume comprised of new fiction set in one locale. The first book was Brooklyn Noir followed by volumes based in Miami, London, San Francisco, New Orleans, and other cities. The series has garnered critical acclaim as well as literary awards.

Now comes Los Angeles Noir ($15.95 paperback) edited by bestselling novelist, Denise Hamilton, creator of the Eve Diamond series. As Akashic Books notes, L.A. is the birthplace of noir. Writers such as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Nathanael West used the city’s underbelly to tell stories in a way that transformed crime fiction forever. So, the authors featured in Los Angeles Noir have big gumshoes to fill.

And fill them they do.

Seventeen writers contribute to Los Angeles Noir: Michael Connelly, Janet Fitch, Susan Straight, Héctor Tobar, Patt Morrison, Emory Holmes II, Robert Ferrigno, Gary Phillips, Christopher Rice, Naomi Hirahara, Jim Pascoe, Scott Phillips, Diana Wagman, Neal Pollack, Lienna Silver, Brian Ascalon Roley, as well as Hamilton herself. It is clear from the page-turning narratives and hardboiled lingo that these writers know their literary roots. This does not imply, however, that they fall into mere mimicry.

For example, there’s Naomi Hirahara’s “Number 19” which begins: “The Korean women, lined up in black bras and underpants, pushed and pulled the flesh on their individual tables as if they were kneading dough.” This is what the penurious waitress, Ann, sees at the Koreatown spa before getting her “salt scrub” from a woman known only by a number. As with all good noir, things are not quite what they seem as we follow Ann into her growing obsession with Number 19. Neither do things end very nicely -- to put it mildly -- but the conclusion is anything but predictable.

Héctor Tobar offers a withering literary attack on the proliferation of guns in his East Hollywood tale, “Once More, Lazarus.” A weary Detective Sanabria investigates the shooting of a fourteen-year-old Daniel José Cruz. It turns out that Cruz and his teenage friends found a loaded gun at a construction site. As the detective eventually learns, Cruz “had taken the gun, and like the little boy and knucklehead he really was, he had turned the barrel toward himself to look inside.” Though he should have died from the wound, Cruz almost miraculously cheats death like Lazarus of the Bible. But how long will this teenager’s luck continue in this city filled with so many instruments of destruction?

Some of the stories take place in the wealthier parts of town such as in Patt Morrison’s “Morocco Junction 90210” where she notes that when you drive into Beverly Hills, “the road under your wheels isn’t asphalt anymore. It’s butter. Beverly Hills must have a law: Pavement shall at all times be as smooth and creamy as the faces of the makeup-counter girls at Saks.” And, of course, the moneyed denizens of the 90210 will do almost anything to keep their dirty little secrets safe from their neighbors.

Christopher Rice has West Hollywood covered in “Over Thirty” which introduces us to Jawbone, a near-ghost of a man: “The bus bench at the intersection of Santa Monica and La Cienega was empty, which meant that Jawbone was probably holed up in a shelter somewhere, possibly drying out from the combo of malt liquor and meth that kept him shouting at passing traffic for days on end.” But is he really at a shelter? Ben, an over thirty, out-of-work actor, comes home unexpectedly that night and stumbles upon an apparent tryst between his lover, Ron, and the drug-addled Jawbone. How could Ron do this to Ben? Once again, circumstances are a lot more complicated -- and bloodier -- than they first appear.

With Los Angeles Noir, the mean streets of L.A. are a little meaner not to mention a lot more diverse than they were portrayed during the era of J. Edgar Hoover, well-worn fedoras, and three-martini lunches at the Brown Derby. These stories are cinematic, violent little gems of contemporary crime fiction that are a must-read for any true fan of noir.

Daniel A. Olivas is the author of four books of fiction including Devil Talk: Stories (Bilingual Press). He shares blogging duties on La Bloga, which is dedicated to Chicano literature. Olivas is a book critic for the El Paso Times and The Multicultural Review. His Web site is www.danielolivas.com and may be reached at [email protected].

WEDNESDAY MARGINALIA

* As has been widely reported, Jonathan Lethem has selected one lucky winner for the film rights for You Don't Love Me Yet.

* Jon Wiener interviews Michael Chabon for Dissent.

JW: I’ve heard that the Jews can be argumentative. Has anybody been outraged by the portrayal of Jews in your book? Have you been called a self-hating Jew?

MC: So far the only person who has said such a thing was not himself Jewish, so his credentials, in my view, seemed a little bit impeachable. But it’s traditional for American Jewish writers that, if you depict Jewish characters engaged in some of the less admirable kinds of behavior that human beings engage in all over the planet, like greed, rapacity, violence, intolerance, if you attribute such behavior to Jews, some Jews get upset about that. They accuse you, in the Yiddish formulation, of “making a shande for the goyim”: airing dirty laundry in public, making a display of disunity at a time when unity is so important. It doesn’t matter what time it is, it’s always a time when unity is so important. The great example was pointed out to me by my mother, in the aftermath of some criticism of my work: Philip Roth, who many times in his career has been accused of this, for many books, starting at the very beginning with Goodbye Columbus. My mom said it was proof that I had finally arrived.

* Elmore Leonard - whose next novel is set in Venice - is set to appear as part of the excellent Writers Bloc series.

* We were delighted when a copy of Calvin Baker's Dominion arrived here the other day - Maud Newton has long been an admirer.  Now Baker is the subject of this NPR profile.

* The one book that's sure not to make Oprah's book club.

* John Banville doesn't exactly invite us out to play handball but he is always nice enough to ask after our novel when our paths cross.  But it's easy enough to relate to David Bezmozgis's Nextbook essay on what happens when the writer you admire most becomes a friend.  (And if you've never read Natasha - go, go, go.)

* Marjane Satrapi is interviewed at Cannes, where she's promoting the film version of Persepolis.

The film "Persepolis," screening at the Cannes festival in competition, was adapted by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud from Satrapi's black and white graphic novels. The movie, in French, is something new in an art form that is spinning in all directions.

"I never saw it as a cartoon," the artist said in an interview. The artwork had to be in black and white, and the characters are never cute. There are none of the usual special effects - cars don't talk, Spidermen don't fly. But it is funny, imaginative, and sad, bringing the famous books to life.

* The new biography of Ralph Ellison has been getting a good deal of attention.  Here's what the Christian Science Monitor has to say:

Rampersad is blunt about Ellison's last years. Ellison "was bedeviled by too rigid ideas about culture and art.... As a novelist, he had lost his way. And he had done so in proportion to his distancing himself from his fellow blacks." Yet for all Rampersad's criticisms, his portrait of Ellison is endearing. He shows us an American romantic haunted by his own high expectations – and tormented, ultimately, by self-doubt.

* Tom Teicholz's Tommywood column on one of the original typescripts of the Nuremberg Laws on display at the Skirball Center reminds us to mention that Saul Friedlander's long awaited concluding volume of this Nazi and Germany and the Jews has been released: The Years of Extermination is now available and, despite its grim subject matter, is prominently placed in our reading pile.  (We emailed him years ago - pre-TEV - to see when it would be available.  The reply was a terse "It's coming.")

* And, finally, we've said it before, we'll say it again - we love Patrick Hamilton.

NOTA BENE: REGARDS AT HOME

"From the beginning, and for the whole of the next year, we were hardly ever apart except during working hours.  It may not have been love, but we couldn't have been persuaded of that because we kept telling each other, and telling ourselves, that it was.  It we often quareled, the movies had proved time and again that love was like that.  We couldn't keep away from each other, though I think we both came to suspect, after awhile, that this might be because neither of us had anywhere else to go."

- Regards at Home, Richard Yates.  From The Collected Stories of Richard Yates.

REMINDER: NATHAN ENGLANDER

We're off this evening to catch Nathan Englander in conversation with Tom Teicholz this evening at LAPL (Readings sidebar at left for details), so posts will be light until the event recap goes up here some time tomorrow morning. 

THE RAW SHARK TEXTS

My review of the Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts appears in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.  Here's the opening:

It's not difficult to see why Steven Hall's debut novel, The Raw Shark Texts, should have set off a heated bidding war for the film rights. One can all too easily imagine that pitch session - "It's Jaws meets The Matrix!" Nothing makes a film executive's heart beat faster than an easily reducible concept, the more derivative the better, as any trip to the multiplex these days can attest.

But what makes for a studio green light works against a novel with literary ambitions. And Hall clearly has ambitions. His allusions, which he wears on his sleeve, range from Orpheus to Paul Auster to - rather ham-fistedly for a novel about amnesia - Clio (the muse of memory). But The Raw Shark Texts runs aground on an overly familiar narrative and brings to mind the oft-quoted if apocryphal bon mot attributed to Samuel Johnson: "Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good." Without necessarily intending to, The Raw Shark Texts also raises interesting questions about a generation of novelists whose primary influences are film and television and forces us to consider the line between homage and mere imitation.

You can read the rest here.

TEV GIVEAWAY: TRIANGLE

Here's your chance to get in early on the action for the next round of the Litblog Co-op.  One of the three titles up for consideration for the Summer READ THIS is Katharine Weber's Triangle. Cynthia Ozick said:

Katharine Weber’s Triangle is a marvel of ingenuity, bridging history and imagination, astonishing musical inventiveness and genuine social tragedy. It is a wide-awake novel as powerful as it is persuasive, probing and capturing human verities

Here's your big chance to win a book at get in on the LBC action.  (Word on the street is that Weber will make an appearance that the LBC's BEA party.)  So, you know the drill.  Send us an email with subject line: TRIANGULATE ME and please please please include your full mailing address.  We'll stop taking names at 3 p.m. PST and run the random number generator and announce a winner.  As always, previous winners are ineligible.

UPDATE: Congratulations to our winner, Wendy Robards of Shingletown, CA.