The Elegant Variation: THE ELEGANT VERMIN'S BIG BAD LIST OF GOOD THINGS THAT COME IN SMALL PACKAGES

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May 16, 2008

THE ELEGANT VERMIN'S BIG BAD LIST OF GOOD THINGS THAT COME IN SMALL PACKAGES

All Blacked Out & Nowhere to Go by Bucky Sinister from Gorsky Press: This combines Sinister's sold-out book of poetry Whiskey & Robots with an epic poem about a San Francisco squat. The son of an Arkansas preacher, Sinister brings brimstone and belly laughs to the foibles of the human condition.

All Over by Roy Kesey from Dzanc Books: One of the most gifted, hard-working, and diverse short story writers working today. There was a time when Roy Kesey's greatness was a secret known to a handful of admirers, but those days are all over.

Bear Parade: An odd collection of e-books from poets. From Michael Earl Craig's "Seahorse": "...someday / I will get it all together, / and not drift so blindly / like the seahorse with his throat slit, / leaking a dark scarf across / his moonlit corral homeland."

Big Lonesome by Jim Ruland from Gorsky Press: You didn't think I'd go five days without plugging my own book of short stories did you? The stories aren't really all that short, but the book itself is only 6.8 x 5 inches. Puny, really.

Bill's Formal Complaint by Dan Kaplan from The National Poetry Review Press: An eclectic chapbook of linked poems in various forms and (dis)guises centered around a hapless, hopeful and all-too-human everyman.

Duck and Herring Field Guide: A quirky, seasonal literary magazine out of Atlanta that fits in your pocket.

A Field Guide to the American Family by Garth Risk Hallberg from Mark Batty Publisher: With it's mish-mash of styles, the book resembles a photography house's overdesigned annual, but the illustrated novella-in-flash is unexpectedly astute. Perfect for road trips with people you hate.

Flasks: A flask is like a good dog or a sturdy walking stick in that every writer ought to have one, but flasks are better because they're filled with whiskey and won't piss on the floor.

Future Tense Books: A "micro-press" run by acclaimed indie author and bookseller Kevin Sampsell that has published Gary Lutz, Myriam Gurba, and Elizabeth Ellen.

Hotel Crystal by Olivier Rolin from Dalkey Archive: 43 descriptions of hotel rooms from around the world scribbled on post cards, end papers, and odd bits of scrap by someone who may or may not be a spy but most certainly is a rogue.

Howl by Allen Ginsberg from City Lights: #4 in the Pocket Poets Series. Intro by William Carlos Williams. 57 pages. Has there ever been a more important pocket paperback in the West?

It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature by Diane Williams from FC2: This master minimalist is at the height of her powers and somehow manages to be screamingly funny even when it's not obvious what the hell is going on.

J&L Illustrated: Extremely irregular literary and art journal with odd stories and black and white illustrations. One of my all-time favorite short stories was published in the first volume but, alas, it's out of print.

Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock: There are few sympathetic characters in these very short stories and a catalog of their sins would read like a season in hillbilly hell. I disagree with just about every review I've read: there's nothing resilient or redemptive about the people of Knockemstiff, OH, but Pollock goes into a story like gangbusters, making this an unputdownable collection.

Letters from Wendy's by Joe Wenderoth from Verse Press: Have you ever sat in a fast-food restaurant late at night and thought about writing a long-ass letter to its fictional figurehead on the backs of hundreds of customer comment cards? Wenderoth: did it. You: ordered fries.

The Musical Illusionist and Other Tales by Alex Rose from Hotel St. George Press: A compendium of fake maps, incomprehensible diagrams, and fantastic libraries, The Musical Illusionist displays the Victorian compulsion toward taxonomy and love of a good hoax. Turning its pages is like taking a visit to The Museum of Jurassic Technology.

Sailor's Holiday by Barry Gifford: Four short novels about Sailor Ripley and Lulu Pace Fortune of which Wild at Heart is the first. The novels are episodic and made up of short bursts of prose that are both hilarious and intense. Smartly written crime fiction from a vastly underappreciated American writer.

Seashells. You find them on the beach. They're pretty to look at. They whisper in your ear. You put them in your pocket. Years later, waves of nostalgia.

Smokelong Quarterly: An online literary magazine devoted to short short fiction, i.e. stories one can read during the course of a cigarette. Each issue is shepherded by a new guest editor.

The Secret Lives of People in Love by Simon Van Booy from Turtle Point Press: There's something endearingly outre about the protagonists of these short short stories that I can't quite put my finger on. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to discover they were written 40 years ago by a Belgium philosopher who was last seen on the back of a camel somewhere in the Sahara.

Posted at 01:17 AM in Guest Bloggers | Permalink

Comments

This is one of the biggest, baddest lists of awesome things in small packages that I've ever seen! It should be printed on little notecards or flyers and given to all writers. Or, something like that.

Posted by: aaron | May 16, 2008 at 06:36 AM

Very cool list.

Posted by: Paul Sweeney | May 16, 2008 at 02:37 PM

I agree about the Van Booy stories. No trace of irony here; they're downright earnest. Which makes the book some strange avant garde.

Posted by: patrick | May 16, 2008 at 04:38 PM

Thanks for the Future Tense mention, Jim. You had a pretty awesome run here at TEV. You've covered or reviewed/interviewed many of my recent faves: Simmons, Rose Metal Press, Kim Chinquee (Kim and the RMP book are my staff picks at Powell's this month), Donald Ray Pollack, Diane Williams. It's like you have ESP! Will you marry me?

Posted by: KevinS | May 16, 2008 at 10:59 PM

Indeed. It actually makes me wish you had a lit blog of your own. Ever thought of starting one up?

Posted by: Shya | May 17, 2008 at 09:08 AM

exactly my thoughts, jim...

Posted by: elizabeth ellen | May 18, 2008 at 07:10 PM

Thanks, everyone!

Paul: I'm very interested in checking out the recommendation on FromBostontoBerlin of Paul Muldoon's essay collection.

Patrick: Avant garde yet accessible. An odd combination. Based on Good Reads reviews people either love him or are left cold.

Kevin: Sorry, I'm spoken for, but we definitely have to work something out Vermin-wise the nest time you're in L.A.!

Shya & Ellen: I appreciate your kind words. I work full-time and travel to LA from San Diego several times a month so updating a blog daily is out of the question, but you've inspired me to push myself and do more with the Vermin blog. Perhaps I could make interviews with upcoming readers a regular feature.

Posted by: Jim | May 19, 2008 at 12:07 PM

Thanks for the mention, Jim!

Posted by: Dave Clapper | May 21, 2008 at 02:38 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

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HARRY, REVISED - Get all the details here.

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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.

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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

May 16, 2008

THE ELEGANT VERMIN'S BIG BAD LIST OF GOOD THINGS THAT COME IN SMALL PACKAGES

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

May 16, 2008

THE ELEGANT VERMIN'S BIG BAD LIST OF GOOD THINGS THAT COME IN SMALL PACKAGES

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