The Elegant Variation

WORKIN' FOR A LIVIN'

As we've just noted in a letter we've submitted to the NYTBR, one of the best things about having a smart and literate readership (and an open comments policy), is that you guys help plug the gaps in our reading list.  Responding to our Personal Days review, in which we struggled to come up with novels that take work as the central subject, a number of you have weighed in with your favorites in the comments box.  We thought we'd "graduate" a few choices above the fold:

"Detail Muse" argues for Max Barry’s “Company”, Joseph Heller’s “Something Happened” (Larry Colby seconds this one), Stewart O’Nan’s “Last Night at the Lobster” and the short-story anthologies: “Labor Days” by David Gates (ed.) "Worker’s Write" series -- stories from the Cubicle; the Classroom; the Cash Register; and the Clinic; by David LaBounty (ed.).

Tod Goldberg points us to "a great novella about office life called Peasants" found in Gary Amdahl's new book "I Am Death."

Garth recommends "the Stanley Elkin oeuvre ... From The Franchiser and The Dick Gibson show to George Mills, Elkin is a master of exploring character through work."

Raul Garcia makes a pitch for Dagoberto Gilb's "The Magic of Blood," as well as Bukowski's "Post Office."

And Sabra Wineteer thinks we should check out Allegra Goodman's "Intuition."

You can always add your selection to the "Novels about Work" reading list in the comments box below.  If only we'd spoken before we wrote the review!

REVIEW: PERSONAL DAYS

My review of Ed Park's debut novel Personal Days appears in tomorrow's New York Times Book Review.  Here's the opening:

When the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno said that “work is the only practical consolation for having been born,” he could not have foreseen the lot of the 21st-century cubicle drones who populate Ed Park’s witty and appealing first novel, “Personal Days.” Today, it seems, notions of work have been transformed from “every man a king” to mass e-mailings of cat pictures

Much is likely to be made of the similarities between “Personal Days” and “Then We Came to the End,” Joshua Ferris’s 2007 National Book Award finalist. Both are set in offices convulsed with layoffs. Both are comic ensemble pieces, and both employ the first-person plural (Ferris throughout, Park in his opening section). But considering the ubiquity of the work experience in American lives, and the thousands upon thousands of novels published annually, perhaps the question shouldn’t be why there are two work-related novels right now but why there aren’t many more.

You can read the entire review here.

TEV GIVEAWAY: MORE THAN IT HURTS YOU

We recently mentioned that Darin Strauss was blogging his 22-city book tour, so this seems an ideal moment to offer up a copy of his latest novel More Than It Hurts You.  No less a luminary than the sublime Gary Shteyngart has described it as "a novel that is — suture by suture, idea for idea — peerlessly brilliant. Here is a supreme, mature novelist at the height of his powers. Take me to the hospital. My jaw has dropped."  If you're curious, you can read an excerpt for yourself, or have Gary Oldman read it to you.  (Scroll down.)

The rules are the same as ever, as always: Drop us an email, subject line "HOW DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH IT HURTS ME?"  Please include your full mailing address.  If you've won in the last six months, you need to sit this one out.  And we will take all comers until 8 p.m. PST, at which time the Random Number Generator will bestow its favors upon one of you.  Until then, be well, and do check the post below and come to Nam Le's L.A. reading on Sunday night.

UPDATE: Congratulations to yet another longtime giveaway entrant, Eric Bottorff of Urbana, IL!  Now go bench yourself for six months ...

L.A. EVENT: NAM LE **HIGHLY RECOMMENDED**

Nam Le will be concluding his North American book tour this Sunday evening with a newly added stop: our very own Skylight Books.  We hope you'll come round and check out the reading - Le is the real thing.  We'll be in the audience, so do say hi.

By the way, email is working again - thanks for the patience.

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

We're having computer problems at the moment that are preventing us from sending emails.  We can receive but not send them, so if you are waiting on a reply please give us a day or two.  Cheers.

T.S. ELIOT v. PORTISHEAD

T.S. Eliot reads Prufrock, accompanied by Portishead.

WEDNESDAY MARGINALIA

The Prospect looks at Beijing Coma and talks to its author, Ma Jian ... At The Atlantic, Megan McArdle has some advice for you guys who want to share your sci-fi jones with the wife: "Those of you who pitch science fiction to wives and girlfriends who do not enjoy it are probably saying something along the following lines: "Space ships! Alien monsters! Men in tights!" Instead, for women who find that sort of thing distasteful, talk about it as a fairy tale--only a fairy tale with science instead of magic. The basic emotional space it taps is the same." ... Thank you to the many readers who wrote in to alert us to sightandsounds.com's report on a new interpretation of Godot. (Scroll down to Die Welt 20.06.2008); Tom Teicholz has a bit more at his place ... UK publisher Hamish Hamilton has launched on an online literary magazine called Five Dials ... A report on the recent literary festival at Shakespeare & Co ... Ted Hughes's holiday home is open as a writers' retreat (insert Bell Jar joke of your choice) ... Sam Jordison, the literary luminary whose resume includes the masterwork Crap Towns, decides that Disgrace would be at home in one of his towns ... An inscribed presentation copy of a first edition of Emma is about to go on sale ... The International Herald Tribune considers "Egypt's Balzac," (their formulation, not ours) Naguib Mahfouz ... Like most of you, we rue the closing of Cody's Books ... Oh, and finally, we're still irritated by Ian McEwan's recent outburst, especially his contemptible assertion that "American Christians don't want to kill anyone in my city ... " Real Big Picture thinking, sir.  Barnett Slepian thanks you for your concern. 

NOTA BENE: LE GRAND MEAULNES

"No one said a word.  The farrier and his man, the latter on the bellows while the farrier struck the hot iron, cast long, sharp shadows on the wall.  I remember that evening as one of the greatest of my adolescent years.  I felt a mixture of pleasure and anxiety, afraid that my companion might deprive me of the meagre joy of going to the station in the trap and, yet, at the same time, without daring to admit it even to myself, waiting for him to perform some spectacular feat that would alter all the arrangements ... "

- Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes.  (From a new translation by Robin Buss - an older translation is freely available via Project Gutenberg.)

L.A. EVENT: JOSEPH O'NEILL **HIGHLY RECOMMENDED**

If you're an RSS reader of TEV, please come by the site and check out Netherland, the newest addition to our Recommended sidebar.

As it happens, you will have a chance to see O'Neill when he reads at Vromans on Wednesday evening - details here.  Hope to see you there.

THE HEAT BREAKS

It has been absolutely unbearable here all weekend.  We live as west as you can get, the beach within spitting distance, and all we wanted to do for the last 48 hours was crawl into a tiny ball and take up residence at the bottom of our pool.  We're still a bit too heat-addled to offer much insight but these items of note caught our eye through the heat haze ... Pia Z. Ehrardt at Five Chapters ...  Ian McEwan infected by Amisism ... Speaking of racists, someone should untwist Rod Liddle's knickers ... (And what is it with all this "Books we hate" nonsense?) ... Geoff Dyer's week ... An early look at the new Roth ... Very exciting!  The new Makine reviewed ... The Edinburgh International Book Festival draws rock concert comparisons ... PopMatters on second hand bookstores ... Did we mention that it's been hot?