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?
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June 23, 2008
THE HEAT BREAKS
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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."
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.
THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism
- A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines & The Man Who Knew Too Much (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- Athena (Boldtype)
- Dictation: A Quartet (Barnes and Noble Review)
- Foreskin's Lament (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- Here Is Where We Meet (Boldtype)
- His Illegal Self (Dallas Morning News)
- Hunk City (New York Times Book Review)
- I Love You, Beth Cooper (New York Times Book Review)
- In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars (Truthdig)
- In the Kitchen (Barnes & Noble Review)
- Indignation (Barnes and Noble Review)
- Out of My Skin (Bookforum)
- Personal Days (New York Times Book Review)
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (The Modern Word)
- The End of Mr. Y (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- The God of War (Barnes and Noble Review)
- The Northern Clemency (Barnes & Noble Review)
- The Raw Shark Texts (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- Ticknor (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- Tom Stoppard's Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon (Threepenny Review)
- Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles (Los Angeles Review)
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."
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Yeah, the "Books We Hate" article is drivel, especially the two "reviewers" who open fire on Virginia Woolf (I'm a bit sensitive to this given I just took a graduate course covering a great deal of her fiction). I hate when writers claim that a novel is "everything a novel should not be" (and what does "and so much less" even mean?). After hundreds of years of novelists experimenting with content and form, has Stephen Amidon finally figured it out? *rolls eyes*
Posted by: Benjamin Hagen | June 23, 2008 at 03:56 AM
Dyer's books are all different and all excellent - 'The Ongoing Moment' is the best book about photography ever written by someone who doesn't own a camera. But what is this British middle-aged writers' obsession with tennis? Amis is always on about it and Sebastian Faulks has Bond playing it in the new book. Joseph O'Neill knows that cricket is the game for real writers.
Posted by: Andrew | June 23, 2008 at 04:18 AM
Michael Burleigh thinks books by 'angry Black novelists' whould be burnt. The grim bigots are angry and they're just not going to take it any more.
Just a warning to you so you know, The Sunday Times and the Times are very right-wing newspapers, and Rod Liddle is a bloated, belligerent journalist whose own novel was a laughable failure, a very bitter man obsessed with the notion that white men of his age and generation are being marginalised and persecuted in British society, who has at least one bitter reference to Black or Asian people in all of his articles. He's a bigoted little philistine and his approach to this subject tells you all you need to know about him and the newspaper he works for.
Posted by: Paul | June 23, 2008 at 04:56 AM
Ideally, people wouldn't write for publication when they're in a bad mood. Of course on these terms some people would never publish at all, but I don't see this as a fatal objection to the principle.
Rod Liddle and most of his brethren in the books-I-hate piece are merely current instances of the people Samuel Johnson dismissed as "sciolists and opinionated bitches."
Pieces like these are perennial. The first two or three may seem funny and liberating, but we've read two or three by the time we're 20. From there, more of the same, year after year, becomes wearisome. (The same is true for much of the recurring stuff in newspapers. Habitual readers seem to engender habitual writing – but I digress.)
The painful thing about these pieces is the writers' lack of sophistication – lack, even of the simple instinct of self-preservation.
These are people whose claim to public attention rests on their literary judgment. When they set out to knock off James or Dostoevsky in a couple of dismissive paragraphs, don't they realize they're saying more about themselves than they are about their subject?
I'd gladly read a long essay that began, in effect, "You know, I've never been able to get Henry James. I'm fine with Edith Wharton, and I love Proust, but James frankly baffles me. Since I admire many of the critics who admire him, I can't dismiss James out of hand, but let me lay out the rough dimensions of my blind spot." And so on, in good-humoured writing that evidently issues from long thought and wide reading. James's admirers and detractors alike might profit from reading a piece like this.
Instead we're treated to the noxious emissions of bilious hacks shouting "I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it."
But there. I'm going to shut up now before I write myself into a bad mood.
Posted by: Allan Connery | June 23, 2008 at 09:26 AM
If, like Helen Hawkins, you don't know the meaning of the verb 'careen', you'd be wise not to use it while insulting someone else's 'fine writing'.
Posted by: Andrew | June 23, 2008 at 10:42 AM
Re: hated books: The GU pulls the same stunt quite often, spiking traffic by pulling in a throng of punters who've read three books between them, though the punters can be counted on to spew wittier toxins than these critics. That said, I must say I liked this spittle-flecked entry:
"Lawrence is a humourless bore, a finger-wagging bully who knows simply everything about his characters, their inner thoughts and darkest motivations, and insists on telling you in wearisome detail..."
Can't someone *do* something about this awful Lawrence menace? Next you'll be telling me he wrote out the *sex scenes*, too...!
Posted by: Steven Augustine | June 23, 2008 at 10:52 AM
How lower will McEwan reach this year. First outed for stealing a whole story and presenting it as his own, and now endorsing the outrageous racism of Amis.
Well, where there's no litterary charisma, there's always a loud voice.
Posted by: blue cave | June 24, 2008 at 05:33 AM
Is Seyran Ates "racist", as well, do you suppose?
Posted by: Steven Augustine | June 24, 2008 at 09:39 AM
For many of us, in Europe, especially, the core of this "Islamism" snafu is a concern for equal protection, under the law, for Muslim women (and Gay Muslims), as we're so far from being there yet. Is sexism even older (and deeper) than racism? It would seem so.
Male "Western" Leftists seem to find it easier to imagine (dream on) solidarity with totalitarian Islamist males than with subjugated Islamic females (please note distinctions). Absurdist double-standards (a Muslim woman can be beaten by her husband because it's part of "their" culture) are putting Muslims at risk in "Western" societies they naively believed would protect them with the same vigor "Western" society protects its non-Muslim natives:
"Seyran Ates, aged 43, is a lawyer, specialising in women's rights. From a practice in Berlin, she had become well-known and her skills were eagerly sought by Muslim women. In 2005, she was named "German woman of the year". She has long campaigned for forced marriages to be made illegal in Germany. Most of her clients have been Muslim women who have been trapped into forced marriage and other demeaning aspects of Muslim "honour" culture that persist. Many of these women are, like herself, from Turkish/Kurdish backgrounds. She also campaigned against the ultimate aspect of Muslim "honour" - Muslim honour killings."
"Speaking in English, she said of honour killings and Muslim women in Germany: "And I think that more than 50 percent live in such a situation of fear of honor killings or to be killed. Many of my clients, I am working as a lawyer here in Berlin and I make family and criminal law, many of my clients, women, they say they are feared to divorce because their men say, 'If you divorce, if you go to court to divorce, I will kill you.'
'So we have a very high number who are very silent, who stay home and don't go out, don't ask for divorce, because they are in fear of being killed because of honor.'
"She has attacked Germany's bland acceptance of "multiculturalism", and has said that it keeps Muslim women in slavery, rather than forcing the Muslim community to adhere to the same standards as other people living in Germany.
"But sadly, news comes from the Telegraph today and from Monday's Deutsche Welle that the constant death threats which have been made against her by Muslim men have become too much. After two decades of defending the rights of Muslim women from abuse, Seyran Ates has finally announced that she has closed her practice.
"She has blamed the German authorities, saying that she had asked the police for protection, but had her requests ignored. The police have denied this, and claim that they were never asked to help.
"The threats have come from the husbands and male relatives of the Turkish women whom she has defended.
"20 years ago, Seyran was shot at by a man in the Berlin suburb of Kreuzberg. Last year she was representing a Muslim woman in a divorce case. Outside the court, the Muslim husband first physically attacked the woman, and then tried to assault her. This was the beginning of the end of her career.
"She told the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel: 'I'm withdrawing from professional life as a lawyer, my client is living in a women's shelter, but the assailant is running around scot-free....my life and that of my young daughter have priority.'
"She wrote on her website: "'It's once again clear to me how dangerous my work as a lawyer was and how little I was and still am protected as an individual.'"
Posted by: Steven Augustine | June 24, 2008 at 10:28 AM
What has a great woman like Seyran Ates has to do with McEwan. Seyran speaks of certain muslims respecting basic human rights. Mc Ewan just endorsed the blind fanatism of Amis and justified his obnoxious demands. To McEwan and his elk's eyes every Moslmi is a priori guilty. Actually, according to Amis, every person who "seems" to come from Pakistan or of Arab origin should be treated as a potential danger.
People like Amis or McEwan are an ennemy to moslim women or gays as much as their Moslim fanatic counterparts.
Posted by: blue cave | June 25, 2008 at 02:30 AM
People in this thread, and Mark too frankly, seem to be suffering from a comprehension problem. Islamism isn't the same thing as Islam. A simple read through wikipedia should help you on that score.
And yeah, I think Amis has succumbed to idiocy. But the attacks on McEwan are completely unfair, and based on people's specific accusations against him, clearly the result of deep ignorance on his critics' part.
Posted by: Nav | July 06, 2008 at 01:29 PM