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Seattle PI Book Critic John Marshall says goodbye with a final column remembering more than a decade of book coverage.
Author interview subject most unlike image: Norman Mailer. Mr. Mellow, perhaps from being on book tour with his dazzling wife, Norris Church Mailer.
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Updates are running behind, some fires on the home front. We'll have some fresh content up this afternoon but in the interim, do check in with The Tournament of Books, where the carnage continues ... or take in Maud Newton's excellent review of the new Cheever biography. Until then, Happy Saint Pat's to our readers.
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Granta has really hit the fatherlode with its Portrait of My Father series, and Christopher Sorrentino's entry continues the hot streak. Go read it this minute (it's brief) and marvel, as we did, as he captures a lifetime in, quite literally, the blink of an eye.
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We were fortunate enough to get to know Marlon James a few years back during the PEN World Voices festival when ... well, Maud Newton, who is a fan, tells the story better than we could. Since then, we've been looking forward to his second novel, The Book of Night Women, which recently was called "an undeniable success" in the New York Times Book Review. Here's a bit of what they had to say:
Marlon James’s second novel is both beautifully written and devastating. While the gruesome history of slavery in the Americas is a story we may dare to think we already know, every page of “The Book of Night Women” reminds us that we don’t know nearly enough. James’s narrative, related in a hard-edged but lilting dialect, takes us back to the cruel world of a Jamaican sugar plantation at the turn of the 19th century.
The curious - and if you're not by now, you should be - can also check out this recent appearance by James on Studio 360.
Well, there's no way we're giving up our copy of The Book of Night Women, but our pals at Riverhead have stepped in to offer three signed copies of the novel to three lucky TEV readers. And so we find ourselves at a familiar juncture, so sing along: Drop an email, subject line "LAPHROAIG" (you have to read Maud Newton's post to understand - and try to spell it right, please, or our email rules won't work) and include your full mailing address. We will take all entries until Sunday, March 15 at 7 p.m. PST, at which time the Random Number Generator will pick three. (Past winners may participte in this one.) Anon!
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Here's a story we'll be following with considerable interest. NEA Literature Director David Kipen has vowed to eat a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird if all 128 residents of Kelleys Island do not read the book.
He's already gotten 70 pledges and needs just 58 more to do the entire island. If everyone reads the book and signs an affidavit attesting to that, he promised to return and buy them all pizza.
Can't you just envision the frenzy around a lone holdout? Doesn't it sound like a bad Kevin Costner movie just waiting to unfold?
We should note that similar promises by others haven't always panned out, but we know Mr. Kipen to be a man of his word ... (Dijon or Gulden's?)
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So a mere 24 hours ago we went on record suggesting that we had no interest in The Kindly Ones. We hereby recant. What changed? Daniel Mendelsohn's typically thoughtful examination in the New York Review of Books:
To name a literary work after the third play in Aeschylus' trilogy, then, is to invoke, with extreme self-consciousness, two related themes: one having to do with civilization in general, and the other with human nature. The former concerns justice, its nature and uses: how it is instituted, and then executed, how much it conflicts with, regulates, and possibly appeases the more primitive thirst for vengeance, which it is meant to supersede. The latter concerns the unsettling way in which, beneath even the most pleasant, "kindly" exteriors, dark and potentially violent forces lurk. Neither, needless to say, is restricted to Greek tragedy, or classical civilization; if anything, both are intimately connected to the main preoccupation of Littell's novel, the German program of extermination during World War II.
This review is a powerful reminder that one deeply engaged critic can turn the tide of a dozen lesser opinions. Whatever our final opinion of The Kindly Ones is likely to be, we can no longer dismiss it so easily - and we stand chastened for having been so quick to dismiss to begin with.
This is the kind of criticism we live for.
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The Tournament of Books has gone live, and in the first round previous Bolaño slights are avenged. Tune in Wednesday when Harry, Revised faces likely ejection at the hands of a Booker winner.
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So, this happens to us all the time. We're away for a while, we fall a bit behind here and next thing you know, we're drowning in items to share. Invariably, an all-too-familiar sloth sets in, and many of these nuggets fall to the wayside. Not this time, however. Today, we empty out everything we've saved up - an early spring cleaning, if you will - and bring you up to date. So settle in, this one will probably last you a few days ... Onward:
* Frederick Forsyth, who usually writes about violence and intrigue from afar, found himself closer to the action than usual.
* Colm Toibin has caused quite the stir, with his declaration that writing is no fun and he's in it for the money. (Although, having met the mischievous Toibin a few times, we wonder about the context; it's easy to imagine him having some fun here.) Other chime in, including AL Kennedy and John Banville.
* We're unutterably weary of all the first novel prizes and prizes for best writer under 12 and the rest, so needless to say, we find the SFC Literary Prize - which will see Michael Chabon, Heidi Julavits, Jonathan Lethem, Ben Marcus, and Ayelet Waldman awarding a $50,000 prize for a fourth published work of fiction - refreshing as all hell. Assuming anyone ever gets to publish fourth novels in the future ...
* The Telegraph on Graham Swift's essays:
We know all this because in Making an Elephant the author has consented to lift the lid a bit. An anthology of new essays and old, this is the closest Swift will stray to a memoir. Each piece is diligently introduced in the unassertive, even tentative style Swift reserves for non-fiction gigs. We find him interviewing and being interviewed by his writer pals, mulling on his early career, recalling entanglements with the filmmakers who all but abducted his two best-known books. There are reflections on his local prison and local river. The collection amounts to a patchwork account of a quiet writer's engagement with the world outside.
* Alan Furst explains why it's OK to review a novel he'd also blurbed.
* During our visit to New York, we were given a gift copy of New Direction's George Steiner At The New Yorker, into which we've been delving with interest since we returned home. The National Post weighs in.
Prefaced by an authoritative and admiring introductory essay from Robert Boyers and divided into three parts — “History and Politics,” “Writers and Writing” and “Thinkers” — the collection reveals a remarkable range of interests. These are motivated always by an ardour for the very best of human creation and also by a sharp eye for how, sadly, those capable of achieving the very best can also fall prone to much of the blindness and crudity that characterize the 20th century’s darker parts.
* The Financial Times offers a thoughtful review of In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.
* The Wilson Quarterly on McCulture: "Americans have developed an admirable fondness for books, food, and music that preprocess other cultures. But for all our enthusiasm, have we lost our taste for the truly foreign?"
* SF Gate provides a list of "good novels for hard times." Elsewhere, Robert McCrum ponders the effect of the recession on books and writers.
* Dublin is hoping to become Unesco's fourth City of Literature.
* Alexander McCall Smith's secret life:
My real life villains ... are people with sloppy language habits, who don't articulate their words clearly, especially in call centres. Linguistic laziness is making it difficult for us to understand what our fellow citizens are saying.
* We are becoming less interested by the minute in The Kindly Ones. Ici aussi.
* It might have been noted elsewhere while we were running around, but there's a trailer out for Disgrace. (Thanks, Andie.)
* The papers of Heinrich Böll may have been lost when the archives housing the work collapsed.
Experts fear that even if the documents were not entirely crushed in the collapse, ground water and soil which has seeped into the hole left by the destroyed foundations will have ruined them. Restoration experts said the longer it took rescue workers to remove the rubble, the higher the danger that mould would attack the manuscripts.
* Honestly, sometimes we're just kinda speechless. Rare. But it happens.
* Sisyphus chuckling: Trying to get college students to read over spring break.
* The unfinished work of David Foster Wallace prompts this consideration on our hunger for unfinished works.
But there is a difference between the open-endedness a writer chooses to produce, and the mysteries of unfinished and posthumously published works. In the first case, the author has chosen the degree to which a reader is uncertain, and has determined the wider parameters within which questions can be asked; in the latter, a different curiosity emerges, for instance with biography being crudely used to analyse the work, or rejected material being used to clarify the author's decisions.
* Those who share out interest in all things Hungarian might want to check out Vera and the Ambassador. (Surely, the first time we've linked to book review in Foreign Affairs.)
* The Spectator has launched a book club.
* End days: Rod Blagojevich's book deal, replete with self-serving explanations.
* Donald Barthelme much in the news these days - Louis Menand's comprehensive take at The New Yorker and a slightly contrarian view from The Smart Set.
* February's most downloaded books. Mostly what you'd expect, except for Jane Austen and ... Ayn Rand?? Keep Greenspan away from the PC.
* Five Dials, a most interesting literary magazine from Hamish Hamilton, is available for your perusal.
* Thank to both Amitava Kumar and David Remy for alerting us to Ron Rosenbaum on Benjamin Black and the pleasures of reading.
* Haruki Murakami's Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech.
* Widely noted last week was the passing of Philip José Farmer.
The son of a civil engineer who survived a brief encounter with military life before working in a steel mill to put himself through college, Farmer supported his family as a peripatetic technical writer for defense contractors until the early 1970s, while (understandably) writing frequently sardonic fiction on the side. Married to the same woman since 1941, and a welcome guest at both Science Fiction conventions and local libraries in his native state of Indiana, Farmer's reputation for personal kindness and generosity was matched only by the wide-ranging fecundity of his imagination. He remained dynamically connected and accessible to his fans, writer peers, and the publishing world at large through the 1990s.
* And, finally, if you need to ask for money, what better way to do so than with Robert Pinsky and a Casio ...
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As promised, I braved some nasty New York winter cold last Friday and headed up to Rockefeller Center to pay last respects to my beloved Librairie de France, which is closing this year after 73 years. (The store's rent has skyrocketed from $360,000 a year to $1,000,000.)
Regular TEV readers will already know that it was a longtime family tradition during my childhood that on each birthday, my mother would take me into Manhattan to add a new Tintin title to my collection. My first Tintin adventure - Destination Moon - was given to me for my tenth birthday, and bought from LdF. (It's a two-parter, incidentally, with a cliffhanger ending, and I was left to wait a year to find out what happened. Agony.)
It was quite sad to wander the denuded shelves, the remaining books marked to fire sale prices. Several shelves were labelled "Do Not Touch - Not Priced Yet", books that are sure to come on sale before the doors close in September.
Of course, I bought a number of books, and my farewell collection is pictured below:
The Tintin book is a French edition of my favorite of the series, known in English as The Calculus Affair; it seemed an essential purchase. The middle row of books are bilingual editions, which I've always enjoyed using as study and practice guides. And the bottom row consists of some French-only sentimental favorites.
Something I'd forgotten, but was reminded of by a display of special books for sale on the first floor, was that the bookstore actually published a number of French authors during World War II, when they were unable to be published under the Occupation - Saint-Exupery among them.
If you're a devotee of French literature, or if you just find yourself up around Rockefeller Center, do try to stop in and say au revoir and merci before September ...
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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.
