Marty. Please. Shut the fuck up.
His latest: J.M. Coetzee has "no talent." Is further comment even necessary?
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January 27, 2010
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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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He's turning into Gore Vidal. A very, very stupid Gore Vidal.
Posted by: Niall | January 27, 2010 at 04:46 PM
I've only read one Martin Amis book, "Night Train." It was pretty bad.
Posted by: iamtheangel.com | January 27, 2010 at 08:22 PM
Does anybody still take this guy seriously?
Posted by: Gary Anderson | January 27, 2010 at 09:12 PM
What a prat! He used to be someone who the British literati looked up to but now he's just a clapped-out 60 year old former enfant terrible with delusions of grandeur. At his best - Money, London Fields, Other People, The Information, his essay collections - he writes brilliantly but when he starts bagging Nabokov(as he did in his recent Guardian article) and Philip Roth for not writing as well in old age as in their youth I think he's talking more about himself than anyone else. He's beginning to sound like a possible candidate for one of his proposed "suicide booths".
Posted by: Nicholas Richards | January 28, 2010 at 02:06 AM
Marty has a longstanding suspicion of writers whose prose doesn't seem open to accident, play or conspicuous humour. As literary prejudices go, I think there are far worse; though I always wondered why JG Ballard escaped Amis's whip, given the reams of deadened prose he produced. Perhaps it's the intrinsic fantastical elements of all Ballard's work.
In the case of Coetzee, though, I suspect the objection is at bottom ideological. Amis objects to writers who don't show at least a tiny urge to cuddle the world. I saw him talk about Beckett once, whom he says he hates: "not because I don't think he's any good, but because he presents the very fact of life as a farce, in maximally ugly prose. Also because he can't see the worth of children." Well, Beckett does present life as a farce. And we can argue about the ugliness of the prose. But what you're basically objecting to is that he sees life differently to you - and that's a personal rather than literary objection. I think it might be something similar with Amis and Coetzee.
Posted by: (The Other) Niall | January 28, 2010 at 03:13 AM
I don't think I'd characterise Amis as someone with a great love of children - not on the evidence of his books anyway. Mind you he seems to have a few of his own. To say Beckett has "ugly prose" is to miss the point somewhat. Especially from someone with such a bleak view of life himself. Where in the novels does he actually show any true love or feelings towards any of his characters? His books are all fundamentally satires where showing well-rounded likeable people is never any issue. I mean - who wants to shake John Self's hand?
Posted by: Nicholas Richards | January 28, 2010 at 04:51 AM
Think of his upbringing--the worst kind of repressed, denying, depressing, alcoholic British childhood. Maybe he's just speaking from earlier wounds. Not a defense of stupid public remarks--just an observation.
Posted by: Martha Southgate | January 28, 2010 at 05:21 AM
"Especially from someone with such a bleak view of life himself. Where in the novels does he actually show any true love or feelings towards any of his characters?"
Children have a symbolic place in pretty much all his novels: if a child disappears or is abused or killed, that child stands for Innocence That The Adult World Has Destroyed. The converse is also true: everyone at the end of London Fields is utterly destroyed, except for Keith Talent's baby daughter, Kim.
But I don't think his own bleakness is something that Amis has ever taken an assessing look at.
Posted by: (The Other) Niall | January 28, 2010 at 05:50 AM
Maybe I haven't drank enough TEV kool-aid, but I don't think Coetzee's books are all that great either.
Maybe it's just me. But I love a writer willing to call others out, instead of all the insular "I'll blurb your book and you blurb mine" crap that dominates 99% of literature in the USA.
I haven't cracked Summertime yet, though. We'll see.
Posted by: Drew | January 28, 2010 at 07:32 AM
Beckett has beautiful prose! Let's get that straight. "Bluer scarcely than white of egg the eyes stare into the space before them, namely the fulness of the great deep and its unchanging calm." Just for example, that's from "Malone Dies." It's precisely because Beckett's prose is so beautiful and his humor and humanity is never far away that the deadly serious misery in his work never stops being amazingly artful.
Posted by: stephen | January 28, 2010 at 07:45 AM
I think he also illustrates a big difference between UK and US culture. In the UK it's very common to bash others to make a point about yourself. In the US, at least among writers, it seems Oprah-esque mutual affirmation is the expected norm. Perhaps Amis needs to get a column in the NY Times Book Review, and start going after our own local pampered mediocrities. Then he might be interesting to read.
Posted by: Niall | January 28, 2010 at 08:01 AM
I haven't read anything by Amis, but much by Coetzee, and always with pleasure!
Hardie -- www.Mountaintop.be
Posted by: Hardie | January 28, 2010 at 10:21 AM
I will admit that in "War on Cliche" he makes some valid points, albeit in his characteristically cruel manner. But that was before he left the realm of the literary and ventured out into the real world (where he proceeded to be lambasted). Now it would seem, he has seen fit to return to his comfort zone (and in the process making everyone else uncomfortable).
Posted by: Gary Anderson | January 28, 2010 at 06:42 PM
Perhaps it's the cynic in me, but all the salvos from Camp Amis seem to be arriving shortly before THE PREGNANT WIDOW is set to hit bookstores. And since no press is bad press, and Martin, not willing to do anything worthy of good press does this instead. Timing is everything.
Posted by: Andy Pederson | January 29, 2010 at 06:20 PM
The Sunday Times reviewed "The Pregnant Widow", and it's not pretty.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/fiction/article7004587.ece
Posted by: Niall | February 01, 2010 at 11:27 AM
I've read three by Coetzee and don't quite see it myself. Whereas I thought Amis's Time's Arrow was brilliant conceptually--though maybe that's the problem with both of them. They're high-concept and low on
the credibility scale. In Disgrace, I was willing to believe the hero really wanted to write an opera based on the life of Byron, until he beat the concept all to hell and went on and on with it and then it became not only hard to believe in but boring. And another distraction. Filler. When he kept it visceral, on the farm or in the bedroom, it worked better. But by the end I felt and thought nothing except the author's hand. I jogged through the first 100 pages of The
Information but didn't read the last 100. Amis is right: what if Coetzee had a sense of humor? And what if Amis had a better
thought-out one?
Posted by: Miguel | February 01, 2010 at 03:10 PM
Here's a link to the interview:
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/02/martin-amis/
Here's the Coetzee exchange:
MA: Coetzee, for instance—his whole style is predicated on transmitting absolutely no pleasure.
TC: Do you admire his books at all?
MA: No. I read one and I thought, he’s got no talent. The denial of the pleasure principle has a lot of followers. But I am completely committed to it, to pleasure.
TC: Why have people felt the need to do this to the novel: is this puritanical?
MA: Dryden said, literature is instruction and delight, and there are people who think that if they’re not getting delight then they are getting a lot of instruction, when in fact they’re not getting that either. But it has a sort of of gloomy constituency. If there is no pleasure transmitted then I’m not interested. I mean, look at them all: Dickens, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Smollet, Fielding, they’re all funny. All the good ones are funny. Richardson isn’t, and he’s no good. Dostoyevsky is funny: The Double is a scream. Tolstoy is funny by being just so wonderfully true and pure. Gogol, funny. Flaubert, funny. Dickens. All the good ones are funny.
Posted by: Peter G | February 02, 2010 at 10:06 AM
Interesting similarity between key complaints in this review and Kakutani's review of Delillo's new book, namely, both writers are tired; they visit old topics without new energy or insights; and their characters spend a lot of time making pronouncements.
Posted by: Don | February 02, 2010 at 11:47 AM
That may be so that Amis is tired and has nothing left to say. I can't speak my own thoughts on this, as no one in the US will have read the book yet, much less reviewed it. And I'm not sure of the difference in Martin's reviews in the UK versus the US, and whether his public persona in the UK has an effect (if so, negative) on his overall reviews there.
Nevertheless, here's a positive review of his new book in the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/31/pregnant-widow-martin-amis-review
Posted by: Peter G | February 02, 2010 at 12:29 PM
His comments about Coetzee were out of line and off base, but I like his statement about Tolstoy. Not a new sentiment certainly, but well put.
Posted by: Chris S | February 02, 2010 at 07:19 PM
In "The War on Cliche" I came away with the idea that Amis thought Ballard's work cliche and monotone. When Ballard died Amis wrote the literary giant eulogy. ? I've enjoyed reading the Information, truly some very funny stuff, but he tries too hard to make every sentence a high-wire act in metaphor.
Posted by: John C | February 07, 2010 at 10:13 AM