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May 31, 2011

Comments

L.G

I for one will continue to check in. Your posts are interesting and further the necessary, literature-affirming conversation.

Shelley

Although I love my readers, there's something about the Internet (medium is message) that exerts on the writer of a post (me included) a gravitational pull toward either the shallow or the pompous. I don't know why. It just skews the tone.

But some successfully avoid that; you have, so I hope you continue.

melbournegirl

I was a lurker around many literary blogs for a time - but now read (and sometimes post comments on) only two, of which (obviously) yours is one. I abandoned the others because of the self-satisified tone that seems almost unavoidable in such blogs. Even though I agreed which much of what was being said I just got very sick of the constant self-congratulation that hummed beneath the surface.
A long-winded way of saying that I, too, hope you continue to post - otherwise my blog reading will be reduced to one lonely blog!

Lee

The chorus of praise has more to do with good old-fashioned sucking up than mediocrity as such (though there's probably a relationship).

ward jones

What's depressing, I find, is the discourse on Twitter, and yes, I'm talking about the mini messages related to writing. A lot about book signings, reviews, of genre, the romance, paranormal, thriller, gushed over by someone, often a publicist, or the creator. Rarely is a literary work mentioned, the closest I've seen, after weeks, was this morning. "The Confederacy of Dunces." My own novel has, thus far, has drawn interest from a lady in Venice, CA. Facebook isn't much better, though the author sites do offer opportunities. Those "likes" from followers of someone like William Trevor, or to widen scope of "literary," Gary Schteyngart, who has jotted a few words about my comments, both of which can make you feel, well, appreciated.

the fool

Nietzschian rants aside, shouldn't blogs be about discussion and discovery?

C-

I hope you continue. You provide a sharp insight into literary issues that is found wanting on other sites.

Also, you never write. You never call. You don't tweet. I sit in the dark glow of my laptop wondering if you're still alive. This is the only way . . . I'm sorry, I'm too faklempt.

Anne

Fragile equipoise is a good description of the state of individual litblogs (or maybe just yours and mine) in 2011.

Also, I have a letter coming out next Sunday in the NYTBR on the subject of Bloom's latest... : )

Hoping all is well w/you and yours...

Konstantin

I come here to meet chicks. Please don't take that from me.

TEV

Am here as your wingman, K.

Edieparker@me.com

I come here to recharge my sanity detector.

Konstantin

Me, too.

Chicks dig dudes who are aware of partial sanity.

bert hirsch

i encourage you to keep posting ay whatever intervals work for you. i appreciate your thoughts, information and reflectuions about books.

thanks for all you have shared till now.

bert hirsch
new york city/buenos aires

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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."

SECOND LOOK

  • The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

    Bs

    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

    Rider_4

    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."