February 2012
11 posts
Anonymous asked: Hi,My name is Michael Hingston also and I just wondered if you have any relations in Jersey Channel Islands. a lot of Jersey Fishermen use to sail to Gaspe in Canada from Jersey to fish for Cod. yours truly Mick Hingston Jersey C.I.
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“There’s a further cluster of references to The Great Gatsby, first to Dr...”
– From Adam Mars-Jones’s review of By Nightfall, which won the inaugural Hatchet Job award for best negative book review.
Sometimes it’s necessary to try to outflash the book you’re reviewing, especially if that book is boring. I can just picture the look on Mars-Jones’s face...
Canon Fodder - The Atlantic →
aaknopf:
The Harry Ransom Center has a list of 600 writers whose careers it is “keeping watch over” in hopes of one day acquiring their private papers.
On a related note, the Ransom Center should get on Tumblr. I want to see some scans!
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Shelf Defense: A Short History of Myth, The New...
In late 2011 I decided, in the hopes of keeping my library down to a manageable size, to comb through the unread sections in alphabetical order. It was a naïve, Sisyphean project, and it will take forever—so I’d better get moving. Shelf Defense is my occasional notebook about what I dig up, from Alphabet Juice to Point Omega.
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KAREN ARMSTRONG, A SHORT HISTORY OF MYTH...
emk-irl replied to your link: Peggy Blair: The path to publication :: Afterword :: Arts :: National Post
Why not skip agents entirely and send it out to small presses?
I have been—with at least a half-dozen rejections there, too. But you’re right: that certainly seems like the best way forward. I wish I’d gone after them more aggressively from the start. All of my remaining leads are...
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Peggy Blair: The path to publication :: Afterword... →
I found Peter’s email address online and emailed him. “I’d love to read your manuscript if Ian’s recommending it,” he replied minutes later. “But I can’t get to it for several weeks. We’re busy getting ready for the Frankfurt Book Fair.”
Weeks? I’d waited to hear from some agents for months. That was early Friday morning. On Monday morning, I came downstairs to find an email from Peter:
“I...
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“I’ve been fortunate that all the bad reviews I’ve had have been...”
– Geoff Dyer, re: the newly established Hatchet Job prize for most scathing book review.
(via)
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“In the good mystery [novel], there is nothing wasted, no sentence, no word that...”
– Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy.
Later, of course, he would be hoisted by his own petard several times over. (So far I have no comment—the first 10 pages, at least, are really great.)
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January 2012
35 posts
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Farrar, Straus and Giroux: Franzen on ebooks and... →
fsgbooks:
“Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.”
-Jonathan Franzen in his first-ever press conference.
This is literally how a...
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“Art is invested with special privileges in our culture because we believe it...”
– John D’Agata, to his fact-checker Jim Fingal, in The Lifespan of a Fact.
Bookavore is right: this book requires readers—because it’s going to inspire a lot of necessary conversations. What’s your schedule like this week? I can do coffee whenever.
Almost forgot!
I have a review of David Whitton’s super charming story collection The Reverse Cowgirl in January’s Alberta Views. Not sure if it’s even on stands anymore, but if it is… you know what to do. (A: Read it.)
And either way, check out the book, too: there is time travelling, and head trauma, and sexy sex, and sad sex. All four food groups.
It looks like I will be on morning TV next month, talking about books.
Nobody is more surprised by this fact than me.
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““Congratulations. And if in the process of this important work you hurt...”
– Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet.
I have basically no patience for this book, but there is one evil-mastermind-revealing-his-plan scene that really lights up. Basically any time he says “uh,” the gloves are about to come off.
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tori-lancaster asked: Post the one you made for Inherent Vice! If you really did.
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Encyclopedia Hearsay →
A few of my friends just founded a new encyclopedia—one that’s based entirely on misinformation, rumours, half-remembered conversations, and outright lies.
I wrote the first entry. Now, I haven’t actually seen The Seven Samurai—but I have seen A Bug’s Life, and at Encyclopedia Hearsay, that counts.
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kratlee replied to your quote: all, animal, ashes, back, bark, belly, berry, big,…
love?
Just double-checked: no love.
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“all, animal, ashes, back, bark, belly, berry, big, bird, bite, black, blood,...”
– The 200 words chosen by linguist Morris Swadesh as the basic vocabulary template for all human languages (as reported in John D’Agata’s endlessly fascinating About a Mountain, which I devoured on a three-hour bus ride home from Calgary earlier today).
Notice that why isn’t...
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Colson Whitehead, Zone One
The problem, in a nutshell, is Whitehead’s vocabulary. Dear lord. It’s more unrelenting and out-of-control than any flesh eater it’s describing. As a result, the novel’s sentences are overinflated and arrhythmic. Now, there are obviously worse problems for an author to have—but when it results in writing like “Surely an accident unravelled its miserable inevitabilities ahead and now all was...
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Shelf Defense: Yellow Dog, House of Meetings
In late 2011 I decided, in the hopes of keeping my library down to a manageable size, to comb through the unread sections in alphabetical order. It was a naïve, Sisyphean project, and it will take forever—so I’d better get moving. Shelf Defense is my occasional notebook about what I dig up, from Alphabet Juice to Point Omega.
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MARTIN AMIS, YELLOW DOG (2003)
WHY DO I OWN...
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“The air smelt of cheap ghosts—those that had died cheaply: street...”
– Martin Amis, Yellow Dog.
In case you missed the launch so long ago! →
italicsmine:
There are a few copies of the LIMITED FIRST EDITION of my novella, If You’re Not Yet Like Me, for sale over at Nouvella. My editor Deena found them in the vaults at the abandoned Flatmancrooked compound. Or something.
Just bought a copy, because I am an adult with small amounts of pocket money and because people on the internet need to support other people on the internet. It is...
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Shelf Defense: Lucky Jim, Russian Hide-and-Seek
In late 2011 I decided to comb through the unread sections of my library in alphabetical order. It was a silly, semi-self-destructive idea, and it will take forever—so I’d better get moving. Shelf Defense is my occasional notebook about what I dig up, from Alphabet Juice to Point Omega.
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KINGSLEY AMIS, LUCKY JIM (1954)
THOUGHTS: Look at me, starting off the year with a...
52books asked: I picked up "We the Animals" due to (I think) a quick blurb from something you wrote a while back. It turned out to be a one day read that was equally wondrous and crushing. Now I've got to add a few more items to the library queue from your previous favorites. Thanks for the heads up on all the good stuff!
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Don DeLillo, The Angel Esmeralda
If you’re any kind of DeLillo fan, or even a curious neophyte, you’ll feel right at home here. Only the title story stands out as unnecessary, and that’s mostly because a re-tinkered version already appeared in Underworld. Then again, if you’ve never read a description of limbo as brilliant/lunatic (I go back and forth) as “a cosmic cloud of slushed fetuses floating in the rings of Saturn,”...
Anonymous asked: Given your clear love of a well-organized book shelf with a variety of Penguin editions, am I to take it that you are anti-Kindle?
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“This audition took the form of a breakfast meeting, a “chat about comedy” with...”
– Not sure how I didn’t read between the lines the first time I came across “Dead Man Laughing” (collected in Changing My Mind), but Zadie Smith was rejected by Mitchell & Webb!
(If you don’t know who they are, the sketch “Send Us Your Reckons” and basically...
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“Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the...”
– Lucky Jim. (This part I remember very well.)
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davidquigg replied to your photo: While re-reading Lucky Jim for Shelf…
From “Marginalia” by Billy Collins: “And if you have managed to graduate from college / without ever having written ‘Man vs. Nature’ / in a margin, perhaps now / is the time to take one step forward.”
Perfect! (I also came across a “the distance aesthetic” just now… does that count for anything re:...
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December 2011
29 posts
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Hindsight: What I Read In 2011
For the past three months, all of my books have been in boxes. The reason was simple enough: my partner and I bought a house, and we agreed that there were more pressing issues to attend to (eg. a yellow living room). I thought I’d hate not having my books visible and easily at hand, and at first I really did. But eventually it felt kind of freeing. The Great Unread wasn’t scowling...
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Shelf Defense: A Better Angel, The Seamstress and...
In late 2011 I decided to comb through the unread sections of my library in alphabetical order. It was a silly, semi-self-destructive idea, and it will take forever—so I’d better get moving. Shelf Defense is my occasional notebook about what I dig up, from Alphabet Juice to Point Omega.
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CHRIS ADRIAN, A BETTER ANGEL (2008)
WHY DO I OWN THIS?: Because I saw it remaindered...
bermudianabroad asked: happy birthday! hope you have a good one. I have to admit I haven't quite gotten around to reading most or... any of your reviews...but I plan to! As someone who has never read Moby Dick, could you perhaps elaborate on the intense, obsessive love? Though I understand if it simply defies clear explanation. Thinking of setting it as a reading challenge in the new year, so maybe in a few weeks...