Another New Yorker blogger

New Yorker staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert, whose global warming opus Field Notes from a Catastrophe has been much excerpted in the magazine of late, is blogging for the week at the Powells.com blog. From her first entry:

When you write about global warming, you start to feel that a lot of what we all spend our time worrying (or blogging) about isn't what we should be worrying (or blogging) about at all. (Which isn't to say you stop worrying about it - or, I suppose, blogging.)

By blogging, Kolbert is briefly joining another New Yorker staff writer who has taken up more permanent digs in the blogosphere.

- C. Max Magee @ 12:25 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

This thing called LibraryThing

Back at the beginning of September I mentioned a new book cataloging site called LibraryThing. It had only just gotten underway and I was busy so I didn't try it out at the time. It looked like the sort of thing that, if it ever reached a critical mass, could be phenomenal, but it seemed to me like it would take a while.

Well, it didn't. I was reminded of the site by an AskMe thread today, so I went to check it out and was astonished to find that in about six months, people have catalogued almost two million books using LibraryThing. This much data allows for some really cool features. For starters, check out the zeitgeist page, where the aggregate numbers are used to generate lists of the "most owned books" and the "most contentious books" along with several other lists. Also very nifty is the "social information" page for each book. Here's the page for East of Eden. By crunching all the aggregate data about users who have this book, LibraryThing can generate a number of lists of related books. On top of that, the whole site is very slick and easy to use and understand.

I entered about a dozen books just to try it out today, and I'll probably work my way through my library at some point - I'm just waiting for some free time since I'm in danger of getting sucked in.

- C. Max Magee @ 9:30 PM ~ comments: 3 ~ Links to this post

 

The New Yorker cover that wasn't

As emdashes recently pointed out, last week's New Yorker cover was the second Bush/Cheney "gay joke" in recent memory. I gave a chuckle when I saw it, but, honestly, I expect New Yorker covers to be a little more, I don't know, subtle than that. So I was sad to see what had been originally slated for last week's cover - before Dick Cheney shot somebody - an elegy for New Orleans as Mardi Gras approaches. (via Jenny)

- C. Max Magee @ 8:12 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

On the anniversary of Khruschev's speech

Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag, on the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev's famous "secret speech":

Clearly there is a lesson here for those who would bring down totalitarian regimes, and it concerns timing: The death of a dictator or the toppling of his statues does not necessarily mean that a complete political transformation has occurred, or even that one will occur soon. On the contrary, it takes a very, very long time -- more than a generation -- for a political class to free itself of the authoritarian impulse. People do not easily give up the ideology that has brought them wealth and power. People do not quickly change the habits that they've incurred over a lifetime.

Link

- C. Max Magee @ 9:56 AM ~ comments: 1 ~ Links to this post

 

Diversions and Distractions Part 5: A Reading Journal by Emre Peker

After Sakincali Piyade I embarked on my Chicago trip and returned to The Fortress of Solitude, which I finished during the journey. Next was In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, which I had been meaning to read for a long time. The release of Capote with Phillip Seymour Hoffman rekindled my desire to read In Cold Blood, as I did not want to see the movie prior to reading the book. So, I dove into the gruesome story of the Clutter family murder in Holcomb, Kansas, in 1959. Capote divided In Cold Blood to three sections and created two parallel storylines, both of which make his narrative very fluid, factual and captivating. Given that in our time we have been witnesses to more outbursts of seemingly aimless violence than previous generations (Red Lake High School, Columbine), In Cold Blood does not come across as shocking as it might have when the Clutter murders took place and when the book was published in 1965. The unfolding events also show that the Clutters were not murdered by a random psychopath, rather by two ex-cons, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, who were motivated to rob the estate. The murders described in In Cold Blood may not surprise the modern reader but Capote's masterful chronicling of the events and extensive research that leads to the psyche of the Clutters, Perry Smith, Dick Hickock, investigator Alvin Dewey and the characters surrounding the murder arouses a sense of real familiarity with the events and leaves the reader wondering why the world works the way it does. I found myself wondering why the outstanding citizens, as exemplified in Herb Clutter's honesty and dedication to society and Nancy Clutter's impeccable record as a student and as a role model to all the young girls of Holcomb, always seem to be victim to society's ills. I also thought about delusional and broken men such as Hickock and Smith: two men who had troubled childhoods, had been in and out of jail, tried to - and succeeded at times - to make an honest living, but always relapsed and turned to wicked means, the most disturbing of which resulted in the Clutter murder. I enjoyed In Cold Blood immensely, not because the story is particularly interesting or fresh, but because of the insightful details that Capote presents and the issues it brings up with regards to society and life.

After In Cold Blood I read nothing but The Economist and other news outlets for two months. I really enjoy reading The Economist and it is my favorite news publication, but two months of not reading any literature made me sad. When I last visited my friend John he asked me what I was reading and I told him nothing at the moment, implying that I was looking for a book that would drag me back to the wonderful world of literature. His suggestion was Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. Since I was so impressed by The Fortress of Solitude, another recommendation from John, I started the novel right away and, as had happened with Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, could not put the book down, even at the expense of sleep. Lionel Essrog is the main character of Motherless Brooklyn and suffers from Tourette's syndrome (that's when you cannot control what your saying and your mouth/brain spurts out profanities or meaningless words at random, mostly when you are under stress/strain). The title works magnificently to describe Lionel and his three friends from St. Vincent's Orphanage in Brooklyn: Tony, Danny and Gilbert. The motley four work for Frank Minna, a shady small time mobster whose murder at the outset of the novel sets off the chain of events. The demise of Minna is dramatic for each individual as he was more than an employer to them: a father figure to Lionel and Gilbert, a role-model/rival for Tony and a comforting personage for Danny. Immediately after Minna's murder Lionel and Tony get on the case to find the killers, but it soon appears that whereas Lionel is sincere in his desire to find the suspects, Tony has other motives. Lethem takes you through a fast two days through Lionel's eyes, prompting Tourette's in you, embedding tics in your mind and causing you to read compulsively to reach a resolution. The mystery is intricate yet Lethem drops hints all along for the careful reader to decipher the plot. But if you get carried away with Lionel's Tourette's (as I did) chances are that you will be as oblivious, yet simultaneously, surprisingly and equally alert, to everything that unfolds. The ending will, nevertheless, put a smile on your face.

If Motherless Brooklyn put a smile on my face in the end, Anneannem (My Grandmother) by Fethiye Cetin did the exact opposite. A good balance I might add. Lethem had me in 5th gear by the time I finished Motherless Brooklyn and I picked up Anneannem, which my friend Ela had brought me from Turkey and urged me to read, for a light read. The memoirs that Cetin relates are a mere 116 pages and I figured it would be a good transitional book between Lethem to Dostoyevsky. I started reading Anneannem on Sunday morning and Cetin's style, as well as the romantic light under which she presented her story, captivated me. I took a break a quarter of the way through and went outside to enjoy the day. I called one of my grandmas on my way to the movie theater, just to hear her voice and rejoice in her presence. When I went to bed at night I picked up Anneannem and it kept me up until 3, crying, thinking and feeling emotions that were left alone for a long time. Cetin's grandmother was an Armenian separated from her family during the Turkish deportation of Armenians in World War I. She was brought up by a Turkish family in Maden, Elazig in Eastern Turkey. She and the seven other girls that were separated from their families at the same time managed to preserve their heritage despite being converted to Islam and marrying Turks. Cetin grew up in her grandmother's house, when, after her father's unexpected and early death, her family moved in with the grandparents. It was, however, not until very late that Cetin learned about her grandmother's past and, in the process, became one of her sole confidantes regarding the hardships she lived through. As Cetin relates her grandmother's story, she also tells the reader of her own frustrations, embarrassment and disillusionment with the official Turkish line regarding the Armenian deportation. Horanus Gadarian's story is heart wrenching, it makes one wonder how people can cause such pain on their neighbors, their fellow countrymen or, simply, to each other. Horanus's wisdom and love for not only her family but towards all who sought her company is awe-inspiring. Cetin manages to trace Horanus's family in the United States and tells the story of a very touching reunion after her grandmother's death. Anneannem is a captivating little book that in the space of a 116 pages tickled my own pleasant memories and admiration of my grandparents, had me thinking about the cruelties that humans suffer in each others' hands and the beautiful Armenian culture that Turkish officials did their best to destroy. Finally, Anneannem impressed me for its candid and lovely storyline. Unfortunately, Anneannem too is only available in Turkish.

I have just begun my first Russian novel, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Wish me luck, I probably won't be writing again for a while, especially because I intend to read David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest after this one. Of course, all of this planning is subject to change on impulse. Good luck and good reads everyone, cheers!

(So, that's all from Emre for a little while. Thanks, Emre! -- Max)

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Emre's previous reading journal

- C. Max Magee @ 5:34 PM ~ comments: 1 ~ Links to this post

 

Gladwell has a blog

Check it out. Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker staff writer extaordinaire, has a blog. Hopefully, it'll be as good as everything else he writes.

- C. Max Magee @ 12:34 AM ~ comments: 2 ~ Links to this post

 

Old News

At GalleyCat, Ron points to a New York Times story - coming four months after the fact - about how a mention of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman boosted book sales. You expect the Times to be a little more on top of things.

In a similar "old news" vein, having followed the Google Book Search story pretty closely, I clicked over to Charles Arthur's story on the topic in the Guardian - which usually has pretty great book coverage - and was disappointed to find it to be a rehash of old news with a healthy dash of scaremongering about how Google could start printing on demand the books they've scanned and sell them to customers (oh, please!). Pretty weak stuff. I did however enjoy the story Arthur linked to, Victor Keegan's account of trying to get some of his writing published by a print on demand publisher, just to see how the process works.

- C. Max Magee @ 11:28 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Judge a book by its cover

Kind of like a Hot-or-Not for books (and cds and movies), judgeabookbyitscover.co.uk lets you rate by books by appearance, something I suspect many readers do (subconsciously or not) when they go shopping for books. (via)

- C. Max Magee @ 10:57 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

New Narrative

Narrative, a great online literary magazine, has a new issue out featuring a new story by Rick Bass and a classic by Frank Conroy. You can sign up for a free "subscription" to get access to the above stories as well as everything in their archives.

- C. Max Magee @ 12:57 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Diversions and Distractions Part 4: A Reading Journal by Emre Peker

The first of the three books I read between starting and finishing The Fortress of Solitude is The Underdog: How I Survived The World's Most Outlandish Competitions by Joshua Davis. Hilarious. I am not sure where to begin but Davis's interest in excelling in obscure or at times plain ridiculous fields of "sports" stems from two sources: the Ipski-Pipski stories his dad told him during his childhood (where Ipski-Pipski would overcome any and all difficulties in a very James Bondesque manner) and his mother's undying hope that her son be best at something (she was the 1962 Miss Nevada and a contender for Miss Universe, who barely missed first spot because of a bad hairdo). So, Davis decides to overcome his shortcomings that keep him from becoming a traditional achiever (such as a high school basketball star or college football player) and get rid of his unfulfilling job as a data-entry clerk by embarking on a quest to be really good at something. Davis not only faces the challenge of finding out what he can excel in but also of providing for his wife, who is about to enroll in gradate school and considers his actions very childish. It is, therefore, difficult to see where Davis is going when he chooses arm wrestling as the first sport to prove himself in. At 125 pounds and 5 foot 9 (and wearing glasses) Davis is not the usual imposing arm-wrestler you would imagine. But despite his physique, Davis manages to join the American Arm Wrestling Team and attend the world championships in Poland, ranking 19th worldwide due and placing 4th in the lightweight category worldwide. Quite a title for a first timer, but it sure helps that there were a mere 4 lightweight contenders. Encouraged by his mediocre success, Davis pursues bullfighting, sumo wrestling, backward running and a Sauna World Championship. Through each of his misadventures Davis meets people such as celebrity bullfighter Miguel Baez Litri, sumo wrestling Yokozuna (grand champion, a title granted to only two people) Musashimaru, world-class backward runner (and inventor) K. Veerabadran, and the Swedish sauna lover Markku Mustonen, who influence and encourage him to pursue his heart's desire. As Davis runs (at times backwards) from one outrageous feat to another, he also manages to pull his family together, please his wife and land a job at Wired as a staff reporter. The Underdog is an unusual and genuinely encouraging take on the American dream of being all you can be (or whatever you want to be) and it points out that doing ridiculous things might work after all.

My second book during the Lethem intermission was Kurt Dosyasi (The Kurdish File) by Ugur Mumcu. Mumcu is a Turkish journalist murdered in 1993 (suspects still at large) whose works were very detailed and influential. I talked a lot about him during my journalism school applications, which made me want to read more of his work. Mumcu was murdered while working on Kurt Dosyasi, hence it is unfortunately cut short in its early investigative stages. The parts that were published, however, tell the parallel stories of (currently imprisoned head of PKK) Abdullah Ocalan's life as a student, as well as his involvement in the 1970s left-wing student movements, and the government policies regarding the Kurdish population in the Eastern and South-eastern parts of Turkey in the 1930s. The documents that Mumcu presents are interesting and shocking, such as reports by ministers and minutes of parliamentary hearings that talk about assimilating Kurds to Turkish society, dispersing Kurdish clans, and replacing internal populations for the Turkification of Eastern Turkey and the Kurds. Kurt Dosyasi also draws on the government's shortcomings in peacefully penetrating Kurdish societies and its failure to deal with the threats posed by armed militias that disrupted trade, prevented investments and threatened the newly founded republic with uprisings. Unfortunately, Mumcu was killed before tying all the pieces together and explaining the emergence of Ocalan as the leader of the Kurdish insurgency in 1984. I am sure that his work would have been invaluable in assessing the "Kurdish Issue" in Turkey and it is a shame that it is incomplete. Still, it is a great source of information and sheds some light on the wrong nationalistic policies of the 1930s that led to the creation of Kurdish discontent in Turkey. I would recommend it to all parties interested in the issue; the only drawback is that you have to know Turkish, as the book is not translated.

My third and last intermission book was another one by Ugur Mumcu: Sakincali Piyade (The Problematic Private). This collection of short memoirs constitute a satirical take on life, as mostly experienced by Mumcu, in the period following the coup d'etat of March 12, 1971, in Turkey. This was the second time since the foundation of modern Turkey in 1923 that the military dissolved the parliament, declared martial law and ran the country until new elections, which, in this instance, they took place two years later in October 1973 (the other 2 coup d'etats are May 27, 1960 and September 12, 1980 - there is also a military decree issued in February 28, 1997 that caused the government to resign). Mumcu was an Assistant Dean of the Ankara Law School at the time. His leftist politics were widely know and not hidden. In the two years that the military administered the country a lot of leftists were persecuted on extremely flimsy charges. Mumcu was one of them. His bitter experiences led to Sakincali Piyade, which points at the outrageous claims made against him, as well as other leftist scholars, thinkers and activists of his generation. His memoirs chronicle life in prison, court hearings and the army. Mumcu had to serve his mandatory military service in this period and at the hands of army officials that hoped to "correct" his "thinking" during the service. The courtroom antics that Mumcu lists are ridiculous in retrospect, but point directly to the gravity of the situation in the 1970s and the sad consequences of "enforcing" democracy through the military. I would recommend Sakincali Piyade to everyone who is looking to laugh and think deeply (and do those simultaneously) about the tragic-comic situations that plague Turkey to this day. Unfortunately, Sakincali Piyade is also not translated.

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

- C. Max Magee @ 1:26 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Bridging the reading gap between kids and adults

At the Powells blog, Alexis writes about the awkward transition young readers make from young adult fiction to regular fiction.

When the children are still young - toddlers to fifth grade, say - parents will sometimes make a point of telling us how advanced their kids are. It might go something like this: She's only two but she's way beyond board books; or, He's in fourth grade but he reads at a seventh grade level. But get the kids to junior high, and suddenly the parents start to fret that their intellectually advanced kids are going to be reading books that contain "mature" content.

I definitely remember this experience from my bookstores, even in permissive Los Angeles. Later on Alexis writes:

That said, I often wish that I could recommend more adult books to some of my teen customers. Nothing is stopping me, I suppose, except my own anxieties about parents flipping out that a Powell's employee exposed their high school freshman to Margaret Atwood's sexual dystopia.

When I was a teenager, discovering Kurt Vonnegut, John Irving and T.C. Boyle was a revelatory experience, and I'd certainly recommend books by them to today's teenagers. I've also said in the past that classic novels can be a great bridge from young adult novels to adult novels. Sometimes, when I worked at the bookstore, I would recommend classics to precocious youngsters who had read "all" the young adult stuff. In this post from last summer, I and a few others put together a very short list of classics that kids might start with.

Some might say that kids won't be willing to read these "old" books that they associate with school, but it's also true that kids can get a lot more out of a book they read for fun rather than for school, even if it's the same book.

- C. Max Magee @ 8:11 PM ~ comments: 5 ~ Links to this post

 

The digital future of the book

So, think about this: In the last 5 to 10 years the way we consume all sorts of media has changed drastically, everything, essentially, except books. From a new Business Week article:

"Every other form of media has gone digital -- music, newspapers, movies," says Joni Evans, a top literary agent who just left the William Morris Agency to start her own company that will focus on books and technology. "We're the only industry that hasn't lived up to the pace of technology. A revolution is around the corner."

The idea here is that a confluence of improving hardware, reader readiness and the prevalence of digitized books are setting the stage for the digital revolution to finally reach the world of books.

In a minimal sense, the hardware already exists in the form of Treos and similar handhelds which some people find comfortable enough to use as a book delivery device, but just around the corner is "digital ink" and "e paper." I had once thought that such technology only existed in the realm of science fiction but was surprised to find during my graduate new media journalism studies that these technologies are not far off and are much anticipated by some (and dreaded by others) in the journalism business. Between current handhelds and the "e paper" future are dedicated reader devices set to come out this year. The Business Week article references the Sony Reader, which I've heard is astounding in its ability to make reading off of a screen feel like reading off of a page. Last spring, Jason Kottke tried out a Sony device that presumably uses similar technology and was quite taken with it. But even this will be a far cry from "e paper." For a peek at that technology, take a look at the slideshow that accompanies the Business Week article.

The other two pieces of the puzzle - reader readiness and digitized books - are already in place. People are used to consuming their media on handheld devices and I think many, especially younger folks, would like to be able to do this more. Meanwhile, between Google and the publishing companies trying to compete with it, it seems like we're approaching a future when all books will be available digitally.

An obvious response to all of this is to wonder whether or not the book as we know it will die. I don't think that question is as pertinent as it seems. In all likelihood, books, like magazines and newspapers, will be marginalized somewhat, still available in their current forms, but not necessarily thought of as tethered to paper and bindings. The content, of course, will live on, and these new ways of reading books will allow them to evolve as they have evolved since words were first written on papyrus.

One side note. From the article referenced above:

George Saunders, a short story author and professor of English at Syracuse University, says he'd like a way to get his work out to readers more quickly. After the scandal broke over James Frey's falsehoods in his hit book A Million Little Pieces, Saunders penned a humorous essay stemming from the events. It was a confession to Oprah Winfrey that all of the fiction he'd written had, in fact, been true. But Saunders had a hard time getting the piece published quickly, and now it feels dated. "There might be a different model for a literary community that's quicker, more real-time, and involves more spontaneity," he says.

George! Such a thing already exists. If you had a blog, you could have posted it there. (And how awesome would a blog by George Saunders be). If you don't want to start a blog yourself, feel free to send your spur of the moment pieces my way and I'll happily post them here for (potentially) millions and millions to see.

Update: George Saunders responds via email:

George Saunders here. Just wanted to thank you for the mention at The Millions. Great site. I've considered a blog but knowing how obsessive I am, worried that I might get consumed by it and my family would expire and my house crumble to dust. Plus I worry about how much I would have to pay myself to keep my blog supplied with content. My fear is that, knowing I was working for myself, I would start cheating myself, only submitting my worst pieces, then get into a labor dispute with myself and never speak to me again.

- C. Max Magee @ 2:16 PM ~ comments: 2 ~ Links to this post

 

Welcome to the New Home of The Millions

After about three days of tinkering, cutting and pasting, and banging my head against the wall, I'm happy to announce that The Millions has a new address, a location on the internet from which I'm hoping it will not move.

Before I go any further let me ask you to please update your bookmarks to www.themillionsblog.com. I've set it up so that visitors to the old blog will be redirected to the new blog automatically, but that will only be in place for a limited time. If you read The Millions via its RSS feed, that has changed as well: this is the new feed.

Now, why did I do this? Well, the previous address, my Realistic Records address, was meant to be temporary. I moved my young blog there to get it off of Blogspot. At the time I knew very little about registering domains and FTPing and things like that, so I just had my friend Derek set me up on the domain he had bought for our little record label project. Well, the record label project is ancient history, I was tired of my blog's unwieldy address, and I figured it made sense for The Millions to be on a domain that was owned by me and not someone else.

Some housekeeping issues. In moving the site, I took the opportunity to change a few things, including switching commenting systems. I think the new setup will be better for conversation on the site, but unfortunately all the old comments are gone. I wanted to save them but there wasn't any way. Also, the site search will not work for a while until the new site is indexed in Google. Finally, please let me know if you are encountering any difficulties viewing the new site or if you find any broken links. You can email me here.

Thanks!

- C. Max Magee @ 4:12 PM ~ comments: 1 ~ Links to this post

 

Diversions and Distractions Part 3: A Reading Journal by Emre Peker

When I picked up my first Kurt Vonnegut book, Slaughterhouse-Five, I noticed the greatest literary feat I missed out on by growing up in Turkey. My friend Annastacia left a copy at our house and her boyfriend/my roommate Uzay read the book in a day, his first Vonnegut as well. Uzay was so startled that he urged me to pick it up immediately. I did as suggested and was much surprised and pleased. I have yet to read more of Vonnegut's works but his stream of conscious style in Slaughterhouse-Five, the disjointed stories that flow together more like an epic poem, the simplistic wording that carries heavy thoughts and emotions, and the personal reflections mixed with fiction were most startling. It took me only a day to read Slaughterhouse-Five (I am usually a slow reader) and I felt that I should go back and reread it immediately to better grasp the stories contained therein. The combination of World War II stories that culminate in the bombing of Dresden, the life of a stereotypical suburban businessman in post-war America and his interactions with Tralfamodarian aliens are at times difficult to piece together. They do, nevertheless, connect on a certain, higher level, which I hope to better understand by reading more of Vonnegut's works, following the characters that reappear in his novels and get a better sense of his outlook on matters of life and death. And so it goes.

Around the same time that my friend John gave me Crash, he also gave me Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude. It took me a long time to get into The Fortress of Solitude. I picked it up in mid-summer and read about fifty pages and stopped. Then I saw The Squid and The Whale, which I liked very much, and the Brooklyn feel of it made me return to Lethem's novel. I read another forty pages and stopped again. In the meanwhile, I was reading other books for fun or out of interest. Around Thanksgiving I picked up the novel again. I was preparing for my 2nd annual Chicago trip to visit Mr. and Mrs. Millions, brother Jozef and aunt Murvet, and I thought that a journey would be the best opportunity to turn to The Fortress of Solitude one last time. I am very glad I did, because now that I fully read Dylan Ebdus's story I am mesmerized by Lethem's style and the strong storyline that picks up after, for me at least, page 120 and accelerates until the reader hits the end. Dylan Ebdus is the sole white kid in a mostly black and Puerto Rican neighborhood in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Dylan, the only child of a not so successful painter and an eccentric hippie mother, is a total stranger to the culture of the block and is constantly "yoked," i.e. bullied, humiliated and robbed, by his peers. One day Mingus Rude moves to the block with his once famous, now low profile, soul singer father Barrett Rude Jr. Mingus and Dylan become steady friends and slowly, sometimes painfully, Dylan embarks on a new path. While the first third of the novel is slow and establishes a strong setting, the second third flies by as the reader flips through the adventures of Mingus and Dylan in the '70s, sees them drop out of high school/go to college, smoke a lot of dope, become crack/coke heads, discover and dive into music, and form their own tag team. The language is rich with graffiti, music and popular culture in the '70s. At the third and final section of the novel the reader finds Dylan in Berkeley during the '90s. A lot has changed except for his fascination with music and adaptation of a white-boy immersed in African-American culture life style. It is easy to empathize with Dylan as he tells his story through music ranging from Brian Eno to Talking Heads, Devo, the Temptations, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, James Brown and Curtis Mayfield. Dylan's struggles with his insecurities and search for identity are amazing portrayals with very strong supporting characters. There also is the parallel story of Aeroman and the ring, which I am still trying to decipher and digest. I am very glad to have read The Fortress of Solitude, it is, along with Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, one of my favorite reads in 2005 and I definitely intend to read more of Lethem's writings in 2006.

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

- C. Max Magee @ 3:48 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Bonus Links

Simon & Schuster is planning to put out full-length audio editions of Ernest Hemingway's novels. At the blog Okay Terrific, Steve figured out that Islands in the Stream will be read by Tommy Lee Jones and For Whom the Bell Tolls by Campbell Scott (and Steve is launching a campaign to get his own narrating gig.)

Remember my post about book news RSS feeds? I've added the USA Today book news feed to the list. I use the book news feeds to generate the headlines that appear to the right. Any feeds that I'm missing? Let me know in the comments.

Recently discovered The Publishing Contrarian via Books Inq. It's full of all sorts of insidery book industry commentary.

- C. Max Magee @ 5:07 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Chicago's One Book

I don't know why I bother to cover the One Book, One Chicago program. I haven't seen any evidence that the locals actually read the books that are selected two times a year. As far as I can tell, on the day of the announcement, the local paper writes it up, and then nobody talks about One Book, One Chicago until six months later when they pick a new book. (I am impressed that Mayor Daley presides at all of these unveilings; it seems like a duty he would have handed off to an underling by now.) I think maybe I'm interested in it because I'm curious to see what a government bureaucracy is able to come up with in such a circumstance. Rarely do we get a recommendation from our government so simple as "read this book," and rarely is the government called upon to advise people on a subject so ephemeral as literature. Given all of this, I think they do reasonably well with their selections - some uninspired, others quite good. And while it would be great to see people spontaneously talking about the latest pick in the trains and on the sidewalks of Chicago, it would be quite odd if that actually happened.

All of this brings me to todays pick, as always, unveiled by Mayor Daley: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a great selection if you ask me.

- C. Max Magee @ 3:56 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Diversions and Distractions Part 2: A Reading Journal by Emre Peker

I did terribly at my GREs the first time around (thanks Harry Potter!) and decided to dwell into some more magic to remedy the self-imposed depression that my results caused me. I turned to Susanna Clark's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, which I had been meaning to read since it was published in September 2004 - and, of course, mentioned on Max's August 29, 2004, entry. Ayse, a good friend of mine who lives in Istanbul, was hooked on Messrs. Norell and Strange's interesting stories last time I visited home and urged me, as a fellow Harry Potter fan, to pick it up immediately. I heeded her advice shortly. For all the speculation out there, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell has nothing to do with the Potter series, except for the main characters being magicians. The novel is set in the early 1800s against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars that are raging on the Continent. Magic has, at that point, been long dead and more of a scholarly interest for gentlemen, who have nothing to do with their endless days on the English countryside. This goes on until Mr. Norell calls upon them and proposes a bet. The agreement is that Mr. Norell will perform a bit of magic for the self proclaimed magicians in the Northern English town of Yorkshire, and if he succeeds they will disband their community and give up all studies of magic. Mr. Norell wins the bet and, as we see throughout the book, gets a step closer to accomplishing his goal of ridding England of all magicians but himself. Since his fellow magicians are mostly scholars and historians Mr. Norell succeeds fairly easily. The London Society, which hears of this eccentric magician's feats, promptly invites him over for some entertainment. A series of events unfold, leaving the Society in awe and raise the curiosity of the struggling government, which is running out of ideas and resources to stop Napoleon. Soon, Mr. Norell is performing magical feats that win the British Navy some time, trick the French Navy and result in the British victory in the Battle of Trafalgar, making Mr. Norell an irreplaceable commodity to the government. In the meanwhile, another Northern gentleman, Jonathan Strange, arrives in London and is accepted by Mr. Norell as a pupil. Norell and Strange have an interesting relationship that is half mentor-apprentice and half rivalry. In the end Strange becomes just as capable and also enlists his services to assist in the British war efforts against Napoleon in Spain and in the Battle of Waterloo. A falling out between Norell and Strange, as well as some other historical turns suddenly diverts the story line and merges it with the longstanding prophecy of the Raven King, a magician king that once ruled Northern England. Clarke's first novel is very gripping and greatly organized. There are a lot of footnotes that make the stories more colorful and provide entertaining details and "historical" magic facts. Clarke's observations and portrayal of English society in the 19th century is very much like Oscar Wilde: witty, snobbish, entertaining and gravely self-conscious. The magic part of the book seems a lot more traditional and scholarly, involving legends, kings, fairies and interactions of the ordinary and magical worlds. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell was definitely one of my favorite reads this year and I would recommend it everyone who likes Oscar Wilde, fantasy, magic and (well yes) Harry Potter.

Next I turned to Ahmet Umid's Beyoglu Rapsodisi for a dose of Turkish reading, per my friend Mehmet's recommendation. Mehmet suggested that the plot was only decent but that I would get a kick out of reading the story because it was set in Beyoglu, a lively neighborhood in Istanbul. Reading Beyoglu Rapsodisi, in that sense, was similar to reading Arthur Nersesian's Chinese Takeout, which vividly outlines the East Village, West Village and Lower East Side of Manhattan, arouses feelings of familiarity and belonging, hence drawing you into the story (that is if you live in NYC or know it well) as a better, more careful and personally acquainted observer. As I followed the three friends that are at the center of Beyoglu Rapsodisi (a poor book dealer, a successful textiles/fashion storeowner and a wealthy eccentric) I found myself walking through streets that I love and cherish, going into bars and cafes that I have not been since my last visit, and tasting the drinks and foods they eat on my palate. The friendship of Selim, Kenan and Nihat is also a familiar one that starts in boarding school, grows through college, and always revolves around Beyoglu. Umid constructed a good mystery novel that is as much a portrayal of Beyoglu and individuals within as it is a thrilling read. It is, unfortunately, only available in Turkish. I would recommend it for light beach reading or at home lying on the couch (that's what I did as I cannot afford to go to beaches these days).

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

- C. Max Magee @ 2:05 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

The Blurb of Death: The collected blurbs of James Frey and JT Leroy

The New York Times has a little piece about books that have been blurbed by recently discredited authors. Taking the cake is Nic Kelman's Girls which was blurbed by both JT Leroy and James Frey.

Just for fun, here are some more blurbs from each.

Frey:

• "[This] should join Catch-22 and The Things They Carried as this generation's defining literary expression of men at war." for The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell by John Crawford (Note how he cites two works of fiction in blurbing a memoir.)
• "Charlie Huston is a bad-ass writer, Six Bad Things is a bad-ass book. I loved it, absolutely loved it, as I did his first book. Can't wait for whatever else comes from him." for Six Bad Things by Charlie Huston
• "Blue Blood is real, authentic, true. Beautiful and inspiring, terrifying and heartbreaking. It is a great book." for Blue Blood by Edward Conlon
• "Perverse and somewhat depraved, Rod Liddle's fiction is a sexy but not too beautiful montage of what happens when people succumb to their urges and fantasies without considering the consequences." for Too Beautiful for You by Rod Liddle
• "I have read many translations of this ancient text but Mitchell's is by far the best." for Tao Te Ching translated by Stephen Mitchell
• And finally there's an "Amazon.com exclusive" where Frey reviews Jay McInerney's new novel, The Good Life (review available here until Amazon realizes it and gets rid of it): "It's also a deeply personal book, McInerney's most personal since Bright Lights, and it feels to me like I'm reading about variations of McInerney's own life. He, like Fitzgerald, is at his best when he's putting his own experiences into the lives of his characters, and I've never felt more of McInerney, or felt more vulnerability, which to me is a sign of strength in a writer, Unfortunately, Fitzgerald's life was unsustainable. He died drunk, penniless, alone, forgotten. McInernery could have followed his path, and it sometimes seemed like he would. Thankfully he didn't. People wondered what kind of writer Fitzgerald might have been had he lived. McInerney, his closest succesor, is starting to show us."

And two more from Leroy:

• "Corgan steps to the plate at the first scent of menace, prepared, as one who is born into the language of battle. His hands might be balled tight, but his soul absorbs what his fists cannot truly deflect. Never just the spectator, Corgan transforms his world into the palpable, lyrical beauty of the heartbreak of one who cannot turn away, allowing us to get as close as we dare without blinking." for Blinking with Fists: Poems by Billy Corgan
• "Really, really great...close-to-the-nerve honesty, severe suffering, intertwined with that leavening cynical humor." for Important Things That Don't Matter by David Amsden

- C. Max Magee @ 8:42 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Diversions and Distractions Part 1: A Reading Journal by Emre Peker

I am back. My long hiatus was partially due to grad school applications, heavy workload, holiday binge drinking and just sheer laziness. I have been meaning write about all the books I read, some of which definitely stand out, as (I hope) you will see. The first book I want to mention is Crash by J.G. Ballard. I rarely stop reading books that I begin, even if I strongly dislike them. The only book/memoir I stopped reading in the recent years is Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy by Carlos Eire, which I found pompous, belittling and badly written. Nevertheless, that is not why I stopped reading Crash. I intend to finish Crash one of these days. That is, if I can overcome the absurdity of the main character Vaughan's obsession with car crashes and reconstruction of scenes for erotic purposes, which did not resonate too well with me. I am an avid fan of weird and disturbing situations (e.g. Henry Miller's Under the Roofs of Paris), but Ballard's dry, calm style and heavy language adds another layer of complicity to an already shocking storyline. I have by no means given up on Crash, though I find it difficult to return to the read. Good luck to any and all that pick up this novel. FYI: I have not seen the movie, but I heard that it is quite weird and disturbing.

Around the period that I was reading Crash, I was also studying for the GREs and took a week off from work to visit my aunt in Madison, WI to study and get away from NYC. I figured that Crash was not the best book to read while trying to study for the GREs and turned to Harry Potter for a dose of happiness, as well as to clear my mind. I had not read The Order of the Phoenix and borrowed it from my roommate Uzay. I started on the plane and by the time I landed in Madison I was, as with the previous four novels, hooked. So much for studying for the GREs. I read straight through The Order of the Phoenix and was pleasantly surprised to find that J.K. Rowling decided to reveal a darker side of Harry Potter. I was curious to see if Rowling would ever cast Potter as the not-so-perfect adolescent, which she successfully did in this installment. I enjoyed the clash between Dumbledore and the Ministry, the background stories that came with the introduction of the Order, the blackmailing campaigns that attempt to undermine evidence of Voldemort's return and the developing relationship between Sirius Black and Potter. After a long sleepless night and not studying for the GREs, I headed straight to Borders and picked up The Half Blood Prince, which had been published very recently.

The Half Blood Prince was an entertaining transition to the approaching grand finale. There were the cutesy parts of love stories and jealousies between Hermione and Ron, and Potter and Ginny Weasley, as well as the development of a closer camaraderie between Dumbledore and Potter, which I had long anticipated. The mystery surrounding the identity of the Half Blood Prince is well crafted and kept me guessing until the very end. Potter's rival at Hogwarts Draco Malfoy has, in the meanwhile, been recruited by Voldemort to carry on mysterious activities at the school. As Dumbledore is showing Potter Voldemort's past and preparing him for the looming battle (one book away, I dare say) Malfoy is brewing his own plans. The Half Blood Prince is a good staging book, with clever twists and turns, that left me hungry for the last novel. I am a big Harry Potter fan for a number of reasons (they're easy to read, fun, thrilling and I feel like I'm on Prozac when I read them) but the series' foremost quality is its continuity and how, at the end of each book, it gets me waiting for the next one. I hope it is soon.

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
See Also: Emre's previous reading journal

- C. Max Magee @ 12:36 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Novels, Stories, Mini-series and Movies

From the New York Times:

A grandfatherly figure, his bearded face wrinkled into a smile, peers down from billboards around town. It is surprise enough that the man is Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, the once-exiled writer, Nobel Prize winner and, of late, octogenarian scold. It is even more so that the billboards advertise his adaptation - broadcast on state television, no less - of one of his fiercely anti-Soviet novels, The First Circle.

While the article goes on to say that Solzhenitsyn is not being embraced by all, I think this is an interesting example of a melding of literature and media to attempt to deal with history - rather like "Roots" the miniseries here in the US.

Another thought: In the comments of this post, Pete and I had a little back and forth about how, in light of "Brokeback Mountain," it would seem that the short story is more sensibly adapted to film than the novel in that novels so often have to be pared down considerably to fit into two hours of screen time. It follows, then, that the mini-series is much more suitable for the novel. Considering how many literary novels get slashed in film adaptations, I'd love to see a resurgence of the mini-series as the preferred format for novels. (Bearing in mind of course that the PBS' recent adaptation of Charles Dickens' Bleak House proves that the form isn't dead here.) And with novels like The Corrections (IMDb) and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (IMDb) in the Hollywood pipeline, I'd love to see them in their full splendor in a longer format.

- C. Max Magee @ 11:18 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Smaller bits

The internet has allowed self-publishing to become tremendously popular, but writers have been limited in their ability to create custom designed books. A new site called Blurb is offering book creation software that allows you to build your own book. Then they print it for you. It's meant for creating a one off gift or keepsake, and the prices seem somewhat steep, but it's probably better than what you would get from a professional print shop.

The Bookfinder.com Journal discusses the US Copyright Office's new report on orphan works ("Orphan works are copyrighted materials whose owners are difficult or impossible to locate, meaning they can no longer be purchased, reprinted, cited at length, or otherwise built upon. Books can get 'orphaned' for all sorts of reasons.") New rules will hopefully make it easier to republish out of print work that has disappeared because copyright holders cannot be found.

The Baltimore Sun reports on a man who tried to build his book collection by checking out more than 402 books on as many as 10 different library cards. The fine? Three years in prison.

- C. Max Magee @ 12:33 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

I Never Liked You by Chester Brown: A Review

I have read only a very few graphic novels, but the ones I have read all seem to tread the same emotional ground. Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan, Daniel Clowes' Ghost World and now I Never Liked You by Chester Brown. Their stories center on a sort of teenage emptiness that inspires a combination of pity and fascination in me. Visually, however, the three are quite distinct with Brown's artwork being far more spare than the other two. Brown's jagged panels placed asymmetrically on the page are surrounded by black, drawing the eye to his simple lines. (Unfortunately, later editions of the book have replaced the black pages with white.) His panels are devoid of details and instead focusing of the setting, the reader dwells on the characters, primarily young Chester himself. Brown's picture of himself is both funny and sad, and while the book touches on his mother's death, the focus is on his interaction with girls. He tells his friend Sky that he loves her but doesn't know what to do next. His neighbor Carrie has a crush on him and they engage in this strange wrestling ritual as a stand in for actual communication. Girls are drawn to the odd, artistic boy but they are also repulsed by him. In the end, the book is about Brown's inability to engage emotionally - with these girls, with his mother, with the rest of his family. It's a poignant and quick read (it took me about an hour), but Brown's dreamy artwork will stay with you.

- C. Max Magee @ 12:10 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder: A Review

The "Machine" in the title of Tracy Kidder's Pulitzer Prize-winning book from 1982 is a minicomputer, but for anyone reading it now, it might as well be a time machine. The Soul of a New Machine takes the reader back 27 years, but in terms of the technology that is central to the book, it feels like we're going back eons. Kidder's book, once a riveting look into a fast-growing and mysterious industry, now reads as history. Kidder's subject is a team of engineers at a now gone company called Data General (it was bought out in 1999). Under the brash instruction of their leader, Tom West, the engineers set out to design a computer even though the head honchos at Data General have put their support and resources behind another group. West's Eagle group - made up of young, brilliant engineers - comes out on top. Though this book is quite dated now, I enjoyed it for a couple of reasons. Computer technology is so commonplace now that it is a part of our landscape, both essential and taken for granted. It was interesting to look back to a time before we had computers on our desks and in our pockets, when computers were as mysterious and awe inspiring as putting a man on the moon. The book was also compelling as a collection of character studies and a treatise on business theory. Kidder does a good job of putting the reader in the basement of the office building where this computer was born. If you're interested, an excerpt from the book is available.

- C. Max Magee @ 10:17 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Smaller Items

Last week I asked "What about J.T. Leroy?" I was wondering when the Leroy hoaxers were going to come forward. Now, one of them has. Warren St. John of the New York Times got Geoffrey Knoop to come clean on the record. Knoop also said that he didn't think Laura Albert, who wrote the Leroy books, would ever come forward: "'For her, it's very personal,' he said. 'It's not a hoax. It's a part of her.'"

Meanwhile, PopMatters put together a special section about Leroy and James Frey. I enjoyed The Rake's related comments on why Frey can't hold a candle to Charles Bukowski.

I saw Brokeback Mountain a few days ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. In an excerpt from Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay, Annie Proulx describes what it was like seeing her story on the screen: "I felt that, just as the ancient Egyptians had removed a corpse's brain through the nostril with a slender hook before mummification, the cast and crew of this film, from the director down, had gotten into my mind and pulled out images." (via Maud)

This Boston Globe column articulates quite precisely how I feel about the strife surrounding the cartoons of Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper.

- C. Max Magee @ 9:37 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

BMW Audiobooks

BMW got huge publicity and probably sold a few cars with their BMW Films campaign a few years back, in which the company commissioned several famous directors to create short films that featured various BMW models. Now BMW is trying again with BMW Audiobooks, "a unique series of specially-commissioned short stories showcasing the work of some of the finest contemporary writing talent." A new story will be available for download every two weeks. Now, this being BMW, I'm sure the product placement will be done in a classy way, but I can't help but think that this does little more than turn "some of the finest contemporary writing talent" into shills writing ad copy. And lest BMW think they are being innovative, it should be known that another car company was seen paying an author to get characters into its cars less than two years ago.

- C. Max Magee @ 6:23 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

HarperCollins unveils first online book

In December, I wrote about HarperCollins' plan to host digitized copies of their books on their own Web site rather than make them available to Google's book search. Now the AP is reporting that HarperCollins has unleashed its first offering in this format, Go It Alone, a business book by Bruce Judson. The book is available, in its entirety, at Judson's Web site. As Google does with its book search, HarperCollins has surrounded the book with contextual ads and provided a link to buy the book. The article points out the supposed irony of using Google ads, but I see Yahoo ads in there too and anyway, HarperCollins isn't trying to screw over Google, they're trying to maintain control over the process. HarperCollins has mostly gotten good reviews for their efforts primarily because they're not using any sort of Digital Rights Management (DRM) to "protect" their intellectual property. To some, this approach is nothing new. As is noted in the article, marketing guru Seth Godin and science fiction author Cory Doctorow (to give two examples), have both made their books available in this way. The news here is that a major publisher is doing it.

Based on this article, though, HarperCollins doesn't seem to understand that by allowing easy, free access to the book, they are, in effect, using the book as marketing for itself in much the same way that one can flip through a book at bookstore before buying. Instead they view the ads displayed next to the book's pages as a "new revenue stream." That's why you shouldn't expect to see any fiction as a part of this program. According to Brian Murray, group president of HarperCollins, "I don't think advertisers are clamoring to place ads around literary fiction." Hence, no literary fiction.

- C. Max Magee @ 5:50 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Postcrossing

Not really a literary item, but I thought some folks might be interested in a Web site I found recently. Postcrossing is a postcard trading site. When you sign up, you get the address of a randomly selected Postcrossing member. You send them a postcard, and when they receive it and enter it into the system, you get put into the queue to receive a postcard from another member. So far I've sent a postcard to Portugal and received one from Finland. For those with an interest in faraway places and/or postcards, Postcrossing is an extremely low impact but rewarding hobby. I've always liked getting postcards, but it seems like a somewhat rare method of correspondence these days given the ease and immediacy of electronic methods. In my travels I've often picked up postcards, not necessarily to send, just to have as keepsakes. I'm something of a map person, so I've often been drawn to postcards with maps on them. I've got a small stack of them filed away somewhere right now, but I've had this idea that one day I might display them all on a wall of cork in collage form.

- C. Max Magee @ 10:09 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

The Corey Vilhauer Book of the Month Club: February 2006

One of the most harrowing things about reading is having to finish a book in order to start another. It's a necessary evil, to use a cliche, because in order to start a book we have already perceived as being worthy of reading we must first finish the one we are currently on. Bittersweet is the word that comes to mind, as in "yes, they are sweet things, the book I'm reading and the book I'm looking forward to reading, but it's so incredibly bitter that I can't read both at once."

Do other people think like this?

So please imagine my situation. Here I am, enjoying and nearly finished with The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs, a book that I'm very impressed with in the way that I was impressed with the newest Coldplay album. By saying that, I mean I'm fascinated and incredibly pleased with a book that is marketed to the public, a book that would rarely make anyone's short-lists simply because it's not an act of literary genius, but it's still very good all the same, as Coldplay's X&Y was not an act of musical genius but was still a very good album and surprised many who thought the band would be resting on its laurels.

But I digress; back to the situation. I'm enjoying this book very much etc., but looming on my bookshelf is Lorrie Moore's Like Life, a collection of short stories that I've been meaning to read ever since my personal hero Nick Hornby admitted to stealing her style for the first few stories he ever wrote. Considering I had stolen Hornby's idea for a book column on my blog earlier in the year, I felt a little closer to him - as if we were both caught doing something incredibly naughty and now can look back on it and laugh (and laugh and laugh.)

So (and I hate to admit this) I actually rushed through the end of The Know-It-All, the book I was initially planning on choosing for the Book of the Month. I did it in the guise of squeezing Moore's book into my column, but in reality I was doing it because the anticipation of Like Life was greater than the enjoyment of The Know-It-All. I sacrificed a pleasant and though-provoking post-completion period by opening Like Life mere minutes after finishing Jacobs' book.

Sorry, A.J. Your feat of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica was impressive, but Lorrie Moore pushed it out of the way like a bully in the lunch line.

Here's what I think about Lorrie Moore: she's brilliant. She's a great writer. She's supplanted NPR-whore David Sedaris as my favorite short-story author.

It's all because of how she writes, I think. It's simple. She uses words that aren't usually put together, but should be. She writes as if she was thinking for the people, as if each of the relationships in question would be better off if they would listen to reason but would never bow to those conventions. Each of her characters exudes a complicated set of characteristics that are all brought to the surface in the confining space of a few pages.

This is the real test of a great short story author. How much can you describe a situation - the entire scope of an era - in the few pages allotted? The talent of Lorrie Moore is that she can get us all to appreciate the history and the emotions of a relationship in just the first few pages, and can get us to continue on with the story in our heads even after the final sentence.

Additionally, Moore captures the spirit of New York City. In every story I feel as though I've just traveled through the seedier parts of Brooklyn - a feeling I usually get only after watching Law and Order - and it heightens my desire to visit. Moore, while not as widely known as she should be, could do well writing for the New York City tourism board. Well, as long as the tourism board was looking to cater to the despondent women who love men that they shouldn't because they don't know any better; the women who, in order to stop thinking about these men, wander through the streets of New York City to keep their mind off of their mistakes. Or something like that.

I could continue gushing, but I'll stop with this: God, I love Lorrie Moore. Hornby picked a good one to focus on, I'd say, and quite possibly some of it could trickle down to me. Rarely does an author make me rethink the way I want to write, but Moore did that. She helped me see the light of the short story, the idea that there's nothing wrong with being short and concise. Hell, even Steinbeck, he of the 700 page epic, wrote short stories every once in a while. Thanks, Lorrie.

And if I steal your style, blame Nick.

- Corey Vilhauer
Black Marks on Wood Pulp
January 2006 CVBoMC

- C. Max Magee @ 12:57 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux: A Review

Though I've heard great things about Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari was the first by him that I've read - well, listened to actually. Thanks to our current location in Chicago and the locations of our respective families, the holidays involve a lot of driving for Mrs. Millions and me - 36 hours worth this year if my math is correct. One of the best ways to pass the time is with audiobooks and even though Mrs. Millions got me XM Radio this year, Dark Star Safari was so engaging that we spent a lot of our trip listening to it. It's a shame that the audio version appears to be unavailable (we got ours from the library) because it was very well done. Norman Deitz, as narrator, is very much in character as Theroux, and he gamely contorts his voice when relating the dialog of the many men and women of various nationalities that Theroux meets on his way from Cairo to Capetown. Though Africa is the centerpiece of this book, Theroux shares top billing. As he explains, this trip, very much a solo journey, was a return to the continent where he lived 40 years ago as a young Peace Corps volunteer and teacher. He soon finds that a lot of Africa has changed and not for the better. Much of the book is devoted to finding out why. We learn a lot about Africa's history and geography and we meet dozens of fascinating people along the way from Nobel Laureates to prostitutes. But Theroux, writing in his 60s and having earned the right to hold forth on such things, dwells most upon his likes and dislikes. He does not like most of the aid workers in Africa and he explains, rather convincingly, why the aid system is broken. He does not like proselytizing missionaries, with whom he gleefully argues theology. He does not like Africa's sprawling, destitute, dangerous cities. Theroux, however, likes the "bush," the great trackless stretches of Africa where people still live simply, uncorrupted by foreign aid and oppressive governments. Of the people he meets, Theroux likes the straight-talkers, the honest people who care about Africa and aren't trying to get something from him. Though Theroux spends a lot of time analyzing the current state of Africa in his own engaging, non-technical way, the enormity of his journey was what made the book so enjoyable for me. He travels by every method imaginable in a meandering path from Egypt to South Africa. Along the way he is shot at by bandits, harassed by border guards and harangued by Africa's urban predators. Theroux acknowledges the similarities of his travels with those of many Westerners before him, but he does not slip into romanticism or despair. He loves Africa for its chaos.

- C. Max Magee @ 10:50 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Elizabeth Crane at the LBC blog

I've been enjoying the discussion surrounding Elizabteh Crane's LBC-nominated book All This Heavenly Glory at the LBC blog this week. Yesterday she posted on the blog and a discussion ensued in the comments and today there's a great interview she did with Dan Wickett. There should also be appearances by her agent and publicist forthcoming. I'll add links to those on this post when they're up. Also, this would be a good place to throw in a link to Elizabeth's blog. It's charming, it's fun, it's silly (and occasionally serious.) It's called standBy Bert.

See Also: Crane's editor posts.

- C. Max Magee @ 10:30 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Artists plus Novels

My recent post about the Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions has generated an interesting thread at The Comics Journal Message Board. Included is word of upcoming additions to the Penguin series as well as a great round of pairing famous comics artists with classic novels to come up with such combinations as R. Crumb doing a cover for Lolita and Tony Millionaire doing the cover for Gulliver's Travels.

- C. Max Magee @ 11:32 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post