Review-a-Day for Wed, Mar 11: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
March 11th, 2009
Go to Source: Review-a-Day for Wed, Mar 11: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
EATING WELL ON A GOVERNMENT SALARY
March 10th, 2009
Here's a story we'll be following with considerable interest. NEA Literature Director David Kipen has vowed to eat a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird if all 128 residents of Kelleys Island do not read the book.
He's already gotten 70 pledges and needs just 58 more to do the entire island. If everyone reads the book and signs an affidavit attesting to that, he promised to return and buy them all pizza.
Can't you just envision the frenzy around a lone holdout? Doesn't it sound like a bad Kevin Costner movie just waiting to unfold?
We should note that similar promises by others haven't always panned out, but we know Mr. Kipen to be a man of his word … (Dijon or Gulden's?)
Reading Published Letters
March 10th, 2009
Until I read chapter one of Rosemarie Bodenheimer’s The Real Life of Mary Ann Evans, I had no idea that reading published letters was so fraught with peril. A letter is a letter, right? I mean it is something personal you write to a friend or business relation. You can take it for what it says, right? And when you want to find out more about a well known person you read their published letters for biographical tidbits and insight into their character and work. You can do all that but you’ll also be doing a lot of misreading:
Letters cannot “explain” novels or give us access to the writer “behind” the fictional narrative, nor can excerpts from letters reliably provide “facts” about a situation or a sensibility on which to ground a literary argument. Letters and novels are both acts of self-representation in writing and, as such, may both be taken, to begin with, as fictions. They differ markedly in genre, purpose, formality, and above all, in their establishment of relations with their readers.
Likewise it is a mistake to read letters as though they were a conversation between two people. Writing is a wholly different beast than conversation and while we can say letters are conversational, they are not conversations. Nor can we read letters as if they are a complete narrative.
If you have guessed that there are two camps that argue about the genre of letters, you have guessed correctly. The majority of critics tend toward the letters as truth and revelation of character and personality approach. Heck most readers do too. But Bodenheimer has a point that must be considered. We must admit, she insists, that the best letters, the ones we claim as qualifying as literature, are “particularly artful, rhetorically inventive, or brilliantly calculated to imitate spontaneity.”
But to say that letters are literature is also a mistake. Letters need to be read as representations of a different sort. We need to respect the “writerly fictionality” of letters and take care that when we read them, we read them in their own context. Letters, after all, are written in a particular time and place to a very particular audience. They are often written with the expectation of a return and they can also be written as a response to a letter received. Meaning in letters is the product of collaboration between the correspondents.
Bodenheimer suggests approaching letters as a “phenomenological study of the narrative gestures that most deeply characterize the productions of a writer.” There is no direct correlation between letters and a writer’s fiction. Instead, letters and fiction should be kept as “two separate registers” that confront each other and form a dialectic between public and private. We cannot look for character and personality, but we can ask about how a writer transforms personal into fictional conflict. Or we can examine to what extent a writer’s fictional imagination is limited and determined by the social and moral codes that shape her letters. We can also look for recurring forms and styles and patterns.
I very much enjoyed the chapter. It has much food for thought in it and made me aware of my assumptions about reading published letters. I feel like I’ve merely blundered around and fallen into a trap since I am guilty of reading letters as though they were anything but constructed self-representations. People like to construct narratives to make sense of things and letters are just one more way we do that. Chapter two is also likely to be interesting. It is about constructing the reader.
Posted in Books, Letters 
Interview with Peter Singer
March 10th, 2009
In 1975, Australian ethicist and philosopher Peter Singer published
Animal Liberation,
which became a seminal text for the animal rights movement and inspired a generation of vegetarians. His textbook,
Practical Ethics,
is a classic in the field. He has written eloquently about globalization, euthanasia, abortion, and a host of other moral concerns. In
The Life You Can Save,
Singer makes a clear, decisive case that the citizens of wealthier nations can and should be doing more to combat global poverty in order to lead truly moral lives. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly raves, “[C]ompelling….[Singer's] solution can be found in the middle, and it is reasonable and rewarding for all.”
The chore of reading to change the world gets more organized
March 10th, 2009
Are world-changing books light on readability? Is that why there are so many books about books that changed the world? A kind of vicarious learning? Anyway, now there’s a catalog of essays on 50 books that changed the world.
Go to Source: The chore of reading to change the world gets more organized
Vintage kids books
March 10th, 2009
Boing Boing pointed to this vintage kids books blog that has some great looking titles, many of which I’ve never seen.
Oy, these kids today…!
March 10th, 2009
Whatever happened to the Dead Poets Society? College kids choose books little leeetel gerrls. College kids these days, I tells ya, only carin’ about werewolf and vampire schlock books instead of books about hairy beats and their bloodsucking hangers-on. (Come on, you can see how it explains a few things, can’t you?)
In 1969, when Alice Echols went to college, everybody she knew was reading “Soul on Ice,” Eldridge Cleaver’s new collection of essays. For Echols, who now teaches a course on the ’60s at the University of Southern California, that psychedelic time was filled with “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” “The Golden Notebook,” the poetry of Sylvia Plath and the erotic diaries of Anaïs Nin.
Forty years later, on today’s college campuses, you’re more likely to hear a werewolf howl than Allen Ginsberg, and Nin’s transgressive sexuality has been replaced by the fervent chastity of Bella Swan, the teenage heroine of Stephenie Meyer’s modern gothic “Twilight” series. It’s as though somebody stole Abbie Hoffman’s book — and a whole generation of radical lit along with it.
…
Here we have a generation of young adults away from home for the first time, free to enjoy the most experimental period of their lives, yet they’re choosing books like 13-year-old girls — or their parents. The only specter haunting the groves of American academe seems to be suburban contentment.
News roundup
March 10th, 2009
- Obama book leads British popular award list
- Write much? Two new Bolaño novels (plus sixth section to 666) found among his papers after his death (I know this is how it happens to me…I think, gee, if I don’t put this somewhere safe I’ll probably forget about it and then, poof, suddenly I’ve lost two-plus novels, just like that)
- Definitely Shakespeare: portrait of Bard confirmed (for some reason, this article is illustrated with a portrait other than the one being discussed… odd); and Willie’s original first theater dug up from ground
- Facebook: for the creepy stalker you never meant to become
- And speaking of hot, melty keyboard love…
- And just to throw some wrenches into the works over at this post on religion where the comments have run the gammut from thoughtful essays to snide face slaps (but have largely stayed refreshingly friendly, if somewhat chiding): 13 things science can’t explain
Review-a-Day for Tue, Mar 10: Isaac’s Torah: Concerning the Life of Isaac Jacob Blumenfeld Through Two World Wars, Three Concentration Camps and Five Motherlands
March 10th, 2009
MONDAY MARGINALIA - THE EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES EDITION
March 9th, 2009
So, this happens to us all the time. We're away for a while, we fall a bit behind here and next thing you know, we're drowning in items to share. Invariably, an all-too-familiar sloth sets in, and many of these nuggets fall to the wayside. Not this time, however. Today, we empty out everything we've saved up - an early spring cleaning, if you will - and bring you up to date. So settle in, this one will probably last you a few days … Onward:
* Frederick Forsyth, who usually writes about violence and intrigue from afar, found himself closer to the action than usual.
* Colm Toibin has caused quite the stir, with his declaration that writing is no fun and he's in it for the money. (Although, having met the mischievous Toibin a few times, we wonder about the context; it's easy to imagine him having some fun here.) Other chime in, including AL Kennedy and John Banville.
* We're unutterably weary of all the first novel prizes and prizes for best writer under 12 and the rest, so needless to say, we find the SFC Literary Prize - which will see Michael Chabon, Heidi Julavits, Jonathan Lethem, Ben Marcus, and Ayelet Waldman awarding a $50,000 prize for a fourth published work of fiction - refreshing as all hell. Assuming anyone ever gets to publish fourth novels in the future …
* The Telegraph on Graham Swift's essays:
We know all this because in Making an Elephant the author has consented to lift the lid a bit. An anthology of new essays and old, this is the closest Swift will stray to a memoir. Each piece is diligently introduced in the unassertive, even tentative style Swift reserves for non-fiction gigs. We find him interviewing and being interviewed by his writer pals, mulling on his early career, recalling entanglements with the filmmakers who all but abducted his two best-known books. There are reflections on his local prison and local river. The collection amounts to a patchwork account of a quiet writer's engagement with the world outside.
* Alan Furst explains why it's OK to review a novel he'd also blurbed.
* During our visit to New York, we were given a gift copy of New Direction's George Steiner At The New Yorker, into which we've been delving with interest since we returned home. The National Post weighs in.
Prefaced by an authoritative and admiring introductory essay from Robert Boyers and divided into three parts — “History and Politics,” “Writers and Writing” and “Thinkers” — the collection reveals a remarkable range of interests. These are motivated always by an ardour for the very best of human creation and also by a sharp eye for how, sadly, those capable of achieving the very best can also fall prone to much of the blindness and crudity that characterize the 20th century’s darker parts.
* The Financial Times offers a thoughtful review of In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.
* The Wilson Quarterly on McCulture: "Americans have developed an admirable fondness for books, food, and music that preprocess other cultures. But for all our enthusiasm, have we lost our taste for the truly foreign?"
* SF Gate provides a list of "good novels for hard times." Elsewhere, Robert McCrum ponders the effect of the recession on books and writers.
* Dublin is hoping to become Unesco's fourth City of Literature.
* Alexander McCall Smith's secret life:
My real life villains … are people with sloppy language habits, who don't articulate their words clearly, especially in call centres. Linguistic laziness is making it difficult for us to understand what our fellow citizens are saying.
* We are becoming less interested by the minute in The Kindly Ones. Ici aussi.
* It might have been noted elsewhere while we were running around, but there's a trailer out for Disgrace. (Thanks, Andie.)
* The papers of Heinrich Böll may have been lost when the archives housing the work collapsed.
Experts fear that even if the documents were not entirely crushed in the collapse, ground water and soil which has seeped into the hole left by the destroyed foundations will have ruined them. Restoration experts said the longer it took rescue workers to remove the rubble, the higher the danger that mould would attack the manuscripts.
* Honestly, sometimes we're just kinda speechless. Rare. But it happens.
* Sisyphus chuckling: Trying to get college students to read over spring break.
* The unfinished work of David Foster Wallace prompts this consideration on our hunger for unfinished works.
But there is a difference between the open-endedness a writer chooses to produce, and the mysteries of unfinished and posthumously published works. In the first case, the author has chosen the degree to which a reader is uncertain, and has determined the wider parameters within which questions can be asked; in the latter, a different curiosity emerges, for instance with biography being crudely used to analyse the work, or rejected material being used to clarify the author's decisions.
* Those who share out interest in all things Hungarian might want to check out Vera and the Ambassador. (Surely, the first time we've linked to book review in Foreign Affairs.)
* The Spectator has launched a book club.
* End days: Rod Blagojevich's book deal, replete with self-serving explanations.
* Donald Barthelme much in the news these days - Louis Menand's comprehensive take at The New Yorker and a slightly contrarian view from The Smart Set.
* February's most downloaded books. Mostly what you'd expect, except for Jane Austen and … Ayn Rand?? Keep Greenspan away from the PC.
* Five Dials, a most interesting literary magazine from Hamish Hamilton, is available for your perusal.
* Thank to both Amitava Kumar and David Remy for alerting us to Ron Rosenbaum on Benjamin Black and the pleasures of reading.
* Haruki Murakami's Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech.
* Widely noted last week was the passing of Philip José Farmer.
The son of a civil engineer who survived a brief encounter with military life before working in a steel mill to put himself through college, Farmer supported his family as a peripatetic technical writer for defense contractors until the early 1970s, while (understandably) writing frequently sardonic fiction on the side. Married to the same woman since 1941, and a welcome guest at both Science Fiction conventions and local libraries in his native state of Indiana, Farmer's reputation for personal kindness and generosity was matched only by the wide-ranging fecundity of his imagination. He remained dynamically connected and accessible to his fans, writer peers, and the publishing world at large through the 1990s.
* And, finally, if you need to ask for money, what better way to do so than with Robert Pinsky and a Casio …
Go to Source: MONDAY MARGINALIA - THE EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES EDITION