Oprah and her minions must read my blog because a little bird told me that her next book club selection is a book that also happens to be on my reading queue. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is a somewhat forgotten classic by Carson McCullers. From what I’ve heard, the book resembles To Kill a Mockingbird and several other works of fiction by Southern women authors. And now it will be a bestseller. If you are one of those people who gets annoyed about the Oprah logo, hurry and get one before they run out of unbesmirched copies.
News Flash
Amazing Literary Magazine Offer
Most of us litbloggers just blather on about books and publishing industry gossip, but Dan Wickett is a man on a mission. Part of his mission is to get people to read the literary magazines that are so important to literary fiction culture yet are so little read. In an attempt to rectify this situation, Wickett has approached a number of these magazines to put together a discounted subscription offer for anyone who subscribes to at least three. For all the details, visit his blog.
●
●
Remembering John Leonard, 1939-2008
A year and a half ago, when BEA was in New York, Max and I decided, against our better judgment, to attend a panel discussion on the fate of book reviewing. The headliner was the intellectual performance artist Christopher Hitchens. However, we both walked away more impressed by the grit, gravity, and grace of panelist John Leonard than we were by Hitch's charming bloviations.I'd been reading Leonard's "New Books" column in Harper's for years, but I emerged from that panel with a more expansive sense of the man, and promptly dug into his essays of the 1970s and 1980s. Those were years when vernacular brio and moral seriousness were not mutually exclusive - when glibness wasn't held in such high esteem. Like Pauline Kael, Leonard made criticism feel like a vital part of the American intellectual landscape.Moreover, Leonard was a fearless explorer (and often defender) of the new and the unconventional. To name but one example, his last essay for The New York Review of Books (on Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union) was a model of sympathetic inquiry.Leonard's death last week, at age 69, is thus both a substantial loss and a reminder that the life of the mind still matters. Leonard was a great critic. He was also something nobler: a great reader. He will be missed.
●
●
●
Je est un autre: David Wojnarowicz’s Rimbaud in New York
Wojnarowicz was deeply aware of the trajectory he shared with the youthful and precocious Rimbaud.
●
●
●
Welcome to the Working Week: Megan Hustad Analyzes Our On-the-Job Foibles
The concept of self-improvement through reading has always struck me as hopelessly vexed. I was surprised and delighted, then, to discover in Megan Hustad's How to Be Useful an erudite, pragmatic, funny, and endearingly humble "Beginner's Guide to Not Hating Work." It was the kind of book I wish someone had given me when I was fresh out of college.Back then, in the giddy afterglow of the Clinton years, my enormous sense of entitlement hid behind a contorted ideological posture. Sure, I would benefit financially from global capitalism, but I would maintain my purity by doing a really mediocre job. (Take that, Milton Friedman!) What's refreshing about How to Be Useful is that it presents an ethical, rather than a moral, argument for working hard. Hustad doesn't attempt to say that you should work for The Man; rather, she argues that if you have to, you might as well do it well.Surprisingly, the secret to success, according to Hustad's meta-analysis of a century of business advice, is making yourself indiscriminately useful to those around you. At some point, she argues, people will want to return the favor. And in the meantime, while you may not have addressed global economic inequality, you will have made the world around you a little more pleasant for your coworkers and for yourself.This week, we've invited Ms. Hustad to give us some "Usefulness Training" based on our own first-job hijinks. Every day, one of our contributors will post an anecdote about his or her misguided work ethic. Hustad will rate us on a scale of 1 to 5, with one being Mildly Useless, and 5 being Irremediably Useless. She'll also try to tease out the misguided assumptions we held upon entering the workforce, and to explain how we might have conducted ourselves more helpfully. These links will become active as the posts are published:Welcome to the Working Week 1: MaxWelcome to the Working Week 2: EmreWelcome to the Working Week 3: GarthWelcome to the Working Week 4: AndrewFinally, we invite our readers to contribute their own first-job stories (ideally 100 words or less) in the comments box. At the end of the week, perhaps we'll ask Ms. Hustad to respond to one of them.
●
●
●
Let’s Dzanc
The tireless Dan Wickett (creator of the Emerging Writers Network) has teamed with Steve Gillis (founder of 826 Michigan and author of Walter Falls) to creat Dzanc Books:Dzanc Books is a 501(c)3 organization set up to operate exclusively for charitable, literary, and educational purposes. Our mission at Dzanc is 3-pronged: To assist literary journals in reaching the largest reader base possible; to develop educational programs within the schools in the areas of reading and writing; and, beginning in 2007, to publish two excellent works of literary fiction per year.Sounds like an exciting and much needed venture.
●
●
A Noted Debut
My good and old friend Garth, while describing what struck at his most recent visit to a book store, alerted me to an intriguing first novel by a 26 year old writer. According to the Washington Post, "Matthew McIntosh, young and despondent though he may be, is the real thing." His book is called Well, and every review I've found so far is very positive and at times a touch awed. This is definitly in the "yes pile." You can find an excerpt on the official page.
●
●
Greetings from Europe
I'm sitting in a Barcelona internet cafe in the completely empty non-smoking section... The smoking section is packed. It's only noon though, so it seems like most of the city isn't really awake yet. We are staying about four blocks from Gaudi's Sagrada Familia. It is under construction as it has been for decades, and it is a bizarre building to look upon. Over the next couple of days we will see some of Gaudi's other work. Today: art museums and La Boqueria, Barcelona's massive open air food market. I had hoped to get a lot of reading done on the plane, but the trip was so grueling that I didn't accomplish much. I worked my way through the first issue of The Believer, McSweeney's magazine about books and other fluff. Heidi Julavits' article about the lost art of book reviewing is the high point, after that it's mostly uneven to dull. But, hey, at least the folks on Valencia keep churning out new and interesting projects. Til next time...
●
●
Flood book fascination
It's always interesting, to me anyway, to see how current events drive books sales. Everybody is interested in Hurricane Katrina and her aftermath right now, but it will likely be at least a month or two before the first books on the storm are published - and those will be the rush jobs with lots of photographs and not much text. So for now, the vaccuum must be filled by other books. One of these, apparently, is Rising Tide a book from 1997, which according to the AP, has gotten a big boost in sales since the storm. The book by John M. Barry is subtitled "The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America," and I'm guessing that people are reading it in order to see how a natural disaster might cause America to change once again. Barry spoke about Rising Tide on NPR's Weekend Edition. And here's an excerpt from the book. Another book seeing increased sales - judging by its Amazon ranking - is Isaac's Storm, Erik Larsen's 1999 book about the 1900 Galveston hurricane (which may be surpassed by Katrina as the deadliest storm in American history.) Here's an excerpt from that book.
●
●