Shooting the Heart by Paul Cody — review, excerpt
The Hamilton Case by Michelle de Kretser — review, excerpt
The Laments by George Hagen — excerpt (being touted as a “hot sleeper”)
New Books and Excerpts
A Small Gallery of Literary Giants
Since I'm convinced that people tend to be more interesting once they're dead, obituaries have always been my favorite part of the newspaper. So whenever a noteworthy writer died, I started drawing the picture that accompanied the obit, eventually adding drawings of noteworthy long-dead writers. Here, then, is a gallery of a few of those literary giants, along with brief explanations of what was going through my head as my pen was fashioning their heads.
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Appearing Elsewhere
Millions contributor Edan won second prize in StoryQuarterly’s Fall 2007 fiction contest for “Animals.” Congrats Edan! The story is now up on the site. You have to register (for free) to read the whole thing.
Rafael Nadal as Religious Experience?
In August, 2006, a few months after the first Federer–Nadal Wimbledon final, David Foster Wallace published “Roger Federer as Religious Experience,” in the New York Times, a lengthy footnoted essay describing the sublimity of Roger Federer and the elements of top-flight tennis that can only be captured watching it live. The essay is not only the best piece of tennis writing I have ever read, but the best piece of sports writing, period. There are countless parts that merit reading out loud to whomever’s nearby. One among them:At least not entirely. TV tennis has its advantages, but these advantages have disadvantages, and chief among them is a certain illusion of intimacy. Television’s slow-mo replays, its close-ups and graphics, all so privilege viewers that we’re not even aware of how much is lost in broadcast. And a large part of what’s lost is the sheer physicality of top tennis, a sense of the speeds at which the ball is moving and the players are reacting.Yesterday’s Federer-Nadal final reminded me of the piece, and, as I have done every year around this time for the past three, had me emailing it out to all my friends, beseeching them to read it, because this time, it really is worth it. It has become a fixation of our manic media culture to instantly assess a just-completed event’s place in history. And in the same way that it drives web traffic and sells newspapers to inflate the significance of a “gaffe” by a presidential candidate, rarely a week goes by without some game or another receiving the brand of “classic” status on ESPN. But every now and again the genuine article comes along, making it obvious that all the other hyperbole was just that. Yesterday’s Wimbledon final was that kind of event. I imagine DFW was watching. I hope he writes about it.
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Appearing Elsewhere
Pete Dexter has been in the news around here lately, and keeping that ball rolling, I’ve contributed a piece to The Rumpus series “The Last Book I Loved” about Dexter’s collection of columns, Paper Trails. Technically, it’s not the last book I’ve loved (more recently there’s been Waiting for the Barbarians, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, Shadow Country, A Mercy, and a few others), so let’s just call it “One of the Last Books I Loved.”
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New and upcoming books
John Burdett’s sequel to Bangkok 8, his mystery set in Thailand, has come out. It’s called Bangkok Tattoo. Here’s my review of Bangkok 8 (scroll down). Here’s EW’s review of Bangkok Tattoo. And here’s an excerpt.I noticed that Penguin has put out a smart-looking new edition of John Keegan’s essential history book, The Second World War. The new edition includes a new foreword by Keegan.It looks like T.C. Boyle will have a new collection of short stories out this fall called Tooth and Claw.
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Books in the News
Some things I’ve noticed today:This review of a new biography of one the founding fathers of fantasy and science fiction, H. P. Lovecraft. What’s interesting about this bio is that it is done in the form of a graphic novel, a fitting medium in which to describe the life of a visionary. Lovecraft was almost a movie before it was adapted by Keith Giffen from a script by Hans Rodinoff and illustrated by Enrique Breccia.Great capsule reviews at the Christian Science Monitor of the nominees for National Book Critics Circle awards in the criticism category, “far and away the most intimidating [category].” The nominees are Gritos by Dagoberto Gilb, Songbook by Nick Hornby, Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling by Ross King, River of Shadows by Rebecca Solnit, and Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag. The winners are announced on March 4th in New York.And a group reads all of Shakespeare in one day, which reminded me of this awesome big ticket item.
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