A few months back there was some fuss about Penguin selling, for close to $8,000, the Complete Collection: More than 1000 of the Greatest Classics. Recently, used bookstore owner Jeff Sharman went through his inventory and found “a handful of forgotten Penguin Classics” – ones that didn’t make the cut. He raises an interesting point that not all classics stand the test of time.
The Complete Collection’s missing books
Literary Action Figures
While most kids were playing with G.I. Joes or Barbies, we at The Millions were more likely to have our nose in a book. Finally, there are molded plastic figurines for us too, though its not clear whether they are fully posable or offer kung-fu grip action. We’ll take what we can get. Who among us wouldn’t enjoy staging our own literary roundtables with the likes of Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, and Charles Dickens? Those who prefer their literary action heroes to be more macrocephalic, might prefer the Edgar Allen Poe bobblehead (pictured here).For those with less of a literary bias, there are actually quite a few of these “historical figures” on offer, from Marie Antoinette to Harry Houdini to Carl Jung.
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Upcoming Books: Matthew Kneale, Andrew Miller, James Salter
Matthew Kneale won the Whitbread Book of the Year award in 2001 for his maritime historical novel English Passengers. Now Kneale has a collection of stories out that takes a more contemporary look at traveling. Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance is about the complexities of exploring today’s world. A review in The Scotsman says that Kneale’s “‘small crimes’ are usually ones of hypocrisy from Europeans traveling in developing countries – well-intentioned souls suddenly confronted with the unpleasant realities of life among the picturesque peasants.” Here’s an excerpt from the book and here’s a little essay by Kneale about some of his more harrowing moments on the road.As Hotel Rwanda helped raise the profile of genocide in Africa, a soon to be released British novel uses a similar, fictionalized tragedy as its backdrop. Andrew Miller’s The Optimists is the story of Clem Glass, a photojournalist who returns home from Africa unable to come to terms with what he has witnessed there. A review in The Times discusses the difficulties in embarking on such a novel: “The novelist has to mediate a political event more skillfully than a journalist and the tension between subject and mediator is what should be driving the story. In The Optimists there is more awkwardness than tension.” At the Meet the Author Web site (which is filled with video interviews with authors) Miller discusses what he was trying to accomplish with the novel. Update: a review in the Guardian.James Salter has a collection of short stories coming out in April called Last Night. Publishers Weekly says, “The reserved, elegiac nature of Salter’s prose and his mannered, well-bred characters lend the collection a distanced tone, but at their best these are stirring stories, worthy additions to a formidable body of work.” That formidable body of work, by the way, includes a previous collection of stories that won a PEN/Faulkner Award in 1989, Dusk and Other Stories. For another taste of Salter, here’s his recent reminiscence of food in France from the New York Times. And here’s a story from the new book.
Iowa Dispatches, Part 2
I heard from my friends in Iowa about the latest in the search for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop DirectorOn Feb. 24, Lan Samantha Chang was in Iowa for her “audition” for the Director position. During the mock-workshop portion of the presentation, Chang showed off her analytical skills rather than her personality, as previous finalist Richard Bausch had. There was a lot more in depth discussion about the stories that were critiqued, and Chang was adept at giving feedback and facilitating discussion. She talked about Frank Conroy, the current director, who is battling cancer right now, taking inspiration from his high standards for writing and teaching. She also quoted Marilynne Robinson, perhaps in homage to her own Iowa education, saying, “you have to have 3, if not 4, if not 5, reasons for putting something into a story.” Chang even discussed the aesthetics of words on a page. She talked about utilizing the power of the “white space” between sections, saying that the connection between two sections should, and can be poetic. She said at one point, “I’m a sucker for beauty.” If the workshop faltered at all it was in the discussion of a novel excerpt when Chang delved into more theoretical ideas that might be hard to put into practice. She read from her first collection of stories for the reading – again, perhaps giving a nod to her student days at the Workshop. It didn’t seem like anyone was blown away by her reading. Her work is quite sad and subtle, perhaps not the stuff of public performance. Chang’s craft talk was on novel structure – her first was recently published – which received mixed, but generally good reviews.Jim Shepard visited Iowa today, so hopefully we’ll get a report on him soonPreviously: Richard BauschUPDATE: Chang gets the job.
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Lisbeth Salander, The Early Years: Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking
Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking never quite breaks the laws of physics, but she is an impossible creature, a fantasy of empowerment: rich, self-confident, unnaturally strong, perpetually delighted, never compromising, never defeated. She's Lisbeth Salander's oldest literary relative and the original girl who played with fire.
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Serendipity
It’s as though the New York Times was using this blog to decide what to write articles about: check out this review of Joseph Roth’s newly released collection of essays, Report from a Parisian Paradise: Essays from France, 1925-1939.
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