This week at the LBC blog, we’ll be discussing my nominee for this round of books, All This Heavenly Glory by Elizabeth Crane. Ed has done a very entertaining podcast with Crane, and I can be heard at the beginning introducing the book (Ed decided to portray me as some sort of bionic man. I’m not sure I get the reference, but I like it!). Also up is a dialog about the book, featuring me and Kassia (of Booksquare). Tomorrow the dialog will continue with help from Sam (of Golden Rule Jones).
The LBC Blog, featuring me
“That’s Totally Book!”
If you hear kids throwing the word “book” around a lot more than you’re used to, don’t assume that a new literary craze is sweeping the land. According to some cultural observers, “book” is becoming a substitute for “cool” thanks to the pervasive influence of text messaging.As some of you are no doubt aware, when the “T9” predictive text function is activated your cell phone will try to guess the word you’re typing as you key it in on those frustrating number keypads. As it turns out, when you try to type in “cool” – that is, 2-6-6-5 – phones will, by default, suggest “book,” and, according to some, the kids are running with it, and “book” has become another word for “cool.” So, all you teachers out there, your work is officially done. Books are now cool, literally. (via Zorn)
The Brits are Just Outrageous
Some bloggers mentioned Penguin UK’s “goodbooking” campaign last spring when it was first announced, but now that it’s been up and running for a while, I wanted to revisit it. Oh… my… God. Apparently it’s not possible to get people interested in reading unless you provide them with a Maxim magazine-style melange of bold graphic design, a dumbed-down system for rating books, and busty models handing out cheques for a thousand pounds. Somehow the idea that an unsuspecting guy will be presented a large sum of money this month by a hired model for reading Michael Moore’s Dude, Where’s My Country? doesn’t quite compute. Setting aside the models for a moment, have a look at the bizarre rating system that they have concocted to get people interested in reading their books. So, if I’m reading this right, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood delivers three doses of death, two of crime, and one each of fast cars, greed, and politics. But don’t worry everybody, this isn’t just a ridiculous marketing ploy, it has been scientifically proven that “women are attracted to men who read books.” (P.S. it’s ok if you’re gay.)Oh, those crazy Brits… anyway, on to more serious matters. Earlier this week, several book bloggers (myself included) posted about books that could help people digest/deal with/move on from Tuesday’s election. Now, an Ask Metafilter thread, inspired by book bloggers, asks, “Can books make a difference?“Speaking of important books, here’s a batch of lists that cover some different takes on what makes up the canon of great literature.I suppose everyone has noticed the new look for The Millions. Pretty snazzy, eh?
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Blind No More
If you spend much time reading the various book blogs, you probably came across this National Book Award blind item at Beatrice. I did and I couldn’t stop wondering who this slighted author was. Speculation abounded at Tingle Alley, and I was stumped, too. But after stumbling upon a clue in the comments of a post at Mad Max Perkins, I did some snooping around, and I can now reveal that the slighted author is Jim Shepard. His books, Project X and Love and Hydrogen, were not submitted for consideration for the NBA because, according to Beatrice.com, his publisher did not follow the proper procedures. Now, I’m not so sure that either of Shepard’s books would have made the cut. But you never know. And you also have to wonder if everyone would be making such a big fuss if one of our women from New York were a man from Massachusetts.
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Tracking Amazon Rankings
Those oft-quoted Amazon sales rankings don’t really tell you much. They just give a snapshot of how a book is selling at a particular moment. TitleZ can track how a book’s ranking moves over time. There’s some debate about how much those rankings really tell you, but this is a fun toy nonetheless. (via)
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Finally Finished
After more than a month of intense reading I’ve finally finished Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. As some of you may remember from a post a while back, this was my first serious excursion into the golden era of 19th century Russian fiction. After seeking the advice of several trusted fellow readers (aside: see how well it works! Make sure to Ask a Book Question if you ever find yourself in a similar predicament. We’re here to help!) We collectively decided that C & P was the best place to start. I reacted to the book in a couple of different ways. My first reaction, from almost the very beginning, was that the book felt like a Dickens novel to me. I saw similarities in both the gothic overwrought characters and the lurking shady characters who alternately seemed for or against young Raskolnikov. The friendship between Raskolnikov and Razumikhin, in particular, reminded me of the friendship between Pip and Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations. Other similarities, I think, are structural. Both books were written serially, and as with Dickens, I looked forward to the cliffhanger at the end of each chapter which would ensure that readers would look forward to the next installment. When I read a book like this, it always occurs to me that it’s too bad books aren’t written that way any more. It seems like it would be a really fun way to read a book. (Now that I think of it, I’m pretty sure that Stephen King has experimented with this in recent years). My other reaction was how psychological and modern the book seemed. I never read this or any other Russian novels in school (not sure how that happened) so I had neither expectations nor preconceptions when I began. The book was, in its own verbose way, a very profound discussion of morality and power. More specifically, I was interested in the relationship between the power of murder and the power of wealth and social class. These themes were buried beneath layers of prose. The book seemed to be divided almost equally between action and Raskolnikov’s internal monologue. It was very readable, but occasionally overwhelming. A final observation: the book is filled with events and real people drawn from real life in 1860s St. Petersburg. In the present day, as an established classic, it gives the book a historical context, but I couldn’t help but think about how it must have appeared at the time of its publication. In this day and age, writers are often derided for relying too much on current events and pop culture. Critics claim the these books will lose their cultural significance as they become quickly dated. Yet, in C&P, Dostoyevsky’s practice of referring to specific scandals and amusements that were the hot topics of conversation at the time serves to cement the book very specifically in a time and place and it manages to make the story feel real and complete. I should also mention that I really enjoyed the particular edition that I read. A multitude of informative notes augment the text, and the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky felt inventive and engaging. But now I am done, and I am looking forward to a change of pace. I’ve already embarked upon Jamesland by LA author Michele Huneven. The book club that I help run is reading it, and Huneven herself is planning to make an appearance at the end of our meeting so that she can answer our questions. Should be lots of fun.
All Creatures Great and Small: On Animals in Literature
“If an ox begins to sicken,” Cato the Elder writes in his treatise on Roman farm management, “give him without delay a raw hen’s egg and make him swallow it whole. The next day make him drink from a wooden bowl a measure of wine in which has been scraped the head of an onion. Both the ox and his attendant should do these things fasting and standing upright.”
This passage has stuck with me, for reasons I don’t entirely understand, since the time I first read it, whenever that may have been. I’m less interested in the questionable medicine it prescribes than in the image of the ox and his attendant — who, on the farm described by Cato, was most likely a slave — together: the attendant going about his work, the ox patiently enduring his ministrations. The two at once familiar and yet gazing across an unfathomable distance of incomprehension as they stand facing one another, both unfed save the ox’s hen’s egg and measure of wine.
I’ve been thinking of the passage often lately, as my novel, That’s Not a Feeling, is, to my surprise, filled with animals. The novel is set on the rural campus of a boarding school, so it isn’t entirely unexpected that animals should appear. But a brief catalogue of non-human animals seen and discussed in its pages would include deer, bees, ducks, a turkey, cats, a caterpillar, a goat, a pig, some chickens, an owl, two wasps, a peahen, horses, bats, some birds that are not further identified, and a snake. This seems to me, if not quite excessive, then at least curious. It’s the kind of thing I try not to think much about while I’m writing, but now that the book is in its final form, I don’t really see what harm it can do.
In the eighth of Rilke’s Duino Elegies, the poet contrasts animals’ way of being in the world with that of people. “The creature gazes into openness,” he writes, in A. S. Kline’s translation, “… and when it moves, it moves / in eternity, as streams do.” Humans, however, are always looking inward, “our eyes are / as if they were reversed.” I’m sure that making this type of distinction is not what I was up to. First of all, I find it too romantic, too idealized. And the animals I’ve written about aren’t the free, sure beasts described by Rilke. They are often frightened, in the wrong place, or sick, like the ox in Cato.
In this way, they are mirrors of the human characters in the book, who are also often unsettled, ill at ease, or worse. And these characters’ confusion and anxiety is analogous to the opacity that, it seems to me, exists between people and animals. “If a lion could speak, we could not understand him,” Wittgenstein says. I take this to mean that a lion’s life, his experiences and concerns, are so foreign to us that even if he shared our language, we wouldn’t know what he was talking about. Just before making this point in the Philosophical Investigations, a point I think we can safely assume applies to all animals and not only to lions, Wittgenstein discusses the transparency, or lack thereof, between people. He says, “…one human being can be a complete enigma to another.” And, Freud might have added, a complete enigma to himself or herself as well.
This begins to feel more like what I may have been after, populating the margins of my book with unsteady animals. They stand (or crawl, or fly) as reminders that proximity doesn’t dispel mystery. Just as Cato’s ox and his attendant can live and work together without claiming to know one another completely, we can live among animals and among people without assuming that we comprehend them. This is less a philistine’s incuriosity about his surroundings than a degree of humility as regards the limits of our understanding. Just as psychoanalysis shows us how we are always telling the truth though we do not know the truth, and can be ourselves — can’t help being ourselves — though we remain strangers to ourselves. And yet we are never so resigned that we stop trying to find out more. I like the way animals in books, what John Berger called “animals of the mind,” can serve as emblems of this. From the meadows and the trees, they gaze out at the human characters, who cannot help but wonder what it is the animals see.
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Chuckles
So, there’s this guy Chuck Klosterman. Here is the “About the Author” blurb from the dust jacket of his first book, Fargo Rock City: Chuck Klosterman is a music, film, and culture critic for Ohio’s AKRON BEACON JOURNAL. He began his career with THE FORUM in Fargo, North Dakota, where he interviewed numerous metal gods and once consumed nothing but McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets for seven straight days. Chuck still tries to dance like Axl Rose when he’s drunk.” Here is an “anecdote” pulled from said book. Now that you’ve read both of these items, I’m sure you already love Klosterman as much as I do and will be delighted to hear that he has a new book out, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. I’ve barely delved into this one, although, at work the other day I happened to flip to his chapter about the odd proliferation of “naughty housewives” on the internet.File under my second dimensionLest you think my book obsession and it’s accompanying website indicate that I am a one dimensional person, I went to Amoeba Music today and purchased two cds, which I will tell you about. The first is a selftitled ep by a band called The Vells. The Vells are a side band for a couple of guys from Modest Mouse. The ep is pretty good, too indie rockish at times, but really good when it’s not. I also got an amazing little gem. You probably didn’t know that Johnny Cash made a concept album in 1960. Well he did, and now I own it. A self-described “stirring travelogue of America in Song and Story,” the album invites you to follow Johnny across this great country of ours as he paints a rustic sort of picture, half in spoken word and half in song, of a whole buch of salty, backroad sort of places. It’s called Ride This Train, and there’s even train noises so you feel like you’re along for the ride with Mr. Cash. Amazon’s got it, if you want it.