The Simpsons will feature some literary heavyweights this season: “Upcoming guest voices include famed authors Tom Wolfe, Gore Vidal, Michael Chabon and Jonathan Franzen.” (via Emdashes)
Animated Jonathans
New Book Previews: Cormac McCarthy, Lydia Millet, Lisa Kusel, Avner Mandelman
One of the most anticipated books of the summer is Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. The book will be out a week from Tuesday, and already it's pushing into Amazon's top 100. All spring there were reports of galleys (advance copies for reviewers) selling for a couple of hundred dollars on eBay. Rake's Progress posted a report from one of the lucky few who got their hands on the book early. Granted, this reader was posting to the Cormac McCarthy Society Web site, but still his review was glowing. Other glowing reviews have come in at PW and Booklist, and the newspaper book pages will weigh in soon. Perhaps most intriguing of all is the report that McCarthy, a notorious recluse, has given his first interview in 13 years, which will appear in the August issue of Vanity Fair.Booklist's starred review of Lydia Millet's satirical novel Oh Pure and Radiant Heart compares the book to "Twain, Vonnegut, Murakami, and DeLillo." Not bad. The novel opens in 2003 with reincarnation of three of the creators of the atomic bomb. After taking stock of the current state of the world, these scientists decide to work for disarmament, but the American military isn't too keen on that idea. Though the premise seems a bit high concept, reviewers are saying that she pulls it off.If you ever wanted to read a novel set in the exotic locale of Zanzibar, you're in luck. Lisa Kusel's novel, Hat Trick, is about two estranged friends who, by chance, happen to be reunited on the small island off the coast of Africa. Mona is there in her capacity as a powerful film producer, while Hannah is there looking for merchandise to sell in her store back home. The man who caused their split is there, too. Peter is a journalist who is writing about the star of Mona's movie, but he is in Zanzibar to be close to Mona, too. There are no major reviews out yet, but PW was positive about the book.Avner Mandelman's collection of short stories, Talking to the Enemy, won the Jewish Book Award when it was published in Canada, and now, Seven Stories Press has released the book in the US. Mandelman was a member of the Israeli Air Force and he fought in the Six Day War before moving to Europe and then to Canada. His collection looks at Israelis and Israeli emigres living in a culture of violence. As PW puts it: "With these agile, vernacular stories, Mandelman takes a clear-sighted yet empathetic view of a fraught nation."
Bubba Loves Books
As a fun little tie in with the opening of his presidential library in Little Rock, Bill Clinton released a list of his 21 favorite books. First off, I wonder if he would have gotten in trouble if he hadn't put Hillary's book on the list. And I suspect he included Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings because they are friends. Other interesting picks: He includes a presidential biography, Lincoln by David Herbert Donald, perhaps hoping that he, too, will someday be the subject of such a biography. Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study of Ethics and Politics by Reinhold Niebuhr seems like a pretty bold choice considering certain of Clinton's own, shall we say, indiscretions. But, alas, the book is about social justice more than anything else. Right up Clinton's alley. For the most part, though, it's a pretty good batch of books, and I must commend him for including one of my favorite books of all time, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Here's the full article and list.
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In Search of Bill Watterson
Inspired by the recent release of The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, podcaster Len of Jawbone Radio paid a visit to Bill Watterson's home town, Chagrin Falls, Ohio. He ended up interviewing Watterson's mom, laying eyes on some original Calvin and Hobbes artwork and sharing some interesting bits of trivia about the beloved strip.via
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An Appetite for GN’R
Slash's memoir, Slash, became the surprise hard-rock book hit of the year after it received two votes from two Charleses (D'Ambrosio and Bock) in our 2008 Year in Reading roundup. In contrast, the recent Axl Rose biography, W.A.R.: The Unauthorized Biography of William Axl Rose, received none. Slash's honesty and openness endear him to us - the book literally begins with a bang, with an account of his defibrillator implant going off mid-show - whereas the reports of Axl's anger and manipulation in W.A.R. make it far easier to identify with the former band members he forced out. Is The Millions yet another outlet that participates, as Axl claims, in the pro-Slash, pro-old Guns media bias? Let's just say we won't be granted an interview with Axl anytime soon.Amazingly, twenty years post Appetite for Destruction and fifteen years after the dissolution of the original band, the members have made a resurgence of noise and headlines. Axl breaks his nine-year print-interview silence on recording matters and the possibility of reuniting with Slash, but still thinks everyone's out to get him, Duff McKagan debuts as Playboy's new financial analyst, and former drummer Steven Adler's appetite for self-destruction continues. A related article in this week's New York Times Magazine remarks on the paradox of Adler's camera-dodging on "Sober House": "He was trying to escape reality, and the desire to escape reality is - on 'Sober House,' anyway - the height of reality."
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