Stephen Schenkenberg, recently returned from a blogging hiatus, has put together a site devoted to William H. Gass. It’s a useful resource for bibliographies and the like.
It’s a Gass
New books: Clark, Cusk, Dermansky
As the Amazon review says, “it takes a world of confidence to name your debut novel The Great Stink,” but that’s just what Clare Clark did. Clark’s novel is set in the sewers of Victorian England as it follows the lives of William May, who has been hired to overhaul the decrepit system, and Long Arm Tom, who makes his living scavenging in the filth. According to a recent New York Times review, Clark is quite explicit in her descriptions of the vile sewer, but “Clark’s triumph is that she makes us see and smell everything we politely pretend not to, and she even manages to give the miasma its own kind of beauty.” The book has been shortlisted for the British Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Memorial Dagger Award for first time authors. You can read an excerpt here.Rachel Cusk’s Booker longlister In the Fold comes out in a few days. Despite the Booker nod, reviews have been mixed. Says Louise France the Guardian: “Cusk has a knack for scene-setting and handles certain setpieces with an unflinching eye for anything pretentious or fake; but throughout the novel, tediously little happens,” a sentiment echoed in the Independent: “at the novel’s heart there’s not very much going on.” An excerpt is available for those who’d like to see for themselves.The Village Voice compares the twin protagonists of Marcy Dermansky’s Twins to those of the Sweet Valley High books, but Dermansky’s twins “have acquired a fearsome host of modern ills: pill habits, self-injury, bulimia, a penchant for juggling.” Twins is getting good reviews on lots of blogs, as well, including at Collected Miscellany where Kevin describes it as “oddly compelling.” And Dermansky herself recently recommended a book at Moorish Girl. If you want to know more, Dermansky’s got her own Web site, and an excerpt of the book is available as well.
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A Treat for Mutis Fans: The Diary of Lecumberri
In my recent review of Alvaro Mutis’ The Mansion, I noted the paucity of Mutis’ writing available in English. Basically, there is Maqroll and not much else. From what I understand, much of what would remain of Mutis’ writing to be published in an English-language edition would be his poetry, much of it featuring “Maqroll the Gaviero.”But there is also Mutis’ account of his time in Lecumberri, a Mexico City prison, after being accused of fraud by his employer Standard Oil in Columbia. Mutis would write, “I never would have managed to write a single line about Maqroll el Gaviero, who has accompanied me here and there in my poetry, had I not lived those fifteen months in the place they call, with singular precision, ‘the Black Palace.'”Mutis’ account, The Diary of Lecumberri, was published in 1959 by the Universidad Veracruzana and reprinted by Alfaguara in 1997.In 1999, a journal called Hopscotch translated and published a substantial excerpt of The Diary of Lecumberri, which is available as a PDF. Also included are a petition to the President for Mutis’ release penned by Octavio Paz and several letters that Mutis wrote to the journalist Elena Poniatowska from prison.When things go bad in jail, when someone or something manages to break the closed procession of days and shuffles and tumbles them in a disorder coming from outside, when this happens, there are certain infallible symptoms, certain preliminary signs that announce the imminence of bad days. In the morning, at the first roll, a thick taste of rag dries the mouth and keeps us from saying hello to our cellmates. Everyone sits himself as well as he can, waiting for the sergeant to come and sign the report. Then comes the food. The cooks don’t yell their usual “Anyone who takes bread!” to announce their arrival, or their “Anyone who wants atole,” with which they break the mild spell left over from the dreams of those staggering around, never able to quite convince themselves that they are prisoners, that they are in jail. The meal arrives in silence and everyone approaches with his plate and his bowl to receive his allotted ration, and nobody protests, or asks for more, or says a word.
Upcoming Books: Seth Greenland, Amy Hempel, Joshilyn Jackson, A.L. Kennedy
Just out is The Bones, the debut novel of playwright and screenwriter Seth Greenland. The title of the novel refers to washed-up shock comic Frank Bones who tries to resurrect his career by calling on a now-successful sitcom writer acquaintance of his from years ago. The reviews are starting to come in on this one, and the sound pretty good. The Bones is described as “savagely funny” in the San Francisco Chronicle, which goes on to say that “Greenland elegantly avoids the usual Hollywood novel trap — he doesn’t dumb down or patronize his characters, and he provides them with pitch-perfect dialogue, the clipped, faux-avuncular patois of the tribe.” Greenland also merits a profile by David Ulin in the LA Times. And to top it off Greenland has a guest column up at TEV today. Check it out.Amy Hempel has a new collection of short stories out called The Dog of the Marriage, which was well-reviewed in the LA Times. To whit: “Short on dramatic incident, the stories risk running out of steam. Mostly they don’t, propelled by Hempel’s wit, language and love of fur. Moving through the collection, the reader grows increasingly intimate with Hempel’s sensibility. The women she speaks through feel mortality penetrating aliveness at all times, but rather than being shocked, they find that inevitable and funny.” “Beach Town” one of the shorter stories in the collection can be found here.The number one Booksense pick for April is Joshilyn Jackson’s debut novel, Gods in Alabama. Jackson has a truly endearing blog called Faster Than Kudzu in which she publicly works through her first-time-author anxiety and excitement. (aside: I have to say that I love the recent trend of authors doing these sorts of blogs. It really does make me more likely to want to read their books.) Gods in Alabama is the story of Arlene Fleet, who has fled Possett, Alabama, and made a deal with God to stay on the straight and narrow so long as He makes sure “the body is never found.” As I look around the Web, the buzz on this book is nearly deafening, and there seem to be expectations of this one being a big seller.A.L. Kennedy’s fifth novel, Paradise is getting some unabashedly good reviews. Publishers Weekly says “jaw-droppingly good,” and I love this take on Kennedy from Richard Wallace in the Seattle Times: “In my household, when you review a book by A.L. Kennedy, you better keep a close watch on the merchandise. For when the time comes for double-checking the quotes you’ve chosen to include in your review, you can’t find the book. That’s how readable she is.” The review goes on to describe the book as “a stunning depiction of alcoholism, as funny as it is sad, as ironic as it is romantic.” If you must make up your own mind, an ample excerpt is available here.
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Advice for small bookstores
Derek Dahlsad has never owned a bookstore and does not have “significant bookselling experience,” but he has, nonetheless, put together some very compelling thoughts on how to make small bookstores more successful. In his article at The New Publisher’s Journal, he lays out several ideas, some of which are very good (“3. Magazines are impulse buys; do not devote floorspace to a ‘magazine area.'” and “7. Store hours can be from 2pm – 11pm.”). It’s a worthwhile read for anyone considering getting into the bookselling business or if you’re just wondering what might keep all those little bookstores from going under.
Reading Roberto Bolaño’s Final Wake-Up Call
If you’re trying to decide whether or not to read Bolaño’s 900-page opus, I can only say this: it must be read, but no shame to any person who cannot.
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Primary Hunting
Derek followed through with his longstanding plan to rabblerouse at this year’s New Hampshire primary. Check out his blog for dispatches. Joining him are three other esteemed bloggers: Cem, El, and Aeri. I’m hoping they regale us with their thoughts, as well. By the way, the best over book about rabblerousing whilst following presidential campaigns is Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail by good ol’ Hunter S. Thompson.
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R.I.P. & O.M.F.U.G.
“A lot of the book business is timing,” editor Buzz Poole remarked Monday night. If that’s true, the launch party for CBGB: Decades of Graffiti represented some kind of weird cosmic collision. On one side of a wall, in CB’s 313 Gallery, ex-Voidoid (and novelist) Richard Hell, who penned the introduction, held court for friends and book-buyers and for the camera crew that’s been following him around for a week. On the other side, in the original CBGB, legendary hardcore act Bad Brains was warming up for a blistering reunion set.Through what Hell calls the “stunning and stunningly effective inertia” of club owner Hilly Kristal, CBGB has lately become a kind of meta-club: both itself and a tribute to itself. This week, Mark Batty Publisher releases a handsome document of the CBGB’s densely inked walls; next week, rumor has it, those walls get dismantled and shipped to Vegas, where Kristal plans to reopen the dump. Punk is dead. Long live punk.
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