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.”
Appearing Elsewhere
In Britain, size matters
The plight of the literary magazine and the demise of the short story are often bemoaned here in the US, but compared to the state of things in Britain, America is paradise for short story writers and readers. So says a recent essay in the Guardian, which hopes that a newly announced short story prize - worth 15,000 pounds, the world's richest - will ignite a passion for short fiction in that part of the world. According to Aida Edemariam, who penned the essay, in Britain, size matters: The British attitude to the short story - that it is somehow lesser, a practice space for the real thing, which is, of course, the novel; that you can perhaps start out writing a collection of stories, but you have somehow failed if you don't graduate to a minimum of 200 pages - has always baffled me. I cannot comprehend the underlying assumption that a particular kind of stamina is somehow better, of more value. It's like privileging the marathon, or the 1,500m, over the 100m.After citing several examples of the form, Edemariam goes on to write: "I know these are North American examples, but it is there where, as (Dave) Eggers points out in his introduction to The Best of McSweeney's Volume I, there 'are probably over a hundred high-quality literary journals,' that the short story is truly alive; disdain for the form is a British phenomenon."Who knew we had it so good?
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Free Music from Amazon
Stumbling through Amazon's MP3 store today (I've recently become an iPod owner), I was surprised to find that they have quite a bit of music available for free download. In fact, they've collected it all in one place, so you can click through and grab what you want.Some of the goodies on offer include songs by The Apples In Stereo, David Byrne and Brian Eno, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, The Streets, Loudon Wainwright III, Bob Mould, an entire Amazon Jazz Sampler, and a bunch more.
On Brevity
In 1886, Anton Chekhov wrote a letter to his brother enumerating the following requirements for his own writing:Absence of lengthy verbiage of political-social-economic natureTotal objectivityTruth descriptions of persons and objectsExtreme brevityAudacity and originality; flee stereotypesCompassionI like to present this list at the start of any fiction writing class because it's wonderful conversation fodder. Everyone has one they cherish (for me, it's compassion), and one they revile (as my students recently pointed out to me: Can anyone every be totally objective? Isn't the fleeing of stereotypes stereotypical?). After a discussion of this list, I have my students replace one or two of Chekhov's rules with their own. Popular answers include: passion; avoidance of adverbs; write what you know; write what you don't know; and humor. I always add "Bold use of metaphor" - whatever that means. If I were to revise Chekhov's list, I'd take the "extreme" out of "extreme brevity." Too wordy.Perhaps Chekhov hadn't read Edgar Allan Poe's famous 1842 review of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales, in which he advised, "Extreme brevity will degenerate into epigrammatism." I have a feeling that Ernest Hemingway did catch this warning, though, for when he was challenged to write a story in six words, he took old Poe to task with this:"For sale: baby shoes, never used."I love Hemingway's story - how it attests to the power of implication! For a long time, I thought it very sad, until author Antoine Wilson schooled me otherwise. Now I appreciate it even more.As pointed out on this blog a few days ago, Smith, the online magazine devoted to storytelling and personal narratives, is publishing a compendium of 6-word memoirs by various authors (some of them were previously compiled in the 2007 edition of The Best American Non-Required Reading.) My favorites include Drew Peck's "Ex-wife and contractor now have house" (which follows in Hemingway's footsteps of implication), and Bob Redman's "Being a monk stunk. Better gay" (for its musical qualities). All entries are fun, and they make you want to try writing one.I myself am terrible at the six-word story, autobiographical or not. Perhaps that's the real reason why I don't want the "extreme" in my "brevity." I use as few words as a story requires - but sometimes a story requires a lot of words. Isn't that what writers of the long short story - such as Alice Munro or Deborah Eisenberg - might tell you? But Poe warns against this, too, for "the sin of extreme length is even more unpardonable."Uh oh.
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A Brief History of Book Blogs
Genevieve Tucker, the blogger behind Reeling and Writhing (formerly known as You Cried for Night) has penned an article for The Australian about book blogs that covers briefly the medium's numerous squabbles and scuffles (have there really been that many? I blame Ed) in what amounts to a history of the nascent "litblogosphere." A handy sidebar of prominent litblogs is included, though, sadly, The Millions has been left off. (Perhaps that will serve as fodder yet another litblog battle? Nah, I'm used to it.)
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Exclusive: New Fan-Designed Cover of 20th Anniversary Edition of ‘Infinite Jest’ Plus a Brief Interview with Michael Pietsch
February 23rd marks the 20th anniversary of the original publication of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, and on that date, his publisher Little, Brown is putting out a new edition of the now classic novel with a new introduction by Tom Bissell. To recognize, as Little, Brown put it, " the deep way that so many readers have connected with the book over the last twenty years," the publisher held a contest allowing fans to submit their designs for the new cover.
The winner, we can reveal, is Ohio-based designer Joe Walsh, who has dispensed with the sky imagery that has adorned all prior U.S. editions of Infinite Jest. Walsh's cover is spare and employs symbolic imagery with a playful undertone. After seeing the cover, we reached out to Michael Pietsch, CEO of Little, Brown parent Hachette Book Group, and David Foster Wallace's editor, to get his thoughts.
The Millions: Beyond the commercial considerations, why is now the right moment to issue a new edition of Infinite Jest and what does the book have to say to today's readers?
Michael Pietsch: I'm astonished that ten years have passed since our 10th anniversary edition with a foreword by Dave Eggers. It’s the publisher’s job to find ways to keep books fresh, and an anniversary like this seemed an unmissable occasion to highlight how alive the book still is. Infinite Jest is embraced and discussed by ever larger numbers of readers with each passing year. This new edition is a celebration of that vitality and an invitation to those who haven’t yet turned the first page.
The book’s main ideas—that too much easy pleasure may poison the soul, that we’re awash in an ocean of pain, and that truly knowing another person is the hardest and most worthwhile work in the world—are truer now than they’ve ever been. Tom Bissell’s brilliant new Foreword calls attention to this far better than I can.
TM: Why did Little, Brown decide to go with a fan-designed cover and what would David have made of that decision?
MP: The internet has made it possible to see the massive amount of creative response readers have to Infinite Jest. I’d seen a lot of art connected to the book online, and it seemed that allowing readers who have loved it to submit cover designs for the anniversary edition was a way of honoring and highlighting all that creativity.
I never presume to comment on what David would have made of this or any other aspect of our work. The David Foster Wallace Literary Trust wholeheartedly supported the idea of inviting fans to submit cover art.
TM: What did David think of the covers and packaging of his books?
MP: David sometimes made suggestions for cover art. For Infinite Jest he proposed using a photo of a giant modern sculpture made of industrial trash—an interesting idea, but one that our creative director felt was too subtle and detailed to work as a cover image. The cover image for the paperback of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again is one he suggested, and that I’ve always loved.
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Fiction Contest at Verb
Laurel writes to tell us about a fiction contest that she's involved with at Verb. Stories up to 5,000 words are eligible and the winner receives $1,000 and publication in an issue of Verb. The judge for the contest is Thisbe Nissen who wrote Osprey Island and once helped my friends find an apartment in Iowa City. Verb isn't your typical literary magazine, by the way. Laurel says: "Verb is the first audioquarterly, which means that you'll be recording your story for distribution through audible.com, and to subscribers on a CD! If you would prefer, an actor may record in your stead. Past contributors include Robert Olen Butler, Stuart Dybek, Peter Case, Julianna Baggott, Ha Jin, and many others."
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Those early Coetzee novels are just amazing. "The Life and Times of Michael K." also devastating.