Our own Garth Risk Hallberg’s City on Fire is almost here. While we wait, read Boris Kachka’s profile of Hallberg for Vulture, about the expectation surrounding his highly anticipated 944-page debut novel and the experience of writing a book that is “unpublishably long.” We’ll be publishing our own illuminating interview with Hallberg on Monday.
Good Fortune is Good Fortune
Like a Career in the NBA
“The myth of the full-time writer is a perniciously sticky one—and it doesn’t help that once in a blue moon a J.K. Rowling does come along, thereby entrenching the cultural delusion that being a full-time writer is a thing that could realistically happen. But the truth is that being a full-time writer is basically just the literary equivalent of a career in the NBA.” Liz Entman Harper talks with seven writers about the struggle to balance writing with a day job, and those interviews pair well with our own Emily St. John Mandel‘s look at “Working the Double Shift.”
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Black Lives Matter
Following the recent violence in the U.S., the editors at n+1 offer resources and articles from the archives. You could also read yesterday’s article asking what political writing is or Michael Bourne’s review of Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash.
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Dear Reader
“Puzzled as to why her mother had not figured out “Miriam” on her own — or why, after Capote became famous, she did not say much about her letter and his answer — Ms. Akers sought clues.” The New York Times writes about recently discovered letter from Truman Capote to a young reader who misunderstood his first published story. Read our own Michael Bourne on the tragedy of Capote’s life.
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Cetology
Classics Illustrated: Draftsman Matt Kish gives Moby-Dick the Zak Smith treatment.
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This Could Be Big
After winning a $100,000 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation, what do you do for an encore? How about staging “fifty days of lectures, discussions, and debates” about what the future ought to look like? How about enlisting the likes of Laurie Anderson, Samuel Delany, Rachel Kushner, and Norman Rush as ringmasters? How about having the entire thing take place in structures designed by artists José León Cerrillo and Adrián Villar Rojas? Triple Canopy‘s “Speculations” occupies MoMA’s P.S. 1 this summer
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Love and Death in Miami
The Takeaway hosted two ambitious author panels at last month’s Miami Book Fair International. The first panel covered “love,” and featured Millions contributor Christopher Beha alongside Jami Attenberg and three others. The second panel focused on “death,” and it featured writers and literary figures as well as Benjamin Busch, an Iraq War veteran.
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The Happiest Meal
Do you want a book with your Happy Meal? McDonald’s will replace Happy Meal toys with books for two weeks next month. Don’t expect to pull out Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs with your fries, though. The books were created for McDonald’s by Leo Burnett and discuss nutrition. Did they miss the irony?
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Let the logrolling begin!
City on Fire review drinking game:
If you see the following, take a drink:
-Reference to $2 million advance (double-down if this occurs in 1st paragraph)
-Reference to Art of Fielding/Goldfinch/Underworld/Motherless Brooklyn or Fortress of Solitude (1 drink each)
-Reference to author’s “ambition”
-Reviewer confusing “ambition” with “length”
-Reference to page count
-Reviewer devoting more attention to “Will the advance earn out?” vs. “Is the book artistically successful?”
-Random reference to Jonathan Franzen (double-down if Time cover mentioned)
-Phrases “Great American Novel”/”masterpiece”/”epic” (1 drink each)
-Reviewer actually analyzes the novel on its own merits (0 drinks, it appears you’ve stumbled upon a piece of honest, independent criticism, possibly written by someone not living in NYC; please inform Knopf and destroy it immediately)
@Cheeze: Fantastic. My only addition would be drinks for references to David Foster Wallace and “Infinite Jest.” In any case, that Vulture profile would make you so drunk, you’d probably have to go have your stomach pumped.
Yes, that’s a great one. Bonus drink if the reviewer makes no link between those two books other than the length.
Also I should add another drink for referencing the movie option.
“He went directly to Union Square Park and wrote one long scene in his notebook. Then he stopped. I don’t have the chops to write this, he thought. I don’t even live here.”
#this
“Oooh, Garth, your book is soooo big.”
Tall white men who wear glasses with their thick novels is getting old.
Contain your sophomoric jealousy for a second peeps – it’s a pretty good book. He’s a damn fine writer, although it’s too long (a thing every reviewer has pointed out. If there was some grand conspiracy they wouldn’t mention it).
Also, yes, he’s white… and tall… I guess that invalidates a good novel? As ridiculous as saying The Fisherman by Chigozie Obioma makes you tired of “these black men with their thin books.” Books are books, and Hallberg hops from perspective to perspective with a refreshing universality… don’t paint him as some sexist Mailer type because of how much melanin is in his skin – it’s unfair and, frankly, low. Can’t believe I just had to write that in the 21st century but that’s where we’re at as a culture…
Yeah, and I can’t believe it’s 2015 and we still have to treat every overwritten, over-hyped encyclopedic novel by young white male writers like they just came down from the mountain with the fucking commandments in hand. Because that’s where we are still at as a culture, like it or not. He wants to be the next DeLillo? He actually said that? What a dork.
Mygod, perhaps you missed the tongue planted in my cheek…but the hype machine behind this book (and others like it) is just so stupid and sad…and honestly, the 2 biggest-hyped books of the last 5 years (Freedom and Art of Fielding) turned out to be fatally flawed and flat-out terrible, respectively, so sorry if I’m skeptical of this one. I will say the reviews have been mixed at best — which is a bit refreshing if you ask me.
@Mygod
Get at me when a black writer gets $2 million for her debut novel. It’s not Hallberg’s fault that the state of publishing leads one to vent their frustration on him… he is an easy target, though.
@butt and @Anon and @Cheeze
Advances have gotten muuuuch bigger (by an order of magnitude) in the past ten years, and there’s still only maybe a dozen writers of literary fiction (mostly all women btw) who have ever received advances at 7 figs. Consider Zadie Smith (black and female), who got a giant advance for White Teeth back in 2000. Why? It was a giant, sprawling, encyclopedic novel, and people like that. Now she didn’t get 2 million, sure, but no one got 2 million back then. But she got the equivalent. If White Teeth was being bid over now, she’d be getting around that much or at least 7 figs. So the notion that no black women have ever gotten the biggest advances (adjusted for payment inflation by the industry) for their debut novels is just not true.
Also, considering the play that Ta-Nehesi Coates (MacArthur award) or Roxanne Gay have been getting, and considering that every single up-and-coming agent pleads on their websites for writers of color and LGBT protagonists and “empowered women characters” it’s not like white men have an advantage in publishing. This is especially because women buy like 80% of all fiction and make up 80% of the publishing industry, so their tastes drive the industry.
My suspicion about why Garth Risk Hallberg has been so press-shy is precisely the reactions in this post: a) racist and sexist shit about how he’s a white male and b) the jealousy effect (which combines with the former). Pretty sad that he has to be so careful.
Allan Folsom got $2 million for The Day After Tomorrow. In 1993 dollars ($3.3 today). Zadie Smith got a quarter million pounds, sure. Hari Kunzru got five times that for The Impressionist, barely two years later. You know why everyone remembers the big advance for White Teeth? Because Zadie Smith is a black woman. Because it was unusual for that exact reason. Because she was an outlier.
Yeah GRH has been real press shy. That GQ profile he did with the designer duds? Man, they musta held a gun to his head on that one. And the Vulture profile…it musta been hard for him to contribute that picture of his badass teenage posse. And I don’t know where people getting these miraculous publicity head shots of him. Poor guy.
@butt
$2 million for The Day After Tomorrow, which is not literary fiction. As for your other points: typical Internet Left incoherence. You say there’s a problem with diversity in the industry… and, without any evidence, you say that people remember Zadie Smith’s advance because she was black. Maybe people who think about race constantly (like you, I guess), but most remember it because she was such a good writer so incredibly early. That’s what Zadie herself has said, that it was about her being young, but I guess you’d know better than her… Then you point to Hari Kunzru, who’s Indian, and got a 7 figure advance two years later. Tell me, do you think through your positions or do you just rant without any regard for if it even supports your argument?
Also, jesus christ, a big, 900 page book that’s well-written and, that’s at least grade A- literature, gets published, and is going to get a lot of attention and sell, and all everyone wants to do is shit on it and complain about “the hype.” Like, good, a book got some hype… maybe it sells a few hundred thousand copies. Small stakes that y’all tear over like hyenas. Please crawl back to whatever NanoWriMo forum is your normal hole, and leave literature to those who want to keep it alive, those who celebrate because GQ covered an author, not those who rant about “Purity”, like doing a few interviews is selling out. Looks like Knopf did its fucking job and got the book out there. Good. Hope it sells a million copies. Sorry if it’s not your books… maybe if you spent less time whining and more time writing (I notice Hallberg doesn’t have a twitter) it’d be your book next time.
Mygod I think you need to lighten the fuck up. This is not about people killing literature. Some people get uncomfortable where marketing and literature intersect. They’re sort of opposite aesthetics, ya dig? You’re obviously fine with it; also an acceptable opinion.
Categorizing all dissent as “unpublished writers whining” is as disingenuous as calling anyone who says something remotely critical about USA “unpatriotic”.
Also, smile! It’s good for you.