- Nice Work David Lodge
- Winner of the National Book Award Jincy Willet
- Arcade Marc Woodworth
- "Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way" Girl with Curious Hair David Foster Wallace
- The End of the Road John Barth
- The Floating Opera John Barth
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers
- The Size of Thoughts Nicholson Baker
- The Transit of Venus Shirley Hazzard
- Lush Life Richard Price
Nice Work David Lodge
Sunday November 16 2008 at 09:48 AM
I really wanted to love this novel because it was recommended by someone whose taste I value. I did love the lit. theory parts and I found myself thinking about it when I wasn't reading it and looking forward to reading it when I wasn't. But it ultimately felt formulaic and fell a little flat. There were good parts, but when I found myself skimming through whole paragraphs that read like thinly veiled polemics on business and factories and the British educational system, I realized its limitations.
Winner of the National Book Award Jincy Willet
Sunday November 16 2008 at 09:45 AM
I was lucky enough to meet Jincy Willet at a HUMP event in San Diego. I'm sorry I hadn't read her work beforehand because I would have been able to feel like I had a real genius, a real talent listening to me read my work (though this would have added pressure--which chapter I was reading?? how I was reading it?? etc.). I would also have been able to tell her how much I loved reading her book, which would have felt good. I loved Winner of the National Book Award so much that I meant to bring it to a basketball practice (meaning me sitting in my car for an hour and a half reading, which is delightful). I had forgotten it at home! I went to the nearest bookstore in the hopes that they would have a copy. I bought instead Jenny and the Jaws of Life, another of Willet's works, which had a great foreword by David Sedaris. I devoured a couple of stories that were excellent. Winner of the National Book Award is very smart and really funny and really dark and I loved it.
Arcade Marc Woodworth
Sunday November 16 2008 at 09:37 AM
I read this collection of poems on flights to and from LA. I was particularly moved by the poems that had to do with cities. LA is so strange. Some of the poems about cities underscored that kind of strangeness. I really liked reading this collection.
"Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way" Girl with Curious Hair David Foster Wallace
Saturday November 01 2008 at 05:27 PM
This novella is the piece that Rick Moody told me was a riposte on the part of DFW to Barth. So I read it just after having finished the two Barth novels. In the beginning of Girl with Curious Hair DFW says a lot of the "Westward" was written in the margins of Lost in the Funhouse, which I would pretty much give my eye teeth to even have a look at. This order of readings (Barth>DFW) was a total privilege. There were so many times when I would have made marginalia of my own, but just dogeared pages instead.
Here are some of the dogeared parts that moved me:
"Ambrose tells out graduate seminar that people read fiction the way relatives of the kidnapped listen to the captive's voice on the captor-held phone: paying attention, natch, to what the victim says, but absolutely hanging on the pitch, quaver, and hue of what's said
"We all have our little solipsistic delusions, ghastly intuitions of utter singularity: that we are the only one in the house who ever fills the ice cube tray, who unloads the clean dishwasher, who occasionally pees in the shower, whose eyelid twitches on first dates; that only we take casualness terribly seriously; that only we fashion supplication into courtesy; that only we hear the whiny pathos in a dog's yawn, the timeless sigh in the opening of the hermetically-sealed jar, the splattered laugh in the frying egg, the minor-D lament in the vacuum's scream; that only we feel the panic at sunset the rookie kindergartener feels at his mother's retreat; That only we love the only-we"(308).
A suicidal father writes in his suicide note:
"Dear Void:
The chances of living in the present seem good today.
Yrs.,"(319).
"Please don't tell anybody, but Mark Nechtr desires, some distant, hard-earned day, to write something that stabs you in the heart. That pierces you, makes you think you're going to die. Maybe it's called metalife. Or metafiction. Or realism. Or gfhrytytu. He doesn't know. He wonders who the hell really cares. Maybe it's not called anything"(333).
"But the special people listen. You can hear what's true, inside. Listen. You can always hear it. In the rain. In the static between stations. In the magnetic whisper on tapes, right before the music starts. And in that sound that utter, complete silence has, in your ears--that glittered tinkle, like tiny chimes at great heights. I believe I know you, and that you're probably special. That chances are good that you're a born listener.
Mark listens. It's true: he's speical. They're both special. (But I'm not special, and chances are you're not--shit, we can't all be special, obviously; not enough room for a crowd that big in here. Suck it up.)"(351).
"I have hidden exactly nothing. So trust me: we will arrive. Cross my heart. Stick a needle. To tell the truth, we might already be there"(372).
So moved.
And on to Dickens, David Copperfield, which I read in high school and hated but that was genuinely engaging me for the first 88 pages. I think, though, having written all this out just now, that I might have to read the remaining 800 some other time.
The End of the Road John Barth
Thursday October 30 2008 at 02:54 PM
In the introduction to this two-novel volume, Barth says The End of the Road is a bleaker, darker twin to The Floating Opera. I love dark and bleak. I loved The End of the Road. The thing that surprised me was how much I liked the protagonist, who Barth describes as a "moral vaccuum" (I think those are his words). Makes me wonder about myself and about the way I read.
The Floating Opera John Barth
Friday October 24 2008 at 10:59 AM
The Book Review (New York Times) ran a thing a few Sundays ago comparing David Foster Wallace and John Barth (the former having occasionally cited the latter as an influence). I had never read any Barth. I promptly got my hands on a two-novel volume of The Floating Opera and The End of the Road. It was the strangest thing. It was as though I had found more DFW to read. Not really. In fact, now that I'm done, I realize they're far further apart than I initially thought, which is logical and inevitable and which says good things about both of them. The first few pages of the
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers
Tuesday October 14 2008 at 02:18 PM
I picked up The Heart is a Lonely Hunter a long time ago because David Foster Wallace, one of my favorite writers, had said it was an important book for him. At least I think he did. I can't find, now, where he said that. Anyway, DFW hanged himself a few weeks ago and I couldn't bear myself to re-read any of his stuff. Instead, I thought I'd read some of the stuff that influenced him. McCullers is amazing. I had read The Member of the Wedding in tenth grade and hated it. But I think that had a lot more to do with me in tenth grade than the quality of the book. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was written when McCullers was only twenty-three or something unbelievable like that. It's far too wise a book, and far too good to be written by someone that young. I'm not sure if it did influence DFW, I didn't see any serious inheritance stuff, but I'm very glad I read it.
The Size of Thoughts Nicholson Baker
Thursday September 25 2008 at 07:14 AM
I brought The Size of Thoughts on a recent jaunt to San Diego with my three kids for a HUMP event down there. I brought the Baker because the short, discrete essays seemed ideal given the assumption that I wouldn't be reading a lot. Au contraire! My guys were so easy on the flight down that I blew through a solid 20 pages. Early morning reading (sitting on pillows on the hotel bathroom floor, which was good for the sleeping kids but not super comfortable) meant finishing the book! Which is another testament to Baker's genius. You might think (I had half-thought) that an entire volume of his essays might get tedious, but they didn't. His scope is so large, his mind so facile, his tone so smart and funny that I didn't tire.
Luckily for me, my agent, who was hosting the event, had an advance reading copy of the new Roberto Bolano, which meant I wouldn't be bookless for the flight back. That was important.
The Transit of Venus Shirley Hazzard
Wednesday September 10 2008 at 06:47 PM
I love this book so much that I just read through my book log because it wouldn't be at all surprising if I had read it in the last year. The interesting thing--besides being yet more impressed and sort of astounded by Hazzard's skill--is that there are whole sections at the end of the book that I had completely forgotten. Reallt good sections. Hazzard is one of those writers whose characters are so real and complex, whose dialogue is so artful, whose prose is both lyrical and accessible, and whose story is so well crafted...that I feel a little like I should stop working on my novel and just hand out copies of hers.
Lush Life Richard Price
Tuesday September 02 2008 at 10:41 AM
When I asked my editor what she had read and loved recently, she told me Lush Life. This was interesting, because Price's writing was clearly valued by someone who helps to shape my writing. I plowed right in and loved it and read it in just a few days despite it's being pretty long (If you've noticed a little fall off in the reading rate on this book log, that's because I'm working on my novel again, which means I'm reading less, which is good and bad). I loved Price's dialogue and there was some really dazzling prose. It was different than what I usually read because there's actually a lot in the book that happens. Which is the reason I've given it at least three friends. Lush Life is really good.