Three Guys One Book

Redirecting 3G1B

2009-11-08T11:54:00.000-05:00

Greetings from 3g1b. If you are still using the old blogspot address, it is time for a change. We've moved to a self-hosted Wordpress site, which can be found at www.threeguysonebook.com, so change your bookmark and come check out the new site. Thanks for visiting, and read on.

jc

Tomorrow is National Bookstore Day

2009-11-06T09:00:00.004-05:00

We spend a lot of time around here trying to develop schemes and strategies to save the book biz. The best way I can think of to keep the book industry healthy in the short-term, anyway, is to go out and fork out some cash at your local indie bookstore. Tomorrow is National Bookstore Day. Yes, I know e-books are the wave of the future, but we all love brick and mortar! Spend some cash, people! A few recommendations from each of the four Three Guys, in case you're at a loss:

JE:

Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply: JC and I will be covering this kick-ass puzzle of a novel next week some time, and following up with an interview with Chaon, whom as far as I can tell, is truly one of the good guys. You won't be able to put this novel down. And it's cheap for a hardcover-- twenty-five bones!

Joshua Mohr's Some Things That Meant the World to Me: Dark and exciting debut from one of my new favorite indie houses, Two Dollar Radio. If you like Patrick deWitt's Ablutions (which we covered here), you'll dig this unsettling story of a man named Rhonda suffering from depersonalization. This is a trade paper original, so your only out about fourteen bucks.

Steve Hely's How I Became A Famous Novelist: I nearly peed my pants reading this debut from TV writer Heley. A seriously hilarious send up of literary pretension and the publishing industry. This dude spins comic gold. Nobody is safe from his skewering. The plot is as thin as your average romantic comedy, but the laughs will keep you turning the pages furiously. Hardback, about twenty-six bucks, I think. Well worth the price of three movies.

JR:

Dead Boys by Richard Lange: This is a tremendous debut collection,examining several lives in the sun bleached but fractured community that is LA.

Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon: Probably one of the most insightful and concise examinations of the small town, like Cheever and Updike without the sex and booze, and replaced by oddity, magic and heart.

Ablutions by Patrick DeWitt: A smashing debut novel about a dishwasher who wants for a better life, but is drowning in self pity, hellish surroundings and a broken relationship. Dewitt is a true unvarnished talent; this book grabs the reader by the seat of the pants, and tells it like it is.

DH:

My taste in novels is communitarian. The story should include the whole group. If I start reading a story that has only one or two characters; I bin it.

Stories about the city, about art and ideas, food and sex, are a big plus. But what's most important is family, children and parents, friends and lovers, a dog even. Marriage, in all senses of the word, finding connections, should be the central subject. Art is an act of marriage.

Three near-perfect, 21st century stories are listed below. You should go to your local bookstore and buy all three if you can relate to what I've said!

On Beauty by Zadie Smith

The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

The Great Man by Kate Christensen

JC:

Cockroach by Rawi Hage: While comparison's to Kafka are to be expected of this tale of a thief who sees himself as an invincible insect, he's as much kin to William Burroughs as to FK. Hage's characters emerge from the darkness of the Montreal immigrant underground, reliving the horrors of wars left behind and scratching for the crumbs of a rich society. Dark and raw.

Jarrettsville by Cornelia Nixon: The wonderfully talented Nixon tells the story of a Mason-Dixon border town during and immediately following the Civil War. Postwar, neighbors and relatives are cast against each other in very personal battles, and Martha Cairnes publicly murders the man she loves. Nixon methodically and brilliantly unravels the transgressions that led the couple to their fate.

Hell by Robert Olen Butler: Just so you know, pretty much every one goes to Hell. Hatcher McCord is there. So is his father, all the presidents and kings, popes, movie stars, and ordinary people. And they all deserve it, because otherwise why would they be there? Butler is hilarious and brutal, inventing methods of creative torture for all of Satan's guests, wrapping it all around a clever little hardboiled mystery.

Go buy a book!

3G1B

Some Things That Meant The World to Me

2009-11-05T09:00:00.007-05:00

Two Dollar Radio is fast becoming one of my favorite indie presses. I love their brand, I'm digging their editorial voice (they recently picked up Rudolph Wurlitzer's backlist), and I love love love that TDR is a family joint. I sort of see them as the new Soft Skull. But different.

Joshua Mohr's debut, "Some Things That Meant the World to Me," is a gritty debut worth getting excited about. You may have seen the coverage of this in Poets & Writers this spring—and BTW, thanks P&W for always including an indie when you do your seasonal coverage!
STTMTWTM (okay, this is not a book which lends itself well to acronyms) is the story of a man named Rhonda suffering from depersonalization as a result of childhood trauma. Rhonda, a hardcore alcoholic, sleeps on an immolated sofa with a zip-lock bag full of rotting fruit pulp, likes hairy women, and frequently crawls through a magical hole in the bottom of a dumpster—all of which makes this book the perfect stocking stuffer for your eight year old son! I daresay this is the darkest book I've read since Patrick deWitt's debut "Ablutions." What keeps this book from tipping the shock-o-meter for me is the humanity. I'm just guessing, here, but it seems like Mr. Mohr may have tilted a few horns on an immolated sofa at some point, and possibly even slept with a zip-lock full of rotting fruit pulp, because this stuff feels lived.

Mohr, who lives in San Francisco, has a second novel coming out early next year from Two Dollar Radio, entitled "Termite Parade," which promises to be as dark and unsettling as this fine debut.

Look at the Birdie - Kurt Vonnegut

2009-11-03T11:30:00.001-05:00

There must be a million different reviews of Kurt Vonnegut and his fiction. He was a legend, who sadly left this mortal coil after many fruitful years at the typewriter. For me, this is the first Vonnegut I've had the pleasure to read. I should hear crickets at this point, if you're still interested in what a complete Vonnegut virgin has to say, please read on.

I heard or read a few very nice reviews of this book, but none more pleasing than Mr. Dave Eggers shocking love letter to Vonnegut, (it says so in the press material I got in a personal letter, the book came to me through another publisher source, unsolicited, if they'd asked me I would have said, "it's up to you, I've never read the guy". Let me not stare a gift horse. But reviewers have to take chances, I guess). Still interested? I like his brevity, the crisp quality to the writing, but these stories were unpublished for a reason. Why? Ask Vonnegut, oh right, you can't he's dead.

What was I doing in High School when everyone else was reading this legend's books? Trying to get through remedial math and the alternate track classes, as I was a succesful underachiever, plus I didn't learn how to read until the fifth grade. So I missed these books, and now I'm fucking pissed. A good friend of mine swears by Vonnegut (and I have mad respect for this guy, especially when he swears), and my pal even has the rare Kurt Vonnegut soap on a rope that came with his copy of Breakfast of Champions, the Kindle Edition. That's right, it's a rare first electronic printing. This pal of mine even named his son Kurt. Weird? I named my son Jackson, after a nasty bastard who happens to be one of the greatest painters of the last hundred years.

Look at the Birdie, is a great collection of short stories, and for me, a wonderful introduction to a writer that I just said, "fuck it, I don't have time in my life to go back and read all these books, jesus, who has the energy, forget time?" Now I guess I have to go back. I love the story at the end of the collection, The Good Explainer, about a Doctor who is a complete asshole and bullshit artist. He's pulling the wool over a poor bastards eyes because he doesn't have the stones to fess up to a really shitty deed from his past. And this story is slicker than deer guts, and you know what? I feel for the Doctor, and worse I feel for the husband who is trying to conceive a child with his stone cold wife. Getting pregnant is hard when you try. But what's easier than lying to other people, lying to yourself of course.

How about this line from Hello, Red. "He was a heavy young man, twenty-eight, with the flat, mean face of a butcher boy." I don't know any butcher boys, personally, but heck, if Vonnegut says they look like this, I have to assume he's right. Red Mayo, who names a character that? Sounds a lot like Jack's aching libido, yes, I'll say it, Vonnegut had a love child, with Ayn Rand, his name is Chuck Palahniuk. Everyone says Chuck is Vonnegut, but Fight Club is my greatest love as a reader. But Red Mayo, yes, he's watching a little girl he's named Red (her real name is Nancy, to tell you why he calls her Red, well, that would be unkind on my part), his own namesake, he watches her everyday from his spot on the bridge, and one day he confronts her father. You can't really get this story unless you're a dad, and I dare say that Vonnegut gives the stories best moment to the reader, it's towards the end when Red can't bare it anymore, and tells everyone he's, or wait, what he has in the...never mind. Read the story, what good would it do to spoil it?

Writers come a long way in their lives, and Vonnegut has seen a lot. I'm always pleased when a writer says, "to hell with it, I'm using some cliches," like I've just witnessed in Little Drops of Water. "Still waters run deep" and "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," both used to death, then dug up and used again. Vonnegut is drifting towards Carver country with this story, and it's not half bad, the other half, well, you'll have to read it. Larry was this guy who used to train women how to sing, and he's teaching them a thing or two between the sheets. Obviously, Vonnegut is making fun of this foolish man, and by describing him as a succesful bachelor, even more fun can be had when love finds its way into the hearts of all involved. By writing their emotions or, excuse me, having the characters use cliche to sum up an action or emotion, Vonnegut is getting to the heart of the story, telling it like it is, and saving the best for last. He's making the point that all people bend towards the common when they speak about themselves, it's easier to understand and to be understood. Larry drifts from one end of the story to the other like a man unsure of which three piece suit to wear, so he try's them all on.

Vonnegut rights faster than falling rain, and it's fun to watch. This is a worthwhile collection, and a great way to get to know the writer. Just because people say it's a classic, doesn't make it good, just look at Hemingway, God he is awful. My pal said that to me years ago, right after he told me he named his son after Kurt Vonnegut. You should hear who he named his second son after...

-JR

The Best Book I've Read This Year Is Out!

2009-11-03T09:00:00.001-05:00

I've talked a number of times here on the blog about Hesh Kestin's fantastic The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats, from one of my favorite indie presses, Dzanc. I read the ARC for Cats at least six months ago, and the book is still fresh in my mind, which in itself makes this novel plug-worthy now that launch time is upon us. Haven't read any good fiction lately? Go out and buy “The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats,” and don't blame me when you don't get anything done for two days.

This unlikely tale of Jewish mobsters avoids all the clichés of the genre. The story is thoroughly engaging and masterfully told, and the writing kicks ass in a hard-nosed Budd Schulberg kinda' way. I'm rooting for this book to get the attention it deserves—and then I'm going to take credit for it. And no, I don't have crush on Hesh Kestin. I've never even met the guy.

je

Labor Days: An Anthology of Fiction About Work - Edited by David Gates

2009-11-02T11:00:00.001-05:00

There isn't much to be said about David Gates that hasn't already been said countless times. I read Jernigan after it had been out for a while, and then realized it was published at the same time as The Sportswriter. The Wonders of the Invisible World, is a collection of stories that I didn't particularly care for one way or the other. A writer can't please his readers all the time. There was a shift, and moment when I was reading Jernigan, that I knew it was something great. Maybe it's the hero, which echoes again in Preston Falls, his last novel, which when I read it, also kicked my ass.

Standing in a bar once, I recalled a scene from Preston Falls to my friends, where the Doug Willis, and early Don Draper, or late, depending on how you look at it, is remodeling his summer house, and he actually goes out and beats on the ground with hammer after he fucks up some part of the inside of the house with his hammer. Then he goes back in the house and has two more fingers of hooch, and keeps working, where more shit happens, and he's totally losing his mind. To my credit, I got lots of laughs when I told this story, probably more than I'm getting now.

I waited around for more David Gates fiction, and I'm still waiting, but I recently grabbed Labor Days off the shelf and realized I hadn't given it a good read. Then I saw there was a Cheever story in the book, I had to remind myself of those days when I told stories in bars, that I didn't or wouldn't read Cheever. Now, I'm a changed man, and Cheever is loose in my life, like a uncle I never knew I had who only shows up for Thanksgiving dinner at my house. Maybe it's living in the suburbs that made me who I am now, evolved with out trying, but the question remains, is it for the better? Work, suburbs, life, living, happiness? You decide.

-JR

Agent Talk with Mollie Glick

2009-10-28T09:00:00.001-04:00

JE: I had three agents, including a couple of luminaries, before I found Mollie Glick, and what I learned is that having an agent doesn't mean squat. You have to find the RIGHT agent. I was in fact un-agented at the time I started getting bites for "All About Lulu," and I interviewed no less than a half-dozen reps, all of whom offered to rep me, before I decided on Mollie. I knew within five minutes Mollie was the right choice. She had an excellent idea of what I was trying to accomplish with my work, as well as an excellent understanding of my longterm goals. On top of that, she offered me some of the best editorial insight I've ever had. Mollie agreed to let the three guys throw some questions at her, in hopes that those of you on the hunt for a rep, or disillusioned with your current rep, might glean an understanding of what to expect from your agent.

JR: How does a writer who has built a base through blogging, reviewing, and placing his or her work in literary journals, online and in print, get an agents attention? They've poured over their prose, and they've had it edited, and they know what you represent, and they wrote that "kind" of book. What are agents looking for? Is there a pedigree? Do you react first to recommendations, and then what? What percentage comes from slush or unsolicited? And does Iowa and Yaddo play into it? Does hype? Or trends? Or is it all just guts and instinct, and if you're not grabbed by the throat in the first five sentences do you hit reply and say no thanks?

MG: Recommendations play a major role in deciding which projects to read, but many of us still search through our slush piles as well! I receive several hundred query letters a week, and I take a quick look at all of them, although I only respond to the ones that are a good fit for my list. Other than "platform" and "pedigree"-- who you know, where you went to school, and what you've published in the past-- what makes a query stand out is the same thing that makes a novel stand out: great writing. In a perfect world, the pitch an author sends me will be so good that I lift language from it for my cover letter, and the editor lifts that language for the catalog copy.

JE: So then, roughly how many clients do you rep? And what percentage of them would you estimate came to you over the transom? And what percentage are fiction vs. non-fiction?

MG: I represent about half fiction and half nonfiction. And I'd say a good half of my clients came through queries. That's why I still slog through them, even though it takes a lot of time to sift the gold from the grain... And although I haven't counted my client list for a while, I'm usually submitting about five projects at a time, working actively on proposals and manuscript revisions with another ten, and in longer term development with another twenty at a time.

JE: You've done stuff for me that I didn't even know was within your jurisdiction as an agent--gone to bat for me with regard to cover design, etc. Good agenting extends far beyond pitching and vetting contracts. Can you tell us what a writer ought to expect from a good agent?

MG: Every agent has his/her own strengths and weaknesses, and the trick is to find an agent whose style matches best with yours. I tend to be pretty hands on and collaborative, and I wear different hats at different stages of the process. Before selling a book, I play the role of editor. When submitting the book, I play the role of sales person. When negotiating the contract, I play lawyer. And after the deal is done, I see myself as a consultant-- there to advise and lobby and be the bad cop from time to time so my clients don't have to.

DH: Mollie, I've heard that no aspiring writer will be looked at seriously by a publisher unless they have an agent. Do you see your role that way...as the gatekeeper to the publishing world? Also, it seems like some writers these days, maybe this is just the newbies,are being published in print-on-demand or ebook formats **only**. Do you ever recommend that route for your writers or do you see other agents starting to do that?

MG: It's true that all of the big publishing houses and most medium sized houses want submissions through agents, unless they have a personal connection to the author or read an article or story the author has published and approach him/her directly. But I haven't heard about a lot of ebook or pod only deals at these houses...

DH: Mollie, I enjoyed your description of all the different hats you might have to wear as an agent. Since in my job, I'm also a problem solver,someone who puts out fires, I wonder if you could give us an example of an interesting situation that you had to resolve with a publisher or with one of your clients and how you handled it; keeping it generic, of course, and not revealing any proprietary details.

MG: Often it's just a matter of educating my author about the marketplace. For example, one of my authors published a parenting book this summer, and the cover was a bit of a 90's throwback. I wasn't a fan from the start, but since the publisher really liked it, and she's a total sweetheart my author decided to let it ride for the Hardcover, but now that we're getting ready to go out with the paperback, it was time for me to speak up, letting my author know that it's not uncommon to give a book a new cover so that the paperback version gets a new life, and once she was on board I introduced that idea to the publisher.

JE: A lot of agents have a reputation for selling their authors out for the biggest advance, and an advance, after all, is only an advance on royalties, it's not a bonus. If an author can't earn out that advance, they're in a bad position for their next book. It seems to be that to build a healthy career, a writer must maintain some type of equilibrium in terms of advances, and seeing to it they earn them out. Has their ever been a situation where you've encouraged an author to think twice about a bigger "front end" and consider the other elements in play with an offer? And what might those elements be?

MG: I think it really depends what kind of writing career the author desires, what his/her financial needs are, and what size publishing house s/he decides to go with. If I've got an author who has got one big book in her, the best thing for her career is the biggest advance possible. If I've got an author who wants to be writing novels for the rest of her life, the trick is to get her an advance big enough that her publisher will back the book, but not so big that she stands no chance of earning out. I've never seen an author whose book sells at auction make the final decision based on a few thousand dollars difference, but for a smaller book sold to a smaller press, every dollar counts.

JE: You wanna' tell us about some recent projects you're excited about?

MG: That's a hard one because I'm in love with all of my books... But one of my favorite authors, Zoe Klein, recently published her first novel, DRAWING IN THE DUST, and it's an amazing debut. It's a love story about a Biblical archaeologist who stumbles across the tomb of Jeremiah and discovers that he was buried with a woman. The perfect book club book. We just sold her second novel to Simon & Schuster. Another of my authors, Greg Olear, just published a book called TOTALLY KILLER that's an AMERICAN PSYCHO for the 90's. Elizabeth Eslami's BONE WORSHIP, the story of a young American woman struggling to understand her Iranian father is coming out in January. And next summer I've got Ellen Bryson's THE TRANSFORMATION OF BARTHOLOMEW FORTUNO which is set in the PT Barnum Museum in 1865 and chronicles the lives and loves of the human "curiosities" who perform there... I pitched it as WATER FOR ELEPHANTS meets GEEK LOVE.

JC: Thanks Mollie, for taking the time to answer a few questions from the guys.

Charles Cumming, Typhoon.

2009-10-26T16:40:00.000-04:00

I'm a huge fan of Charles Cumming's novels. Typhoon, his latest, goes on sale today. I've been fortunate enough to read the UK version, which the author was kind enough to send my way.

I read A Spy by Nature in huge gulps, and I've always been fascinated by the trade craft of the spy business. I've faithfully watched MI:5 start to finish, all six seasons, witnessed the rise and fall of several main characters, all of whom I've loved and hated to see them go.

I've just started Typhoon, and hope to get a review up soon.

In the meantime pick up A Spy By Nature here.

Here are my thoughts on one of his other books:

A Spy By Nature by Charles Cumming

St. Martins Press

As far as spy novelists go there are a few writers who are without peer, John le Carré, Graham Greene just to name a couple. Since they had both worked in the spy business themselves at one point or another in their lives it leaves no question as to why they’re so good at writing the genre.

Mr. Cumming was a one point recruited to work for the SIS in London and eventually decided that writing a novel about the experience would be a better career path. We’re fortunate to have this novel published here in America and if this novel is a sign of things to come then you’re in for a treat as he’s written several other books including a sequel to ‘A Spy By Nature’ entitled ‘The Spanish Game’.

It’s been a while since a book from the spy genre has grabbed me so quickly and managed to get my attention night after night. This book is so smooth, so readable; you’ll be devouring it in 50 to 60 pages chunks. Reason being? Alec Milius is such a likeable character; identifiable to anyone who’s suffered through their 20’s and 30’s looking for the meaning of life.

You always wonder how a man can be recruited to work as a spy. Who does he know? Where do you go to apply? What do you need to know to be a spy? Alec doesn’t know anyone, his mother has a friend who recognizes something in him and before we know it he’s neck deep in the application process for SIS. I found this part of the book to be absolutely fascinating, riveting, and almost exhaustingly real. Alec finds that he can’t keep up, starts to lie, and even begins to think he’s going to get away with lying about his past. Foolishly enough he accepts another job offer with his mother’s friend shortly after SIS rejects him. The only other business that’s as murky as the spy game is the oil business. I was worried Cumming would bog the story down with heavy technical data and slow the process down to a dribble, but this is where the novel takes flight and I’m hard pressed to find another story like it, anywhere.

Alec is offered a job working for Abnex Oil, a company that’s researching oil drilling in risky parts of Central Europe, they have a competitor aptly called Andromeda which is run by a couple of shifty Americans (for some reason the name of the company reminded me of the Crichton novel). His job as it’s laid out to him is to give these Americans secret information, and to perform a little industrial espionage at the interests of the British government. He’s promised a job for another branch of the British Secret Service if he can complete this task successfully. So he takes the job with Abnex Oil, gets introduced to the Americans, a nice couple about his age who appear to be married. All is going well, he’s dropping off information, getting paid, and not a soul at Abnex knows what he’s up to. The story toggles back and forth between Alec’s own personal tug of war with doing the right thing, Queen and Country and all that, with hopes of bedding the American woman he’s selling secrets to. All the while a girl from his past haunts his dreams and he can’t seem to shake his guilt over breaking up with her years ago.

I couldn’t help by recognize the agony that Alec feels for himself as he realized he was just a pawn for the British government, that his time on the planet was being wasted as he slogged forward into nothing. Finding the right career, a place to hang your hat everyday isn’t what it used to be, it’s a revolving door of sorts and we’re raised to believe that we’ll all be bright shinning stars, when in fact the reality is much more banal and mundane and the hopes of success recognition and fame are slowly carved out of you as you endure the painful reality that surrounds you; work, sleep…and someday…death. Alec has developed incredible skills at realizing his own grave misfortune, that is, his inherent laziness combined with the off chance at a neat job with sexy underpinnings, a job he coveted, is nothing more than a golden noose which he willingly puts around his own neck.

Eventually Alec has a bad case of the willies and his conscious keeps him from carrying on with the fiction that defines his life. Finally the level of secrecy that he’s expected to maintain makes it impossible for him to carry on, but it’s worthy of the tension it creates for the reader. I’m actually shocked to have only just discovered this great writer, but I’m happy to report he’s written several other books. He’s a hit in England; let’s hope people catch on to him here.

One for the Crapper: Nick Belardes and his Random Obsessions

2009-10-22T09:00:00.002-04:00

When I say I've got one for the crapper, I mean that in the best way possible. Friend of the blog, Nick Belardes released a weird little book earlier this month that I can honestly say is totally unique. Every crapper in America should have a copy of this book accessible. Random Obsessions is one of those trivia collections you can pick up and start reading anywhere. Belardes, a historian and illustrator (he drew the maps for my forthcoming novel, West of Here!) has ransacked the useless information files and uncovered some real gems. To wit: I had no idea Napoleon suffered from crippling hemorrhoids—so bad in fact, a hemorrhoid may have cost him a victory at Waterloo. I was also unaware that actress Sarah Miles drank her own urine for thirty years, believing that it immunized her against allergies. Just two examples of the sort of edification readers can expect from Random Obsessions. As a bonus, the book features a foreword by another friend of the blog, Brad Listi. It's time to start thinking about stocking-stuffers, kiddies, and this book will make a good one.

The Smoking Cannonball

2009-10-19T09:00:00.007-04:00

3G1B has an ongoing conversation, the subject of which: "what the hell is going to happen to publishing in the future?" disturbs us all. This week we have invited Craig Nova to tell us what he thinks. Craig is the award winning author of 12 novels. His new novel, The Informer, will be released in January 2010.

CN: the first thing that comes to mind when I consider writers and the state of publishing is one of those science fiction movies from the fifties, you know, where some light is seen in the sky and then something like a smoking bowling ball lands someplace and then a couple of geeks get out of a pickup truck. They find a stick and poke the smoking bowling ball and say, "Welcome to California." Then a cobra shaped thing comes out and wastes the shit out of them with a death ray.

So, I think we are in the smoking bowling ball stage. Something has landed and we don't know what it is. The best we can do is scratch our head and poke it with a stick.

By this I mean, we haven't come to terms with the digital age, and the impact that this is going to have on publishing. And while it would be easy to say that we are only talking about Kindle, and books in digitized form, it is far, far more ominous than that. Ask an ex-independent book store owner about the impact of online shopping, which seemed pretty innocent in the beginning.

For instance, what about pricing and royalties? For some reason, a Kindle book is being priced at $9.99. Now, for writers there is a big difference between a ten percent royalty on a book of $25 and one at this price. Just as this might mean the end, altogether, of book stores. The economics seem to be driving it that way (after all, you can avoid cutting down a lot of trees, although I guess you still have to make plastic, but only once). So, that's the simple part.

But it's not that simple, if a writer's chance of making a living, already precarious, is reduced even more. The downward pressure on a writer's livelihood is a serious matter and I think writers are scared.

Where it gets complicated, and where writers and I would imagine publishers feel doubly uncomfortable is that if you don't need books, that is physical items on a shelf, maybe you don't need publishers. If the technology is there to make a book suitable for Kindle, and anyone can set up a website to sell it, and if there were some other web based method of letting people know about books (say this very website), where does the publisher fit?

Where, by the way, does an editor fit?

Is this the way it's going to go?

And beyond that, will it be like the newspaper business, where more and more they are giving away content. Will writers have to do that, too, that is give away large pieces of a book to try to get people to read the last half. And if that is the case, what impact will that have on the way books are written?

Please understand: I am not saying I think this is the way things are going to go, but that this is the way one thinks when poking at that smoking bowling ball and seeing that sleek, metallic cobra head come out with that little hot spot there in front that begins to glow a little more intensely….

That's one thing.

Another is seemingly more mundane, but in fact, more realistic. That is, what is happening to the American novel or novels altogether.

I used to think that I knew what was what, but I didn't have any real, err, data as they say in the science world, but a couple of years ago I was a judge for the National Book Award, and I read a lot, and I mean a lot of books. I really don't know how many, but I can say that one of the judges for the nonfiction part of this said she came home and found that her kids had made a fort out of the books that were waiting to be read. I understood this instantly, and even thought of building a fort myself out of the books that had come in the door.

But here's what I found was wrong with the novels I read. Somehow, novelists have got the idea that a novel is really just a piece of nonfiction with the details made up, when this is as far from the truth as can be.

A novel is a sort of dream, something that comes from that dark, interior place, and this dream is dressed up in the trappings of everyday life, but really is far deeper and stranger than that. The best example of this dreamy quality I can think of is the Great Gatsby, with those big glasses looking over the ash pits (like god himself). That big wedding cake of a house. All the shirts, etc.

The dream underneath this book, or a dream of any kind, seems to be missing from the novels I've read recently. I could list some of them, but I really don't want to single out ten or twenty current writers: they all have the same problem.

JE: You know, I can't even find Kindle sales on my royalty statement, and I know I've sold a bunch, but I'd be curious to know what percentage of my retail sales they comprise, so I could know how worried I ought to be. But the truth is, I'm really not worried at all. I've been writing books for free and burying them in the backyard for so long that making a decent living just feels like gravy. Last year this time, I was rolling nickels for beer money and eating pot pies every night. My wife was pregnant. And you know what? I still felt lucky. I'm just gonna' keep writing books, hope somebody publishes them, and let the consumer figure the rest out. If you believe that, I've got an autographed portrait of Jesus, I'll sell you. What I find refreshing about Craig's comments is the conception that the novelists are to blame every bit as much as publishers and consumers. Sadly, most works of contemporary fiction I read are too self-conscious, and seem to forget the reader completely. It's sort of shocking the percentage of writers who can turn a lovely phrase, but really have very little instinct for storytelling. I'm talking about basic nuts and bolts-- pacing, tension, turning points, character arc, stuff even the greenest screenwriter has some grasp on. Most novels are kind of a mess on a storytelling level. Not to be reductive, but it seems to me that good storytelling is more about the distribution of pertinent information, rather than the manufacture of said information--how and when and in what manner the writer distributes it. It really doesn't matter if the writer is describing the landing at Normandy, or an excruciating wait in the DMV line. It's how they move the story. How they infuse the story with tension, how they move their character through dilemmas. I don't care how out-of-the-box a writer's narrative approach is, at the end of the day, the best he can do in most cases is re-imagine and frustrate Aristotelian dramatics, if he's going to really move readers. Because you know what? After lo these many centuries, people still process stories according to these principles. I'd go so far as to say that these principles are necessary for the digestion of stories. You want to invent a food that bypasses the small intestine? Go for it. But don't be surprised when it gives people diarrhea. A lot of great sentence writers just don't get this. Language doesn't keep the story moving--that's poetry's domain. A reader can't invest his hopes in words--a reader wants to invest his sympathies in characters. That's what bugs me about all these slacker novels. The writer serves me up some existentially disaffected protagonist who doesn't really seem to care what happens to himself, so why should I care? That said, here's what I see as the biggest problem, and I'm crossing my fingers that a bad economy will only help the cause: There's just too many novels being published, and most of them aren't very good. If they were films, they'd go straight to video. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of great novels being written, there's just too many mediocre novels muddying the waters. I wrote about five mediocre novels myself, and at this point I'm just happy nobody saw fit to publish them.

JC: Oh boy, where to start? Why don't we talk about writing first, and then do the business stuff? I've heard Jonathan bemoan the rise of the "sentence-writer" more than a few times and, yes, he has a point. A lot of writers can craft a line and not a story. The converse is true as well. there are just as many authors who have great plotting and timing, but whose writing makes my eyes bleed. They can tell a story, but they can't write one. Maybe they should hire ghost writers for their novels. I may get one for off weeks at the blog.

The thing is that these writers can tell a story, but can't put you there. I started the new E. L. Doctorow Homer & Langley yesterday, and let me tell you what a pleasure it is every time I pick up one of his books for the first time. From page one, I've been immersed in both good storytelling and more than a few good sentences. But more about that later. The point is that great writing draws you in to the story, and it doesn't really matter why some writers fail, because whether the fault is stylistic inadequacies or flatfooted plotting, the failure is the same. And pulling you into that story, where you block out the rest of the world and take part in what I think Craig is calling the "dream" of the novel.

I wonder sometimes if what we see as flawed writing is that much worse than it once was, or if it's just that the massive increase in the number of novels published makes it evident. Or in Craig's case, the many books he had to read for the NBA that would normally have never made it anywhere near his desk.

Or is it in the editing? From my understanding, modern book editing is a diverse enterprise. Not to slander our many editor-readers, because the quality of editing seems to range from those who work closely and intensively with their authors to craft great books, to those who give a book a quick copy-edit and send it on its way. All editors are created equal, but some are more equal than others, to paraphrase George-O.

Is this part of the result of the overloading of the Great Publishing Machine? Probably, but the more interesting question is the one that Craig posed: what the hell is that bowling ball thing, and what's going to happen when I poke it?

Here goes nothing.

We will know that the digital age has arrived, when a coterie of small publishers give up on the printed book altogether and dispense with the physical distribution platform and choose only to sell ebooks. They will have decided that the increased costs associated with paper sales, distribution, returns, pulping, remaindering, etc is greater than the potential profit. That is not going to happen tomorrow, but it will happen, and it's not as far away as some would suppose.

So how does that work? I don't know, ask Richard Nash. How about doing some cost accounting? Right now ebooks are riding on the coattails of printed books, but when they reach that critical mass to survive on their own, the associated costs of the ebook will be substantially less than the paper book. So the price will go down, probably. What will be interesting to see, is what will sales do? At 9.99, will an ebook sell the equivalent of (in terms of profits) the hardcover sales plus the mass market sales? I think so, but the transition is going to be hell. A lot of people are going to screw it up and a lot will get it right. There will be a lot of growing pains

What I do know is that Craig has correctly intuited that there will be a shakeup in the author, publisher, platform supply chain, and I think the publisher loses some ground. First, unless someone gets some more strong distribution platforms out there, Amazon will have publishers by the balls. Authors, realizing that they can sell a digital book themselves will squeeze the publisher, and will form two lines (at least. There will surely be a full spectrum of reactions). Some will come to see their publisher as handling duties that they can outsource for a better rate, and some will decide that they are happy to let a publisher handle it for them, preferring to stick to content creation. Either way, I think you see authors take lower advances, and much higher royalties.

JR: I'll be the first one to agree with Craig when he points out that today's fiction is nothing more than non-fiction with the details made up. It's interesting to see how many novels are simply regurgitated from a writer's life, with a little artistic flair thrown in. What are they teaching at these MFA programs? How do you craft a story, JE talks about it, arc, narrative, tension, mix that up and you're on your way. The main problem I see with novels in particular in today's market is readership. If Oprah Winfrey picks up a book, a million units move and more in trade paper. But what is Oprah, when all is said and done? A trafficker of the lowest common denominator (she just wants to make people happy, so does McDonalds), to put a fine point on it, and I'll bet she doesn't have a Kindle. Underneath that readership is the voice of the writer, and that has been lost in the hurricane of distractions that now plague society like locusts. Television,video games, phones, computers, porn, gambling, navel gazing, anything but reading! Amazon throws it all at you with the artistry of a jack hammer. There aretoo many books being published every year, by every single imprint in the business (they all have incredible overhead, and an interest in profit, this is a capitalist society we live in). That leaves no time, or a much shortened period of time for a publicist to get a book exposed, even if the author is JE, who has more friends than god. So now what? Oh right, they think they can jam ebooks down our throat. Have you ever walked around a big time publisher's office? It's a cubicle farm with people staring at computers propped up by cartons of books, and they are trying to feed the computer books, in the hopes that they can market them properly, the disconnect between how it used to be done and how it's done now…will keep writers up at night for a long time to come. The trouble is the big time publishers are too invested in forward shark like movement to really stop and smell the roses. They print 5 million copies of a bathroom book (Lost Symbol) and saturate an already over-saturated market with a book that is no better then the back of a shampoo bottle (marketing with a fire hose instead of a laser). Not only is it insulting to readers of literary titles, but also to the mashed potato sandwich crowd, where it should at least make them feel like they've chosen the wrong path in life.

Distribution, oh please, lets talk space, bought and sold by COOP advertising, that's where the rubber meets the ro ad. If BN has 50% of their real estate devoted to proprietary product, what's left? Backlist, coretitles, kids department, and front of store bestseller list (which is all bought by the big time publisher), coffee shops with over priced fatty drinks, a music department with CDs!!!! That's right; they give over 25% of their stores to CD'--that's like someone selling VHS, at Barney's prices. Do you think anyone at BN has heard of Itunes? How about you shrink that part of your store down to a set of kiosks the size of a phone booth and anyone who wants to buy a CD can bring in their Ipod and download it. This will leave more room to sell books. It is a **bookstore** for goodness sake.

You wrote a book, I'm happy for you. Now find an independent publisher who will take care of you, as that end of the world is cracking open like independent filmmaking circa Reservoir Dogs. Independents will take an interest, get you in on the ground floor and get your book into the hands of people who will read it, blog about it, water cooler it, give it to friends. If no one will publish your book, shit, DIY it, and find out what kind dark forest that is. Michael Mann said it best, "life is short, and the time we get here is luck".

DH: Craig says we haven't come to terms with the digital age. Do we want to? I remember watching a predatory nature film on TV. It was an infrared night shot of a herd animal of some sort, wildebeest maybe, being surrounded and attacked by a pack of hyenas or wild dogs.

The cow was defenseless. It couldn't run. It just **stood** there. Its fragile life passing before it as it was torn apart one small piece at a time. Bookselling these days is like a nature film that I don't want to watch.

Mr. Nova talks about the precarious chance of writers to make a living. But I think that most casual readers, most customers of Amazon or Walmart, don't see it that way. All they see is the writers who get the biggest co-op budgets. And seeing just those writers, it's like the life styles of the rich and famous. Maybe someone should make it clearer to the public how most writers actually live.

As for Mr. Nova's National Book Award "fort" of American literature. Speaking as a book buyer, I might have hundreds of novels brought to my attention every month. Even after you winnow down this herd of stories by eliminating genre fiction from consideration (And I'm not sure that I want to eliminate mystery, sci fi, fantasy, erotic lit...whatever) I still see no consensus forming about what a serious art novel should look like.

I think that JE is exaggerating the consistency of the formula that produces winning fiction. But I love JE's point about the "cult" of the sentence. There's no confidence in a direction. Lost in the woods and not knowing what to do; we sit down on the ground and whittle dead wood into a campfire of beautiful sentences; waiting for the signal that will tell us where to go.

I don't know why a "novel" has to look like a novel. I'm used to reading lots of different literary forms: epic poetry, histories that read like literature, philosophy that reads like a performed play, treatises, dairies, memoirs. One of my favorite books is Nikos Kazantzakis' *The Odyssey A Modern Sequel*, written early in the 20th century. It's 776 electrifying pages of verse. None of my friends will go near this radioactive book...as if a take on epic verse must be poison...unreadable. Why can't writers and readers show more flexibility? If you're a gourmand, you have tried more than one dish on the menu. And also trust a foodie to know how to recognize a good ham sandwich.

I love JC's point about clumsy sentences. It drills down **to the word** for me. If I'm reading a novel and I have to stop and say; "That's a really dumb word to use here." then I may put the book in my kitchen trash bin. The writer needs to work ten years, like JE says, so that they become so skilled that they're not doing that to me. It's a great thing to trust the artist.

JC's take on a likely transition to digital publishing is the smartest that I have read. I especially love the coattails metaphor. Right now it's ebooks that have attached themselves like remora to the printed book. But maybe someday, the remora will turn into the shark and printed volumes will be the ancillary form of the text.

A dual form of distribution makes sense to me. Some writers will want to go it alone or form collectives with like-minded authors. There will also have to be clearing houses like Amazon for most readers who will not want to go to ten thousand different sources to find the text that they want. And outsourcing publisher services, as JC suggests? Why shouldn't a writer go to one source for their editing and another to promote or distribute the book? No wonder publishers are scared shitless. They should be.

But when Craig Nova or JE publishes a book, I am thinking that it's the writer who is the enterprise and not the book. As a cultural entity originating creative power, the writer has "cash value"...that's a phrase from William James. I am trying to answer the question of where the writer's income comes from. I seem to be ending up with the idea of Craig Nova tee shirts. But that's not what I mean. The writer should be "followed" and everyone who supports this process legitimately has the right to earn a living. The current system? History.

JR is so right, so convincing, when he talks about the "voice" of the writer. Everything else is spin. It's existentially: nothing. Oprah is nothing. This sounds silly but the problem with essential truth is that it often sounds silly. The spin of our age is of no significance.

There are a lot of time warps in our business. In publishing, you can encounter the 1950's (I see black people!) In chain stores, it's like walking into the 1980's. Maybe I need to buy wider ties and a clunky portable phone the size of a toaster before I walk into one. It was exciting in its time but not now. But I don't want to tell the dust where to settle.

Let me get back to JR's "voice". It's what those of us who love art really care about...as opposed to those who think that they just might be interested since they have nothing better to do and need to stay distracted somehow. The voice of the writer, getting lost in all the turgid, pseudo-significance of our I-love-being-stupid society. The writer's voice has always survived somehow. It has always made itself heard. It will find a way. Don't worry about it.

3G1B

A Complete Collection of People, Places & Things, by John Dermot Woods

2009-10-17T09:00:00.002-04:00

Reading JDW's intricate little collection of stories about a small town and the covey of strange characters that haunt it, I was initially at a loss in trying to describe it. Here is this sleepy village, populated by tendancies and residents and laws worthy of a strange, pleasant dream. The inanimate shake with life. The episodes are farcical, but at the edge of every joke or wordplay is a hint of seriousness. Or perhaps it's the reverse. Punctuating each story is Wood's artwork, introducing characters and places with drawings that sometimes simplify, and sometimes complicate his subjects.

Be prepared to relax your sense of reality for Woods. One of the earliest tales relates the story of chopsticks, which are the required eating utensils of the town. Local chopstick shopowner Mr. Greenjeans has an enviable collection, topped by the most beautiful set, displayed in his store window, and ogled by the townspeople. One night he leaves the store unlocked and watches from a hidden locale to see what the people will do. Only one checks the door, Belle, the woman he wishes for unrequitedly. She takes the chopsticks, and Mr. G turns her in, with a quiet twist to his heart. Strange and poignant. Perhaps as if Garrison Keillor recalled something of Murakami's dreams in the morning.

I surprised myself by going back and reading several passages a second time, which I don't generally do. You might try it once.

jc

Craig Nova Blogs

2009-10-13T09:00:00.000-04:00

My father introduced me to the work of Craig Nova, and I've never stopped thanking him for the tip. I started with Incandesence, which I pass around to all my friends, and to be honest the copy I have is pretty worn out. Mr. Nova's books have been a huge influence on me, and the foundation of my collection of contemporary American first editions that I've been building up since the early 1990's.

Somewhere along the way I invited Mr. Nova to read in Manhattan at a bookstore I was working at and I finally go to meet him. This was around the release of his novel The Universal Donor. Since then we've talked a lot about the process of writing, and Mr. Nova has given me incredible advice and help, more than any unpublished writer could want, and would never have the nerve to ask for.

Someone told me that he is the nicest man in the world, and it was easy to agree to that sentiment. He's also a wonderful writer, and a great American novelist.

His new website can be found here: http://www.craignova.com/

Of course in this day and age everyone blogs about something, but not everyone is Craig Nova. So check out his blog, especially his post about marriage. He sent me a version of this to me on the eve of my own marriage and I've never forgotten it.

http://craignova.com/blog/

In January 2010 his new novel The Informer (pre-order it here) will be published by Shaye Arehart Books.

Meanwhile, run out and buy a copy of his last novel (here), Cruisers, it's one of my favorites, and a novel that will grab you by the throat and not let go until you've finished it.

If you keep your eyes peeled to the blog over the next few weeks and months you might see Mr. Nova taking part in our discussions, and an interview with me.

-JR

My Abandonment by Peter Rock

2009-10-12T09:00:00.001-04:00

Caroline and her father live a simple, meager existence, shrouded in Forest Park, a nature preserve in Portland, Oregon. Ostensibly homeless, they have built a secluded home in the woods, complete with garden, library, and shower. Caroline reads the encyclopedia and runs barefoot in the forest, exploring the boundaries of her domain. Occasionally, she and her father visit the nearby town for food, the library, his SS check, but mostly stay out of the reach of other people.

Peter Rock's My Abandonment is really a huge surprise. This slim novel examines their lives with dazzling, electric prose, starting with the childish naivete of the opening pages, to the shock of her father's subsequent unraveling, to the quiet mournful remembrance at the end. As each chapter unfolds, a stranger, more twisted history evolves, yet Rock writes with a tenderness that belies the darker truths.

Read this. Jeez, it will only take an hour. Okay, maybe two, but it's worth it.

jc

Victory Lap by George Saunders

2009-10-07T09:01:00.040-04:00

George Saunders Victory Lap appears in the October 5th issue of The New Yorker. There's a lot of interest in this story. Kyle Beachy over on his Twitter site says he going to assign it to a class. My take is to separate why you should be interested in this story from why you shouldn't.

This is a seven page story; allowing for some text leakage due to ads and New Yorker cartoons. (I wonder if I'm the only one who is sick of New Yorker cartoons.)

It's a two-person plot plus a perpetrator of some violent action. There are parents as background figures. The story takes place in the suburbs which the parents sort-of blend into like they're azalea bushes that talk.

The first fifth of the story presents Alison Pope. Then we have a larger section giving you another awesome character x-ray, this one of Kyle Boot. Two kids, suburbanites-in-training. A rapist intrudes on this closed-community idyll. Saunders nails his characters dead to rights.

How? Body language: Alison pauses at the top of her staircase. Right away you are wondering why she is pausing since people do not usually stop there.

GS pulled me up short...while I was wondering why Alison was pausing...by making a hypothetical statement: "Say the staircase was marble." Hey, this is a realistic story, right? So why am I being forced into a speculation about the design of the staircase?

Okay, let's speculate. A marble staircase is unlikely unless Alison lives at Versailles or her parents work for Goldman Sachs. It's a way of getting into Alison's head. It's much smarter than saying: "Alison thinks that..." or "Allison was daydreaming that."

Two pages on what's inside a teenage girl's head: Alison thinks she is special although not quite as special as Mother Teresa. Some sort of princess syndrome. Enjoy it while it lasts, kid.

The other kid is Kyle Boot. Pope? Boot? Are these names over the top? Almost. That's why they're so good. Kyle Boot sounds like "Kick Boot" and Alison Pope sounds like "Alleluia the Pope". There was an American literary critic, Kenneth Burke, who was big on these kinds of rhetorical distortions. Maybe George Saunders has read him.

Kyle is a dutiful kid whose parents are obsessive-compulsives. There's a clocklike indicator in Kyle's house that tells whether family members are in or out. And Kyle's parents have laid out his chores as if he were an inmate in a reform school.

He gets "work points" for the performance of tasks that can be cashed in for rewards like weed or alcohol...no I'm just kidding...the work points can be cashed in for dumb-ass rewards like 15 minutes of supervised TV. Does anyone really live this way? I'm tempted to say this is nonsense but JR has told us on this blog how he was brought up and it sounds similar to me.

Kyle gets upset that he uses dirty language inside his head. Since he's upset about this, he can't control the compulsion. It's a great example of how GS can get inside his ordinary characters' crazy interior worlds and...on the inside, we're all crazy.

Beautiful stroke, it's genius really: Kyle sees a suspicious character who ends up at Alison's door. The character studies of Alison and Kyle, which have been presented serially, are now unified by the interpolation of this third character, an aspiring rapist. Kyle's anxiety level hits flood tide as he suspects that his neighbor, Allison, is in jeopardy. The family in-or-out clock and his execution of a humongous list of household chores haven't prepared him for crisis intervention like this.

If you're thinking: why doesn't Kyle just call 911? GS has deftly foreclosed that option. He has Kyle think that if he calls the authorities...first...it proves he witnessed the crime...and second...that he did nothing to save Alison. Faulty reasoning? But you're a kid who gets credit for fulfilling assigned tasks, not for being a hero.

Let's leave Kyle right there on the deck of his parent's very neat house while he agonizes over whether he should try to save Alison.

Victory Lap, well-named, is a narrative of great technical brilliance, very funny, and attempting to be very moving. Careful preparation, both of the physical props and of the personalities of the players, mean that when the action, carefully modulated, is finally ready to reach high voltage; it ignites its charge by means of the shortest possible fuse. It's as if Victory Lap was composed backwards; the finale imagined first and then the text worked in reverse to justify the ending.

Based upon what I've said, I guess you'd be surprised to find out that I was very dissatisfied with this story. But I felt I was choking on the saccharine taste it left in my mouth. It felt so Young Adult. There's nothing wrong with YA literature except that I'm not a YA reader. I wanted to say: Grow up, Mr. Saunders.

The technique is superlative but it's as if an expensive professional range was turned up full tilt in order to toast marshmallows.

This is a matter of taste. But I so long for an adult art. For a depiction of a society and a range and depth of imagination that is not provincial. And I long for a literature without zip codes. I'll have to look elsewhere.

-DH

"Totally Killer" is totally killer

2009-10-06T09:00:00.001-04:00

Harper releases “Totally Killer” this week, a great debut by super-talent and friend of the blog, Greg Olear. TK is a spot on send-up of 90s thrillers like “The Firm,” where conspiracy and pop culture collide in early 90s New York. Smart, funny, fresh, Olear has written a veritable almanac of the 90s. This baby had me humming Whitney Huston (and liking it!). Another friend of the blog, Brad Listi says this about TK: “*Smart*, unexpected, and wonderfully *savage in its humor*. TK nails, without mercy, the mood and minutiae of a weary *America* at the end of the 20th century. Olear’s characters are *perfectly emblematic* of their times.”

Not only is Greg a great big talent, but he just may be the second hardest working man in literary fiction (three guesses who number one is)! Greg will be guest blogging on Powell's this week, and blogs regularly at The Nervous Breakdown.

I'm thinking I'll hit GO up with some questions a month or so down the road, and we can talk about his experience as a debut novelist, one who is really rolling up his sleeves and trying to build a readership, and doing his damndest to control his own destiny in the cold cruel realm of literary fictiondom. In the meantime, pick up TK, and put some bread on a brother's table.

JE

AM/PM by Amelia Gray - My Brother by Lindsay Hunter

2009-10-05T09:00:00.003-04:00

Before I get started on Amelia Gray, I have to tell you something about this wafer-thin story by Lindsay Hunter that tells more in a few sentences than most novels do. My Brother will kick your ass, it will take just a few minutes to read, if you're a slow reader like me.

This staple-bound story came in the same package from Featherproof Books, and I'm so glad it did. My Brother goes something like this: your sister is telling her friends about you, but you're telling her that monsters live in your closet. Your record needle drops on the vinyl and you both agree that you're father is a pussy. It's sort of bulletproof like a mile marker sign on the side of an empty stretch of desert. Or a stack of Playboys you find at the dump. You hope no one is watching you while you page through them. This story makes you feel like you're the only one reading it, that maybe it was written just for you.

Lindsay Hunter writes like a Yeah, Yeah, Yeah's song, Karen O would be proud, like Gold Lion...this story is.
For a free download of this story...go here:
http://www.featherproof.com/Mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=193&Itemid=41

Amelia Gray, I've seen her name here and there, mostly when I was searching out Blake Butler, and AM/PM was mentioned on the same website. JE got me going on the short form of writing, the 500 words or less style of telling a story, where Amelia Gray is already operating like a seasoned pro. This deceptively big book wrapped in a small package tells the story of several different characters who stumble through life, either enjoying their own mortality or riding shotgun towards a uncertain future. I especially like the flash fiction format, each story, or snippet is told in chapters that barley make up a page, and were written in the morning or at night, AM/PM. You don't need to go on for hundreds of pages to tell a story, your narrative arc doesn't have to be Robert McKee inspired, you just have to tell the reader what it is you like about your characters. I can point to many characters in this book and call them my favorite, but chapter 29/PM is really funny. You always remember the girls you dated, at least most guys I know do, and Amelia Gray imagines a game of shirts and skins between the girls you had a chance with and the girls you never had a chance with. This book slips through your hands like a fine silk scarf, and is just as attractive.

Gray sprays these pages with slivering moments from the lives people you've met, and who are nothing more than pebbles of sand on beach of life. These people aren't unique, but the way Gray tells it they offer a vibrant case for their own existence. Independent publishers like Featherproof are getting their hands on some of the most exciting and urgent storytellers out there, and it's nice to have a chance to read them before they hit the big time. You can buy AM/PM here.

A Love Letter to Hudson

2009-10-02T09:00:00.001-04:00

I wanted to send this to Hudson corporate or whatever, but I figure it's more likely to find the right eyes here than in a mail room somewhere.

Dear Hudson,

Okay, so maybe it's no coincidence I'm in love with your airport stores, after all, you did pick /All About Lulu /for your Best of 2008 (only indie title selected!), and you gave my girl some excellent face time in the world's best book market—the only market, in fact, that actually /creates/ readers. But truthfully, long before any of that happened, I was impressed with your stores. You pack a pretty damn eclectic selection into a small space (not the newsstands, mind you, but the booksellers). Soft Skull in airports? Dzanc? Fucking Borges? Hell yeah! In a co-op driven market, a venue leaning heavily toward the newest blockbusters, it's nice to see a “chain store” who will go to bat for the little guy! On behalf of the little guys: Thanks!

Cheers,

JE

P.S. Don't tell Borges I lumped him in with the little guys!

J.G. Ballard - The Complete Stories - Minus One & End-Game

2009-10-01T09:00:00.001-04:00

This is a dramatic collection, the weight of the book alone makes you feel like you're holding something substantial. I've never been a huge SF fan, I love Alien, and Blade Runner, anything about the end of the world, that stuff gets my attention. Jonathan Lethem wrote a really great essay on J.G Ballard recently (here), and it reminded me of Lethem's roots in the genre, and he made a point that the stories aren't all flying saucers and alien's eating human flesh.

My own mother loved the story in The New Yorker that came out the week J.G. Ballard died, The Secret Autobiography of J.G.B. and after reading it I was convinced that this guy might have more in store for me than what I knew, or should I say hardly knew. Crash, and Empire of the Sun are both great movies, at least until Spielberg puts his soft sticky stamp on one, and the sickness known as David Cronenberg who with his adaptation unsheathes a thirteen karat zirconium train wreck on movie goers. It's interesting to see how filmmakers take to Ballard's harder stories, and I could see many modern cinesates frothing over this collection, casting the rolls as they read the book. The Secret Autobiography of J.G.B. convinced me that the world had ended, and this was the only place "to be". If that makes any sense. There was a something very attractive about the desolation, it's the adhesive quality of that story, for sure. How life can start again after everyone is gone, as long as everyone doesn't include you.

End-Game is nothing more than a man doing the same thing over and over and expecting something to change. Which is the long way of saying Constantin, the jailed hero of this story, is insane. Malek, his personal executioner is there for the long haul. They are both confined to a villa without any furnishings, it's just them and a chess board. Over time, and many games of chess, you get an ear full from Constantin as he discusses his circumstances, at least how they relate to his imprisonment and his death, soon to be, at the hands of Malek. This is like watching a drowning man reach for anything that will save him, or a crook say anything to get out from under the point of a knife. Ballard sets his men apart by good and evil, looming death plays a part too. I'd like to think that the theme here is that life is short, and none of us know when it will end or how, and Malek, or a man like him, will come to our homes like an unwanted visitor. Constantin almost succeeds in convincing the reader that he should get another trial, but Malek proves otherwise, not with a death blow, but with the words of a wise old man.

Minus One, is the next story in the collection and falls suspiciously into your lap, it's not there for long, but it's an effective example of what Rod Serling was trying to do with The Twilight Zone. To be honest I don't know who influenced who, I can't see how it matters, but there is a connection, especially with this story.

Ballard takes us into the throat of a sanitarium, asylum, dry out ranch, whatever you want to call it. Immediatley there is something wrong, a patient is missing. Mr. Hinton has gone away, disappeared like car exhaust. He was there and then he wasn't. People are blamed, the people in charge, and suddenly common sense prevails. Watch as Ballard proves the impossible, if Mr. Hinton can't be found, did he ever really exist? Could it have been a typo on the registration of another patients intake forms? Was he imagined? Of course, that's the answer. I wouldn't be doing you any favors if I told you what really happened.

Christmas is coming, you can make someone happy here.

-JR

Temporary by Marisa Silver

2009-09-30T09:00:00.005-04:00

Marisa Silver's story appears in the September 28th issue of the New Yorker. I liked this story; in part because I couldn't make up my mind of what I finally thought of it. The Guys usually get comments on their reviews of New Yorker stories. So I'm hoping that some of our fans will come up with alternative readings.

Shelly and Vivian, roommates of convenience, share an illegal warehouse space in LA as their residence. It's attached to a ribbon factory. Shelly is dominant...she invited Vivian to occupy a small room in her large space. They met at a temp agency.

"Temporary" is the evolving metaphor. Shelly comes from money. Her last name is almost identifiable and she is living off it. She doesn't do much except drift around and have serial boyfriends stay over. Vivian is the straighter arrow from Oklahoma where she did two years of community college. It's cool the way Silver wastes no time in typing her characters...or leading you to expect a certain type.

Silver also sets the scene with exceptional skill. This industrial space has a bathroom without a door. That doesn't matter so much if the women are alone but is more awkward if Shelly has a guy or a woman over. There's no mention of Vivian having someone over. The bathroom without the door...this reminds me of Lubitsch. As a director he loved doors. He could peel open a narrative like an overripe fruit by having his actors use the door, make entrances and exits as part of a sexual play. See what I mean by renting Trouble in Paradise.

MS is a gifted technical writer. As in Updike, the body language of her characters is telling when it needs to be. When one of the women sleeps with a guy, specifying his narrow shoulders and his body shaped like a log; this is just enough information to allow the reader to visualize the night-over for themselves. And anyone who eats a yogurt knows that if you put your spoon in the empty cup it will tip over. But Silver pulls this yogurt trivia out of her head when she can make it go to work in her story. And then the empty yogurt cup becomes a prop, how to dispose of it? Read the story to find out why the layout of the apartment, and who's in it, makes this a problem.

Perhaps you can tell that Vivian is the monkey puzzle that you have to unwind in Temporary. She works as a temp in an adoption agency. She is adopted herself. I just reviewed a novel, Coetzee's Summertime, which used interviews to move the story forward in an original way. And here in Silver's story, I find this technique used effectively again. Vivian transcribes the interviews of couples who are applying for an adoption. She doesn't see the couples herself so she has to imagine what they look like. She takes it upon herself to decide if they are good candidates to adopt a child. She writes evaluations in the margins of her transciptions. She's not supposed to.

There's a wicked literary joke in Temporary. Vivian has a solo encounter with Shelley's boyfriend, Toby, in the warehouse apartment. Shelley has taken a powder. (Are you wondering already what's going to happen? You should be.) Toby, the brainy type, is reading Nabokov's Pnin. Vivian asks him if it's good. This is, book-wise, so uncool. You don't ask someone reading a Nabokov classic if it's good. You ask them what they think of it. But Vivian doesn't really care about the book. She just wants to use the john. Silver gives us wonderful lines about caring. Maybe Toby and Shelly are guilty of a false carelessness. But perhaps Vivian engages in a false caring. So don't think that MS is all technique. This is a thoughtful story.

What will you read into this? I want to know because I had misgivings about the last part of the narrative. The story walks away from Shelly and Toby and re-centers itself on Vivian's family, on her being adopted and her adopted mother's battle with a fatal illness. Up to this point, Temporary has had the all surface glean of a smart Ed Ruscha print. But now I feel like I'm looking at an Andrew Wyeth canvas. I found the transition jarring. My own take was that the material was autobiographical. But for me, it didn't work as an art form although I respected it as a feeling. And I have to tell you that I went through this with my own mother. But it's certainly very difficult to express intense emotionality on the page. For me, this came off as bathos; the closing metaphors being trite.

So that's why I especially want our Three Guys readers to look into this exceptional work of fiction in the New Yorker. I would appreciate hearing another take on the story.

-DH

Interview: Amit Chaudhuri's Redemptive Realism

2009-09-29T09:00:00.037-04:00

I recently reviewed Amit Chaudhuri's novel on Three Guys. His publisher, Knopf, generously gave me the opportunity to ask the writer some questions. Reading over the interview, I was struck by hints of the same wayward lyricism that I found so affecting in The Immortals. His tossed-off comments that adolescence was a form of fiction and that realism could be redemptive amazed the hell out of me. But what could realism that's not naturalistic be? What a bright man...see below:

DH: In The Immortals, I found extended families, friendships and business relations laid out, more or less, on the same plane. It's as if a carpet with a striking pattern were quickly being unrolled in front of me. There's a great sensitivity to family groupings and social networks in the presentation of individuals. It's sort of Trollope-like. Do you think that I’m on the something in how you are presenting the personalities of your characters?

AC: D.H. Lawrence called the novel the ‘one bright book of life’, and also said its particular power lies in its ability to capture ‘subtle human interrelationship’; and, although I long valued Lawrence for his other qualities (his powerful sense of the ordinary, of the real), I think I’m finally beginning to understand, and explore in this novel, the pleasure of the process he’s talking about. One thing I always liked about Sons and Lovers, though, was that it did not give weight to any particular life-experience over another; and it’s something I’ve often tried to be true to.

DH: The exception to this “I’m in the group.” sort of identity is Nirmalya. Nirmalya is not a people person. He is especially close to his mother and reveres the musician Shyamji but he can take or leave his friends.

Nirmalya is a character in suspension. You kept me wondering what he would finally fall into. Also, you made me want to know Nirmalya’s opinion of the other characters and of life more than I wanted to know anyone else’s opinion. Is that the way you saw the function of the character…as a point of reference, the square peg in the round hole?

AC: Parts of Nirmalya are very like what I was like when I was sixteen. The simultaneous sense of destiny and anonymity – only in adolescence do we have that sense of holiness and mysterious (because it has, as yet, no proven reason) purpose. And yet, because adolescence is such a recognizable and temporary phase, that holiness and sense of purity are held within quotation marks: we cannot quite take them seriously. The quotation marks also render that phase in life novelistic, almost as if the adolescent were inseparable from fiction. And yet fiction has its own peculiar and undeniable truth, doesn’t it; which is why I can’t entirely laugh at Nirmalya, or ignore the force or truth of the things he says.

DH: I noticed from your website that you are a musician as well as a writer. Certainly Indian music plays an indispensable role in The Immortals…the novel can’t be imagined without it.

It’s my guess that Indian music has affected the form and tempo of your novel and is a key to understanding some of its multiform meaning. The raga seems like a fascinating kind of evolving form. Has it affected your writing?

AC: I’ve been asked this question before, and I find it difficult to answer. I’m not consciously importing Indian musical forms and their textures into my writing. But an analogy could be made, I suppose, with Western forms of music – because I compose in movements (paragraphs and sections) rather than through plot, and also through pauses and silences. These are as important to me as twists and turns in the plot are to other writers.

DH:There’s a hint of malaise in the student/guru relationship between Mallika and Shyamji. Mallika is a talented amateur. Her family dreams of the recognition that they feel is her due. But she is not willing to do the work.

There's a sense of promise that falls short in The Immortals...of characters that are all too human grasping at something magical through art without being wholly aware of it. Do you mean the title ironically as a form of social satire?

AC: I guess I was thinking, in the title, of the raga itself; of how it is, in a sense, immemorial, but how we must only encounter in only in a world of mortality and compromise. Music, like the gods themselves (brass figurines in the drawing room), transcends this world of complicity and compromise we live in, but can never be encountered outside this world, in some pure untainted paradisial context.

DH: I loved your depiction of the memorial concert for Shyamji's revered father, a legendary musician. It's strange mix of serious art, which wasn't popular with the crowd, and amateur night, when the wives of business executives went upstage to perform.

Would you say something about the vitality of the Indian music scene? It seems all mixed up to me...a mix of the corny and the sublime. Perhaps my question relates to the issue of fusion in music which you have written about.

AC: I think the classical scene in Indian music has suffered in the last three decades by becoming a national music; something that possesses more symbolism than vitality – that has been the tragic legacy of gifted musicians like Ravi Shankar. The corniness you speak of comes from that feelgood nationalism, that kitschy satisfaction that comes to an art-form when it begins to believe it’s essentially ‘Indian’ or ‘American’ or ‘African’ or ‘Japanese’. Fusion is not really an avenue out of this unless it deliberately unsettles these static qualities.

DH: I was delighted to encounter a reference to Frege...as well as Wittgenstein in your novel. Nirmalya hugs his Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, with its dog-eared pages.

Nirmalya yearns for something more fulfilling that our quotidian lives but maybe it's just not there. As a writer are you a realist or an idealist?

AC: I’m a realist – but not in a naturalistic sense. The real is, or can sometimes be, redemptive for me – something that Nirmalya is yet to discover.

DH: Professor Chaudhuri...I wanted to thank you so much for considering my questions. Here's the last one: Which contemporary writers especially interest you and what books would you put on your writing desk for inspiration?

AC: Off the top of my head, and from very recent memory, I could mention the Pakistani writer Nadeem Aslam, and the Indian novelist Sunetra Gupta.

What's a Novel For?

2009-09-28T09:00:00.002-04:00

DH: The literate media has recently brought the criticism of Richard Poirier to my attention. I picked up a copy of his The Renewal of Literature on Amazon. I had to settle for a used copy. The book is not currently in print.

I just started it but I didn't want to wait to discuss this issue. What's a novel for? Why would you want to read or write one.? It boils down to this. When one of us wrote All About Lulu did he do it because he wanted to becomea better person or help others to improve themselves? Like: "Thank goodness I read Lulu, it really helped me ace that job interview! Or: "I used to be a terrible person but now that I've read Lulu, I help blind people to cross the street and am kind to animals!"

Okay...it's a crock. I'd like to say, apparently with Poirier as far as I can tell, that literature is about the growth and renewal of language, about the need to make everything new, to make new discoveries or re-establish old ones. Let's go exploring!

But our schools, libraries, booksellers, parents...the society says: read and write and get a good job, Or read and be entertained and stay out of trouble. Writing is a nice hobby. Reading keeps you occupied. Or read and become a better person.

I admit that I can't shake the idea that our morality, our spiritual identities are lexical. That they depend on the written word. So I can see the argument that reading Lulu or any other good book will make me a better person...even though I'm an art for art's sake sort of guy. "That Dennis! Look at him reading or trying to write! Always improving himself!"

That's my question for you guys. Why did you want to write a novel...or why would you want to read one? Jonathan...you go last, sir.

JR: I started writing novels because I have something to say and this was the way I thought I could say it. I grew up in an incredibly creative environment. I wasn’t allowed to watch much television as a child, only one hour a day. So I found the radio station that was the simulcast for CBS, and listened to every show that was on the television. Every night I listened to sitcoms like Kate & Allie, or Cagney & Lacey, or made for television movies. In the ninth grade I completely plagiarized Salem’s Lot, in a short story of my own, basically changing the vampires into heroes, thank God my teacher hadn’t read the book, I got an A. For as long as I can remember writing novels seems like the best place for me to pour my thoughts. I’m transfixed by a good novel, its hero doesn’t have to be sympathetic, and the ending doesn’t have to be happy, and it certainly doesn’t need to be told in chronological order, but I have to connect in some way. Which is exactly why I want to write a novel.

Novels are for people to read and enjoy, it won’t make you better person. You can work in a soup kitchen for that.

Why did Jonathan write All About Lulu? He wanted to tell a story, he wanted to tell it in a medium that could be shared with others. Which makes me wonder, do novels reflect society or writers insecurities about friends and family and work? Should we take what’s being published in the literary end of the book business as gospel? Are those writers somehow telling the rest of the country a story that has come from a particular experience that somehow got translated into a novel? The writers I read are saying something that I like, is it entertaining? Sure. Which begs the question, not what are novels for, but who the fuck is reading them…literary or commercial?

JC: Um... all of the above. Really, who says a novel has to be just one thing, or one thing for everybody? Hell, lots of people write because because they have something to say, or think they do. And lots of people write as a form of therapy - a good place to put down their thoughts, ideas. Some have this crazy OCD thing going on - I have to write! Some people think it's an easy way to make a buck. Ha! The novels we write are either thinly-veiled mirrors of our lives (wait till you see my novel about a blogger named CJ!) or stories that range widely from our experiences. Some are philosophical, and some are personal, some are political. Some of the best are a hundred different surprising things.

And readers want more than a hundred different things. We all know this. Some want escapism, a good yarn, a roll in the hay; others want something more complex - enlightenment, complexity, epiphany. And I won't presume to know what the hell some people want, but a lot of them find it in a lot of different books. And it's not the same from every book. It's a loser's game to try and figure out what the reader wants unless you are a marketeer and not a writer. If you're looking for trends, in most cases the trend will be past by the time you write and sell the book. So don't start your vampire novel now. Or your newest Dan Brown ripoff. Just write the book you want to write. If it's good enough, find your audience. If it's not, there's always your mom.

And as far as writing a book making you a better person... well, it probably won't make you worse. Unless you refuse to blurb.

JE: Not long ago I got an e-mail from an early reader of Lulu, who had been driving west on the 10 through San Berdoo valley, past the dinosaurs of Cabazon, when she was all of a sudden inundated with memories. She recalled an epic night in her adolescence that she'd spent getting drunk in Cabazon with some friends, and climbing around on the dinosaurs. She remembered the crickets and the great gaping silence of the valley, and certain desolation. She couldn't for the life of her remember what had brought her out there, though, or who she was with, or what all the drama was about, but she remembered that the night had changed her life somehow, like maybe she'd had her heart broken. She remembered the wash of starlight and the smell of sage, and that somebody had a bass guitar, and that they were drinking spiced rum, and she remembered that one person was drunker than everybody else, and she remembered feeling sad for that person. But who? And whose car had they driven? And what were they doing out there, anyway, it didn't make sense? Who did she know that played the bass guitar? It was driving her bonkers. Then it hit her that none of it happened to her at all, that one of her friends had told her about it really vividly. But who told her? Who all was there? It was really starting to bug her. Finally, it hit her that she was remembering a scene from All About Lulu, and the people were Will and Lulu and Troy. A year-and-a-half after she had read Lulu, the scene was still a palpable thing living inside of her, folding over on her own experience, making her remember in a very real way what never happened. This is how stories change people. And this is why I read them, and this is why I write them. As a reader, I get to live inside the story, I get to experience the story, sensually, tactilely. As a writer, I get to live inside my reader, haunt my reader with memories outside the realm of their experience, and in some small way become a part of them. This is why I never forget the reader, because hopefully, I'll be with them for a long time.

What Makes Sammy Run?

2009-09-23T09:00:00.012-04:00

Folks are always talking about the "The Great Gatsby" as a quintessentially American novel, and I hold the same to be true of Budd Schulberg's 1941 classic, "What Makes Sammy Run?" If Neil Diamond is the Jewish Elvis, Sammy may be the Jewish Gatsby. Perhaps the parallel is not coincidental considering the personal association between the two authors, which culminated in Schulberg's 1950 novel "The Disenchanted," featuring a thinly disguised (and critically drawn) Fitzgerald at the nadir of his career, ten years prior. Also a dynamite novel. But back to "What Makes Sammy Run? Every couple of years I revisit this masterful case study in the American ethos. In spite of its vintage, "What Makes Sammy Run" could have been written yesterday. Shitheels never change, I guess, especially not in Hollywood. Speaking of which, it's unbelievable to me that nobody ever made this book into a film. Especially considering Schulberg was the son of a studio head. Schulberg, however, did imitate himself in his 1957 screenplay for "A Face in the Crowd," which was allegedly based on the life of Arthur Godfrey, but followed Sammy Glick's arc to a tee.

But what I love most about this book is not Sammy's arc, not the study in greed and ambition it presents, nor the wavering moral compass of the story's narrator, but the writing. The writing is so good it's not even there. The voice is so consistent and decisive and unadorned, and yet at the same time so punchy and complex and obsessively readable. Schulberg knows exactly what, when, and how much to describe. His scenes always seem to speak to the moral center of a story, even if the moral is undecided; the question really is more important, after all.

JE

Sam Shepard - Land of the Living - New Yorker Fiction - September 21st

2009-09-21T09:00:00.004-04:00

I once saw Sam Shepard sitting in a Japanese Restaurant on Columbus Avenue in New York City. He was all by himself at a table near the front of the restaurant, sitting right up against the window, and a few inches from the sidewalk. It was a quick recognition, I was halfway through a long walking stride, and in the time it took me to recognize him, and he recognized that I recognized him, my other foot had landed and I had walked past the restaurant. Years earlier I saw a play of his with Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly, and was really blown away. The Right Stuff comes to mind, but Sam Shepard as writer of fiction just doesn't ring a bell. He's a playwright...right? I'm kidding, I know Sam Shepard writes fiction.

It was a nice surprise to Shepard's short story Land of the Living in this weeks New Yorker, a magazine that never disappoints...confounds, yes, disappoints, never. The story starts off at the airport in Cancun, Mexico. A family of four has just arrrived for a vacation, kids are lazy sprawled on the floor waiting for the customs line to move, while Dad tells Mom how great it feels to be on Xanax. Shepard's dialogue is honed from his days in the theater but is so crisp in this story it's like hearing a deck of cards getting shufled over and over. Each conversation moves like a recalcitrant eyelash on your eyeball, and you can't stop to see who is talking because it moves so quickly, as dialogue should. It's the smoothest part of this story, and when the family finally gets in their rental Suburban, that dialogue makes way for little sketches of description about the passing scenery of Mexico. Shepard descirbes the flies swarming around a group of horses; it's quick, efficient, and makes you're fingers tingle with anticipation for what might come next.

As soon as they get started on this part of the journey, and are driving along happily, Mom accuses Dad of having a girlfriend. It's a wild and bitter exchange, and Dad denies it, emphatically. Mom says she heard a strange woman's voice on her husbands cell phone, Dad wants to know why she answered his phone, she couldn't stand the constant ringing, his ring tone is the riff from Purple Rain. There is a smacking of the well-to-do in these people. They've vacationed to a secluded part of the country, and sometimes travel into town for dinner, to take pictures of the hairless dogs staring down from the roofs, like the wealthy coming down from their castle to dine with the serfs. Shepard seems to be traveling with this family, and this isn't a story, as much as it is a travelogue, a kind of intimate portrait of a husband and wife who are doing what they're supposed to do, with their children who are needing less of their attention and seem oblivious of their marital spat. This of course turns the parents on each other, and strangers to one another even though they are vacationing as a family. You'll like this story because it will remind you of the things you've seen on vacation, maybe. Don't forget, Sam Shepard writes fiction too.
-JR

The Futurist...a book you totally forgot about...now go buy it...

2009-09-18T09:00:00.001-04:00

It’s nice to see a big time publisher, actually, the biggest of the big time publishers, taking a little bit of the money they carpet the floor and paint the walls with and toss it behind a piece of speculative fiction, and I mean that in with every possible compliment in mind. ‘The Futurist’ is the fantastic debut novel from the massive talent, James P. Othmer.

There are parts of this story that directly reflect Jonathan Franzen’s masterpiece, ‘The Corrections’. I’d go on about that book, but I’ve made that case enough times already. Franzen would be proud to read Othmer’s views on the future, culturally significant and relevant in their predictions. But ultimately Kurt Andersen and ‘Turn of the Century’ are the models for this book. Andersen took his story of the lonely genius trapped by his own wit and boy wonder powers to incredible heights of glory (everyone missed that book). But to say ‘The Futurist’ sounds and looks like these two books would be doing it a disservice. It’s an incredibly original and highly readable story about the zeitgeist in us all. We meet a cinematically likeable main character, flawed, hampered by his own intelligence and his extreme wit who’s a globe trotting expert in everything that’s about to happen.

Meet the Futurist. His name is Yates.

And it’s safe to say that this book will kick your ass.

Yates predicts the future of society: the cultural trends, the lifestyles, and people pay him to do this. He gets this information not from a computer program he’s created, or from a crystal ball, but from his own cynical and highly immoral mind, albeit an oddly repressed mind. He just looks around and makes snap judgments on what he sees. Simple when you think about it. He’s paid ridiculous sums of money from equally ridiculous but colorful characters that Othmer has peppered along Yates’ path as he bounces carefully from one global hot spot to the other.

Yates is likeable but only in an envious fashion; he’s taking advantage of the banal stupidity that permeates the world. Yates predicts that people will be traveling to space, to live, vacation, etc., and then suddenly the Russians decide that it seems completely plausible to do just that. The spine of this story revolves around a doomed space station that Yates feels directly responsible for, which echoes Yates and his human side.

As the story starts, his girlfriend has just left him for a history teacher, forgetting of course that Yates doesn’t believe in history, he only knows the future. He’s not interested in what’s happened, only what will happen. In Johannesburg, he witnesses a bloody riot at a football match which sets him off on a Jerry McGuire-like tantrum that causes the opposite effect, making him even more popular for telling the king he has no clothes on. He’s in town to be apart of something called Futureworld... it’s a conference of people trying to predict of all things... the future.

From here we dip into one of the more incisively brilliant sections of this book. I need to direct your attention to page 60, the last paragraph of the chapter (too long to reprint here) and what could possibly be the most ‘right-on telling’ of our society, right now. Yates has a Bill Gates-like friend who lives in Greenland and is fantastically rich. So rich that he makes Bill Gates look like, well, like someone who’s making minimum wage by comparison. Campbell is his name and his viewpoints on fantastic wealth - and how it really hampers you, and you’re never given any idea of what to do with yourself once you become wealthy - are used as a mirror for a malady that many people suffer from, and that is anticipation. (Don Draper said it best, "Our greatest fears lie in anticipation.") You’ve looked forward to something for so long that you forget how good it is when it’s finally arrived because you’re looking forward to something else, so the thing you’re doing now and its emotional value have deserted you. (Jim, you've nailed my personality...) Othmer manages to toggle between Campbell, Yates, and the simplistic materialism that has destroyed the society we all live in. Dare I say this isn’t even the finest section of the book. Milan. How the section in Milan soars, and the Fiji chapter: the waves, the surfing, the sacrificing of the virgin… It’s all here, every portion of the human condition: wealth, greed, ego, religion, science and its failures, human or accidental in nature. The Futurist, I mean, Yates… is a man on a mission. Of course it wouldn’t be a mission without a Deep Throat to inspire/threaten him, but I’ll leave that treasure for you to find. I wouldn’t want to spoil the future.
-JR

Summertime by J. M. Coetzee An Early Review

2009-09-17T09:00:00.036-04:00

Coetzee's new novel, Summertime, is short-listed for the Mann Booker. The winner will be announced on October 6th. If JMC wins, he'll be the first writer in the history of the prize to win three times. The novel will be on-sale in the U.S. on December 24th unless, due to mounting excitement, Penguin USA is able to advance the date.

I have to say that this is one of the most remarkably constructed novels that I have ever read. The form seems unique and the content, it being Coetzee, is fastidious. Epistolary novels have been around since the dawn of the modern novel and in recent years we have had novels composed of emails. But I have never come across a novel whose text consists of a set of interviews...bracketed by fragmentary journal extracts. It's sort of Citizen Kane-like but the subject isn't John Foster Kane; it's John Coetzee.

There are five, generously-scaled interviews; each named after the "A" in the Q and A. Four out of the five are women who have encountered the fictional JMC, some intimately. In an extraordinary stylistic move, the second interview reverses figure and ground. The interviewer recaps the interview for Margot, who has been questioned, while she reacts to how the interview turned out. So many brilliant moves: the text specifies "silence" in brackets where a question is portentiously not answered. The A's, at key points, keep requesting that material be taken out of the interviews and assured that the offending passages will be softened or removed. But they never are, apparently. Hell...we are reading them.

Most Americans, including Oprah Winfrey, have trouble with the idea that a memoir could be considered a form of literature. How salutary an effect for these misguided readers to have a sort-of-novel, sort-of-memoir, told in the form of made-up interviews in which the writer is apparently being asked about himself.

But as much as you may want to puzzle about the "true" Coetzee behind this spark-inducing brilliance, it's the women in this novel, revealing their hearts by talking about JC's, that moved me towards a deep emotional attachment to the book. This figurative Coetzee is emotionally autistic. He's not all there...and this throws "his women" into relief as if they were projecting their profiles onto a neutrally hued Robert Ryman canvas.

As for the John Coetzee of the story, he has a sad and obsessive relationship to his doddering father; perhaps as compensation for the other relationships that he doesn't have. And see the section where Adriana, the third woman, explains why John can't dance.

If I wanted to give myself some cover for confessing some very sensitive truths, I might try to hide those truths in a forest of fictions. See, I'm going lie dozens of times. But I'll slip in some deep secrets of the self among all the tall tales. That's the way I think Summertime works.

Sophie, a French academic and the last of the interviewed women to make an appearance in Summertime, calls JC a francophile so I'll conclude with a reference to Montaigne, another self-revealing writer who I am always reading.

In order to grasp what I was feeling about Summertime, I imagined Montaigne walking through the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles which, of course, was after his time. I imagined that he walked straight into the mirrors and shattered them. As he picked up the pieces he saw reflected fragments of himself and he laughed. I think we are seeing fragments of Coetzee in Summertime and I think the writer is offering us some very serious laughter.

Montaigne said in the introduction to his Essays that if he could appear naked to his readers, if that were allowed by his society, then he would. He wanted to be that candid. I think that the good JMC appears to us naked in Summertime. But to see that nakedness, you have to know how to read.

-DH