September 2010
68 posts
objectivecorrelative:
mcnallyjackson:
Your day today. This, my friends, is exciting and big and great.
No self-control whatsoever:
Automatic IRL-reblog reblog.
August 2010
49 posts
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Luv 2 Shop - w4m →
housingworksbookstore:
“You were in Housing Works on Chambers Street in Tribeca,about to go downstairs to housewares. I said hey. I wanted your advice. At first you dissed me thinking that because you’re like African American or black or whatever, I thought that you were working at HW as one of those volunteer slash outpatient types who gives you the number when you go into the dressing room But...
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Frequently Asked Freedom Questions (FAFQ)
Q: Is it out yet?
A: No.
Q: When?
A: Tuesday the 31st.
Q: But I want it now.
A: Patience.
Q: Have you read it? Is it good?
A: I have. It is. Though I fear that expectations are outpacing reality and people are going to be disappointed, because how could any book be as good as all that hype? Backlashes are boring.
Q: Did you read The Corrections?
A: I did.
Q: WHICH IS BETTER?
A: Well--okay. When The Corrections came out I was a freshman in high school, so I was more concerned with, I don't know, zits and punk rock than I was with literary fiction. I was up at my mom's place years later and without a book. She had a copy. I started reading it, not having read any Franzen or knowing exactly what was going on--just that it was maybe a famous book--and obviously it was exciting stumbling on something that great. Literally actually stumbling: It was a hardcover and being used as a doorstop.
Q: Answer the question.
A: I enjoyed The Corrections more--for the newness, the discovery--but Freedom might be the better book.
Q: So, can I buy it?
A: No. Tuesday.
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Mongering
Since this is ostensibly a bookstore blog, maybe I’ll try to get you to buy some things?
In paperback this week:
Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs
Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City
Julia Holmes’ Meeks put out by the beloved Small Beer Press and blurbed by Wells Tower and Lydia Millet, both of whom I like, and so by the transitive property of blurbing (TPoB) I should like...
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The Annals of Facial Hair →
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More on Ulysses
Okay! I haven’t had time to formulate a decent response to objectivecorrelative’s long, thoughtful post on Ulysses, but, first: Someone asking a good question; writing an overlong response; that response triggering another question; the answer to that question leading to a great long thing? That rules. Take that, Gary Shteyngart. One point for the thoughtful internet.
My intention was...
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“Elias Canetti, in his book on the twentieth century’s greatest writer,...”
– Roberto Bolaño in the essay “Literature + Illness = Illness,” which is in The Insufferable Gaucho (great title), which is just out and on our fiction table.
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Ten Walks/Two Talks
I just read Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks. Rather than bother with thinking of my own thoughts, here’s what my sister said about it:
It counts as some small death, the blinders-on result of routine, when instead of noticing how the light hits the river or the man in front of the noodle shop crouches as if he’d got no bones, your thoughts pinball from your...
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“Good movies, or at least pleasurably bad movies, make the worthless ones even...”
– Elizabeth Gumport on Kick-Ass in the just-launched N1FR, n+1’s new online film supplement.
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“Someone with tickets to a game show said oh. The man with tickets said be...”
– From Ashley Farmer’s “Game Show,” a super short story up with the new Gigantic online. It takes two minutes to read and your day will be better for it. (It’s raining.)
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“I have had for some years on my computer a file called “Unpleasantness of...”
– Anne Carson, from Grief Lessons, her translation of four Euripides plays.
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Sex for everyone tonight at McNally Jackson
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“Critics function that way often. They make art easy, safe, and wholesome. But...”
– William Gass, in another one of those Dalkey interviews.
“But for literary fiction, the fiction of discovery, formulas are death. In my 12...”
– Lorin Stein, guest blogging for The Atlantic this week. (via theparisreview)
timeoutnewyork asked: Can we get regular updates on the lovemongering? Please?
Anonymous asked: Hi Sam!
I hate to be the person who asks this kind of question, but! I am a regular patron of your store, and every time I am there (weekday evenings, generally), a charming young gentleman bookmonger always says hello, always compliments my selections, and is generally happy to see me. (I do come in often -- a few times a month, at least!)
Now, I know not to confuse...
I hate to be the person who asks this kind of question, but! I am a regular patron of your store, and every time I am there (weekday evenings, generally), a charming young gentleman bookmonger always says hello, always compliments my selections, and is generally happy to see me. (I do come in often -- a few times a month, at least!)
Now, I know not to confuse...
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matthewgallaway:
“I finished Ulysses, & think it a misfire. Genius it has I think; but of the inferior water. The book is diffuse. It is brackish. It is pretentious. It is underbred, not only in the obvious sense, but in the literary sense.”
— Virginia Woolf on Ulysses (inspired by this post).
Heck yeah, VA Woolf.
rachelwetzler asked: Do you actively dislike Ulysses, or are you just not as into it as you feel you should be? As a full-blown Joyce obsessive, I'm not totally sure I can fully comprehend either scenario, but am now incredibly curious.
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“Clark also has odd notions about the Oxford English Dictionary, calling it a...”
– From the Times’ otherwise positive review of Roy Peter Clark’s The Glamour of Grammar.
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“There’s something kind of timelessly vital and sacred about good writing. This...”
– David Foster Wallace in this interview over at the Dalkey website. Posted now as a b-side to my answer to agrammar.
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agrammar asked: Hi, Sam! So I recently picked up Taylor's story collection from your store, but I've only read a couple pieces so far. Is there anything you can tell me about why you're excited for his novel, or why you like him as a writer? (His interview with Bookslut this summer was really fascinating to me, but I haven't gotten through enough of the fiction to know how I feel about it...
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“He is a person of very gentlemanly instincts in every respect, save that he is a...”
– Nathaniel Hawthorne on Herman Melville.
housingworksbookstore:
“How to join: You can purchase the book from us or from an independent bookstore. Just send proof of purchase to “admin AT therumpus.net” to join the book club for free. Books purchased from Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Amazon are ineligible.”
—
Announcing The Jonathan Franzen One-Off Book Club - The Rumpus.net
Wow.
Heck yeah.
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“The light in the bedroom died, and after a time Shelby came out on the porch and...”
– From John Brandon’s Citrus County. He reads tonight with Hilton Als, who—in addition to appearing in the newest McSweeney’s—is the theater critic for the New Yorker.
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Apartment!
“There is no folly of the beasts of earth which is not infinitely outdone by not moving in with Sam and Willa.” - Merman Helville
Friends! Willa and I are still looking for a third roommate in “East Williamsburg.” The room is the largest in a large 3BR apartment. You’d have your own private full bathroom (!!), and the rent is reasonable (I live there on a bookstore...
My new favorite question!
housingworksbookstore:
Which authors’ next books are you sure to read whether or not the subject matter interests you at all?
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E.g.
“I need to buy a gift for my friend. She doesn’t like books or reading.”
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“And utterance and thought as clear as complicated air and
moods that make a...”
– Have you read the Anne Carson poem in the new New Yorker? She writes books that are too good to staff pick.
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meaghano:
newyorker:
New Fiction Podcast
...
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Watchkeithgessen:
Speaking of videos of Russia… longtime readers of this blog will recall my Russian traffic updates from the past year, which began with the car-based assassination attempt on the president of Ingushetia and then went on to a video of the presidential motorcade whizzing through the streets of Moscow, as well as the sort of real-time updates readers of this blog used to rely on until...
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