September 2010
68 posts
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“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green islets and meadows;...”
– Charles Dickens, from Bleak House. Dickens worked as a clerk in a solicitor’s office and a court stenographer before he first gained recognition for his fiction in his mid-twenties, publishing the Pickwick Papers in serial form from 1836 to 1837. One of the greatest and most prolific authors of the...
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Dr. Varelli nudges his son back into the study, sticks his bushy head in the door, says, “Play nice, my beautiful puppies.”
“Father,” the Dungeon Master will say, “stay the fuck out of my mind realm.”
“I honor your wish, my beauty.”
From Sam Lipsyte’s story “The Dungeon Master,” in the new New Yorker.
“These stores are succeeding not because they are the biggest stores, but because...”
– The Millions : Comparing Apples to BMWs: What Does it Mean to be a “Best Bookstore” Anyway? (via housingworksbookstore)
A Literary Map of Manhattan →
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“The next best thing to having your stuff burned, if you’re ambivalent, is giving...”
– Etgar Keret, in Elif Batuman’s piece on Kafka’s papers.
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5 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD ATTEND TONIGHT’S NEW...
housingworksbookstore:
1. Award-winning author Amy Hempel may bring her dog. . 2. You may get the chance to sample one of these or one of these. . 3. You’ll get the chance to see—in person—one of New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” read out loud. . 4. You’ll feel extra good about buying a book because all proceeds go to support Housing Works. . 5. Rumor has it, Justin Beiber is planning on attending....
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I am carrying literally 8 chairs
Carrying them up the stairs. Why yes, I would love to answer your elaborate question.
“Suppose it’s October, October or November, let’s say, in 1960 or 1961, October,...”
– The opening sentence from The Sixty-Five Years of Washington by Juan Jose Saer or How to Find Your Target Audience (Me) and Alienate Every Other Conceivable Reader in One Easy Sentence. It’s new this month from Open Letter. (via towirr)
“Every coffeehouse is illuminated both without and within doors…This is the place...”
– Thomas Brown, from Amusements Serious and Comical, Calculated for the Meridian of London, c. 1700. Coffee proved so popular among London men that some women drafted a petition against that “black, thick, nasty, bitter, stinking, nauseous puddle water.” By 1700 there were more than two thousand...
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The cinematic equivalent of W.G. Sebald →
This from the ever-great Ed Park.
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carpentrix:
“If I can say that Gob’s Grief asked What shall we do about death? and The Children’s Hospital asked What shall we do about sin?, then I suppose I can say that this one asks What shall we do about love?”
— I didn’t know Chris Adrian had a new book coming out. Thanks to McNally Jackson for being ever in the loop. I did a profile of him for the Phoenix when The Children’s...
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Also
What brought both of those things about was the disintegration of my relationship with my boyfriend. The novel became a sort of open letter to him about why it was in the universe’s best interest that we get back together, and at the same time it was a sort of weapon of mass emotional destruction aimed, rather angrily, at his heart. It was written out of order, so I had the ending done even when...
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“If I can say that Gob’s Grief asked What shall we do about death? and The...”
– Chris Adrian on his new novel, The Great Night, in an interview with Rivka Galchen for FSG’s Work in Progress.
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Weekend New Book Round-Up
Your Weekend New Book Round-Up is not happening. I’m just back from Boston and have no idea what’s out. Probably books. I’m reading Eula Biss’ The Balloonists, though, and it’s recommended for anyone who liked Bluets by Maggie Nelson. It’s not new; it is great. Here’s a chunk I read on the train this morning—there’s a lot (too much? just...
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My sister's blog
carpentrix:
The cement looks like kitty litter when we add water (kitty litter ranking high on my list of least favorite substances on earth; I’d rather swim in a pool full of pus than wade even ankle-deep in kitty litter). We add water then we mix and mix and it no longer looks like a place for cats to piss and shit.
Did you guys know that my sister—a newspaper-job-quitting, MFA-dodging...
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BRBRRB
Grappling with the disappointment of you guys not loving my Snooki/Marilyn Monroe post as much as I did, and the disappointment of being on a bus to Boston (the bus ride is the disappointment, I mean, not being Boston-bound, though there are reasons I’d like to be in New York City this week)—reading the Stein-edited Paris Review, by the way, and that JD Daniels piece is great, did you...
“A couple of years ago I joined one of those clubs where they teach you how to...”
– From J.D. Daniels’ “Letter from Cambridge” in the new Paris Review.
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Convergence!
Marilyn, if you can’t see, is reading James Joyce.
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Weekend New Book Round-Up
Things that are not books but that are great:
The Lapham’s Quarterly tote bags that we just got. We are literally—literally!—the only place in the universe—in the universe!—that you can buy these. We shipped a few to San Diego, and a few to some other place.
In paperback:
Stitches, David Small’s graphic memoir about home dentistry and a fucked-up family....
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Tonight: Karen Lord & Julia Holmes
Tonight in our cafe we host Karen Lord, author of Redemption in Indigo, and Julia Holmes, who’ll be reading from Meeks. Small Beer rules. More information here.
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housingworksbookstore:
“Thirty two percent of the books purchased in 2009 were from households earning less than $32,000 annually.”
— Books | Who buys books? 40-year-old women and others | Seattle Times Newspaper The only stat from this article I found surprising.
Grad students.
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If Nicholson Baker had a blog
I would dedicate a blog to reblogging his blog and only reblogging his blog. It would be called www.rebloggingnicholsonbaker.tumblr.com and it would be a great blog, but not as great as Nicholson Baker’s blog if Nicholson Baker had a blog.
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objectivecorrelative:
housingworksbookstore:
“Is Google making us stupid? Is reading in America a dying pursuit? Will novel srviv in age of twtr?”
— The Millions: Is Big Back?
This article is interesting and worth a read (hint: The Millions’ Garth Risk Hallberg thinks the novel is alive and kicking and I’m inclined to agree), but the thing that no one ever seems to acknowledge when...
Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives
wwnorton:
“Her scent blossomed in the car like heavenly polecat, like flowers manufactured in a tire plant, something dusky and nostril-stinging, like perfumed coal dust, dead rose blossoms on hot oil-grimed engine blocks.”
— Brad Watson, from “Ordinary Monsters” in the story collection Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives
Damn.
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The Complete Edits of the Iraq War →
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thingsiatethatilove:
“I don’t wish to convey messages—period. But I look carefully at certain situations in the world and try to render them honestly. And if someone perceives that to be a bleak situation, it’s the situation’s fault, not mine!”
— My interview with Jonathan Franzen is up at Goodreads. I had trouble picking a favorite part and settled on this. Other contenders were: his...
