January 2006
15 posts
1 tag
The Chess Artist by JC Hallman
I enjoyed The Chess Artist by JC Hallman on various levels. First and foremost, because I know the author, the voice echoes, ghostlike, as if I were having another conversation with him. (This is my first encounter with reading a book written by a friend.) I enjoyed the storytelling, as I would a conversation, something that I rarely find in non-fiction and one of the reasons that I don’t...
December 2005
11 posts
1 tag
Literary Wrap-up
The Chicago Sun-Times has an interesting end of the year literary wrap-up, which includes a “best books” list, (brief) commentary on the American literary state, and snippets of interesting literary events of 2005.
Here’s a sampling:
SHOWDOWN AT ST. ANDREW’S CORRAL. Cary McNair, a wealthy film producer, demanded that Annie Proulx’s stunning short story...
1 tag
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
The subtlety of distance suspends the narration in Housekeeping above time and place. The narrator grows into a character of isolation and Robinson takes us through her ironic journey of going nowhere until she is old enough to realize that she belongs to no where but within herself. Ruth, the narrator, and her sister Lucille grow up in Fingerbone - a nondescript town in a nondescript time -...
1 tag
Who is JT LeRoy?
New York magazine offers that JT LeRoy is not who he claims to be (although he doesn’t claim to be anyone, really). The SF Chronicle asks: Does it really matter? Greil Marcus sees the real problem:
“What it all signifies to me is a deepening mistrust of the imagination, or the driving out of fiction by nonfiction…
“People will read fiction about a gender-confused teenage...
1 tag
A Little Nepotism
I am glad that I am not the only one who noticed that six of the sixty-one non fiction books were written by NYT staffers - not to mention there were only thirty-nine fiction titles, but that is another issue that leads to my weekly disappointment in the NYTBR. The NYT has an article from the public editor discussing the literary nepotism, both of which I find disappointing.
READERS, it seems to...
1 tag
The Best 'End of Year' List
New York magazine has the year’s best ‘end of year’ list for its creative categories and not so typical choices.
1 tag
Oh, the Hilarity of It All
Transplant friendship
Robert Novak leaves CNN for Fox News.
1 tag
Sins of Omission
Speaking of truth or the lack thereof, the NYRB has an article relaying the “balance” in American journalism.
Still, there remained firm limits on what could be reported out of Iraq. Especially taboo were frank accounts of the actions of US troops in the field —particularly when those actions resulted in the deaths of Iraqi civilians.
On the same day The Times ran its front-page...
2 tags
We Are Talking About Truth
Harold Pinter, winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for literature, took his acceptance speech as an opportunity to speak unspeakable truths about the United States. You can find the full text here (of course a British newspaper).
In 1958 I wrote the following:
‘There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is...
1 tag
Broadway Magic
Joan Didion is working on turning The Year of Magical Thinking into a one woman broadway show.
1 tag
What We Are Talking About
I am talking now about coming of age in a narrative - of allowing yourself to live in the lives of others, real or imagined - of realizing you’ve been there all along but didn’t allow yourself to see where you’ve been, creating your own narrative despite what you want to believe, despite the contradiction of reality, despite the fact that everyone else is doing the same thing....