I'm liking Ron Charles more and more and more, and
this video review of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom makes just makes me giddy.
Over at Critical Mass, the blog for the NBCC, Wyatt Mason
writes about Roth's "tenth, short, and perfect novel, The Ghost Writer." I agree with Mason; this is one great novel, and a great place to start if you're looking to get to know Roth. Here is
my review. It wasn't my first Roth, but it is the book that made him one of my favorite writers of all time (if not my favorite).
This promises to get interesting. Anis Shivani of
The Huffington Post has posted his list of the
fifteen most overrated contemporary American authors. As usual, he makes some great points. Often when I see these, though, I think, "Okay, so they are bad. Now, tell me who is good -- and why the difference." Shivani promises to follow-up with the most
underrated contemporary American writers. Followed with similar lists for American writers of the past century, and going further to include lists for the global writers.
Patricia Zohn interviews Jennifer Egan at
The Huffington Post. I still think
A Visit from the Goon Squad is one of the best books of the year.
New York Magazine has a nice
look at independent bookstores in the City, which are rising "against all odds."
At Reading Matters, Kim has featured my blog on her
Triple Choice Tuesday. My choices?
The Ghost Writer,
So Long, See You Tomorrow, and
Butcher's Crossing. Pop on over and see my fresh, brief write-up of each title.
For Independence Day, the Huffington Post has a slide show of
fifteen great independent publishers, featuring a few of my favorites --
Open Letter,
Archipelago -- and a few I didn't know about.
New Directions is a model of perfection, and I agree. I have stacks and stacks of books from these three presses, and I'm anxious to see what the others have to offer.
Michiko Kakutani's
review of Jacob de Zoet is surprising in its lack of substance. It's mostly just a plot rehash (which I think gives away a bit too much). It's boring to read and insightless, where I usually enjoy her reviews even if I disagree (as I do here). I'm not saying my reviews are better, surely, but this is pretty poor for
The New York Times daily and from a Pulitzer-winning critic.
In the new issue of
The New Yorker, James Wood
takes a look at The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: "This is to argue not that David Mitchell should be more like Tolstoy or Conrad or Beckett but, curiously, that he might be more Mitchellian—that the reader wants a kind of moral or metaphysical pressure that is absent, and that has ceded all the ground to pure storytelling."
The Paris Review blog has a
Q&A with Jennifer Egan, author of
The Goon Squad, a piece of which was published in
The New Yorker and discussed
here.
Click
here for the
Never Let Me Go trailer. I didn't like the book as much as I hoped I would, but the trailer makes the film look good.
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Click 
The 2009 Giller Prize jury was announced today:
– Russell Banks, a New York based author with 16 works of fiction and a lot of high-end magazine work to his credit. Trevor: I recognize the name but have read none of his books. Do you know anything about him?
– Victoria Glendenning, British biographer and novelist. Also a journalist — I’ve been impressed with the novels I’ve read.
– Alastair MacLeod, Canadian short-story writer, novelist (No Great Mischief, his only novel, won the IMPAC) and icon (you can put him up with Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood in that category).
I’ve left a post on the Man Booker site about this, trying to set a fox into the henhouse. While they are choosing “populist” juries from English bingo-callers and critics, this Canadian prize has recruited three international writers with equally international reputations. While it might be argued that writers jurying writers has its own set of problems, one does wonder what credentials TV commentators bring to the table.
I too know Russell Banks only by the name. I’ll do some looking though because it seems the name was in the context of good things.
By the way, did you see this article about what is happening to Canadian Lit? I’m interested in your thoughts and think that your presence in the blogosphere and the Man Booker site is a good thing!
I hadn’t seen this article, so thanks for the link. I do have some background.
First on the National Post (known in our household as The Pest). It is the right-wing national newspaper, founded by Conrad Black before he went to jail in Florida (he is an old boss of mine), which never lets the facts get in the way of its anti-government, anti-liberal, anti-academy, indeed anti-Canada bias. If you go back to the article, you actually get a good illustration of this — note how the headline says “grant culture and sands of time deserve some blame” when in fact the only reference to grants is in a rhetorical question that Marchand uses to set up his argument. The Pest loathes all things Canadian and thinks we are a disgraceful nation — they loved (and still love) George W. Bush and are very in step with his politics. (Sidenote: W is making his first post-presidential appearance in Calgary tomorrow — not only have I not been invited, I know security even for an ex-president will make downtown impassable.)
Marchand is also interesting. He was an okay critic for the Toronto Star (it’s the country’s largest circulation newspaper but very Torontocentric — the joke in the industry is that the Star headline for the sinking of the Titanic was “City woman misses boat in Southhampton”. Just to complete the Canadian joke, the Globe headline was “Lloyd’s suffers major losses” and the Telegram (Toronto’s version of the New York Post) “Stewards demand sex before lifeboats”. Ah, my old trade.)
Sorry for the digression. Marchand took the buyout last year (the Star was somewhat ahead of the curve in seeing and experiencing the decline in the newspaper industry) to “write books” and freelance. He was always mainly plugged in to a very Toronto view of Canadian publishing and this piece reflects it — e.g. almost everyone else regarded the Giller win of the Bergen book as a jury disaster. I hated it.
Marchand, in his desire to feed the Pest’s anti-academy virus, neglects a number of things. For example, while the piece implies Morley Callaghan was known and beloved by all Canadians, in fact he was virtually unknown in his home country, even while being celebrated by Edmund Wilson. Canadian literature was so “disrespected” by the academic world (to borrow a Tony Soprano term) that the course on the Canadian novel that I took in 1971 was the very first ever offered at the University of Calgary (and this was only the second year that it was offered). My professor, who had Callaghan, Hugh MacLennan and Sinclair Ross on the reading list, told us that we would be the first in generations to read any of them.
Given all that, 53 per cent knowing a Canadian author seems like a pretty good number — my guess would have been under 35 per cent. Given that only 61 per cent know the name of the country’s first Prime Minister and also only 61 per cent know the date of Confederation (link to this fascinating data is
http://www.dominion.ca/CanadaDay.Survey.DominionInstitute.1July08.pdf
that number is actually quite high. (Check out the survey — the argument is that we know more about American politics than our own history.) Also, take the Canada quiz on their home page — I suspect you’ll do better than the vast majority of Canadians. I did get 10 out of 10; I predict you’ll come up with 6 or better.
For what it is worth, I’d say Canadian fiction and publishing is in better shape than it has been in my adult lifetime. That still doesn’t mean it is very healthy. Guys like Marchand (and even me some days) resent the rise of Chapters and Indigo (our Barnes and Nobles and Borders — our government won’t let them set up stores here because we have to protect our culture from you dreadful Americans) and, as someone who likes independent bookstore owners, there are days when I agree with them. On the other hand, when I go into any Chapters store at any time of day, I see more people looking at books than I would see in three months of bookstore visits 10 years ago. They may be buying J.K. Rowling or Stephanie Meyer, but at least they are buying books. And some of them, at least, are buying Canadian books.
End of rant. Obviously, that book is still not attractive. The good one is that Sheila advises another one that I have been looking forward to has arrived while I have been doing this. Now I have a book I want to read. Bye for now.
Kevin, I’ve been looking up titles by Russell Banks, and they look really good. Here is a blurb for Sweet Hereafter which might hold some clue as to why he’s on the Giller committee if much of his fiction takes place close to Canada and that is an important enough fact to mention in the blurb. I’m interested in the lawyerly aspect, though I don’t see myself ever becoming a litigator.
That was only one of the titles that looked appealing. Could be a promising batch of titles.
I know the year has (kind of) just begun, Kevin, but do you see any strong contenders for this year’s Giller?
Also, I bookmooched Russell Banks’s Sweet Hereafter yesterday, so I might have a better sense of his style soon.
If only writers as good as Russell Banks were running the rule over all book awards!
Russell Banks is one of my favourite modern American writers. The Sweet Hereafter is excellent, and his short story collections are also highly recommended