True Grit - Charles Portis

It's always difficult reading a book after seeing a movie - the comparisons, either way, never hold up. In this case, however, the book and movie (both versions) can be treated as separate artifacts. In the novel, it's Mattie who narrates from the vantage point of years later. She seeks the man who killed her father and hires Rooster Cogburn - oh, I'm sure you've seen the movie. What separates the book from the movie is the murky morality - Mattie states she wants to capture the man who killed her father, but hires the Marshall known for killing to do it, I man who plans on shooting bandits in the back. The man who kills her father expresses remorse over the action. Of course the movie makes the morality clearer, but the style alone makes this a worthwhile read.

Author on Author Verbal Violence

Is there anyone better to insult an author than another author?

9. Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac

“That’s not writing, that’s typing.”

8. Elizabeth Bishop on J.D. Salinger

“I HATED [Catcher in the Rye]. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it?”

From Flavorwire

No Such Thing As A Contemporary Novel?

Russell Smith on Graham's Swift essay that claims that there is no such thing as a contemporary novel:

"His argument is simple and undeniable: As soon as something’s written and published it is about the past. Novels take years to write, so “… the ‘now’ with which they begin will be defunct by the time they’re finished.” And the hippest of new novels will look very dated in a couple of years. He points out that many of our favourite novels from the 19th century are actually not about their own time but are set many years previous to their writing: War and Peace, for example, was written in the 1860s but set during the Napoleonic wars, about 50 years earlier. The lag seems immaterial to us now."


Globe and Mail

The 100 Greatest Non-Fiction Books

The Guardian lists the 100 Greatest Non-Fiction books of all time.

Rubber Balls and Liquor - Gilbert Gotfried

There are some laughs in this memoir, but the whole endeavor feels obligatory. All the signposts of the typical comedic memoir are here - precocious childhood, awkward teenage years, followed by grinding it out on the stand-up circuit. More stories about that scene would have added more meat to this limp broth. In his comedy he is fearless, but here he is like a meaner version of Paul Reiser.

The Age of Wonder - Richard Holmes

Puts to the rest the notion that the Romantic era was filled with poets and not scientists with a passion and enthusiasm one doesn't usually read in books about science. Focusing on Joseph Banks, Humphrey Davy and William Hershel, the book at times reads like a thriller. A thriller that informs - the balloon flight mania of the time is particularly engaging, as Banks' journey to Fiji.

Theroux: Travel Writing Isn't Dead

A master at the form on why, despite popular belief, good travel books are just waiting to be written:

The world is not as small as Google Earth depicts it. I think of the Lower River district in Malawi, the hinterland of Angola, the unwritten-about north of Burma and its border with Nagaland. Nearer home, the urban areas of Europe and the United States.


Theroux: The Places In Between

Interview with George Saunders: Steer Towards The Rapids

Best advice on writing fiction I've read in a while:  “Any monkey in a story had better be a dead monkey"


From the good people at BOMblog

George Saunders Interview Part One


George Saunders Interview Part Two

Great Book, Terrible Person

After V.S. Naipaul said some stupid things about women writers the issue of having a great book written by a terrible person has come up again.  Dickens treated his wife terribly, but he wrote Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities. Hemingway was a drunk who harboured petty grudges and was married four times, but he wrote The Sun Also Rises. TS Eliot was an anti-Semite but he gave us The Wasteland. The list goes on.

The real question is whether it matters to the work. Of course what the indiscretion is and how long it was are two factors - it's hard to imagine any Nazi writers gaining any kind of credibility, but Gertrude Stein is still read, even though she made comments in support of Hitler.  It's also interesting that this doesn't come up as much in the movie/TV/music/sports world - we almost expect an actor/athlete/rock star to behave in a certain way.


When Bad People Write Good Books  - Salon

A Collection of Good Books by Morally Questionable People - Flavorwire

Famous Literary Spats

From the good people at Flavorwire:

In 2002, Whitehead gave us a hilarious and scathing review of A Multitude of Sins in The New York Times. He writes, “The characters’ sense of befuddlement comes to infect, but never to enlighten, the reader.” He later notes, “At the top of the story, the protagonist offers an Awkward Pang of Simmering Dissatisfaction, which sounds suspiciously like the A.P.S.D. offered by the character in the previous story.” For this, Richard Ford spit on him at a Poets & Writers party. Afterward, Whitehead said, “This wasn’t the first time some old coot had drooled on me, and it probably won’t be the last. But I would like to warn the many other people who panned the book that they might want to get a rain poncho, in case of inclement Ford.”


Famous Literary Spats

Esquire's Big Book of Fiction - Adrienne Miller

Reads like a who-who of American fiction of the 20th century, with all the names you'd expect - Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Mailer, Carver, Ford, McCarthy, O'Conner, Wallace, Cheever, Barth, DeLillo.  Some are good, others are great, and a few were added just to be inclusive. A book you can pick up at different times, turn to a story and read - one of my favourite kind of books.

Gary Shteyngart Super Sad True Love Story Trailers

Somehow, I missed these two trailers from Gary Shtenygart for his book Super Sad True Love Story.

Super Sad True Love Story - James Franco

Gary Shteyngart and Paul Giamitti Buddy Comedy

The Pale King - David Foster Wallace

Somewhere in here is a great novel, amid these half-formed, half-written sections. It's about the IRS and boredom and how ordinary people doing ordinary things (processing tax forms) can achieve a level of heroism, a level of cool that mostly goes unrecognized. 

The Pale King can't really be called a novel, more of a journal, and will be remembered more for what it could have been rather than what it is. It's a greatest hit album - if you like David Foster Wallace than you'll like this, but if you don't, this won't change your mind.