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.

King Leary - Paul Quarrington

Manages to turn hockey, a topic so mundane and familiar to Canadians that we can smell it in our sweat, into a metaphor for magic. As a character King Leary skates alongside other great Canadian literary figures (Duddy Kravtiz, Anne of Green Gables)  and as a novel King Leary should body check a few stodgy works that are taught in classrooms. There are some tried and true concepts here - the small town boy who only knows hockey, the rich business man who ruthlessly operates the team with only profit in mind, the bitter and alcoholic sports writer, the destined to die in a hotel room player  - that Quarrington weaves into something new and wonderful. A classic.

Remainder - Tom McCarthy

Moves through the world in supreme control, a remarkable feat for a first novel, with hardly a misused word. It builds to the only ending that makes sense, a satisfying conclusion to a treatise on memory, identity and the need to control the world around us that reads like a novel.

Tokyo, My Everest - Gabrielle Bauer

The issue about reading a story about something similar to what you went through is the tendency to draw comparisons to your own experiences. Often, because the subject matter is so familiar, the story comes up lacking, and not in any particular deficiency in the story, but because your experience is different and more real.  This was somewhat the case with Tokyo, My Everest, the story of a 30-something Canadian woman who moves to Tokyo to teach English and figure out what to do with her life. 

Her experiences are typical to the newbie in Japan - getting to know the subway system, overcoming the language barrier, dealing with non-Japanese who treat the country as a party palace.  The author is one of those people who come to Japan to find the 'real' Japan - kimonos and temples and tea ceremonies - the kind of person I tried to avoid in my own time in Japan. Living in a big city, riding the subway and eating convenience store food heated in a microwave has the same claim to legitimacy as does hiking Mt. Fuji or watching Noh. I always bristled at this idea of a 'real' version of a country (Do Japanese come to Canada in search of the real Canada, with images of snowy tundras and beavers in their minds?)

Curious about Japanese men, the author finally finds one that meets her specifications. The only problem is that he's cloaked himself in secrecy as well as a rigid schedule that he never wants to veer from, which causes friction in their relationship that eventually leads to its demise. Heart-broken, the author leaves Tokyo, having been there for less than year.