Lots of good things

at the Guardian Review; I am slightly horrified to see there's a whole new round of ambivalent pieces about Jonathan Franzen now that The Discomfort Zone's been released in Britain (I want to read that book for myself, I read a bunch of reviews that convinced me it's a must-read--will link once I get to it), but more appealingly there's Chris Petit on Derek Raymond (it was pre-blog when I discovered Derek Raymond c. 1997-98, but rest assured that I was completely obsessed and couldn't stop talking about him, he is one of the great literary geniuses of the twentieth century in my opinion--one of these days I'm going to reread all of his books and rave here about how amazing they are) and Michael Dibdin on the new thriller from Benjamin Black aka John Banville. My alternate-universe self is living in a very grimy studio apartment in the West Village (sixth-floor walkup) and writing noir novels possibly with vampire/shapeshifting elements to them, and working the night shift word-processing somewhere in the Financial District to pay the rent.