Loving literature

At Slate, various writers on the "great books" they most hate. The one here that most resonates with me (could have written these sentences myself, and in fact may quote them in the style book) is Daniel Mendelsohn on Joyce:

Honestly I've never been persuaded by Ulysses. To my mind, Joyce's best and most genuine work is the wonderful Dubliners; everything afterwards smacks of striving to write a "great" work, rather than simply striving to write—it's all too voulu. Although there are, of course, beautiful and breathtakingly authentic things in the novel (who could not love that tang of urine in the breakfast kidneys?), what spoils Ulysses for me, each time, is the oppressive allusiveness, the wearyingly overdetermined referentiality, the heavy constructedness of it all. Reading the book, for me, is never a rich and wonderful journey, filled with marvels and (no matter how many times you may read a book) surprises—the experience I want from a large and important novel; it's more like being on one of those Easter egg hunts you went on as a child—you constantly feel yourself being managed, being carefully steered in the direction of effortfully planted treats. Which, of course, makes them not feel very much like treats at all.

NB this obviously all intensely subjective: other writers name some personal favorites of mine, including Hardy's novels and the Iliad (and I love the behavioral psychology in Gravity's Rainbow - I'm only about 150 pages in, so we will see whether I still feel the same way when I finish, but it is a surprisingly enjoyable reread). The great book I most love to hate, I think, is The Great Gatsby, which seems to me infinitely inferior to Fitzgerald's stories...

Primary colors

You are what you eat!

Kafka's eyes

Notional box set of intense desirability! (Link courtesy of Ian C.-B.)

(The sole detail I don't like on this otherwise gorgeous page of designs is the placement of the author's name on the Amerika cover. I don't know why it jumps out at me, but it just doesn't seem right!)

(Is it box set or boxed set? I have always preferred the latter term, but neither one seems actually incorrect, though the first is perhaps a back-formation; on a related note, I really do strongly prefer course release to course relief as the term for getting a reduced course load in exchange for taking on some administrative responsibility, though neither phrase is exactly flattering when it comes to conceiving what it is that one does while teaching.)

Thursday update

I'm having a good week.

I did a little race yesterday, the first of three; it was very warm and on that count mercifully brief, but highly enjoyable. As I said on my other blog, I am very glad to break a streak of not making it to the start line of races I've been looking forward to!

I am just now printing out a new draft of the style book; there are some holes here and there, it needs not just another copy-edit but still some bits and bobs of new writing as well as perhaps a longer tranche of pages about Wittgenstein's Nephew which I am going to sit down with shortly (like in about ten minutes) and reread.

A new structure and rationale have emerged in this iteration of the book, and I like it quite a bit: actually I must confess that I am experiencing the possibly deluded but still desirable conviction of this being the best book I have ever written! (Also, perhaps not coincidentally, the shortest?)

(Really of course one feels the best books are the as-yet-unwritten ones, so it is precious to have this feeling however fleetingly about a book that is mostly in existence already!)

On the basis of literally three words that need filling in (there is a noticeable lack of proportion here between projected effort and potential payoff!), I have realized that another thing I really must do in the next few days is reread Gravity's Rainbow, which curiously I have not read since high school (c. 1987?). It is not available on Kindle, but I have just called the very good local bookstore and they have a copy; they have pulled it from the shelf, in the event of the slightly unlikely chance of someone else purchasing it in the meantime, and I will walk over there in the early evening once it's a bit cooler to pick it up. (Could ride my bicycle, but there are too many cars out there!)

Got a good email from my agent yesterday, full of enthusiasm for BOMH (really it is now called The Magic Circle) and with a few thoughtful and very constructive notes for revision. I'd like another pass through it in any case, as I think there are some things to do with storytelling and pacing that could be stronger, but it sounds as though she'd like to send it out shortly after Labor Day, which is exciting.

So let's say another week or so on style, and I think I can be more or less done with that manuscript by next Friday (some new quotations I can get references for via Amazon's useful "Search inside this book" feature, but a few will need New York library access - I will request everything I need before I am physically back there so that I can finish it up on the Thursday and Friday before the Labor Day weekend, there are few things more frustrating than being prevented from filling in final details on a book manuscript because of holiday library hours and delays with BorrowDirect deliveries - it is a situation I have often experienced!). Then another week or ten days for a good pass back through BOMH, and I should be able to send both books back to Kathy before school starts.

Have had some very good light reading this week also, but that report will have to await a more leisurely moment, I have work to do! I like the feeling that things are happening...

"Then my imagination went wild"

This is very strange.

The project

A cautionary tale: inheriting the hoard.

First principles

Karolina Waklawiak interviews Luc Sante for The Days of Yore. It's interesting throughout, but there is some particularly apt advice for writers in conclusion...

Exciting times for librarians

A great commencement speech by librarian and internet folk hero Jessamyn West.

Eggishness

Remarkably beautiful breakfasts. (Courtesy of Sarang, who found it via The London Review of Breakfasts.)

Minor Sunday linkage

Brent left yesterday for a week in Ottawa; fortunately the style book is now at a stage where I should be able to ramp up work hours (I find that as I first get back into a project, it's wise not to push too hard - a good hour or two every day lets you build up momentum without overstraining, it's not unlike endurance sport training in that regard - but I think I am coming to the point where I can do much longer days of work than that again), and the Kindle is as always indispensable for island living. Neal Stephenson's new novel isn't out yet, unfortunately, but I think it might be a good time to embark upon a massive George R. R. Martin reread in preparation for the new installment of the series: I read those books in a white heat, and long enough ago that it was before I started blogging (sometime during the first few years I was teaching at Columbia, maybe 2002?), so can probably stand a reread, and it is very good to undertake something of copious pages. Otherwise, if I am not watching DVDs in the evening and find myself without much else in the way of outside distraction, I need something like three books a day - it is too many! The Alan Hollinghurst book has yet to arrive, alas...

This is the sort of hobby I could use to while away an hour or two: pig-keeping! (FT site registration required.)

Light reading: Joan Vinge's novelization Cowboys & Aliens (I've been a big fan of hers ever since I read the superlative The Snow Queen and its sequels, and I was also captivated by Vinge's account of why this particular novel represents a personal triumph); Neal Pollack's very funny Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude (the Kindle edition is on sale this month for 99 cents, a definite bargain); Matthew De Abaitua's The Art of Camping, which is full of funny and interesting things but which left me devoutly grateful that I will never have to camp unless perhaps in the event of zombie apocalypse in which case I will have other things to worry about than my personal dislike of camping; and Harry Connolly's Child of Fire, which is quite good but which has caused me to declare a temporary moratorium on urban fantasy, there is just too much of it and it's all built too much along the same sort of chassis: enough!

Bonus links: Matthew's campfire mix, and also an apt illustration from the intriguing Things Organized Neatly blog.

Stage psychics, booth psychics and one 'cyber witch'

I am eager to read A. L. Kennedy's new novel. (Link via Bookforum.)

Light reading catch-up

I am finding it very enjoyable to be back at work on the style book: this is the book that I have waited my whole life to write! It should be done by the end of the month, although I might need a few library days to check some quotations and follow up a couple of last-minute thoughts; I will try not to let impatience get the better of me if that is the way things go.

My cold is mostly gone, only the lungs are still full of junk in a way that is problematic for exercise, and much nose-blowing seems to remain necessary. Otherwise feeling pretty much better; energy levels back to normal, which is probably the most important thing.

I read two books I wished I hadn't (seriously, these Amazon reviewers are clearly working on some sort of demented cost-to-quality ratio when it comes to assigning stars: the book can be only half as good as something else, but if it costs less than half as much, it will come out ahead!). Then I read a very beautifully written short book by Cody James, The Dead Beat; it is now lost in the mists of internet tabbage where I initially got the recommendation, but I thought it was very good, perhaps slightly reminiscent of Jesus' Son though probably only because of the subject matter. Conrad's The Secret Agent more than lived up to my memory of it: it is a minor but distinct work of genius! I found Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy well worth my while, only I wish that it were possible to purchase 'bundled' YA trilogies for Kindle at a discount, it does not seem cost-effective to purchase individual books that one races through at such a rate. Erin Celello's thoughtful debut novel Miracle Beach falls into a genre category that I don't often read, but I enjoyed it and it will repay attention by fans of Joshilyn Jackson and Sara Gruen: I found this one because several years ago I was very much a fan of Erin's triathlon blog!

-verses

I've been intrigued by the idea of the Amazon Kindle Singles (basically, 99 cents for a piece roughly akin in scale and ambition to a substantial New Yorker feature - sorry to put it that way, but that's the long and short of it!), and I've just readDouglas Wolk's funny and moving contribution to the series, Comic-Con Strikes Again! I do not know that I will ever attend Comic-Con myself, though you never know with these things... - at any rate, this gives a very good glimpse of it. Definitely recommended.

Good paintings and bad fathers

At Triple Canopy, David Levine on the matter of Rothko.

Acrobatic historians

Tim Adams interviews Simon Schama for the Observer. On self-doubt and big projects:

You are not thinking hard enough if you are sleeping well. And you would have to be unhinged to take on a subject like the French revolution, or Rembrandt, and not feel some trepidation. There is always the possibility that you will crash and burn and the whole thing will be a horrible, vulgar, self-indulgent mess.