Tag Archives: Books

Reading on Reading: 5 May 2009

One: Two pieces on the late J.G. Ballard: the first, an appreciation from Martin Amis, comes via Nick Antosca; the other is a 1996 interview with Ballard appearing now on HTML Giant. (An earlier Amis piece on Ballard is collected in Visiting Mrs. Nabokov, and comes highly recommended.)

Two: Shane Jones and Blake Butler, in conversation at Powell’s on writing, promotion, the internet, and other topics of myriad interest.

Three: Alan Jacobs on “URLs for books” — essentially, attempting to use technology to allow readers of different editions of the same work to share a common ground.

notes, briefly, on ‘am/pm’

I’ve just finished Amelia Gray‘s AM/PM. The spine lists it as “a book by Amelia Gray”, and that, rather than “stories by”, sounds about right: it’s composed of just over a hundred works of flash fiction, many of which share characters, and is structured in such a way to provide a fair amount of emotional payoff by the end.

Which doesn’t at all capture just how readable this is. There’s a bittersweet absurdity to it, a way in which the familiar is rendered surreal and unpredictable — a quality that it shares with work as diverse as The Dismemberment Plan’s “The Ice of Boston” and Emily Horne and Joey Comeau’s A Softer World. The sentences are neatly structured, as are the stories: there isn’t a wasted word to be found here.

(Obligatory note here that I am not, perhaps, entirely unobjective with respect to publisher featherproof books.)

notes on farhad manjoo’s notes on the kindle

At Slate, Farhad Manjoo examines the new version of the Kindle, and comes up with one of the best metaphors to describe what is, perhaps, its largest stumbling block:

Say Barnes & Noble signed a deal to sell the next Twilight book at a huge discount. But with a catch-the book would be published in invisible ink, and in order to read it you’d need to buy a special Barnes & Noble black light. This is ludicrous, of course, and no bookstore would ever attempt such a deal. But what’s the Kindle other than a fancy digital decoder ring?

Manjoo’s analysis of digital publishing in comparison to digital music is one of the more nuanced ones I’ve seen, and the conclusions he reaches (think, basically, of all of the negative connotations monopolies and Wal-Mart’s pricing bring to mind) are more than a little ominous.

That said — if you’re feeling like a good counter-argument, via Richard Nash comes this piece by Mike Shatzkin, which argues that this isn’t actually the case.

notes on narrative versions

Earlier this week, I wrote about alternate versions of narrative works — novels and films, to be more specific. Michael Hemmingson posted a  response regarding the Raymond Carver question:

The unedited carver book, BEGINNERS, will be out in october in the UK from Jonathan Cape. In August, the Library of America will publish a 900 page omnibus Collected Works that will also contain the unedited and edited versions for comparison.

Which makes me wonder — this particular case will ultimately leave both versions for the reader to peruse. Similarly, if and when I read Shadow Country, I can refer back to my copy of Killing Mister Watson if I so desire. The same is true for film: Criteron’s Mr. Arkadin set, for instance. And I’d argue that having access to multiple versions, to see just how a work came about and how it evolved, can be deeply educational. (I can remember reading older drafts, for instance, of Robert Towne‘s screenplay for Chinatown while in college, and learning a lot about storytelling through seeing how the different elements of the film interacted.)

notes on wording + technology

Earlier this week, I read something on Andrew Sullivan’s blog that reminded me of John Siracusa’s piece on electronic reading devices, referenced earlier this month. In a post entitled “The End of Permanence”, Sullivan argued that an advantage to the digital distribution of books is the ability to constantly revise and update information. I’m more skeptical of this, but part of this comes from the fact that the bulk of the books I read are fiction, and revising narrative works after the fact brings to mind conflicting images: on one hand, Shadow Country; on the other, Greedo shooting first. See also the late-2007 discussion of a possible collection of Raymond Carver stories sans Gordon Lish’s edits, which raised any number of questions of what the “definitive” versions of those stories might come to be.

Nonfiction — particularly political nonfiction, the area in which Sullivan resides — is a little more complex. Given that much of my reading is done on public transportation, I generally wait for the paperback edition of the books in question. And in the case of nonfiction works, more often than not, the paperbacks come with additional information, an afterword of some type.

One example: when I do read nonfiction, much of it has to do with politics. 2008 saw the hardcover releases of Matthew Yglesias‘s Heads In the Sand, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam‘s Grand New Party, and Rick Perlstein‘s Nixonland — all books that struck me as interesting, all sparking debates in which I’d be interested in participating. And yet — chances are, the trade paperbacks of at least one of these will end up being more comprehensive than the hardcovers. And cost less money. And take up less space in my bag. Ergo: the incentive’s on me to wait.

In many ways, this seems bizarre: if I pay for the hardcover edition, I’m getting more money to the publisher and, by inference, to the author(s). And yet I’m getting an edition of the book that will, most likely, be supplanted in roughly a year. I’m trying to come up with an analogy, and all I can think of is some theoretical world where, of the two Criterion editions of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, the more expensive turned out to be the single-disc version with fewer extra features. (At the very least, it seems strange that the publishers aren’t setting up some way to make sure that owners of the hardcover edition can access the new material.)

Where the Siracusa piece comes into play is in his debate over semantics — which leaves me wondering whether changes in technology and distribution will cause a significant gulf between our understanding of what a work of fiction is relative to a work of nonfiction, and whether the gulf between the two could widen even further. In other words — there are differences now, but they’re both books. Decades from now, will each have shifted into its own medium?

in which tao lin and nick antosca talk writing

I’ve already rambled a bit about Nick Antosca’s Midnight Picnic, one of the most memorably unsettling books I’ve read in a while. At MobyLives, Tao Lin interviewed Antosca; their conversation heads into Antosca’s writing process and covers pretty much everything novel-length he’s written. Particularly of interest is how Midnight Picnic was written and how some of the more surreal logic came about.

Also, there’s this:

I think the funniest books I’ve ever read are Lolita and American Psycho, neither of which is generally considered humor writing.

Which is pretty bold, as bold statements go. (Also, it’s better explained in the interview itself.)

Links: 02.04.2009

One: Asta In the Wings author Jan Elizabeth Watson assembles a playlist for Largehearted Boy.

Two: Simon Reynolds on zines. [via Warren Ellis]

Three: John Siracusa on digital publishing. [via The Book Oven]

This last one merits some qualification, as I don’t agree with all of Siracusa’s conclusions or his central metaphor. (There was a good debate happening in the comments section when last I checked.) I do think he makes two spot-on points, though: the first being that people are far more likely to purchase and read books digitally using an existing device as opposed to purchasing something specifically designed for that purpose. The other has more to do with semantics: the fact that an album is an album, regardless of whether the format is LP, CD, or MP3; yet a digital book has the “e-book” tag.

assorted notes on newspaper coverage, technology, and the selling of books

Couple of random links that I think dovetail interestingly, beginning with the announcement of the closure of the Washington Post‘s Book World section.

As it happens, Book World never garnered much advertising from publishers, who generally spend very little on newspaper ads. Publishers now focus their marketing dollars on cooperative agreements with chain bookstores, which guarantee that certain books will receive prominent display at the front of stores.

Reading that segued into this post on The Written Nerd, citing an LA Times report on the current state of independent bookstores. And connected to all of that is this Conversational Reading post on book websites, which explores the question of how to properly create a website for a writer or book. (Hint: Mark Sarvas and Neil Gaiman are those praised in the piece.)

***

As for where I stand on the closure of the section itself — my thoughts on this right now are pretty close to those of Edward Champion. The Washington Post isn’t ending its coverage of books (though I wish they weren’t cutting the overall number of books reviewed in a year); nor do they seem to be looking to change the quality or nature of those reviews. And given that I don’t live in Washington, my method of accessing those reviews isn’t exactly changing.  One thought that endures from one of Champion’s updates:

…one advantage that a print-based newspaper has over a blog is the manner in which a reader can discover an article adjacent to another, much like the way in which you discover an unexpected book next to another in a library or a bookstore. Given this exploratory reading tendency, does it even make sense for any newspaper today to maintain a stand-alone books section?

In which HTML Giant examines George Saunders

At HTML Giant, Justin Taylor looks at the work of George Saunders via his short story “Al Roosten”.

Is George Saunders the most radical fiction writer writing in the mainstream today? Or to put it a possibly better way, is Saunders the most mainstream of today’s radical fiction writers?

A damn good piece on a writer whose work sometimes moves me and sometimes frustrates me; in a lot of ways, it clarifies just why his work tends to have that effect on me.

reading on reading: online magazines + paper camp

At HTML Giant, Jimmy Chen looks at Issuu’s method for displaying text, which — to these eyes — essentially looks like figuring out a way to mimic the action of holding a magazine open in the online space. This is something I’ve seen used a fair amount of places, including by publications I like, and I’m a little baffled by it. I like reading articles in magazines; I like reading articles online. I can argue the pros and cons of each, but — more importantly — I think the critical thing is determining what the best way is to display those articles. I’d tend to argue that using one kind of media to mimic the properties of another leaves you with a hybrid that loses the advantages of each.

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In a similar vein — Warren Ellis today directed readers to his earlier coverage of the Papernet, to Matt Jones’s announcement of the PaperCamp conference, and to Jeremy Keith’s coverage of the same. There’s a lot to take in here — half the reason I’m posting all of these links is so that I’ll have them all in a handy place — but given the growing theme in granularity in publishing (the Emerging Writers Network has had a lot of recent coverage of limited-run chapbooks, for instance) and publishers bridging the gap between online and printed work, this definitely seems like the beginning of something significant.

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It’s deeply frustrating to read “the future of publishing” pieces that tend to focus on an entirely digital future for books. Mainly because — for me — there seems to be a general “digital is always better” mentality that doesn’t always make sense. Does a perennially updated digital work make sense in some cases? Sure. But there seems to be a call for a singular format even as we evolve the ability to present work in a host of different forms, and at times it seems like a rush to standardize may deprive works from being presented in what might be their ideal format.

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Update: looks like the next PaperCamp will happen in Cohoes, New York in around two weeks.

reading on reading: three links for a thursday night

One: The event took place a month ago, but I’m only now reading about Sam Lipsyte and James Murphy talking art at Joe’s Pub. (Link via Jessica Suarez.)

Two: THE2NDHAND’s Todd Dills on Arthur Nersesian’s The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx. I’ve only read one of Nersesian’s novels (Manhattan Loverboy), which I wasn’t taken with, but a combination of alternate history, paranoia, and political unrest definitely has my interest piqued.

Three: Via Edward Champion: this Chicago Reader piece on the pay rates (or lack thereof) of the Huffington Post and what that might may for the future of freelance writing describes one of the more frustrating scenarios I’ve encountered recently.

novels prose & graphic: 2008

This is by no means a complete list of books I read that impressed me in 2008. It’s more of a selection of a few that I particularly dug, or that got under my skin, or did something that caught my eye. You’ll notice a strange dearth of proper 2008 releases on here. Part of this is the fact that, as a regular user of public transit, I tend to prefer the trade paperback over the hardcover; there are also a few highly-regarded books from 2008 (Home, 2666) that I plan to read but haven’t as of yet. 2008 was, in many ways, about discovery — either being introduced to authors whose work I hadn’t read before or seeing a different side of others.

Charles D’Ambrosio
The Dead Fish Museum, 2006
Orphans, 2005
So I’m in Seattle in April, 2007, and I make the trek to the Elliott Bay Book Company. On their staff recommendations shelf is a collection with the eye-catching title The Dead Fish Museum and a fine cover design to boot. So, of course, I procrastinate on picking it up. Back in Seattle the following April, I decide to remedy this, and ended up reading said collection a month or so later. Orphans, a collection of essays, was picked up and read a few weeks ago, while I was in the midst of holiday shopping. In both, there’s a sense of place that’s hard to shake; D’Ambrosio has a skill at rendering characters deftly and intimately while still making us aware of elemental forces around them. The news that he’s working on a novel damn well warms my heart.

Barry Hannah
Airships, 1978
Charles Portis
True Grit, 1968
Two authors whose work I put off reading for far too long. I read Airships and The Dead Fish Museum back-to-back in June and got a fine sense of what the short story could do. True Grit was just flat-out good: the kind of novel where the style was ever-present but never interfered with the plot, instead having a deepening effect on it.

Julio Cortázar
Blow-Up and Other Stories, 1967
I read Cortazar’s The Winners last year and had tremendously mixed feelings on it: it was beautifully written and some of the more lyrical sections were among the most propulsive prose I’ve ever taken in. At the same time, though, the pacing felt at odds with the events of the book: stately even as the book’s characters descended into an ominous, anarchic paranoia. The stories in Blow-Up… (hat tip: Todd Dills) range from realistic narratives on art to more surreal occasions that foreshadow, well, a lot of the more offbeat work I enjoy these days.

Steve Erickson
Zeroville, 2007
Maybe my favorite of the books I read in 2008. It’s got any number of things I like present — film theory, mysterious conspiracies, punk rock, and bizarre obsessions — and it’s both constantly unsettling and compulsively readable.

Chris Adrian
Gob’s Grief, 2001
A Better Angel, 2008
I read Chris Adrian’s The Children’s Hospital in 2007 after being impressed with his short fiction. It’s a huge, at times ungainly book, and over a year later I haven’t been able to get certain parts of it — particularly the ending, and its implications and cosmology — out of my head. Gob’s Grief, his first novel, brings together similar elements but with a setting in the years following the Civil War. Part of what I like and admire about Adrian’s fiction is his thematic reach, and Gob’s Grief doesn’t disappoint there. A Better Angel — which I reviewed here — collects many of the stories that first impressed me. While not a perfect collection — in part because some of the stories feel too close, thematically — it’s hard to say just how good Adrian is when he’s at his peak.

Nick Antosca
Midnight Picnic, 2009
Midnight Picnic doesn’t waste any words. Technically, it’s a ghost story, but not a familiar one. The first time I read Kelly Link’s “The Specialist’s Hat,” I felt as though its supernatural elements worked according to a logic that was, at its core, entirely unknowable. Midnight Picnic‘s like that: its protagonist ends up being caught up in the plans of a child, murdered decades before, to revenge himself on his killer; the landscape that they travel, constantly shifting, reflects an America reeling from the war in Iraq and the neglect of New Orleans. It’s not a book you can shake.

Zach Plague
boring boring boring boring boring boring, 2008
Anything but, Zach Plague’s first novel felt at times like Paul Auster’s Oracle Night on a three-day bender, an irreverent yet carefully structured metafictional satire of art-world pretensions and music-scene excess. Between it and Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai, this was the year I got to see just how typography itself can be made to work in service to a story.

Matt Fraction and Fabio Moon
Casanova: Gula, 2008
Pedro Almodovar’s recent films have done something neat with structure: essentially, after you hit a certain point in the narrative, you realize that what’s seemed like a series of loosely connected instances and events has turned out to be, in fact, a meticulously plotted work. Gula, the second volume of Matt Fraction’s collaboration with brothers Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba, is kind of like that, but with spies, giant robots, and things blowing up.

Chris Onstad
Achewood: The Great Outdoor Fight, 2008
I originally typed in “surreal and amazing,” and then deleted it, figuring I could come up with a better description. Turns out I can’t. Surreal and amazing.