The End of Oulipo? The End of Oulipo? My book (co-authored with Lauren Elkin), published by Zero Books. Available everywhere. Order it from Amazon, or find it in bookstores nationwide. 
Lady Chatterley’s Brother Lady Chatterley's Brother. The first ebook in the new TQC Long Essays series,  called “an exciting new project” by Chad Post of Open Letter and Three Percent. Why can't Nicholson Baker write about sex? And why can Javier Marias? We investigate why porn is a dead end, and why seduction paves the way for the sex writing of the future. Read an excerpt.
Available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and direct from this site:
Translate This Book! Ever wonder what English is missing? Called "a fascinating  read" by The New Yorker, Translate This Book! brings together over 40 of the top translators, publishers, and authors to tell us what books need to be published in English. Get it on Kindle.
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See you all in 2010.
This should keep you busy till at least 2011.
Pim & Francie, one of the strangest books we’ve reviewed in a while, courtesy of Scott Bryan Wilson. Here’s a taste of the review:
Adding to the confusion are sequences that seem like they’re from something longer but are taken out of that context and stuck in the middle of the book. For instance, Pim and Francie, having dismembered some sort of animal (i.e., taken off his arms, legs, and penis), tease him that they’ll let him go on one condition, but we never see any event preceding this two-page sequence, nor anything after it. Additionally, . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Ron Silliman:
Some poets have chosen to embrace the new with everything from flarf to technology-based visual poetries. Others have decided that the “timeless” values of tradition will outlast even this. They recall and sometimes reiterate the archaeologist’s maxim that ultimately hard copy is truth. If you can’t dig it up in 5,000 years, did it ever exist? Ian Hamilton Finlay, with his stone-carved minimal texts, may outlast us all.
Moleskine Literario posts a review of El fondo del cielo by Rodrigo Fresan. Cielo, you might recall, was Enrique Vila-Matas’ recommendation from The Quarterly Conversation’s Translate This Book! roundtable.
It does sound interesting:
Entre la imposibilidad de verse a uno mismo fuera del Universo, y la necesidad imperiosa de ver un planeta distinto al nuestro, se forma esta novela que según el autor “quizá no sea la novela de amor más grande pero sí –seguro- la más larga” pues alcanza desde el estallido del Big Bang hasta el final de la Era de Las . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Chad unveils Open Letter’s titles for summer 2010.
Some excellent stuff here. I very enthusiastically reviewed Quim Monzo’s The Enormity of the Tragedy for the Philly Inquirer two years ago, so I’m thrilled to see Open Letter will be bringing out his novel Gasoline.
Also on the list is A Thousand Peaceful Cities by Jerzy Pilch, which we excerpted and discussed at The Quarterly Conversation. And I’m thrilled to see The Private Lives of Trees by Alejandro Zambra since we very much liked his novella Bonsai (am I noting a tree theme . . . continue reading, and add your comments
I've been on a bit of a Stoner crusade since I read this book back in October. It really is that good, and given that it was out of print for a good 30 years until NYRB published their edition in 2006, I figured it must be fairly overlooked.
Well, looks like it may not be quite as overlooked . . . continue reading, and add your comments
For a while now I’ve cast a curious eye at my galley of Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer. There’s the obligatory Kafka reference on the back copy, there’s the rave from Thomas Mann, it’s from Archipelago books (always a positive sign), and the title just sounds interesting. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I have a mile-long stack of books compared to classic authors, praised by titans, put out by great publishers, and screaming for my attention. So, in other words, I haven’t really had that last push to take it down from the shelf.
Well, it might have just come. . . . continue reading, and add your comments
So, what'd you get today, and what'd you give to your book-loving friends?
Apropos of my Books to Watch for in 2010 post from last week, I’ve been receiving further suggestions (and finding more of my own picks). So I’ve updated the original list and will keep updating it as more suggestions roll in.
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Recommended Books DeLillo's major work before White Noise is probably his most underrated novel. Its all right here--the politics of paranoia, terrorism, the unnamable--set in an evocative, timeless Greece.
The most bizarre Abe novel I've yet read, which is indeed saying something. About a subclass of Japanese men who go around wearing boxes from the waist up (and then use them as domiciles in the evening), the book is also an experiment in perspective shifts, a highly unstable, metafictional first-person narrative, and an exploration of voyeurism, consumerism, and aberrant sexuality.
Charting the path to three gunshots--the one that killed filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, the one that disabled his Islamic extremist assassin, Mohammed Bouyeri, and the one that led to Vincent Van Gogh’s one hundred years earlier--Olsen tells three separate stories that resonate with one another on numerous levels: the logic of extremism, the role of the dissident in Dutch society, the limits of tolerance, the purpose of the artist, the feeling of the most important five minutes of your life. Read my interview with the author.
Creatively structured, well-executed epic novel of rural South Africa from 1950 - 2000. Takes on a lot and lives up to it magnificently. Highly recommended.
A book that's an interview about the book you're supposedly holding in your hands. Creative, potent, and full of life. Just what metafiction should be. Read my post on it.
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The Novels of Kim Young-ha
Graphs, Maps, Trees
The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)
The Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)
Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)
The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)
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