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With the James Wood review in this week’s New Yorker, it’s official: everyone has reviewed HHhH by Lauren Binet. And, well, the critics that I trust haven’t thought too much of it. Wood gives it a very mediocre review, pointing out sloppy prose and a facile meta-narrative structure.
Sam Sacks in the Wall Street Journal writes,
The Heydrich story is one of the war’s darkest, his murder a sensational coup; it would be hard not to turn the tale into an exciting book. Mr. Binet has tried. His rendering (translated from the French by Sam Taylor) . . . continue reading, and add your comments
The new book isn’t getting very good reviews. And this review even started out with a meta-critique of Franzen the media hound.
The problem reveals itself here, you see, because most of “Farther Away” takes Franzen himself as subject. Self-obsession is a hallmark of the essay. From Montaigne to Joseph Mitchell and beyond, sensibility, voice, and insightful idiosyncrasy offer the compelling arguments for publishing them. But Franzen isn’t Mitchell, and he’s surely not Montaigne. High standards, to be sure, but Franzen often invites himself into discussions of literary greatness, even though what we have to contend with . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Maybe this is why I’ve generally found Simon Critchley’s philosophy quite rewarding, whereas many others in his genre are dull reads and not worth the struggle. What he says is so true. I happen to believe there’s a sizable audience of people who are interested in literature and don’t loathe it, but do loathe the people who like to make it seem loathsome.
The discipline of the sentence is very important to me. It’s important to write well, and the way you learn to write well is by studying the English language and other languages too. I’m working . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Here is the schedule for the summer read of A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava. The dates correspond to the first day of the week in which we will be reading the indicated segment.
Discussion of each segment will occur during that week, probably with some looking back as we go further. And there will be four signed copies of the original POD edition to be given away at various points during the read.
Schedule
June 10: Chapter 1 to Chapter 3x2x1 (1 – 131) June 17: Chapter 3x2x1 to End of Part . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Douglas Messerli on Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard.
In Thomas Bernhard’s 1984 fiction, Holzfällen, moreover, we perceive that the feeling of disgust by some writers for others is not just an American phenomenon, but if we are to take the voice of Bernhard’s narrator as an example, perhaps even more virulently experienced in Austria. And, unless we are somehow involved in that scene, the petty hatreds and disgust (amounting almost to nausea) felt by the central character makes for great fun, as he cattily attacks his fellow dinner partners gathered together in Vienna’s Gentgasse for what the . . . continue reading, and add your comments
The next installment in the great Aira invasion of the North American continent is upon us: Varamo. My review has just published at The National:
Perhaps it is because Aira stays so close to Varamo’s daily routine that this is one of the most carefully observed of his novels. Due credit must be paid to the translator, Chris Andrews, for putting Aira’s quietly comic locutions into a well-tended English that maintains the compactness and freshness of the original. Each element Aira draws our attention to is placed into sharp focus before being discussed in short, entertaining digressions. . . . continue reading, and add your comments
AO Scott on Patience (After Sebald):
So “Patience (After Sebald)” may not, in the end, offer much in the way of explanation. It does not solve the puzzle of an oeuvre that, as it made its way from German to English, established its creator as a major and unique force in world literature. Once you read him, you may discern traces of his influence everywhere (in a book like Teju Cole’s “Open City,” for example) and may find yourself collecting thoughts and perceptions that qualify as Sebaldian. Whatever that might mean.
Harry Mathews, on confusion, as quoted in . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Lev Grossman talking about reviewing books is a little like that 50 Shades of Grey person talking about bring an author. Here, Grossman talks about how he picks books for review:
But then there’s the signal – that delicious, delicious signal. People often ask me how I choose books to review. There’s no simple answer; also no especially interesting answer. I review books if they do something I’ve never seen done before; or if I fall in love with them; or if they shock me or piss me off or otherwise won’t leave me alone; if they alter . . . continue reading, and add your comments
The LARB has a sharp review of The Femicide Machine, plus an interview with author Sergio González Rodríguez.
This caught my eye:
But González Rodríguez agreed to meet us and (winkingly, I thought) chose the patio of the Four Seasons hotel, with its menu of fancy cocktails and uniformed wait staff, as the place. You couldn’t miss the contrast between the setting and the subject matter when González Rodríguez called over the waiter for another round of drinks and then, smiling, pulled out a black-and-white picture to pass around the table. It was going to be . . . continue reading, and add your comments
It’s amazing that in 2012 The Atlantic can still publish something so clueless as this. Titled “Could the Internet Save Book Reviews?” the posting purports to be an investigation into just that. So, what vital new review sources does intrepid Atlantic reporter Sarah Fay turn up? After the obligatory smack at Amazon reviews, we learn,
But there are also signs of hope from pioneers like Nancy Pearl, the Seattle librarian behind “Book Lust.” Pearl tends to recommend rather than review but does so with the expertise that only a librarian or someone who works in an independent bookstore . . . continue reading, and add your comments
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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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Why Is Everyone Reviewing HHhH?
Naked Singularity Big Read Schedule
More on Bolano’s Journalist
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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