Lady Chatterley’s Brother

The first ebook in the new TQC Long Essays series, Life Pereccalled “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.

Available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and direct from this site:


Translate This Book!

Ever wonder what English is missing? Called "a fascinating Life Perecread" 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 for 99 cents.

Spring 2011 Group Read

Life Perec

Spring Read: Life A User's Manual by Georges Perec

Starting March 2011, read the greatest novel from an experimental master. Info here. Buy the book here and support this site.

For low prices on Las Vegas shows visit ShowTickets.com

You Say

Shop though these links = Support this site

Interviews from Conversational Reading

New Books
See this page for interviews with leading authors, translators, publishers, and more.


Group Reads

Last Samurai

Fall Read: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt

A group read of one of the '00s most-lauded postmodern novels. Info here. Buy the book here and support this site.

Tale of Genji

The Summer of Genji

Two great online lit magazines team up to read a mammoth court drama, the world's first novel.

Your Face Tomorrow

Your Face This Spring

A 3-month read of Javier Marias' mammoth book Your Face Tomorrow

  • In Red by Magdalena Tulli December 5, 2011
    In Red is Tulli's most conventional novel—which is not to say it could finally be described as a conventional work of fiction. Still, to the extent it does offer individuated characters, some degree of plot "movement," and a strongly delineated setting, readers hesitant to commit to one of the novels that seems formidably experimental might fi […]
  • Show Up, Look Good by Mark Wisniewski December 5, 2011
    Early in Show Up, Look Good, Mark Wisniewski’s second novel, newly single Michelle meets up with an old friend, Barb, from the Midwest. Michelle has already been portrayed as a woman who attracts all variations of awkwardness and bad luck: she’s awakened to find her ex, Thom, “having his way, well, with a marital aid,” agreed to bathe an old woman as part of […]
  • An Ermine in Czernopol by Gregor von Rezzori December 5, 2011
    Gregor von Rezzori’s fictitious city Czernopol exists at the edge of civilization, on the border of memory and invention, lying “somewhere in the godforsaken southeastern part of Europe.” In reality it is Czernowitz, in the region known as the Bukovina, ceded by the Ottoman Empire to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1775, then after World War I part of Romania […]
  • 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami December 4, 2011
    The publication of 1Q84, Haruki Murakami’s biggest, most ambitious novel to date, seems to have brought his career full-circle. This is not simply because the book has widely been posited as Murakami’s Brothers Karamazov—that is, an attempt to write a meganovel summing up his life’s writing—but even more because of the trajectory Murakami has taken as a writ […]
  • Ordinary Sun by Matthew Henriksen December 4, 2011
    Ordinary Sun at times feels like listening to confession in a parallel universe, a world with all the guts displayed on the outside, and the underworld on top. Make no mistake though: there is no otherworld. Henriksen’s world is this world. Who doesn’t recognize her own kind in lines like these, from “Corolla in the Midden”: “I do not dream. I just watch / f […]
  • Selected Poems by Jaan Kaplinski December 4, 2011
    Though sometimes referred to as a Modernist, Kaplinski’s poetry often has the feel of a classical, and older, poetics. The poems have a gravitas; they do not mock, toy, or play with the reader. They invite the reader to eavesdrop on the thoughts, remembrances, and philosophy of a person as they flicker and flow. This contemplative, philosophic strain is pres […]
  • Joseph Brodsky: A Literary Life by Lev Loseff December 4, 2011
    A martyr is not necessarily a saint, in any case, and those who knew him didn’t turn to him for saintliness. He was spellbinding, an electrical jolt for the psyche. An encounter with him, as a colleague or as a mentor, could be life-changing and endlessly rewarding. Warts and all, the real man carries far more interest than the photoshopped one Loseff gives […]
  • From Fiona and Ferdinand by Josef Haslinger December 4, 2011
    On the day of Bachmaier’s funeral there were two messages from my mother waiting for me on the answering machine. In the first one she asked me to call her back, in the second she said that the village was in an uproar: I was to come at once. Calls from my mother were rare. […]
  • Self-Portrait of an Other by Cees Nooteboom and Max Neumann December 4, 2011
    As hard as you look at it, Max Neumann’s paintings don’t reveal much about his method, but two recent English-language publications imply that he must enjoy collaborating with luminaries of world literature. AnimalInside, reviewed in The Quarterly Conversation's issue 25 by Christiane Craig, brought Neumann together with László Krasznahorkai, the presti […]
  • Learning to Pray in the Age of Technique by Gonçalo M. Tavares December 4, 2011
    Someone once noted that it’s easy to have virtue when facing adversity but the real test of character comes when one is given power. To test this aphorism, one need look no further than Gonçalo M. Tavares’ novel Learning to Pray in the Age of Technique for evidence of how power corrupts and attracts the corrupt. Tavares is a prolific writer from Portugal who […]

Blogging Monks

Amidst general thoughts on making it 5 years as a blogger, Max Magee, the lead over at The Millions, has this to say:

Though some folks in the bookish corner of the blogosphere shy away from it, and others criticize their colleagues’ ad placement but stop the presses for flashy pledge drives, I am unashamedly proud of The Millions for marching onwards towards being a legitimate literature and arts publication. In a time when many are fearful of the diminishing commercial viability of literature and the arts, it is heartening to see that The Millions has grown from a hobby into a business, albeit one that is still nascent and that is, because of the small sums involved, still very much a labor of love. While I harbor no delusions that The Millions will become a heavyweight of the blog world, the opportunity is there to keep making it better, and I find that exciting.

Although I’m not sure what exactly separates a hobby from a business (making any money? making a profit? does money even have anything to do with it?) I’m generally in agreement with this.

It’s strange how prevalent remains the train of thought that runs something like "Bloggers are in it for love, as opposed to pure commercial/career advancement, so thus they should shun all attempts to make money from their blogs, use them to further writing careers, etc." It’s as though when you sign up with Tyepapd you have to take your holy orders as well and lock yourself up in a cloister. To me, this makes no sense for a number of reasons.

Primary among them is that the same people who often voice this blog-abnegation creedo seem to have no problem imbibing the work of (and sometimes contributing to) newspapers and magazines. In fact, I don’t really know of anyone pure enough that they entirely shun the enterprise of mainstream literary criticism. And yet, though they recognize the good criticism can still come out of for-profit enterprises, they seem to think that criticism on for-profit blogs is a betrayal of some sacred trust.

Really, anyone who truly believes in the blog-abnegation creedo should check out political blogs. This is where the real money is being made, and it’s rare to find a political blog that has suddenly become corrupted by the major money flowing through it. (If anything, all that money has allowed these bloggers to extend their reach and make their blogs far better enterprises.)

I don’t see a problem with people who, at root, have a deep love of literature, but who would also like to use that love to get a little cash/attention/respect/etc. In fact, most people I know wish they could get a little of each by doing what it is they say they love. As with anything, some individuals will go too far in trying to get paid, but that doesn’t mean that people can’t develop a balance between the two.

So basically, if Max sees his blog as a business and wants to expand it along those lines, good for him. Obviously, when one begins to take a business-minded approach to anything there are certain risks involved, but intelligent, well-meaning individuals have managed to circumvent those risks in the past, so I see no reason why Max can’t do the same.

You Might Also Like:

More from Conversational Reading:

  1. Bloggies I dunno, maybe the Bloggies are a bigger deal that I realized, but I find it difficult to get too worked up over blog awards....
  2. TEV at Wallace Reading Even though TEV claims not to like his fiction (say it ain’t so), he was on the scene at the latest DFW reading. TEV provides...
  3. Big Money or Critical Taste Who wins? At Art Basel in Miami Beach last December, just as we were about to go out and perform on the imminent death of...
  4. Postmodernists Beware Your days are numbered, so long as the motherfucking Republicans control Congress. WASHINGTON, D.C. – Several consumer, arts and public interest groups today jointly sent...
  5. Prizes A good essay by Louis Menand on literary prizes. When the first Nobel Prize in Literature went to Sully Prudhomme, in 1901, the choice was...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

2 comments to Blogging Monks

  • ed

    Since both you and Max appear too diffident to cite me by name, I’ll save you the trouble and chime in here. My particular post, which was by no means a slam of what you and Max are doing, merely pointed to the current emphasis away from community in the litblogosphere — a shift that is transforming this medium into something not altogether different from the newspapers we once complained about. Blogs as inflexible gatekeepers, as opposed to a “conversational” and interconnected medium. As such, if the litblogosphere is not careful, it may very well face the same problems of staleness and complacency that dominate some newspaper book review sections (I’m looking at you, Tanenhaus!) on a weekly basis. Community kept us all helping each other, working to innovate the medium and keeping things fresh and lively. And the honesty and encouragement within that network helped many to spawn their own projects. Which was a very good thing.
    Now, this early excitement has been replaced by the “chore” of turning out a daily post, as opposed to the passion of books or the ambition of a project like the Quarterly Conversation. I count three spelling/grammatical errors in this post, Scott. I’ve long told you, both publicly and privately, that you’re a good writer and have interesting thoughts about books. But in this case, why didn’t you have somebody take a look at this post? Why don’t you take Conversational Reading more seriously?
    You have every right, of course, to fill this blog up with intrusive advertisements. Just as I have every right to pursue a “flashy pledge drive” that did not intrude upon the content and that was very clear in its ethics. I agree with you that how one goes about making money at something they love is entirely their business. I only express reservations about how pronounced it appears within the content, and to what degree it causes one’s words or passions to be corrupted.
    Community, by contrast, offered something to litblogs that was comparable to the SETI@Home project, where literature served as the program we all kept running on our respective computers for a common and united goal. Now that money has become a more salient part of the equation, I’m wondering if, in this self-interest, that the litblogosphere is now starting to resemble the fragmented snake in Ben Franklin’s woodcut.

  • Ambien order wow what a price restorejustice org.

    Cheap ambien online order ambien now with discount. Online pharmacy order ambien. Buy ambien online order cheap ambien now. Ambien order wow what a price restorejustice org.

Leave a Reply

  

  

  

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>