Conversational Reading

ORP Your Reading
My prediction: less than a year after this releases no one will have remembered it ever existed. You've also just gotta love... »
Haruki Murakami, Music Addict
Makes sense. “I was astounded by the size of his music collection: he must have something like 10,000 records,” says... »
The Photographic Spawn of Benjamin
Geoff Dyer connects Benjamin, Barthes, Sontag, and Berger. Berger was indebted to both of the others. Dedicted to... »
The Lived Experience of Literature
I like Franco Moretti's work because the conclusions he draws feel pertinent to how I comprehend books. My approach to... »
Writing Courses Are Useless
While I think Hanif Kureishi is slightly overstating things, I agree with this in spirit. But I would very quickly add that... »
Atwood’s Sebald Lecture
Audio of the full thing is now up on Soundcloud.... »
Destroy the Evidence
The classy thing to do is to remove the ephemera before you sell the book. I bought my copy of this book (used,... »
A Tiny Bit More on the Academic Life
One more post on this subject, since it continues to be fascinating to me. One of the other reasons that I've concluded the... »
The Amtrack Train Scheme
Given Amtrack's new plan to host writers on its train, I'm feeling a little prophetic. As I say here, I've long known the value... »
On Whether the Universe Is Really Just a Simulation
Strange stuff. Very clever. But is there any way to empirically test this hypothesis? Indeed, there may be. In a recent... »

P.: http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/11/28/reviews/991128.28boxer
P.: I suspect it had something to do with the fact that Weber's
luke clancy: obviously, people who listen to audiobooks dont spell good.
luke clancy: what a terrifically helpful thing to do. i was listening to
Pete: They request a review copy, don't review it, then sell it a
Eric Wojcik: I know I've long appreciated the hell out of the trilogy. I
Padraic: One thing that I think gets lost in both sides of the debate

Fall Read: The Tunnel by William H. Gass

A group read of the book that either "engenders awe and despair" or "[goads] the reader with obscenity and bigotry," or both. Info here. Buy the book here and support this site.

Summer Read: A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava

Fans of Gaddis, Pynchon, DeLillo: A group read of the book that went from Xlibris to the University of Chicago Press. Info here. Buy the book here and support this site.

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.

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.

The Summer of Genji

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

Your Face This Spring

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

Life and Times of Mr. S by Vivek Narayanan December 2, 2013
What does it mean to be an Indian writer? Does it mean you’re writing in Hindi? Or Tamil? Or Bengali? Or any of the many dozens of languages that have produced high literary achievement? Does it mean you’ve grown up in India (like Rushdie, or Kipling), or live in India (like Arundhati Roy, or Ruth Prawar Jhabvala), or are of Indian descent (like Naipaul or J […]
Blinding Volume I: The Left Wing by Mircea Cărtărescu December 2, 2013
Cărtărescu's first volume, built around childhood memories and family stories of his protagonist, Mircea, provides vivid descriptions of Bucharest, a beloved city that emerges from a surreal landscape, whose future is uncertain. Yet it also weaves in dreams and memories, obscuring the lines between hallucinations and reality throughout. His prose reflec […]
Damnation by Janice Lee December 2, 2013
Janice Lee's latest novel, Damnation, may initially present itself as a work of "critical theory" in disguise. A rumination upon cinema—specifically, the collaborations of director Bela Tarr and novelist László Krasznahorkai—the book is more broadly concerned with the experience, in all its torpor and extravagance, of watching films. Though pe […]
Roth Unbound: A Writer and His Books by Claudia Roth Pierpont December 2, 2013
It wasn’t until midway through the second chapter—fifteen pages that nimbly narrate Roth’s childhood and life before publication—that I realized I was reading a biography. You’ll forgive me for thinking otherwise before then. The marketing materials, again, are no help. “This is not a biography,” the blurb intones, “but something more rewarding: an attempt t […]
Ancient History: A Paraphase by Joseph McElroy December 2, 2013
Ancient History’s most unusual and distinctive feature may be its fusion of scientific discourse and the textures of American life. Concepts from geometry, vector-field theory, and anthropology animate a narrative exploration of friendship between the narrator and his childhood friends Al and Bob, spread over diverse locales and several decades. Dozens of ne […]
Cannonball by Joseph McElroy December 2, 2013
With Cannonball, McElroy returns to familiar themes of family relations and criminal/political intrigue, this time in the setting of the Iraq War. As in most McElroy novels, the story begins in the middle, a space between, the still moment at the top of a dive’s arc, “a slowness so divided it might never finish in your mind.” The narrator, Zach, a “slow on t […]
The African Shore by Rodrigo Rey Rosa December 2, 2013
Guatemalan author Rodrigo Rey Rosa opens his 1998 novel The African Shore with a Moroccan shepherd boy obliviously meandering by reminders of Tangier’s history. First, he passes by a ruined Spanish boating club and then the large abandoned Perdicaris house—the one-time home of the unofficial head of the international community in Tangier, and the site of his […]
Uncollected Poems by R.S. Thomas December 2, 2013
The latest volume, culled by the editors from newspapers, magazines and journals, spans Thomas’ sixty-year writing career. The earliest poem collected dates from 1939; the latest, from his final years and after. Almost absent from these fugitive pieces are Thomas’ signature arguments with God. With Geoffrey Hill, he may be the great embattled poet of faith f […]
My Poems Won’t Change the World: Selected Poems by Patrizia Cavalli December 2, 2013
Italian poet Patrizia Cavalli has become known for her lucid, supremely accessible work which lends itself well to translation. The themes which unify her work seem to center around the process of reimagining the domestic. In her writing, housework, childcare, traditionally feminine crafts (such as weaving), and relationships with men are topics that she inv […]
Valuing Experimental Literary Book Publishing as Non-Monetized Thought December 1, 2013
Since we appeared together last spring on the Left Forum panel on the future of experimental literary publishing, I have been trying to state clearly my intuition that our discussions about “the future of the book” have been missing something crucial. After reading George Dyson’s extraordinary history of the making of the first high-speed, random-access stor […]

First (?) Pale King Review

Bookforum tells me that PW’s review of The Pale King is the first. The lede is decidedly dour: . . . continue reading, and add your comments

I registered two nice appearances yesterday in those big-time NYC periodicals. First off, The New Yorker’s Book Bench ran a very nice post on the simply beautiful covers for Melville House’s new Heinrich Boll titles. And, as you can see, right at the top of the item is the cover for The Clown, with my name, wee but quite legible . . . . . . continue reading, and add your comments

James O. Incandeza’s Films To be Screened

So a bunch of artists put together an exhibition of some films they made inspired by James O. Incandeza’s oeuvre, as described in a footnote to Infinite Jest. They’re calling it “A Failed Entertainment.” Here for instance is a still from The Medusa vs. the Odalisque by Jessica Segall: . . . continue reading, and add your comments

More Thoughts on The Pale King

I readily admit, I’m a Pale King skeptic. In fact, I’m pretty skeptical about all posthumous, incomplete texts. In most cases, if an author didn’t finish it, I’m not really interested in reading it (with obvious exceptions; e.g., Kafka). At The Howling Fantods, a great DFW site in general, Nick Maniatis has an alternative view that’s worth a look. Here’s the start: . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Is This What The Pale King Should Have Looked Like?

Earlier this week, I mentioned that The New Yorker has published a work by David Foster Wallace entitled Backbone, an excerpt from The Pale King. Now there is an extremely interesting Google Doc that purports to offer “Changes between the transcription of David Foster Wallace reading ‘A fragment of a longer thing’ (Dec. 2000) and The New Yorker’s publication of that story as ‘Backbone’ (Feb. 28, 2011).” . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Pale King Excerpt in The New Yorker

In case that rock you’ve been living under is a little heavy . . . & if you want, you can pre-order the book here.

VIDEO: New BBC David Foster Wallace Documentary

45 minute DFW documentary from the BBC. Need I say more?

Surely you have 45 minutes . . . . . . continue reading, and add your comments

On Wallace’s Philosophy Thesis

Levi Asher isn’t too hot on DFW’s “new” “book,” Fate Time and Language: . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Understanding DFW’s Thesis

Everybody who has a grasp of formal logic, raise your hand. Okay, unless I’ve vastly underestimated my popularity among the philosophy grad students, that should not be to many of you. But if you are to make an honest attempt to read DFW’s thesis, Fate, Time, and Language, then you’ll probably want to have some understanding of this stuff. . . . continue reading, and add your comments

The Introduction to David Foster Wallace’s Thesis

In case you’ve forgotten (and let’s face it, unless you’re an enormous fanboy, you probably have), David Foster Wallace’s college thesis goes on sale in December from Columbia University Press under the title Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will. CUP is now offering an excerpt from James Ryerson’s introduction to the book: . . . continue reading, and add your comments

The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)

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 Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)

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.

Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)

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.

Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)

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.

The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)

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.

The End of Oulipo?

Lady Chatterley’s Brother

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