Conversational Reading

The New Deal for This Blog
Hey guys, it's 2015. This blog first went online in 2004. In Internet time, that's several geologic eras. In 2004, Google... »
Must Have Been an Interesting Translation
From Oulipian Frédéric Forte's Minute-Operas, translated by Daniel Levin Becker, Ian Monk, Michelle Noteboom, and... »
Interview with Rodrigo Rey Rosa
I emerge from the frigid depths of the winter holidays to offer you this link to an interview I conducted with the Guatemalan... »
NPR Love The White Review & M&L
Some love for two of my favorite journals at NPR. From The White Review, a fantastic quarterly arts journal in print and... »
Dictionary of Untranslatables
This came out about a year ago, and I have a feeling I may have even linked to a review at The New Inquiry already, but,... »
Buy Some Verso Books
Verso ebooks are 90% (yes NINETY PERCENT) off until Jan 1. But a few. Like some Franco Moretti, or some ZIZEK, or this... »
Season’s Greetings
I'd just like to make a year-end plug to ask that if you value this site, the please contribute a little toward shoring up my... »
Favorite Reads of 2014
Lila by Marilynne Robinson This isn't my favorite Marilynne Robinson book by a long shot, but even not-the-best Marilynne... »
Michael Hofmann on Richard Flanagan
The NYRB should really get this guy to review Jonathan Franzen's Purity. The Narrow Road to the Deep North has the scope... »
Coetzee’s Short Stories
Just published by Text Publishing. J.M. Coetzee swims strongly against the ebbing tide. Not only has Text Publishing... »

Jeff Bursey: Scott, hi. I'm not on Facebook or Twitter, but will read you
Dan Whatley: Will miss e frequent posts. Like DC not into Twitter, but go
Patrick O'Donnell: Good luck with the new direction. I plan to stay on board a
Mike White: I'm looking forward to seeing how things develop - no doubt
DC: As a person who doesn't use Twitter, I'm a little sad, but i
Miguel: Good luck with your change of direction! I'll continue to co
Jackie Griffiths: ... and indeed I've recently published a novel (June 2014) i

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

[[there.]] by Lance Olsen December 15, 2014
Lance Olsen is the author of two recent works, [[there.]] and Theories of Forgetting (FC2). The second presents three narratives in a clearly fictional mode while the first offers day-to-day thoughts on living in another country. We rightly suspect that any artist’s memoir or diary ought to be viewed as written with a prospective public in mind, no matter ho […]
Noir and Nihilism in True Detective December 15, 2014
"It’s just one story. The oldest. . . . Light versus dark." Spanning 8 episodes between January and March of 2014, HBO’s runaway hit True Detective challenged the status quo of contemporary crime drama. The show has been widely celebrated for its philosophy, complexity, and visual aesthetic. Co-starring actors Matthew McConaughey as Rustin "Ru […]
The Colonel’s World December 15, 2014
Mahmoud Dowlatabadi (born 1940) is considered by many the living Iranian novelist, a perennial Nobel Prize candidate. Dowlatabadi wrote The Colonel some thirty years ago, because in his own words he had been “afflicted.” The subject forced him to sit at the desk and write nonstop for two years. “Writing The Colonel I felt a strong sense of indignation and pa […]
Mr Gwyn and Three Times at Dawn by Alessandro Baricco December 15, 2014
Alessandro Baricco’s well-crafted, elegant prose seems as though it should create the impression of distance, or of abstraction; instead, the reader of Mr. Gwyn and Three Times at Dawn becomes wholly implicated and immersed, drawn into a dreamy and idiosyncratic world that blurs the division between reader, character and writer. As readers, we expect that th […]
The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash December 15, 2014
"The paan shop leads to the opening of a tunnel, full of the creatures of the city, and the tears and spit of a fakir." In a single opening line, Uday Prakash sets the scene for the politically incisive, yet intimately human stories of The Walls of Delhi (translated brilliantly from the Hindi by Jason Grunebaum). Lest the fakir suggest otherwise, t […]
The Man Between: Michael Henry Heim and a Life in Translation December 15, 2014
In a speech reprinted in the book, Heim makes a self-deprecating joke about whether the life of a translator is worth reading: “What does a translator do? He sits and translates!” The Man Between serves as a book-length retort by laying bare all the things Heim did: these include persuading the academy that translation is a scholarly (in addition to a creati […]
The Prabda Yoon Interview December 15, 2014
Yes, I think people are not comfortable anymore to write in this straightforward, traditional way, especially the younger, more progressive writers. So it’s interesting—you have social commentary, and you also get a little bit of structural experiment. You have themes that are very, very Thai. I’m actually very interested to see what new writers will come up […]
The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck December 15, 2014
For Jenny Erpenbeck, no life is lived in an indisputable straight line. Which is why, in her new novel (new in English, though published in 2012 as Aller Tage Abend) she approaches the narrative as a series of potential emotional earthquakes, some which take place, some which might have taken place, all of which reveal something of how political turbulence p […]
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country by William H. Gass December 15, 2014
Once, at a writers symposium, William Howard Gass remarked that to substitute the page for the world is a form of revenge for the recognition that "you are, in terms of the so-called world, an impotent nobody." There is inarguably no contemporary writer of American stock in whose work one might locate a more ambitious war of attrition between innov […]
Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli December 15, 2014
Luiselli’s first novel, Faces in the Crowd, translated into fluid English by Christina MacSweeney, is the perfect illustration of this attitude toward fiction writing. Narrated in short sections spanning multiple storylines and the better part of one hundred years, it uses "[d]eep excavations" to expose the empty spaces in two lives, those of a you […]

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 Whole Equation by David Thomson

Film criticism as prophesy: a unified field theory of cinema, an attempt to explain how film and America fused to create a new form of consciousness geared to the realities of the 20th century. Thomson's massive, inspired, unwieldy, poetic, and compelling account of how moving pictures became the dominant form of mass communication in our world, and how it created all of us, a creature we might now call homo cinematis.

Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty

Part economics book, part revisionist history of capitalism. A new story of the 20th century. An essential book for understanding our world and where it is headed, and a powerful broadside against income inequality. I compare it to Don DeLillo's Underworld right here, and I do think this is a book that cultural critics and literature-lovers can benefit greatly from.

Varieties of Exile by Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant was one of the great prose stylists of the 20th century. Full stop. Her understanding of narrative structure was also highly original. This book is edited by Russel Banks and collects much of her very best work. Read it, be amazed, see the world anew.

Seiobo There Below by Laszlo Krasz-
nahorkai

I have never enjoyed Laszlo Krasznahorkai's prose more than in Seiobo There Below. Here he is at his clearest, his most taut, his most imaginative, and his deepest. One of the world's great contemporary writers at the apogee of his art, and a truly important novel of ideas about spirituality, art, and just what is our purpose here on Earth.

Blinding by Mircea Cartarescu

The first volume of an epic trilogy by one of Eastern Europe's most renowned writers. Pychonesque, baroque, mad, the prose here must be read to be believed. Some of Cartarescu's images will never leave my mind. Read the interview with the author in The Quarterly Conversation.

The End of Love by Marcos Giralt Torrente

The arrival of a major talent into English. As I write in the San Francisco Chroncile, thee four long stories "chart the lifelong effects of courtship, the months and years in which it turns from desire to heartbreak to nostalgia. Brilliantly translated by the gifted Katherine Silver, Torrente's remarkably precise sentences are as tightly wound as violin strings, his brutal stories coiled like pythons."

The Box Man by Kobo Abe

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

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.

The End of Oulipo?

Lady Chatterley’s Brother

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