Conversational Reading

On Joining Oulipo by Accident
From Harry Mathews' excellent, engaging Paris Review interview. Is that when you found out about the Oulipo? MATHEWS... »
Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
My review of The Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky runs today in The National. Krzhizhanovsky falls under the... »
Lifespan of a Fact
Harper's serializes a little of John D'Agata's latest book, Lifespan of a Fact. Though I had some serious reservations about... »
Your Day of Gaddis
A ton of Gaddis links right here on the eve of the republication of The Recognitions and JR by the Dalkey Archive. They... »
Patience (After Sebald) Trailer
Because I'm very curious about this film ... »
Reliably Bad Roiphe
The always cranky (and just as often on-target) Steve Donoghue takes apart the word salad that is Katie Roiphe's latest attempt... »
Cronenberg on Genre
From his interview with the Los Angeles Review of Books. The difference between approaching themes in art and in genre... »
The Omission of Desire
From Charles Baxter's review of The Angel Esmeralda: This omission of any markers of the narrator’s desire is one of the... »
Patience (After Sebald)
It gets a rather tiny and inconsequential review in The Guardian.... »
Impressions of Africa
Nice to see this piece on Raymond Roussel over at the Poetry Foundation (and Chad's enthusiastic response to it). Both... »

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 […]

Toward An Understanding of The Last Samurai: Quests

The Last Samurai is an exceedingly long and complex novel, and I don’t want to try and attempt a full and rigorous reading of it here, but I do think I can say a number of useful and interesting things about the book without going quite that far. I think it’s worthwhile to consider how Samurai might be a variant of the quest novel. That’s what I’m going to explore right here. . . . continue reading, and add your comments

The Last Samurai: Charles-Valentin Alkan

I just finished up with The Last Samurai today, and I was tickled to see the composer Charles-Valentin Alkan make an appearance toward the end. While I’d disagree that Alkan is quite as obscure as DeWitt makes him out to be (or maybe his reputation has grown in the 10 years since TLS was published), it’s very true that he gets nowhere near the acclaim of his more celebrated contemporaries (e.g., Chopin) even though he did compose some remarkable music. . . . continue reading, and add your comments

The Last Samurai: A Good Samurai Will Parry the Blow

I was out of action for half of last week, but I’m hoping to finish up The Last Samurai today and get together some concluding thoughts on the book in short order. In advance of that, here’s something that I can’t quite reconcile: I’m struck by the fact that Ludo compares declaring a man is his father to an elegant samurai cutting down a man with one awe-inspiring blow of his sword. . . . continue reading, and add your comments

The Last Samurai: Why Have So Many of Us Petered Out for the Moment?

“We don’t do anything.” We said this to our parents, and now we hear our children saying it all over again. Ludo’s complaint is plastered in the most obvious place imaginable: chapter headings at the beginning of the novel. Think back: . . . . . . . . . .

As the novel grows, the situation gets better, for Ludo at least. He starts doing things. Not just turning around in circles on the Circle Line. . . .

. . . continue reading, and add your comments

The Last Samurai: Fathers and Reasons

I’ve been thinking a lot about the story of Hugh Carey this week, which comprises roughly the last half of this week’s reading. I like the story a great deal, but the way it relates to the rest of The Last Samurai remains elusive. . . . continue reading, and add your comments

The Last Samurai: Week 4 Notes and Annotations

We’ve pulled into the nice, fat middle of The Last Samurai. Here are a few notes I found for this section–add yours in on the comments.

Tyrone Power school of acting. Now hat Sibylla has mentioned the “Tyrone Power school of acting” more than a few times to deride certain individuals, I thought I’d pull up an image to we can see what she means when she says, for instance, “and he did change, but only in the way that someone from the Tyrone Power school of acting would show maturity: mouth set, furrowed brow, this is someone . . . continue reading, and add your comments

The Last Samurai: Cultural Literacy and Other Grown-Up Things

Now that we’re into the meat of this book, I think it’s time to talk about a theme I’ve been tracking for a while and that has really taken center stage in our third section. That would be cultural literacy. . . . continue reading, and add your comments

The Last Samurai References and Annotations Thread: Week 3

Last Samurai-ers–you know what to do. And here’s a thought that occurred to me from last week’s section. . . . continue reading, and add your comments

The Last Samurai: The Burden of Genius

For instance, the section starts out with the piano-playing dreams of the narrator’s mother (and I like how each of our sections has begun by narrating the life history of each of the narrator’s parents). It turns out that when her mother goes for an audition at Julliard, she’s essentially told that though she is a pianist of talent, she is nowhere near prepared to explore that talent. So she is instructed to perform a set of exercises ever day for two hours for a year, after which she may be prepared to begin. . . . continue reading, and add your comments

The Last Samurai: The Author as Woman

Inevitably, we’ve already had a couple of references to Helen DeWitt’s gender in the comments to the first week of The Last Samurai discussion, so I’d like to toss this point out there to everyone. I’m not one of those readers who thinks that an author’s biography is irrelevant to her work, and the fact is that several aspects of The Last Samurai make DeWitt’s gender germane to a discussion–in particular, the postmodern novel of information tends to be a boy’s club, so it is noteworthy that DeWitt is a woman; also, the plot of Last Samurai deals in no small part with fathers, sons, mothers, and parents in general, all things that will be seen in very different ways depending on which gender’s perspective you are looking from. . . . 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.

Lady Chatterley’s Brother

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