Conversational Reading

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... »
Infinity Nets
LA Review of Books on Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama: Discussions of Yayoi Kusama must inevitably... »

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 […]

The Body Writer

I’m very much intrigued by the intersection of literature, identity, and the human body. That is probably at least one reason why I enjoy reading J.M. Coetzee so much. The current issue of the TLS has a hugely interesting essay on Coetzee as a writer of the physical body (which I would wholeheartedly agree with). Here’s a taste . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Obviously Novels Are Constructed

Stephen Mitchelmore offers my first reasons to want to read Summertime and Diary of a Bad Year:

The Complete Review offers another curious judgement: “Coetzee is an incredibly talented writer and a master craftsman — and, yes, this is a meticulously crafted book, and one of [Summertime's] weaknesses is that it is so obviously a construct.” The key words here being “so obviously”. Perhaps the schism then is between those who are troubled by fiction as a construct and those who are not. One has to ask the question begged: how might this novel have . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Coetzee on Walser

Writing in 2000 on Jakob von Gunten:

As a literary character, Jakob von Gunten is without precedent. In the pleasure he takes in picking away at himself he has something of Dostoevsky’s Underground Man and, behind him, of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau of the Confessions. But—as Walser’s first French translator, Marthe Robert, pointed out—there is in Jakob, too, something of the hero of the traditional German folk tale, of the lad who braves the castle of the giant and triumphs against all odds. Franz Kafka, early in his career, admired Walser’s work (Max Brod records with . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Summertime Excerpt Watch

Another one just popped up ($$$) in Harper's. This one takes the form of a mock interview with a woman whom a man referred to as "Coetzee" once propositioned, the woman declining because "Coetzee" seemed "soft."

Movie Trailer: Disgrace by JM Coetzee

Oddly enough, they've made a movie of what is probably JM Coetzee's most popular novel, Disgrace. And odder yet, it stars John Malkovich as the philandering professor Lurie. The trailer:

Looks almost decent, doesn't it? Although, I have my doubts . . . bad book = good movie, and vice versa.

For more on how Coetzee fits into the fiction of post-apartheid South Africa, see Matt Cheney's essay at The Quarterly Conversation.

Waiting for the Barbarians

Summertime by JM Coetzee

Moving into prolific author territory, J.M. Coetzee will be publishing his 20th book in late summer, the aptly titled Summertime. Hat tip to the Literary Saloon for the head’s-up.

The book doesn’t yet have a U.S. Amazon webpage, although it is listed on the Wikipedia J.M. Coetzee page, where it has been grouped with Coetzee’s previous memoirs, Boyhood and Youth. So, looks like this will be the third installment of Coetzee’s reflections on a provincial upbringing.

Coetzee and Crossreferencing

Matthew Cheney:

And then I realized that I was marking up my teaching copy of Michael K. as if I were marking up a poem. I looked, then, at my teaching copy of Disgrace, from when I used it in a class a few years ago. The same thing. Lots of circled words, lots of "cf."s referring me to words and phrases in other parts of the book. Lots of sounds building on sounds, rhythms on rhythms in a way that isn’t particularly meaningful in itself, but that contributes to an overall tone-structure, a scaffold of utterance to . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Friday Column: Overcoming Your James Wood Habit

With the publication of James Wood’s new book in England, we can already see the beginnings of the coverage that will soon attend its publication over here. In other words, more attention for the one literary critic in America who actually gets attention.

To me this seems unfair. Yes, Wood rightly deserves some attention, but he certainly doesn’t deserve this de facto coronation as the only thing going. Moreover, focusing on one critic to the exclusion of others is contrary to the idea of literary criticism, which thrives on a polyphonic chorus of competing voices.

In that . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Coetzee on Nooteboom

I enjoy few novelists as critics as much as when JM Coetzee steps in to contribute on essay. He’s already written eloquently on Cees Nooteboom in the past, and here he is again, discussing the recently translated Lost Paradise.

Do angels exist? Does God exist? It is not only in the universe of postmodern fiction that such questions have a quaint, old-fashioned—that is to say, pre-postmodern and perhaps even pre-modern—air. In tolerant, post-Enlightenment societies we are free to make up answers to them as we choose, without risk of punishment. Indeed, in its advanced form the principle of . . . continue reading, and add your comments

The Immoralist

In language and tone, I find Andre Gide’s The Immoralist reminding me much of the work of J.M. Coetzee, specifically Disgrace. Both authors use a very pared down, austerely beautiful language; in a translator’s note, Richard Howard calls Gide’s voice "raised almost to the tension of the lyre," which seems about as good a description as can be given. Thematically, both books are wrestling with the following idea, quoted from Gide: "The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free, that is the task."

Like Disgrace, The Immoralist’s protagonist eventually evolves into an amoral state (despite . . . 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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