Recent Posts

  • If you can’t sell books, sell teddy bears September 3, 2010
    Or that seems to be Borders’ solution to its constant financial problems, at least for the time being until the next quarter with lower than expected sales.  Really, the problem with Borders is that it lost its identity about eight or so years ago when it decided to become a shadow of Barnes & Noble.   [...] […]
    Soo Jin Oh
  • Reflections on Rockwell September 3, 2010
    In recent years, fans of Norman Rockwell, with the assistance of some art historians, have attempted to lift him into the canon of high art. As a fan of midcentury American illustration, I don’t really care how he is assessed on that scale: like the recurring fantasy that underlies so much of our politics of [...] […]
    Levi Stahl
  • A Taste of Cherry in a Heat Wave September 3, 2010
    I’ve been thinking a lot about heat waves. The thick summer weather has felt like a wall of fire that must be bravely pushed through to order to exit from an air conditioned office building and make my way to the corner to board a bus crowded with sweaty citizens. So perhaps it’s no surprise that [...] […]
    Carrie Olivia Adams
  • The Ballad of David Markson September 3, 2010
    "What’s not so up for dispute is that Markson accomplished what, by all rights, should be a literary impossibility." (Colin Marshall for The Millions) […]
    Jeff Waxman
  • Gass-X September 3, 2010
    "Ich liebe dich. No sentence pronounced by a judge could be more threatening. It means that you are about to receive a gift you may not want." Via Dylan Suher, Greg Gerke's sort-of review of William H. Gass's Reading Rilke in BIG OTHER. […]
    Jeff Waxman

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Group Reads

Last Samurai

Fall Read: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt

Starting Sept 19, read 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 Homer’s Head: Ransom by David Malouf
    In Ransom, Malouf satisfyingly gives us a meeting between Priam and Achilles that builds from the interiority of Priam. The novel seems to want to teach the importance of doing something human to those who might never get around to picking up Homer or who, if they do, might wish they could get into the character's heads. […]
  • How Jeanette Winterson Makes Fiction
    Winterson has always told and retold the same fictions: of parents and children; of origins, and adoptions; of differences, of margins; of love; of passion; she has always manipulated rhythm and language as an excavation of sources. Much of her fiction mirrors what we know of Winterson's own story, but she agitates against the idea that her work has to […]
  • Inveterate and Unrepentant Book Collecting: A Guide to My Favorite Contact Sport
    It's difficult to pin down exactly why books as objects mean so much to me. I wasn't alive when William Goyen's excellent Come, The Restorer was published, but owning an original printing with the dust jacket—as it would have been purchased at the time of its release—makes the book more special to me than some beat-up paperback rei […]
  • The Master of the Not Quite: The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief by James Wood
    Wood can be harsh, yes, but he is seldom unfair. Wyatt Mason was wrong to accuse him of having suggested, by dint of a string of negative reviews, that no good contemporary literature exists. (He has written favorably of McEwan, Bolaño, Robinson, Ozick, Kirsch, Sebald, Roth, Saramago, Swift, Carey.) He never simply dismisses a writer (in the manor of, s […]

Alberto Manguel's Odd Bolano Pan

Alberto Manguel’s Odd Bolano PanShare

Writer Alberto Manguel is certainly a critic to be taken seriously. In reader-unfriendly times he has stuck up for reading as an indispensable act of pleasure. He has also written well about Spanish-language literature, and has even written his own successful novels.

But that just makes some of the odd statements in his review of Nazi Literature in the Americas less comprehensible. I’m going to pass right over his critique of Nazi Lit since it’s the least troubling part of his review, although . . . continue reading, and add your comments

And the Bolano Keeps on Coming

And the Bolano Keeps on ComingShare

The Barnes & Noble Review has just published my piece on two new Bolano books, Monsieur Pain and Roberto Bolano: The Last Interview.

If you’ve become a Bolano fan, they’re both well worth your time (and, well, they’re both worth your time if you have yet to become a Bolano fan too). As I remark in the piece, they keep on publishing more Bolano and it keeps being of very high quality. The depth of his work is extremely impressive.

Here’s a quote . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Poetry, Bolano, and Jim Morrison

Poetry, Bolano, and Jim MorrisonShare

Words Without Borders covers the the Madmen, Exiles, and Savage Detectives: Latin American Poetry panel:

I was late to the Madmen, Exiles, and Savage Detectives: Latin American Poetry panel at the Philoctetes Center this Tuesday. I was late because I was puttering around the fourth floor poetry section at the Barnes and Noble in Union Square here in New York City. Among the shelves, out of place, was a book which has nothing to do with Latin American Poets, but everything to do . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Hilarious Bolano Interview

Hilarious Bolano InterviewShare

Paper Cuts excerpts a hilarious Bolano interview from the new Melville House title Roberto Bolano: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations.

Why hilarious? To wit:

M.M.: Have you shed one tear about the widespread criticism you’ve drawn from your enemies?

R.B.: Lots and lots. Every time I read that someone has spoken badly of me I begin to cry, I drag myself across the floor, I scratch myself, I stop writing indefinitely, I lose my appetite, I smoke less, I engage in sport, I . . . continue reading, and add your comments

El Tercer Reich Coming in March 2010

El Tercer Reich Coming in March 2010Share

One of Bolano’s never-published manuscripts, El tercer Reich, will be published in the U.S. in Spanish by Vintage. (Anagrama is already publishing it in Spain.) I suppose this makes good business sense, since Bolano is still hot and there’s a large Spanish-reading population in this nation.

I’m at least curious to read this book. I was originally of the opinion that it probably wouldn’t be very good, but Natasha Wimmer, who is doing the translation into English, is of the opinion that it’s a good novel. So.

On That Bolano Myth

On That Bolano MythShare

Jorge Volpi returns with an all-Bolano installment 3 of his essay on Latin American lit at Three Percent. It’s an interesting piece well worth reading. Volpi starts out with a sanguine take on what Bolano has become here:

I do not believe, as some Spanish critics and even some of his friends do, that the American Bolaño is a falsification, a marketing product, a forced reinvention, or a simple misunderstanding: on the contrary, maybe the power of his texts lives in the diverse . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Bolano Versus Crack

Bolano Versus CrackShare

No, this isn't another reset of the Bolano/heroin thread. Rather, Chad Post makes a good addition to the Bolano myth discussion from last week. He notes some Latin American writers contra Bolano that are generally getting ignored:

Post-Garcia Marquez, it’s been near impossible for a non-magical realist from south of our borders to get published in America. A certain Isabel Allende-tainted vision of what “counted” as good Latin American literature came into being, and anything that didn’t fit that mold wasn’t marketable.

. . . continue reading, and add your comments

Best of the Millennium Honorable Mention

Best of the Millennium Honorable MentionShare

My Bolano pick for this list–By Night in Chile–gets mentioned here.

Not too many novels can legitimately claim the adjective perfect, but I think this one has a strong, strong claim to that word. It's a well wrought work, a book that reads like a series of story-like digressions imperceptibly linked, ordered, and devised by the threads of a fallible human consciousness, and it's poignant, weighty, and very, very readable. It's the kind of book that can turn on your interpretation of . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Horacio Castellanos Moya Is Disgusted with the “Bolano Myth”

Horacio Castellanos Moya Is Disgusted with the “Bolano Myth”Share

I'm not sure I can translate this properly, but this has to be one of the best lines I've read recently:

El mercado tiene dueños, como todo en este infecto planeta, y son los dueños del mercado quienes deciden el mambo que se baila, se trate de vender condones baratos o novelas latinoamericanas en Estados Unidos.

This line comes in conjunction with a very acidic essay that novelist Horacio Castellanos Moya has written on the "Bolano Myth" (published . . . continue reading, and add your comments

For the Record

For the RecordShare

Just wanted to point to my short interview with Natasha Wimmer available here, mostly because she talks about the Bolano books she’s currently translating, and you know how this site is with links to meaty info on Bolano books.

If El Tercer Reich is as good as she implies, I might just have to re-think my stance on these posthumous manuscripts . . .