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Bad Books
We discussing books we love to hate over at The Constant Conversation. Which, if you're me, means What Can I Do When... »
The Disappearing Digital Data
Of course I'm a big fan of digital media for obvious reasons, but I'm also a big fan of print. This would be one of the reasons... »
Beckett’s Poetry
Faber and Faber published a new volume of it last year. Don't call it minor: But Beckett didn’t do minor. Or rather, and... »
Imperial Fictions
Some indication Vollmann's not done with the area covered in Imperial yet: RAIL: So you did not stick with the idea of... »
Theresienstadt and the Problem of Knowledge in the Modern World
Before I get into what I think is a very interesting question, I need to do a little background. Since January I've been... »
Reality Hunger Review @ B&N Review
Right here. I liked it, quite a bit. I know a lot of you didn't, and some of you have very good reasons for not liking it,... »
Trash in Contemporary Literature
I'm looking for recent books that have made trash a major theme The obvious one here is Underworld, and I know there must be... »
New @ TQC: JC Hallman & AWP
We've just published the text of the remarks that JC Hallman will be making on his panel at this year's AWP conference. Why... »
New @ TQC Sam Lipsyte Interview
Our own Barrett Hathcock has done a lengthy interview with Sam Lipsyte. Therein they discuss, Gordon Lish's infamous writing... »
Your Face This Spring in One Week
A reminder for everyone that we'll be starting our epic, multi-month reading of Javier Marias' Your Face Tomorrow trilogy in a... »

the first in a series of conversations with small press poetry publishers http://bit.ly/94S4Pa [link]
The Contract Was Bad, But the Poetry Was Good: Possibly not the greatest move in the history of management: In 17... http://bit.ly/bkuHju [link]
Tom LeClair's lecture on Mao II. Great stuff http://perival.com/delillo/meandmaoii.html [link]
@Twitchelmore 140 chars. restrains my rebuttal, but surely you didn't think his recent Pynchon and DeLillo revs were good . . . [link]
Deep thought: they should stop letting Sam Anderson review books he clearly doesn't understand. [link]
"which used a computer algorithm to identify every client with HIV, then systematically revoked coverage" http://tinyurl.com/yz935jk [link]
hope the next jobs bill is a little less lame than this one http://tpm.ly/ama992 [link]
and yet people like michael kinsley continue to be taken seriously and get paid for this nonsense http://tinyurl.com/ydsa698 [link]
Beckett?s Poetry: Faber and Faber published a new volume of it last year. Don?t call it minor: But Beckett didn?t ... http://bit.ly/axzazM [link]
my local museum is getting a new look. here are the people in the running http://bit.ly/bwSpPr [link]

Conversation with Warm Milk Press March 18, 2010
Conversation with Ben Spivey, editor for Warm Milk Press, a publisher of handmade chapbooks. […]
Carrie Olivia Adams
Valerio Manfredi on tour March 18, 2010
As noted on the Europa Editions website, Italian author Valerio Manfredi has a U.S. tourÂ lined up. Nice to see this happening for Manfredi,Â what with all theseÂ do-it-yourself author tours going on during the recession. […]
Matt Jakubowski
Extreme Acts of Literary Asceticism March 18, 2010
Now this is why I love Borges. […]
Scott Esposito
Austerâ€™s Prefaces March 18, 2010
With all due respect, I think the answer is pretty clear–it’ll help their books sell. […]
Scott Esposito
Anything West of Chicago Is Not Necessary March 18, 2010
Andrew Seal argues that “Chicago and New York are to U.S. fiction what Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are to the Russians. Sorry, Boston. Sorry, L.A. Sorry, D.C. Sorry, San Fran. Sorry, the South. You have your claims, no doubt, but they are as the claims of Pushkin, Lermontov, Chekhov, or Gogol.” Discuss. […]
Scott Esposito
Whoâ€™s Bad? March 18, 2010
Phelan goes on to say, "There will, Iâ€™m sure, be no consensus about what constitutes badness or whether it belongs to the book, the reader, the situation of reading, all of the above, or none of the above," though he's almost wrong there. The list is pretty varied, from the morally-bankrupt to the so-bad-it's-good varieties, though gene […]
John Lingan
Vollmann Interview March 18, 2010
Wherein we learn that Imperial hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves and “Vollmann was exceptionally gracious as both host and interview subject, quite generous with his whiskey and his time.” […]
Scott Esposito
Margaret Atwood + hockey movie musical = Heaven March 18, 2010
In some of the best news ever,Â Margaret Atwood is going to have a cameo in a movie musical about hockey. Seriously. I am — what is the word? –Â giddy. Don’t believe me?Â AtwoodÂ discusses it on her blog. CanÂ this newsÂ get better? Hell, yes.Â The movieÂ also stars Olivia Newton-John. […]
Matt Jakubowski
New NYRB March 18, 2010
New issue of the New York Review of Books is out, with Colm TÃ³ibÃn on exile lit. […]
Scott Esposito
More from the NBCC Awards March 18, 2010
With jokes from Joyce Carol Oates and "wild imaginings" from 92-year-old winner Diana Athill -- not to mention talk of a sequel from "Wolf Hall" author Hilary Mantel -- this year's NBCC Awards were noteworthy for their celebration of literature by women. […]
Matt Jakubowski

Cesar Aira At Feria Internacional del Libro de Guayaquil

Cesar Aira At Feria Internacional del Libro de Guayaquil

Nice write-up on Cesar Aira, who was speaking at the Book Fair in Guayaquil, Peru.

The piece opens with a typically modest statement from the Argentine author:

“Mientras más grueso es un libro, menos literatura tiene”. La frase fue una de las sentencias del escritor argentino César Aira (1949), durante un conversatorio desarrollado el pasado sábado en el marco de la Feria Internacional del Libro, en Guayaquil. Y el dictamen fue duro, cuestionable para muchos, pero ceñido a las convicciones del narrador no tan popular como otros de su nacionalidad, pero que en una de sus obras, Carlos Fuentes lo imagina como el primer premio Nobel de Literatura Argentina.

That is, the bigger the book, the less literature it contains (Aira's works being uniformly short). And as to the odd Fuentes reference at the bottom of that paragraph:

Sobre la referencia que Fuentes hizo en su novela, Aira comentó que se trataba de una réplica a un texto de su autoría titulado El congreso de su literatura, donde un científico decide hacer clones del autor mexicano a fin de dominar el mundo usando a un poderoso ejército de intelectuales, pero todo sale mal.

And I wonder yet again why Aira isn't bigger in the States.

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