The End of Oulipo? The End of Oulipo? My book (co-authored with Lauren Elkin), published by Zero Books. Available everywhere. Order it from Amazon, or find it in bookstores nationwide.
Lady Chatterley’s Brother Lady Chatterley's Brother. The first ebook in the new TQC Long Essays series,  called “an exciting new project” by Chad Post of Open Letter and Three Percent. Why can't Nicholson Baker write about sex? And why can Javier Marias? We investigate why porn is a dead end, and why seduction paves the way for the sex writing of the future. Read an excerpt.
Available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and direct from this site:
Translate This Book! Ever wonder what English is missing? Called "a fascinating  read" by The New Yorker, Translate This Book! brings together over 40 of the top translators, publishers, and authors to tell us what books need to be published in English. Get it on Kindle.
|
Shop though these links = Support this site
|
Mexico
In a San Francisco Chronicle article, Monica Campbell explores some key problems facing Mexican literature. One of them sure sounds familiar:
But the real problem is far bigger. "Mexico has long lacked a reading culture," says Volpi. "With few exceptions, no writer can survive here on just books." Clavel agrees. To keep financially afloat, she, like other writers, supplements her income by teaching, translating and editing. "Most writers in Mexico find themselves on the social margin," she says
I’m not saying that writers in America have it nearly as bad as do writers in Mexico, but the problem detailed in the above graf is applicable to American writers too. Just something to think about. (via Lit Saloon)
You Might Also Like:
More from Conversational Reading: - Criticism Great Prospect article. If the below at all sounds lucid to you, do yourself a favor and click on through. (via Lit Saloon) When looking...
- Jewish Authors The most influential group of post-war American writers? The complex and often harrowing postwar period was delineated by a queasy mix of unsavory McCarthy-esque politics...
- Fiction v Non-fiction In this essay by Kevin Smokler about editing Bookmark Now, a non-fiction anthology by younger authors about writing in the 21st century, there’s a lot...
- Top 100 Time pickes the 100 best novels written in the English language since 1923. Time to get in touch with your inner wounded pride and excessively...
- LINKS 1. The Literary Saloon has a great roundup of all the Booker-based pontificating that’s happened in the last 24 hours or so. 2. Writers who...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Leave a Reply
|
Recommended Books 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
|
Although I agree on the difficulties of making your living by the pen alone, I do not think it accurate to state that Mexico has long lacked a reading culture. I just returned from the Feria Internacional del Libro–aka, the Guadalajara Book Fair–where every afternoon/early evening the entrance to the exhibition hall was swarmed by teenagers and students waiting outside the doors to be let inside. It looked like the entrance to a large concert stage or sports arena. The book fair in Guadalajara is special becuase it allows the public to enter every day and actually purchase books and other merchandise sold on the exhibition hall. I’ve been to this fair twice in my life, the first time was in 1992, i think, as a student myself. The overwhelming public attendance, the long lines in which these folks waited for a chance to charge inside and browse through aisles and aisles of books convinced me there is a *starved* reading public in Mexico. There is a market there, and just because publishers or bookstores haven’t yet figured out the best way to reach this market, does not necessarily mean it does not exist.