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
Interviews from Conversational Reading  See this page for interviews with leading authors, translators, publishers, and more.
|
Almost Never is getting some pretty good coverage. The New York Times gives a rare translation review to it.
What is so daring here? It’s not Sada’s depiction of the Madonna-whore complex, nor his take on the delusions of a Mexican macho — although both make for delicious burlesque. What’s new is the voice, and Sada’s glorious style. Katherine Silver pulls off the near-impossible feat of translating the cacophony of thoughts, interjections and slang rattling around Demetrio’s fevered brain, not to mention the continual asides of an arch narrator. Here is Demetrio attempting to write . . . continue reading, and add your comments
I’m going to be posting a schedule for our Naked Singularity Big Read soon (it’ll be starting in June). But for now, something else: prizes—namely, 4 copies of the original Xlibris Naked Singularity POD book, signed by De La Pava himself. I’m still working out just how these will be given away, but it will be in conjunction with the read.
I don’t know exactly how much these are worth, but I do know that if you look up the book on Amazon, eBay, and AbeBooks, there is nary a copy for sale, much less one signed . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Agreed.
For decades now, the most prominent place in our literary canon has been awarded to the monolithic novel, a work that attempts to give the impression of containing all topics within its pages. Modernist epics like Ulysses or The Magic Mountain set out to create total pictures of their world, or at least capture in art (momentarily) the unity that seemed so lacking beyond the domain of literature. Even the generations of large postmodern novels following in that wake, from The Recognitions onward, seem to champion and pursue that unity while simultaneously avowing its impossibility.
Maybe . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Interesting new book from Semiotext(e): The Femicide Machine by Sergio González Rodríguez (part of their valuable “Interventions” series).
It’s a cultural investigation of sorts into the murders of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez, which Bolano built 2666 around. Interesting, González Rodríguez appears in 2666 at the journalist investigating the murders (and he also appears in Javier Marias’ Dark Back of Time).
Seems to be an interesting work. Flipping through, I discovered this gem of the grotesque:
In 2010, the U.S.-based cosmetics company MAC introduced a new line inspired by the murdered women of Ciudad . . . continue reading, and add your comments
While I was at Blue Met last week, Chad had some interesting things to say about how Amazon selling ebooks at $9.99 was something that publishers could definitely make a profit off. He was making a lot of sense—basically that at 70% of $9.99, publishers would be earning more per ebook than they’re currently getting per print book.
But now Jason Epstein says this at the NYR Blog. So, would be interested in seeing Chad’s rebuttal.
The problem began when Amazon set out to charge $9.99 per e-book download, considerably less than it was paying publishers . . . continue reading, and add your comments
TQC contributor Morten Høi Jensen on Amis at LARB:
MARTIN AMIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN a casualty of his own biography. Every new book comes swathed in literary gossip or literary scandal to do with his father, his teeth, his divorce, his politics, his agent or his friends. The recent publication in England of Martin Amis: The Biography by Richard Bradford (a jangling heap of bad writing and factual inaccuracy) doesn’t actually tell us anything new: we know it all already. Born in 1949, the son of novelist Kingsley Amis, handsome Martin with his furrowed brow and energized . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Good answer.
How has reading become more social for you?
It hasn’t.
I have a friend who “skims” books by turning on the popular highlights feature in Kindle and only reading those. It works for her, but to me that’s the death of reading.
Reading is a bootcamp for developing and exercising critical thinking. Without that — intellectual apocalypse! And critical thinking is about developing a point of view, and all writing is — or, should be — about arguing a point of view, implicitly or explicitly. When you bring the crowd into the equation, this concept . . . continue reading, and add your comments
I think anyone who follows this blog with any regularity knows that A Naked Singularity, just released by the University of Chicago Press, began its trip from self-published book to local bestseller thanks to Scott Bryan Wilson’s TQC review.
Local bestseller? you say. Correct. I’ve now learned that the novel has debuted as the sixth bestselling title at Chicago independent bookstore The Book Table. And given that it takes sixth place behind soft-core pornography for suburban housewives and two prestige titles from large New York presses—i.e. titles it’ll be all-but-impossible to beat—I’m essentially calling this . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Over the weekend on Swiss radio, Javier Marias praised Lady Chatterley’s Brother, the ebook that Barrett Hathcock and I wrote about sex int he literature of Nicholson Baker and Marias. (You can read excerpts and buy it direct from this site for $2.99 here, or an Amazon here.)
The interview was in German and Spanish (Marias spoke in Spanish, the host in German) and you can listen to it here. They discuss Lady Chatterley’s Brother right around minute 36.
The second book in this series is finished and will be a collaboration between myself . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Can’t write too much at the moment because it’s been a busy few days, but. I’ve read a lot of Walser. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what Walser was capable of. And then, The Walk. Very, very much like Walser on acid. I’m calling it a fever dream right now. It is baroque and hilarious and ironic as fuck, although also as profoundly whimsical and melancholy as anything I’ve read of Walser. Any way you split it, it’s an amazing little book. Definitely read this.
Reading it is kind of like walking through . . . continue reading, and add your comments
|
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.
|
Naked Singularity Big Read Schedule
See Attacks, Vicious
More on Bolano’s Journalist
The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)
The Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)
Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)
The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)
You Say