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.
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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 little over a week, on March 21. Here is the schedule of reading.
Now how many of you have already gotten started reading these books?
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- Next Week at The Quarterly Conversation And now that I’ve gone and talked lists to death, it’s my duty to report that writers and editors from The Quarterly Conversation will be...
- Read Marias As Quickly As Possible That’s Andrew Seal’s advice for budding readers of Javier Marias: My advice for reading Marías is to read him as quickly as possible, with as...
- Javier Marías Article on Javier Marías over at The New Yorker. An op-ed by Michael Chabon may pop up now and again, but it is hard to...
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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.
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So Much for the Granta
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)
Just bought them on Amazon. Looking forward to it.
I have. :)
With a nursing school schedule from hell, I won’t even be able to keep up with the perfectly paced schedule you have provided. So I started a bit early, only to watch the group pass me by at some near stage.
I will be very interested to see the reception of Marias for those who have not yet turned his pages. The first volume so far has all his wonderful attributes: exploration of what it means to be distanced or separated from another (he writes about this better than any other author I’ve read), his freezing of the frame, the repetition of certain ideas and words, his humor, above all, his humor. He also hedges his interpretations which should resonate with those who are familiar with Bolano. It’s lame to say this way, but each scenario or thought or interpretation he turns as if it were a prism penetrated by light, only to put it down once all the colors have been documented, exhausted, extinguished.
This is a revelry of all things Marias, and his digressions are going to grate – both in their length and subject matter. Saramago does something similar, so if you like Saramago, then this is familiar territory, but Marias takes them a step further in his insistence and verbosity. More of an essayistic vein than one of fictional supports.
At any rate, I am positive all will find something to admire in his writing. Again, great idea to do this!
Really looking forward to this. The only issue is Im in the middle of four books right now, but luckily Ive already read Vol. 1 so I will have extra time to finish the books Im currently working through. Unfortunately Ill have to put off my reading of Imperial until later in the year. I dont think reading 1300 pages of Vollmann while trying to parse through the Marias trilogy would be a good idea.
[...] Your Face This Spring in One Week « Conversational Reading [...]
I have chosen to halt my reading of Marias, or rather to suspend the experience at a most exquisite moment,about half way through Dance and Dream–until I finish an exam. Marias is just too grand for the subway. So here I am.
Aahhh, finally a well-regimented excuse to read this trilogy. Just ordered, can’t wait!