Counterbalance

Vollmann on Bookworm

This ought to be good.

Tomorrow.

2:30pm

Be there or...you know the deal.

Lit Bits & A Bit About Bookshelves

A few lit bits for an almost-over week:

• Min Jin Lee, author of Free Food for Millionaires, has a wonderful essay on weight and body image in the April issue of Vogue. I had tears in my eyes reading it for several reasons: One, I could relate. Two, I kept thinking "this is so honest, so raw...wow."  It is that ability to cut to the truth that makes her an excellent fiction writer...it is the line through all her work.  (As with Harper's, the April features aren't online yet.)
• Jhumpa Lahiri's new collection of stories, Unaccustomed Earth, is also featured in April's Vogue. She says, "It's the first book I've written since becoming a parent, with the full consciousness of what it means to bring a life into the world and be responsible for that life. I can see both ends of the spectrum now."  She also says this was the "hardest" book she's written to date.
• Felicia Sullivan, chef extraordinaire and author of The Sky Isn't Visible From Here (whom I'll be interviewing in the coming weeks), just recommended a book that's not been on my radar: Kelly McMaster's Welcome to Shirley. Consider it officially on the list.
• Nathan Ihara at LA Weekly has the goods on Richard Price and his latest novel, Lush Life.
• I've been staring at the above photo of a phenomenal bookshelf project featured on Apartment Therapy for awhile now...and it seemed wrong to drool and not share. So, there. Also, I should note that I've been in such an odd state that I was looking at this picture all wrong - not from the aerial view (which this is, actually, if one were standing at the top of the staircase looking down) but from some bizarre literal view in which I wondered aloud how strong those books were that people could actually step on them going up and down the staircase. Of course, that view would mean that the door downtstairs was on the ceiling and that should have been my first clue that I had the wrong perspective on it. Ah! Isn't that often the case!
• In other bookshelf news, Design*Sponge just happens to be featuring an extensive book storage roundup today.  Gorgeous empty bookshelves are a slippery slope into full-on book porn.

You Have 1.5 Hours...

...to make it to the Junot Díaz reading tonight at the Hammer Museum. As I mentioned the last time I saw him read - wow. If you can make it out tonight, even if you have to dash all the way across town in horrendous traffic, it will be worth it. He will make it worth it. Really.

If you can't make it tonight (and you should, you really should), there are plenty of other good lit bits happening this week, including a joint discussion of Raymond Chandler's work with Judith Freeman and Denise Hamilton. Now that's what I call pulling in the right folks for the right topic!

Paul Theroux's Little Pieces

I'm just barely back (flu + a middle ear infection will get you every time) but wanted to share:

If you've ever, ever, had trouble compressing your complex plot lines and characters into a novel or, more to the point, a short story, Paul Theroux's "Twenty-Two Stories" in the April Harper's (not yet online, so go pick-up a copy) should turn that all upside down.

I, on the other hand, have the opposite problem: my stories are often very focused on one small moment in time and I sometimes feel they're too simple, too compressed.  Theroux's stories, some only four paragraphs, beautifully capture the essence of a good story in such a small space that I'm inspired tenfold.  In these brief stories, you can see the bones of structure and how so much can be communicated with so little.

Good stuff. I'm only an ear infection away from trying my hand at some shorter shorts myself.

If I Didn't Have a Fever

...or a hacking cough or a head so full of pressure I'm quite sure my hearing is nearly lost, I'd check out some of the bookish events in LA this week.

If. Operative word. If.

Completely Sick...

...of the nasty politicking by HRC.

...of the false memoir.

...of actually being sick with the flu for days on end.

...of not being up to posting my love letter to Millet because of said flu.

A bright spot: this just arrived in the mail. Ahhhh - here's to being in bed with the flu for a whole weekend and having some Tom McCarthy to read. Delish.

How Millet Can Write

Um, yeah. I finished Lydia Millet's How the Dead Dream this weekend and I have to say: holy hell. What a fantastic, revelatory book. There is so much to say and I'm so, so insanely behind. I will return with a more considered take on the book later this week.

However. If, for whatever bizarre reason, you've been on the fence about reading this book, I urge you to go get it at once and read it so we can discuss it. Really. It is powerful in the most perfect way. It has shades of Tom McCarthy's Remainder but then becomes something else. It has shades of This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes but then becomes so much more. I finished the book and then danced around the living room. This is what writing can do when done well.

I loved reading it as a reader, but I suspect part of my passion for this book lies in how I read it as a writer. Millet managed to do something I've been attempting to do for a while now, but without success. More on that later. Also: I work with animals on a daily basis and some of her insights were so spot-on and so gorgeous, I gasped. Bravo, I say. Bravo.

This is very, very good stuff and I wish that every piece of fiction could deliver in this way, could matter in this way.