Counterbalance

Ruined by Revolutionary Road

I'd put off reading Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates for years and years and years.  Now that I've finished the book, I see that waiting was a good thing. A very good thing. So good, in fact, that I wish I'd waited even longer.

Why? The book was so good, I can't quite seem to enjoy anything that has come after it. I've tried. I've picked up novel after novel, collection after collection. Nothing is Revolutionary Road. Nothing is that perfect blend of disdain (bordering on disgust for one's characters, which is fascinating when pulled off and I'll have so much more to say on that later, but all of it has been said I'm sure, as I'm so late to the dance on this one and I don't want to be the girl that discovers this obviously great novel years after all the important people have already deemed it uber-great and I'm just showing my truly unstudied colors by talking about it in such excited tones well after such a thing was acceptable) and office minutiae and dashed dreams and lives stuck in perpetual suburbia even when they fancy themselves better than all that. It was a delicious read - funny and ouchy and deep and dark and then funny again.  Nothing I've picked up since has that kind of meat on its bones.  I'm not sure what I'll do.

All this comparison to a recently read book that I loved begs the question: what book had this effect on you? What book colored all else that came after it...even if only for awhile?

Gone a Travelin'

As I mentioned last week, I've been traveling a lot for work and this week is no exception. Which is why it pains me - pains me - to direct your attention towards the remaining events in LA this week. I will be missing some very good stuff, including:

• Joseph O'Neill discusses Netherland tonight at Vroman's @ 7pm
• Stacy Bierlein & contributors will be discussing A Stranger Among Us tonight at Book Soup @ 7pm

Here's what I won't miss: Nam Le (yes! Nam Le!) discussing The Boat this Sunday at Skylight Books @ 7pm.  More goodness where that come from later this week...stay tuned.

Ed Park Does LAist

These pages have been oh so quiet this week as I've been criss-crossing our country like a madwoman for work. The days were progressively hotter with a treacherous trifecta of Las Vegas (110 degrees) to Phoenix (115 degrees) and back to LA which I expected to be temperate but which was instead 107 degrees late yesterday afternoon.  Hello global warming!   

During this intensely hot traveling, I had the distinct pleasure of email-interviewing Ed Park about his debut novel Personal Days and other tidbits. I also had the distinct embarrassment of being so hurried, so hot, and so without a proper email or power connection for several days (read: me, on the floor of a hotel room in Phoenix, with 2% power remaining on my laptop and holding it high in the air for the only wireless connection I could find whilst banging out questions), that I flubbed a few questions and managed to butcher the English language in the process. With Ed! Ed of The Village Voice! Ed of The Believer! Ed of the Poetry Foundation! Ed of The Dizzies! Ed of Personal Days! Ed of so many things, all of which are grammatically correct!

But, alas, Ed is lovely and seemed not at all to care about my teen-aged interviewing style this week. (For those I've interviewed in the past, do let Ed know when you see him next that it is normally a very cerebral - somewhat more grammatically correct - endeavor!) There were many more nuanced & juicy questions about his book that I wanted to ask, but the LAist format doesn't really allow for it. So I'll have to save those questions for his reading this evening at Book Soup @ 7pm.

You must also go check-out my interview with him at LAist, where, as always, Ed recommends books I've never heard of (other than Rivka Galchen's Atmospheric Disturbances which is already at the tippy-top of my pile) but am now convinced I must read at once.

Knock Me Stiff

So here's the thing: This book came highly recommended, so I went into it with high expectations (always a surefire way to ruin a book) and I knew from the get-go that it's not the kind of book I tend to love (subject matter, whathaveyou) but is more a kind of a book that I might learn something from, technically, structurally, or otherwise.

The verdict: Damn. Double-damn. Donald Ray Pollock can write short stories that knock you off your feet. I have not had this experience in a long time (not since Roy Kesey's collection) and I'm jumpy and anxious to share these stories with anyone who will read them. These are tough characters with ugly lives, wayward folks who seem always to make the wrong, often terribly disturbing, choices. Oh, but the way they do it is fantastic.

Lovely surprise: This collection of stories features characters from all over Knockemstiff. While there is roughly one story primarily devoted to each character, they tend to appear in other stories as well...often years later. In a roundabout way, you get more information, more history and more "story" about a character in story #8, even though they were introduced in story #1.  A very lovely technique and it really works here (sometimes this kind of thing can feel a bit forced) because it allows you to see the 30-year arc of a person, rather than just the immediate situation of one story.

This is really brilliant writing and I'm thrilled to have had the chance to read his work. I can't wait to see what he does next.

Summer Reading Lists Aren't as Dim as Expected

It is that special time of year once again: that bright beachy time in which we are asked to carefully check our brains at the parking lot and carry our girlish, clothes-horse-y selves onto the sand and escape into mindless fiction of boys and bikinis and Birkin bags. Yes, that's right, it is Summer Reading time once again.  I've registered my distaste for this bizarre list-making season before. I will never - ever - understand the desire to read fluffy fare simply because the weather is warmer. I just don't get it. I still contend that this is a holiday conjured by publishers to speed otherwise lagging sales before the big, "literary" books hit in the fall. But that's just me.

My documented irritation with this irrelevant season has no effect on the Summer Reading lists that are de rigeur once the first heat wave hits and this year is no exception. Every publication under the sun is now unfurling their brightly colored/SPF-inclusive beachy reading recommendations and as much as I was prepared to get snarky and annoyed and overly pious, I have to say that a few of these picks are far less flinty than I expected. A few books, in fact, seem so perfectly "summer" that they appear on several lists.

Here's the rundown so far, with more lists likely to drop in the coming weeks:

• NPR's list of '08 Summer Reads wins an early place in my steely heart with the inclusion of Samantha Hunt's The Invention of Everything Else.  Other decidedly non-beachy picks include the short story collection Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan and Nam Le's collection (and it is here that I must remind you, in light of my own recent folly, that this is, in fact a collection), The Boat.

• The LA Times has a lengthy Summer Reading list that is more than any reader (fluffy or no) can really think about in the heat. It offers a range of essays and reflections and fiction and friction. Notable picks include:  This is Their Land by Barbara Ehrenreich, All About Lulu by Jonathan Evison (bravo!), The Lemur by Benjamin Black, Real World by Natsuo Kirino, Shining City by Seth Greenland and The Road Home by Rose Tremain.

• Salon has prefaced their summer reading series of lists by defining precisely what beach reading means to them: "summer books that transport you to new places without making you go through airport security." So is that the definition, then? Summer reading = books that make you feel like you're taking a vacation even though your sorry ass can't go anywhere for months?  Hmmm. Interesting.  I'll skip entirely over their "chick lit" summer reading list (yes, all the usual suspects are represented) and their "true confessions" list as neither offers anything of interest to me.  Their "killer thrillers" summer reading list, however, offers weightier tomes to drag around in your beach bag: Obedience by Will Lavender and Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith.

• The NYT's June 1st book review section is dubbed Summer Reading, but all of the "picks" seem to be the books they would have reviewed anyway. Call me crazy. Too bad they didn't highlight one of those beachy reads on June 3rd instead so we could be spared two separate reviews of the same damn book. A crime in my estimation, no matter how divergent the opinions (which in this case, were nil), given the dwindling space in book review sections.

Common denominators: Several lists have included Ethan Canin's America America and the completely obvious pick When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris.

I'm with Laila on this one, though...I often like to use those beachy summer months (where, honestly, I burn so quickly there is no point for me to even go until it's at least 6pm and the BBQ and drinks are well under way) to go back in time and re-read old favorites or finally, finally get to those classics that I've not yet enjoyed. Revolutionary Road, here I come.

Janelle Brown Does LAist

My brief interview with Janelle Brown, author of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, is now up at LAist. Here's a teaser:

Q: What is the biggest misconception about Los Angeles?

A: There's so many old hackneyed chestnuts – "oh, the terrible traffic, the vapidity, everyone's in the industry, all the women have fake breasts" – that it's hard to know where to start. Truly, it all gets so boring to listen to. 

But the one that gets me the most is probably the "there's no literary scene in LA." You hear that a lot from people on the East Coast. Come on, really? Half of my friends are writers, and there's readings and events every night of the week here, not to mention some great literary magazines (Swink, Black Clock) and several of the best up-and-coming creative writing programs in the country.

Poor LA. People are so condescending to her.

Ah! So true, so true!  Brown will be reading from her debut novel tonight at Skylight Books @ 7:30pm. Be there.

Bookish LA

The week in bookish LA is up at LAist and offers all sorts of interesting options.  What've we got? Food discussions, film dialogue, political intrigue, debut fiction and Salman Rushdie (Saul Rushie, according to the woman who requested his newest book oh-so-loudly at Vroman's on Saturday) signing The Enchantress of Florence. 

Here's to hoping those in attendance actually know his name.

Bookforum Bounty

I spent a leisurely Saturday devouring the latest Bookforum and there were several bits that caught my eye:

• Paul LaFarge's look at Tom McCarthy's Tintin  - just as McCarthy asks if Tintin is literature, I feel as if LaFarge is asking if McCarthy's exploration of Tintin is literature. Kinda meta.
• A look at 60's literature - four recent novels in particular - and how books about that time are colored (or not) by those who lived (or didn't) through it all by David Ulin.
• The aforementioned review of Ed Park's Personal Days which articulated what I could not and I'm happy for it
• Stacey D'Erasmo's take on Rivka Galchen's Atmospheric Disturbances in which she finds the book charming and challenging and quite a debut
• Carla Blumenbranz's take on Rachel Kushner's Telex from Cuba (on my radar to be read oh so soon)
• Andrea Walker's review of Harry, Revised by Mark Sarvas - While Walker nitpicked a bit, all I can say is: bravo to Mark for getting reviewed in Bookforum. Book. Forum. Wow.
• Marjorie Welish's review of Maggie Nelson's Women, The New York School, And Other True Abstractions, in which Welish finds many faults, makes me not so happy. However: the review is just as academic as the book and so, you know, what can one expect?  Echo chamber, indeed.
• Jonathan Schell's review of Nicholson Baker's very large, very intimidating (to me, of course, only to me) Human Smoke
• And finally, a fascinating piece on Fiction and Political Fact by Morris Dickstein which includes insights from a range of socio-political writers including Madison Smart Bell, Richard Flanagan, Dana Spiotta, Lydia Millet, Dubravka Ugresic, Norman Rush, Claire Messud, Valerie Martin and Zakes Mda.  The subject has been much on my mind lately and has become the stuff of many recent conversations. It's a longer piece and is well worth your time. A few quotes that caught my eye, in no particular order and in no way representative of the entire piece, but certainly up for agreement/disagreement on many fronts:

"Yet for the most part, American fiction writers stay out of politics or choose between politics and fiction, as Grace Paley did in her life as an activist. When Norman Mailer was most involved in politics, he wrote close to his worst."
                                        -Madison Smart Bell

"I also think the way fiction conjures interiority and consciousness is unique among the arts and deeply challenging. A novelist can inhabit some pretty unloved and vilified people and make them human and recognizable. Since the novel is built for irony as well as for empathy, it can avoid sentiment while pursuing these recognitions. Few places in the culture encourage this kind of hard-edged, uneasy empathy."
                                      -Dana Spiotta

"The problem is that fiction is written about in this country, in places as prominent as the New York Times, in a way that mistakes narrative for art...Works that are little more than cross-cultural soap operas pass as literary achievements because, in a sense, they also pass for political statements: The politically correct, in other words, is clothed as the political, and apparently, that's the closest many readers care to come to transcendence."
                                      -Lydia Millet

"For the political novel in particular, the weakening grasp of actual history is a burden: A majority of young Brits think Winston Churchill is a fictional character and Sherlock Holmes is an actual one. So when it comes to possible readers, the outlook's not good."
                                    -Norman Rush

As is always the case with Bookforum, there is so much more and it often requires several passes for me to fully appreciate all that a new issue offers. So much good stuff in such a thin wisp of a publication.  Do check it out.

Park's Picks

The Week asks Ed Park to pick his "best books" and he offers up six "of the more obscure titles among his all-time favorite novels", of which I've read exactly none:

• Strange Life of Ivan Osokin by P.D. Ouspensky - "Oupsensky's short, strange fable has the most potent use of repetition I've ever encountered in a work of fiction."
• Thieves' Nights by Harry Stephen Keeler - "Talk to me for more than five minutes and I start raving about Keeler, America's great unsung experimental writer, who masqueraded as a mystery novelist."
• The Scorpions by Robert Kelly - "The narrator is so effortlessly sinister, one nearly forgives Kelly for never again writing another novel, as if for fear of the voice getting lodged in his head."
• Afternoon Men by Anthony Powell - "...a British comic novel par excellence that seems to have Hemingway in its DNA."
• Speedboat by Renata Adler - "Along with Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine and Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, this is a book I've bought repeatedly and given away, in the hopes of expanding the cult."
• Amazons by Cleo Birdwell - "Don DeLillo's reputation as a novelist of ideas overshadows his comic gifts. In 1980, DeLillo and Sue Buck collaborated under the Birdwell pseudonym, and their raunchy, relentlessly silly fabrication..."

I've added these to my ever-growing list (several are out of print however, so you'll have to start trolling eBay or alert the fine folks at Alibris) of books that I must read.

And speaking of books that you must read (a nice transition, no?), do check out Ed Park's novel Personal Days, which I recently finished and which flummoxed me a bit for its similarities (at first, but then later, no) to Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris.  I loved TWCTTE and only pages into Personal Days, I began to worry that something had gone terribly awry in a universe that would let two excellent writers, working separately and unawares, begin a novel of office intrigue in the first person-plural.

I then worried that I could find no review - no person, no less - to discuss said conundrum with me. No review mentioned it. And when I finally discussed it with bookish friends, several mentioned that it wouldn't make sense to mention TWCTTE in the same review as Personal Days because, well, they are two different books. Which they are, they are.  I've been confused and perplexed about both books for weeks now and bless Bookforum (for so many things, really) for perfectly setting my concerns to rest and saying exactly what I could not articulate on my own:

"Then We Came to the End was among the best American novels of last year, so it's a considerable compliment to Park to say that Personal Days suffers not at all from this association."

And then:

"...despite all the comparisons it invites, Personal Days proves by its end to be wholly and strikingly its own."

I have much more to say about the latest Bookforum (which is excellent) but I'd love for you all to go out and read Personal Days and let me know what you think. I want to talk about this with you. I want to discuss. I want to roundtable. I want to point out all my favorite funny parts and learn which ones are yours.

You + Me + The Hammer Museum on Sunday

Here's what I'll be doing tomorrow.  You?