Counterbalance

Lit Bits & A Bit About Big Reading

A few links worthy of further investigation that I hope to investigate...further...in the coming days:

• The now heavily-linked-to David Mitchell NYT piece: David Mitchell, The Experimentalist Some haven't picked it back up since they read the first few pages, others swear it is genius. Consider this my official promise not to read any press or any reviews about this book until I've had a chance to tackle it on my own terms.
• Garth Risk Hallberg at The Millions tackles a subject that has been much on my mind lately: to pick Dhalgren up or no. In the age of quick news snippets and online marketing folks touting short, snappy posts (I'm one of them and guilty of such recommendations to my own clients), I feel there's a time coming soon when it will be all the rage to savor long blog posts again. To do the long essay. To embrace the crazy long novel. I picked up a lovely used copy of Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren from a favorite but now-closed used bookstore years ago and every few months it calls to me from the shelf. I've not yet succumbed to the call, but Hallberg's post has me tempted anew.
• Chad W. Post at the excellent Three Percent has written a post that pulls together all the disparate articles & studies & research about how the aforementioned short, snappy posts with their oh-so-convenient hyperlinks are not only changing how we read, but what we retain and...most compelling to me...what we think about what we've read. There is so much here and is the beginning of what looks to be an ongoing series of posts. I also hope it is the beginning of an ongoing dialogue about this. My secret (now not so much) hope? This leads us back, in some way, to longer forms.  What We Talk about When we Talk About the Future of Reading is a must-read.

Update: Matthew Cheney has a fantastic response to Hallberg's Dhalgren post. I'm more tempted now than ever.

How Suzanne Rivecca Awakened the Reader/Writer Within (Yes, Again)

 

Simple: a kick-ass short story collection. So kick-ass, I'm saying it's kick-ass before I've even finished it. 

Why is it so kick-ass? It is honest, funny, sad, painful, straight-up storytelling with awkward, messed-up, self-conscious characters at its core. No fancy deconstructions, no look-at-what-i'm-doing-there-right-there-in-that-chapter tomfoolery, no meta-themes and overarching themes and subgenre themes melding together to create the stuff of a thousand and one grad student papers gone bad. Instead, Rivecca offers characters who are honestly struggling, honestly telling it like they see it, honestly trying to sort their shit out. How refreshing after months of plowing through theory and meta, meta, meta lit.

Why does it matter? I've been on a non-blogging, non-reading, non-writing, non-loving-books-at-all jag. Again. For the umpteenth time. Call me a jaded reader. An unproductive writer. Whathaveyou. I'd lost the spark. Rex, while fascinating in many ways, felt like an exercise in what literature could be if we all tried very hard to make it so. A puzzle to deconstruct and re-make and discuss at dinner parties. Same with Shields (but that's a separate matter) after awhile. I wondered if it was me or what I was reading or both. Hell, Tinkers didn't move me. I kept skipping pages and pages thinking, I'm bored. Bored to tears with the Pulitzer prize-winning novel that all those I respect & admire have praised loudly, effusively. The only reading of any kind that has wowed me in any way since Maggie Nelson's excellent Bluets is the street-style photo compendium The Sartorialist by the fantastic Scott Schuman. Seriously.

So: For long-time readers, you know the drill. You get my gig. You are totally hip to this dip in readerly-writerly interest. I lose interest with the seasons (sometimes more often, on good years...less) and a book and a trip (thank you NYC) often conspire together to yank me right out of my complacency and place me firmly back on solid reading/writing ground. The most recent book to yank me out of my nonsense is Rivecca's debut short story collection Death Is Not an Option. Go check it out & let me know what you think. Would love to chat you up about it before I fall into another fashion blog coma.