A look at Anna Kavan's new book

Anna Kavan's "found" novel Guilty comes out this week in the US and Strange Horizons has a look at it and Kavan's most popular novel, Ice. Reviewer/blogger Abigail Nussbaum appropriately praises Ice, though she reveals some awkwardness in Guilty. And she also appropriately questions the idea of publishing an author's work posthumously.

On top of reissuing Ice and several of her other novels, Kavan's publishers have also posthumously brought to light a "rediscovered" work, Guilty. There is a natural tendency to distrust such novels, with readers and reviewers making the reasonable argument that, had the novel been finished and worthy of publication, it would have seen the light of day within the author's lifetime. To a certain extent, Guilty seems to justify this bias. It gives off the impression of not having cooked quite long enough, and there is a dissonance between its first two thirds and final third that suggests that a final rewrite might have been planned and never carried out. Nevertheless, it is by no means an unworthy read.

I have a feeling that I won't have the same problem with the novel. Kavan's early work was full of coming of age stories, but her later work was more surreal. I've always wanted one that combined the two.

(Thanks to Matt Cheney for pointing the way to this essay. He also has some work at Strange Horizons.)

Hitchens doesn't like Philip Roth, either

Surprise.

Our good friend and chain-smoking grump Christopher Hitchens has a review of Philip Roth's Exit Ghost in the Atlantic, and it goes, in part, like this:

As with Exit Ghost's immediate predecessor, Everyman, one gets an ever-stronger impression that Roth has degraded the Eros-Thanatos dialectic of some of his earlier work and is now using his fiction, first to kill off certain characters and to shoot the wounded, and second to give himself something to masturbate about.

And this:

The dull reported speech with which Roth economizes (so much easier to do the background of WASP-dread secondhand, rather than evoking it directly as he used to do) is limpid and engaging when set beside the great swaths of soliloquy-as-dialogue in which the remainder of Exit Ghost is bogged down.

And it ends like this:

When Raymond Chandler felt things going limp in a story, he would have the door open and then it would be: Enter a man carrying a gun. When Roth is in the same fix, we know that some luckless goy chick is about to get it in the face. Exit reader.

And now you don't have to bother reading the review.

Submission Titles

The Virginia Quarterly Review » Blog » Titles We Have Known

VQR reveals:

The ten most common titles of submissions that we’ve received in the past year:
Remember
Smoke
Revelation
Work
Grace
Waiting
Insomnia
Voyeur
Butterfly
Reunion

Remember, there is no such thing as an original idea. But at least try for a more interesting title.

Into the Wild, the movie

So, Sean Penn has made a movie out of a book I've never read, Into the Wild. Not something I would usually have a comment on, but the book has had an effect on some people I know. And the movie looks good. Of course, limited release means that it doesn't play in some place like Denver. But there are reviews out there, so I can pretend like I've seen it. And Krakauer and Penn were on Oprah, if you're into that kind of thing.

Me, I'm also still holding on for No Country for Old Men.

NPR : Famous Authors' Rejection Letters Surface

NPR : Famous Authors' Rejection Letters Surface: "Jack Kerouac, George Orwell and Sylvia Plath are just a few of the authors whose books were turned down by the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house. Researchers going through the Knopf archives have come across their rejection letters, as well as a few others. "

We always like these sorts of stories, don't we?

"Yes, someday they will discover what a genius I am. And they will be sorry."

Book Review: Ulysses

Ulysses by James Joyce

Who on earth thought this was the best English language book ever written? Were they so intimidated by Joyce's smarts that they didn't want the world to think they might be stupid because they didn't enjoy the book? Ooh, look how he mirrors the Odyssey and how this chapter shows the evolution of the English language. Congrats, Mr. Joyce, you sure know a lot. But you also know how to write a good story. Why don't you go back to that?

There are some amazing passages. Some funny and quotable phrases. But I found the whole thing annoying. And I loved Dubliners. And I will still read Portrait, but there's no way I'm reading Finnegan's Wake after this. Maybe we would have been better off if they would have kept the book banned. There were parts that were surprisingly offensive, but I was more offended by the meaningless absurdity in it.

The book was so difficult and without reward. I don't recommend it. In fact, I advise against reading it. Sure, Joyce is brilliant, but I want to read a good book.

On Formatting

I'm busy banging in the last twenty pages of my manuscript and I got to thinking about formatting. I tend to work in Garamond, a nice, under-stated font, that is pretty small, and won't eat up a lot of paper. And with maybe twenty pages of hand-written text still to type in, I'll end up with around three hundred pages of manuscript with Garamond.

Looking around, though, I see that most people suggest that a manuscript be in a non-proportional font like Courier, at 12-point. 12-point? Really. So I go back and reformat what I have in the system and it adds nearly a hundred pages to my text. And it looks hideous. It looks like I'm some neanderthal working a century or so in the past. Even my old Brother electric typewriter didn't use a 12-point font. With this format there are only ten to twelve words a line. It makes every sentence look extremely declarative.

I'm reluctant to do it, though it looks like I'm going to end up with a whopper of a stack of paper when I print this thing out.

I've always opposed autobiographical fiction

Polish author jailed over killing he used as plot News Guardian Unlimited Books

"A Polish pulp fiction writer was sentenced to 25 years in jail yesterday for his role in a grisly case of abduction, torture and murder, a crime that he then used for the plot of a bestselling thriller."

I did it

I finished the project. Two hundred and seventy three handwritten pages and the first draft is complete. While I definitely feel like patting myself on the back, it is not a wholly satisfying feeling. A million doubts persist.

Endings are tricky and found myself questioning every aspect of mine. How much denouement is necessary? How much unravelling do you need? Is it necessary to tell you how everything turned out for everyone? This idea is particularly trouble some for this project because I have a whole slew of major characters whose fates are not necessarily intertwined. I don't know that it's necessary, that it is worth it to visit each of them in some post-climactic states some months after the peak events. What I've chosen to do is to sum up with the one character whose nose is in everyone's business to begin with. And through her we learn the fates of each of them. Well, the perceived fate, at least. I don't know if this is the right choice. I don't know if this closes things properly. I don't know that I could even tell without going back to the beginning.

And now I'm on to new chores. I think my revision process is going to be particularly arduous because of this ensemble. Each characters' chapters has a different voice, a different tone. And of course each character has his own arc, each changes in his own way. Some more than others. So, I think the thing to do is to read each of these character's chapters as a whole, to look for consistency in voice, details, themes, and to be sure he progresses like I believe he does. After doing this for each, I'll need to go back to the beginning, put everything back in its place, and see how the thing reads as a whole. I think the whole thing will take some time.

I am excited, though, to write some new things. I'd like to look at short fiction again and I want to work on some nonfiction. All told, finishing feels freeing, but there is a lot of work to do. Though, I am drafting a letter to an agent in the back of my head.

Finish the Damn Thing

That's it. That's the goal. I have a three-day weekend and I'm going to finish "the project." I should only have two short chapters to go and I just want to get it done. It's easy to anxious about finishing. I want to get it all right, but it's never going to be right the first time through. If I put off finishing because I'm waiting for just the right piece of imagery or dialogue or something to enter my head that is somehow going to make it all right, I'll be waiting a long time. And those sorts of things really only come one the page is before me, when I'm in the process of writing. There's no point in waiting.

So, I've blocked out some time, excused myself from some family activities, and I'm going to write the ending. But then my mind starts thinking about revision, how to go about it, how long it might take, and I start to think about who I know who might be willing to read a first draft. Look out, it might be you.

Anyway, off to work.

Rejection Collection - CutBank

This tasteful rejection from CutBank for my story "Those Afternoons" arrived in the mail yesterday (9 mos. after it was submitted) to remind me that it is time to send out another round of submissions. Most of the lit journals are back in action and accepting submissions again, so I'd better put some fiction in their hands. I came close last season, I felt, with some very positive rejections. Hopefully I will have some success this go around.

Man leaves dead mother in armchair for two years

Man leaves dead mother in armchair for two years - Yahoo! News:

"The man told police he could not bear to move his mother and said he never again entered the room where she was seated."

Back to Nature

We're crazy to do it with two young children, but we're going camping this weekend. I'm looking forward to that sort of escape, but since the whole house was up last night at three in the morning after strong thunderstorms passed over, I'm thinking I'm going to get much rest.

It has been a slow month, I realize. I pledge to get back into the swing of things by next month. It's only right that we slow down some in August, and things have been quiet overall, but I have some posts coming on novel revision and the idea of revealing secrets in non-fiction when your potential audience includes your wife and children. And I'm close to finishing "the project."

Litblogger on NPR

The Millions' Max Magee made an appearance on NPR last weekend identifiying his summer reads. The blog is one of my daily stops. So congrats, Max.

Sylvia Plath, artiste

One should wonder if this is really a good thing.

Sylvia Plath's unseen art, discovered in the attic

Paintings and drawings by Sylvia Plath, many of which have never been seen before, are to be published in October to mark the 75th anniversary of the birth of the American poet and novelist.

So, are they vultures simply looking to cash in, as some might say? Will they bring out her underthings for auction next?

'On the Road' Again

Viking is reissuing Kerouac's On The Road and the NYTBR felt the need to again reexamine the book, the beats, all the associated crap. But I swear that I read this article not six months ago.

I was under-whelmed when I read it (late) in my early twenties, and I'm not guessing I would think any more of it if I read it today. And who would really think the unedited 'scroll' version would be any better?

Presidential Candidates as Authors

Now if we were to judge them on their literary merits, who would we have to vote for?

Running for President Through the Bookstore - NPR

Pity the Adverb

I've never been one to follow that rule about eliminating adverbs. Sure, they sometimes describe too much. Especially when it comes to dialogue. But am I really to believe that they shouldn't be used elsewhere. What if I want to describe how someone walked across the room?

He moved vigorously towards the bar.

He moved towards the bar with vigor.

He moved towards the bar.

Which works better? Maybe if the last sentence had been set up with something about his general haste then it would be the best one. I think, though, that there are times when the first sentence is not only accurate but when it is the right sentence.

The blog at the Oxford University Press (via Ed) writes the adverbs epitaph:

The adverb is an endangered species in Modern English. One should neither wring one’s hands nor weep on hearing this news.
...
During his visit to Minneapolis after the collapse of the bridge, President Bush said: “We want to get this bridge rebuilt as quick as possible.” This is not a Bushism: few people would have used quickly here despite the fact that my computer highlighted the word and suggested the form with -ly.
...
Individual cases are hard to explain, and valid generalizations are hardly earned, but the tendency is obvious: adverbs are on the retreat in Modern English. Do it real quick has become the norm. We want to get this bridge rebuilt as quick as possible is a borderline case (quickly seems to be more appropriate). But it is enough to listen to the people around us, to observe adjectives replacing adverbs. A boy of ten comments on the speech of a person with an accent: “You are talking funny.” As ill luck would have it, the adverb funnily is rare, so that the boy had little choice. To a conservative taste he did it real good is a bit too much, but I fully realized what odds adverbs are facing only when I read in an undergraduate paper: “She sings beautiful.” On the same day I heard: “She is fragile and walks slow.” Another century or so, and the difference between those who speak good and those who speak bad will disappear. When that day comes, what will happen to the following exchange between Lady Bracknell and her nephew? “Good-afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well. –I am feeling very well, Aunt Augusta. –That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.” It looks as though adjectives and adverbs also prefer to part company.

Maybe someone who has studied the way language changes over the centuries can appreciate that dropping the old -ly suffix is not necessarily a bad thing, but I've spent time as a tutor and misuse raises the hairs on the back of my neck. Of course, things are flexible in creative work, but I will defend the use of the adverb in writing and in speech. And I'm likely to correct you when you are wrong.

The Summer Reading of our Sec. of Ed.

Now, I have to admit that I went to the NPR story on the Secretary of Education's summer reading choices looking to make fun of her. As the picture above exemplifies, Bush has the hots for Sec. Spellings and I suppose I should have remembered that he likes 'em smarter than him. Look at Laura. Of course that's not really asking too much.

So, I expected fully chick-lit or plot-driving, substance-deprived thrillers, instead she smartly identified books being read in many book clubs this summer: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. And she gets extra points for also including The Master Butcher's Singing Club by Louise Erdrich.

It turns out she might be a little better than the last education secretary who called teachers' unions terrorists. I'll just have to save my ridicule for the other hundred incompetent people that surround our President.

Hitchens, the Great Literary Critic

Inspired by the absurd choice by the NYTBR to have Christopher Hitchens review the new Harry Potter, Ed Champion gives us Hitch on "Green Eggs and Ham."

I was in the children’s section of a Barnes & Noble in Stanford, Calif., shaking down the dregs from my flask and firing up a cigarette for fortitude when I was kicked out by the employees. They told me that I could not smoke or drink and that I was an evil man for practicing my habits in an apparently sacrosanct section of the store. They didn’t know I was a writer of some note, that I was the Hitch and I could write them all under the table. Literally and figuratively. I then proceeded to berate the idiot behind the counter because it amused me. He could not identify Khruschev, even when I tapped the sad sod repeatedly on the head with my heavy shoe to help him get the hint. He called the police. An arrest and a court appearance later, and I was on the phone with Sam Tanenhaus, seeing if I could write a piece that would pay my bail. He told me that I should write about Green Eggs and Ham. I could write it completely drunk if I liked. I wouldn’t be edited.

Hitch is a parody of himself and, as absurd as it might be that NYTBR might would choose this caricature to give us his self-righteous and self-aggrandising take on the cultural phenomenon of Harry Potter, I find some humor in it. And of course Ed just exploits it all.