Where is the good rock novel?

Why is it that no one has produced a convincing rock novel? Or, at least, I sure haven't read one yet. This article (Resisting the rock-novel demon) seems to suggest that authors and readers just don't get the rock and roll lifestyle. I think it may be difficult to capture every aspect of what it is like to be a musician, let alone pull of the sense of build-up and let-down that comes with it, but there's no reason that a character can't have a "career" as a musician, just as he might a street sweeper. It is part of who he is, helps to determine how he views the world.

Or maybe it's just that the novelists that have attempted it are merely trying to live out their own rock n'roll dreams. Or the article suggests this:

A criticism that has often been levelled at the rock novel is that, because the literati are largely upper-middle-class, they haven’t ever experienced the struggle and graft that go with dreaming of a headline slot at Glastonbury. This is almost certainly rubbish, partly because the middle class has just as much historical right to comment on rock existence as the working class, and partly because musicians are, on the whole, roughly 13½ times lazier than novelists.

I'm not sure what that has to do with anything (or what it has to say about writers who are musicians).

Florida man's headache mystery solved by a bullet

Florida man's headache mystery solved by a bullet

MIAMI (Reuters) - A Florida man awoke with a severe headache and asked his wife to drive him to a hospital, where doctors found a bullet lodged behind his right ear, sheriff's deputies said.

"The nurse looked at him and said, 'It appears that you've been shot,'" the Fort Pierce Tribune quoted St. Lucie County Sheriff Ken Mascara as saying. "And he said, 'No way.'"

The wife, April Moylan, fled the emergency room when the bullet was discovered but later told deputies she had accidentally shot her husband as he slept early on Tuesday. She was jailed on a weapons violation charge while deputies pursued additional charges.

The husband, 45-year-old Michael Moylan, woke up with a head pain so severe he suspected he was having an aneurysm and asked his wife to take him to the emergency room, deputies said.

They arrested the wife after obtaining a search warrant and finding a gun and bloody rags in the couple's home near the Atlantic coastal town of Port St. Lucie. The husband was hospitalized in stable condition.

If you're wondering why posting is light...

...blame this guy.

Book Review: Invisible Man

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Some books you wonder why it took you so long to get around to. How come no ever told me how good this book was? How come it never came up in discussion about existential literature? Ellison's narrator is the underground man, pushed aside by society. It reads in many ways, especially in the beginning like Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground. He lives a life of absurdity, guided by happenstance, uncontrolled contingencies. He is not incapable of action, but chooses in bad faith to be a yes-man, to go where he is led. And the whole time he is trying to sort out who he is, never really learning that it up to him to determine that.

Ellison deals with race in a way that makes me think of Frantz Fanon or Ngugi. Race is an excuse for marginalization. He's not casting blame except for those who deserve it. Race is circumstance, part of identity as any other circumstance of birth, but it is not completely definitive. When Ellison deals with it this way race is not by itself the major issue of the book.

The narrator, though, is frustratingly passive. We're given glimpse of his abilities, but he is guided by others and by contingency. Even when he has his existential epiphany in the end, finally sorting out that it is up to him to determine his identity, that only through action does he make himself, it is weak, too late, and again set off by something incidental and absurd.

The novel is a thoroughly psychological novel, with first person narration that allows us to see the tumbling around of his thoughts. With it's existential and political themes, I can't believe no one has ever recommended this book to me. I would have thanked them for it.

The Three-Quarters Done Complex

A funny thing happened when I got about three-quarters of the way through this first draft of my "project." I had to (sort of) map out where I was going near the end so that I know the critical scenes and could time things, but now that I know more or less what's going to happen, my interest is beginning to wane. I'm not sure if it was simply that I knew what was coming, thus killing my own curiosity, or if it maybe was a fear of hitting that end. Fear of finishing a draft, which is a strange sense of loss or maybe fear of having to get it all right. I think it was the latter.

I know my basic goals for the project, I know what I want to happen for specific characters, and I know the culminating events, but the pressure to get it all right as I come speeding to the end is a bit much. The speed is part of it as well. I've begun to see the destination, and instead of enjoying the journey, I'm hauling ass to get there. And I worry about spoiling the sense of things.

I've seen a lot of good novels go bad at this point (Jennifer Egan's "Look At Me" comes to mind), so I'm especially conscious of what's happening. I believe in the inevitability of what happens in fiction. Even what's shocking should feel in some way as if was inevitable. The important thing is to stay true to the story told so far, and to the characters within.

With all of this in mind, I really fell like the pressure's on (I'm also coming up on one year since I began this draft, which was my de facto deadline). I think I have the ways to see myself through. I have many things yet to discover, I believe I can avoid the deus ex machina, and I know to watch my pace. Maybe, though, there's someone out there with a little more experience what might want to share their battle stories, and let us all learn from your experience. Any Walter Moselys want to weigh in?

On Summer Reading

"I'm sorry, sir, but Dostoyevsky is not considered summer reading. I'll have to ask you to come with me."

While everyone is out there pushing summer reading lists that are full of fluff, easy reads, I wonder why we don't use these free summer days to read harder books. The rest of the year is full of other obligations, impending holidays, taxes due, and the like, so why not settle into the book you've put off? Say... Ulysses?

It seems to me it's a good time to sit out on the porch until the sun goes down while reading something a little challenging. So, tell me, who's up the challenge? what are you going to read?

Some suggestions:

The Brothers Karamazov
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Middlemarch
A Tale of Two Cities
Anna Karenina
Underworld
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Remembrance of Things Past

More Blog Resentment

The Scorn of the Literary Blog - June 12, 2007 - The New York Sun:

"In fact, despite what the bloggers themselves believe, the future of literary culture does not lie with blogs — or at least, it shouldn't. The blog form, that miscellany of observations, opinions, and links, is not well-suited to writing about literature, and it is no coincidence that there is no literary blogger with the audience and influence of the top political bloggers. For one thing, literature is not news the way politics is news — it doesn't offer multiple events every day for the blogger to comment on. For another, bitesized commentary, which is all the blog form allows, is next to useless when it comes to talking about books. Literary criticism is only worth having if it at least strives to be literary in its own right, with a scope, complexity, and authority that no blogger I know even wants to achieve. The only useful part of most book blogs, in fact, are the links to long-form essays and articles by professional writers, usually from print journals."

NYTBR's Got a Blog?

Wait, I thought blogs were killing book sections. Didn't NYTBR editor Sam Tanehaus say as much? Then why is Dwight Garner writing a new blog for the Times, titled Paper Cuts?

Now, I don't hold as much against Tanenhaus and the Book Review as others, though I think hostility towards blogs is misplaced. I also don't see blogs, even the best of them, as replacements for good print reviews. And, in the same way, I don't see how a NY Times version of a blog is going to take anything away from the good book bloggers out there.

All this being said, it is a pretty boring blog. Even though he started strong with a post on old book ads (where this ad of dapper Cormac McCarthy was nicked).

My Man McCarthy

It's funny how inspirational it is to hear a writer you admire talk about writing. And for that writer like Cormac McCarthy, who has barely voiced a word about his craft, it seems particularly special.

Oprah looked intimidated by this laid-back author who doesn't care about fame and doesn't care that her magic hand is going to lead to millions more reading his book. McCarthy was relaxed and talked pretty openly, and for a man in advanced years he wasn't set on many issues. When asked about his faith he responded, "Depends on which day you ask me."

It was a coup and worth watching without a doubt, though I wish someone would post a transcript or the video on YouTube. I wonder, though, how much she had to fork over to the Santa Fe Institute for McCarthy to be willing to do the interview.

There is video, exclusive video even, on Oprah's site, though you have to join the book club to view it. I'm still reluctant to do that.

If you missed it, here are some articles:
Cormac McCarthy gives first-ever TV interview to Oprah
We watch as Oprah, Cormac McCarthy mix it up
Cormac McCarthy Bombs on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ - What were they expecting, exactly?

Mostly, McCarthy's interview reminded us of the magic worked every day by professional media coaches. We don't know that we've ever seen a more uncomfortable person on television than McCarthy, slouched in that armchair, chin resting in hand, speaking so quietly that even miked up he could barely be heard. He was stripped, by bad lighting and a seeming refusal to wear makeup, of the stern grandeur he adopts in his book-jacket photos. (The brilliant photographer who helped create McCarthy's image, Marion Ettlinger, should show video of this interview to potential clients.) Instead, he seemed ungainly and frail and uncertain. We guess we don't particularly want to see a poised and polished Cormac McCarthy fobbing off anecdotes like a pro, but this sure made for awkward TV.

To me, it was exactly his unpolished-ness that made it so good.

McCarthy, Oprah on 'The Road'
Cormac McCarthy opens up on 'Oprah'

In the New Yorker this week

In case you're too busy to get to it until late Sunday night, which usually happens to me, the New Yorker this week, the Summer Fiction Issue, has a new story by Denis Johnson. Also in the issue is short article by Charles D'Ambrosio, along with the in-crowd writers Eggers, Eugenidies, Shteyngart.

And for those of you who pay attention to these things, there's another poem by Dana Goodyear.

Poor, poor little writer

An Observer article this week, titled My Book Deal Ruined My Life, tries to make us feel bad for published authors because getting a book published has turned their life into some kind of magical paradise.

It's not enough to try and tell us it's hard work, we hear that all the time and it doesn't deter the dedicated writer, but now we're supposed to feel sorry for someone who decided to write a book so that they could make money? My admiration and sympathy goes to those authors who would be doing it either way.

PS: Ed skewers the article here.

Cormac McCarthy on Oprah

Reclusive novelist talks to Oprah - Yahoo! News

I haven't seen it yet, but I have it on the DVR at home.

Book Review: No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy


Is it a Cormac McCarthy thriller or a deconstruction of genre fiction through the art of Cormac McCarthy? Either way, "No Country for Old Men" is an immensly readable book that stil retains everything we expect from McCarthy. Brutal violence is everywhere. Characters are overwhelmed by a world gone-bad and their own possible complicity in it. And it ends in a fashion that would likely surprise a traditional genre reader but should be no shock to a McCarthy fan. The book could serve as a good introduction to McCarthy or for those intrigued by "The Road" but might want something, say, a little less depressing.

For me, I don't finish any book in a week (especially these days), but this book held me in its grip from the moment I picked it up to merely see if I wanted to read it next.

Book Sale Haul Pt. 2

• Existentialism and Human Emotions - Jean-Paul Sartre
• The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
• Reflections in a Golden Eye - Carson McCullers
• Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
• Three Novels - Samuel Beckett
• Rabbit, Run - John Updike
• Intruder in the Dust - William Faulkner
• Absalom, Absalom - William Faulkner
• The Town - William Faulkner
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
• Rhinoceros - Eugene Ionesco
• Delta Wedding - Eudora Welty
• Faust Pt I - Goethe
• Faust Pt II - Goethe
• A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
• Islands in the Stream - Ernest Hemingway
• Charles Baudelaire - A.E. Carter
• Saul and Patsy - Charles Baxter
• The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (first printing)
• The Complete Stories - Franz Kafka
• The Inner Circle - T.C. Boyle
• The Ruins - Scott Smith
• Rock Springs - Richard Ford (first printing)

One could detect a couple of themes here. A certain leaning towards Southern literature as well as traditional classics. Never minding the outliers like "The Ruins." I've heard good things and thought the wife would like it.


I could have grabbed more, that's certain, but I had to bags with handles ready to break and as much as I could take. They do this again in October anyway.

Book Sale Haul Pt. 1

Day one of the library book sale while price are still (fire-sale) high. They sell 'em by the bag on Sunday, so there'll be more.

• Troubled Sleep - Jean-Paul Sartre (a first American edition that I probably already have)


• For Whom The Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway (a hardback reissue from 1968)


• The Death of Sweet Mister - Daniel Woodrell (after the beauty of Winter's Bone, it is time to dig back in his catalog)


• Black Swan Green - David Mitchell (I heard a short interview with him yesterday and it made me want to read this one)


• Color of Law - David Milofsky (Denver Post columnist and CSU workshop prof)


• Therapy - Steven Schwartz (another CSU teacher and my former advisor)


• Sanctuary - William Faulkner (I will get through all of Faulkner's works eventually)


• The Reivers - William Faulkner (this one has a nice early 70's cover--and back copy--from when a movie was made of it with Steve McQueen)


• Middlemarch - George Eliot (everyone in the world seems to cite this book, so I'd better get around to reading it)


• One Writer's Beginnings - Eudora Welty (of course)


• Existentialism & Alienation in American Literature - Sidney Finklestein (if I'd have gone for an MA in Lit, this would have been my thesis)

So, I guess my reading list just got longer.

Book-burning Bookseller

Mo. man burns books as act of protest - Yahoo! News

Okay, now I understand the bookseller's sense of protest at a world seemingly in decline, but couldn't he have given me a call? I would have taken them off his hands. But burning them? Come on.

Meanwhile, it's book sale time for my local library district again. Let's see how I make out this time.

Book Review: Lolita

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

I remember once, many years ago, attempting to read this novel and finding it simply unappealing. Something about Humbert's smug attitude bothered me. I failed, then, to see the humor in it. But when I gave it a go this time (in my attempt to tick off all the classics I'm somehow gotten this far without reading), I immediately fell into it. The sense of play in this novel is extreme and aesthetics take a great priority. Humbert himself is an aestheticist, thus his preference for the pristine physical form of the nymphet. But don't let us forget that our narrator is also a madman. His narration attempts to play up his mental malady, but it becomes apparent. to the reader through other means. He is obsessive, single minded, and illogical. Reason often takes a backseat to impulse. And yet we read on because we somehow find him likable. Grotesque, but likable.

Lolita is as salacious as it is made out to be. I certainly understand why many would have trouble with this book. But this is not erotica. The details given are not mean to entice but to show enticement. Someone with a defensive moral center is not likely to make it too far through these pages before chucking it out an open window.

The novel, though, goes quickly from a "novel of rapture" (as it says on the jacket of my edition) to a detective story, to a simply sad final third that demonstrates Humbert's pathetic nature. And while I could have read a hundred more pages of the first section, this remains one of the best books I've ever read.

Favorite Fonts

I've been a Garamond guy since I first started using a PC. It is quiet, small, and understated--sort of how I like my fiction to be. It makes less demands of the reader than, say, Times New Roman, which sort of screams 'Do you hear what I'm saying?'

I am surprised, though, by the authors in this article who prefer to work with Courier. Sure, some of it comes from a nostalgia for the click-smack sounds of an old typewriter. but they also point to its temporary look. Courier does not look like something you'd read in a book and therefore looks less fixed. This should make it ideal for drafts.

I have some nostalgia for typewriters too. Somewhere there is a picture of me at age 5 or 6 with my brand new typewriter delivered by Santa. He even typed me a letter that still sat in it. That probably went a long way towards instilling this need to write, to see words of my own creation on the page.

When I finished my first book-length manuscript (a god-awful thing I'm sure it was), written out long hand, that second draft was completed on an electric typewriter. Those were the starving artist days. I'm sure the heat had been turned off and I was keeping warm with the assistance of discount whiskey while blasting away at that machine.

And then I moved on to one of those word-processors, a stand-alone unit that worked in ASCII that was really more frustrating than anything. And when it printed it was a really painful sound, so mechanical the sound of each letter smacking the paper at regular intervals.

Then I moved on to the PC and I know we should all be grateful for how they have eased the revision process, but I still cannot compose--or do not like to compose--on the computer. I need that slow pace of the pen scratching on paper. Though, when I do type that second draft into the computer, I'll have to consider using Courier.

It would make my manuscript much longer, I suppose.

What Makes a Book Successful

In the New York Sun, David Blum writes in "How Not to Write a Bestseller" about how the highly praised novel Then We Came to an End by Joshua Ferris was not a success because it never appeared on the NY Times bestseller list. The hardcover book, though, is already on its fourth printing. That sounds like success to me. Bestseller status isn't required for a mid-list book to be successful and profitable. But expecting it, a book by a first-time author, to sell like James Patterson is idiotic.

The fact is that there are difference audiences for books. Smart audiences don't drive the bestseller lists. They don't. The majority of books bought and sold are very predictable and tested books. James Patterson does not require a good review in the NYTBR to sell a lot of books. People who read Patterson or David Baldacci (numbers 1 and 2 on the NY Times Bestseller Hardcover Fiction list as I write this) are not turning to the NYTBR to read about new books. The reviews that praised Ferris's book certainly garnered it more sales than it would have seen otherwise, but a review also let's people know something about the books (besides the subjective thumbs-up or thumbs-down) that helps them decide whether they might be interested in reading it. Ferris's book is written in that annoying "Rose for Emily" collective perspective. My guess is that this turned some readers off and, I'll admit, has made me a little reluctant to read it.

Blum's article goes on to make some great points about bookselling that I absolutely agree with:

What if bookstores created sections devoted to that week's best-reviewed books? Or posted positive reviews alongside the books themselves? That way, book reviews (even those that appeared only online) would be easily accessible to those most likely to buy books — people already browsing in the bookstore. Right now, bookstores place all their marketing muscle behind bestseller lists, meaning that prize positions get awarded to those who've already won the horse race. Even movie theaters operate according to more democratic principles than that. Shouldn't good bookstore placement go to good books? Just a thought.

But that would require that bookstores care more about selling interesting books more than they care about selling what they know will sell. They don't. Yes, this idea would likely sell more mid-list books, and more books I'm interested in, but they might sell less books overall.

Literary Criticism and Lost at Powells

How come I've just now found out that they've been posting about Lost at the Powell's blog? Intelligent and researched, puts all those fan sites to shame. Except for Lostpedia, of course.