It's Keeping Us Up At Night
We’ve got a stack of new books to read. They’re waiting for us, lined up against the wall next to the bed, whispering mysterious words in the night, laughing at our literary pursuits, and pretty much causing us daily fits of bookish anxiety. Anxiety comes in many forms and affects lots of people, but it seems writers are especially victimized by its mighty claw. Can you relate? We know you can. Today, however, we are not a victim. Instead we’re reveling in the bounty. Today we relish the always-expanding syllabus of required reading. Amy Bloom discusses her work in the New Haven Advocate, literary heroes are scrutinized in Student Pulse and a new book looks back on the early days of Patti Smith’s punkishness. Poets John Ashbery and Daniel Nester are reviewed, Joshua Ferris releases a second novel and Jerzy Pilch — our nomination for best-named author — gets his booze filled in Three Percent. Speaking of booze, you might want to get your hands on some. Hell, it works for us, and is known to cure all forms of bookish anxiety. — Kevin Murphy
– Amy Bloom’s new collection is a revelation of the emotional violence and loss within friendship and complicated love. For new readers, this collection offers an introduction to a writer of uncanny precision. Bloom fans will recognize many of these stories from previous collections. Two sets of four linked stories, forming novellas, revolve around two now-familiar couples: Clare and William, and Lionel and Julia. The William and Clare stories detail an extended affair between them that survives each of their divorces, closing with the new story, “Compassion and Mercy.” — Amy Bloom in the New Haven Advocate
Richard III: Hero Or Villain?
– It is tempting to classify literary, cinematic, and historical characters into groups. The trouble of course, is that such labels can be misleading at best, and severely subjective and variable. When using terms such as hero, villain, anti-hero, anti-villain, or adventurer, it is important to remember how vague and movable the borders really are, and to ask why a certain label is or should be placed on a specific character. — Judging Heroes in Student Pulse
– When Patti Smith first began to release albums in the late 1970s, she seemed to have magically eluded all of the shackles imposed on women in the rock ‘n’ roll world. She was neither angelic muse nor bad-girl sexpot, a tomboy willing to be photographed in a pale peach slip, flashing a patch of unshaven armpit hair that shocked the record-store boys I knew more than just about anything any girl had ever done. — Patti Smith in Salon
– “Readings” of John Ashbery’s poetry have been a contentious point in critical and scholarly circles for more than half a century. It is commonly held by acolytes and detractors alike that there are only misreadings of his work, to the great delight of Harold Bloom. Stephen Burt recently wrote in the Times Literary Supplement, “When you interpret Ashbery at all, you risk having sceptics tell you that you made it all up: that the poems demonstrate ingenuity not from the poet but from his interpreters, who find music in static, meaning in randomness, synthetic silk in a succession of sow’s ears . . . No one can prove that Ashbery’s poems mean anything.” This is as good a maxim as any. — John Ashbery in the Critical Flame
– In his second novel, The Unnamed, Ferris drops realism to ask but what if we did live without distractions? Not just the petty ones, such as e-mail, but all the carrots: a promotion, a successful resolution to that all-important lawsuit, a vacation in the British Virgin Islands. What does the Zen lifestyle touted by Yogis, existence without the relentless pursuit of the next desired thing, actually look like? — Joshua Ferris in Slate
New From Nester
– Daniel Nester’s writing has appeared in Best Creative Nonfiction, Open City, Nerve, Daily Beast, Best American Poetry, Time Out New York, The Morning News, Bloomsbury Review, Poets & Writers, and Bookslut. He most recently wrote How to Be Inappropriate, a collection of personal essays. In November 2009, Elizabeth Hildreth interviewed Daniel Nester for Bookslut. They discussed, among other things, finger weenies, why it ain’t easy being a clown, variations of moon/moon as an act, the Outfield song “Your Love,” leaving New York City, why poetry makes us sick, and “the reverse-cowgirl” compared to “in vitro” as a process of conception (not a conceptual process). — Daniel Nester in Bookslut
– It’s Pilch’s genius to be able to craft a narrative that’s both honest and deceiving. That doesn’t pull punches when exposing his character flaws, but does so in a way that makes it seem like he might be writing himself better, so to speak. That by putting these things down, by conveying them in a way that you can relate, that you can see the problem, that if he can do that, he can cure himself. — Jerzy Pilch in Three Percent
Video: Daniel Nester Reads
