Sunday, December 5, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
Hardboiled for Hard Times
PM Press is sponsering a slew of readings around
the Bouchercon convention at the Embarcadero Hyatt.
I get to read with all these great crime writers. I'll
read a little from Incredible Double but will also
mix in something from a new novel.
Also--don't spread this around, but there's a private
party Sunday 10/17--a chance to drink with the cream
of lefty noir. Email me and I'll give you the lowdown.
Tour Dates Below--more info at pmpress.org:
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010:
7:30pm
Kim Stanley Robinson
Terry Bisson
Gary Phillips
Counterpulse
Thursday, October 14th, 2010:
7pm
Gary Phillips
Summer Brenner
Benjamin Whitmer
Michael Harris
The Green Arcade
Friday, October 15th, 2010:
7pm
Lars Mars and His Men
Jim Nisbet
Sin Soracco
The Green Arcade
Saturday, October 16th, 2010:
7:30pm
Gary Phillips
Summer Brenner
Benjamin Whitmer
Michael Harris
Kenneth Wishnia
Owen Hill
Pegasus Books Downtown
Monday, October 18th, 2010:
7:30pm
Benjamin Whitmer
Michael Harris
Jim Nisbet
Owen Hill
Summer Brenner
Moe's Books
Tuesday October 19th, 2010:
7:30pm
Benjamin Whitmer
Michael Harris
Summer Brenner
Pegasus Books Downtown
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010:
Barry Eisler
Owen Hill
Benjamin Whitmer
Michael Harris
Counterpulse
the Bouchercon convention at the Embarcadero Hyatt.
I get to read with all these great crime writers. I'll
read a little from Incredible Double but will also
mix in something from a new novel.
Also--don't spread this around, but there's a private
party Sunday 10/17--a chance to drink with the cream
of lefty noir. Email me and I'll give you the lowdown.
Tour Dates Below--more info at pmpress.org:
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010:
7:30pm
Kim Stanley Robinson
Terry Bisson
Gary Phillips
Counterpulse
Thursday, October 14th, 2010:
7pm
Gary Phillips
Summer Brenner
Benjamin Whitmer
Michael Harris
The Green Arcade
Friday, October 15th, 2010:
7pm
Lars Mars and His Men
Jim Nisbet
Sin Soracco
The Green Arcade
Saturday, October 16th, 2010:
7:30pm
Gary Phillips
Summer Brenner
Benjamin Whitmer
Michael Harris
Kenneth Wishnia
Owen Hill
Pegasus Books Downtown
Monday, October 18th, 2010:
7:30pm
Benjamin Whitmer
Michael Harris
Jim Nisbet
Owen Hill
Summer Brenner
Moe's Books
Tuesday October 19th, 2010:
7:30pm
Benjamin Whitmer
Michael Harris
Summer Brenner
Pegasus Books Downtown
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010:
Barry Eisler
Owen Hill
Benjamin Whitmer
Michael Harris
Counterpulse
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Frank O'Connor Festival
Flying to Ireland tomorrow to read at the Frank O'Connor short story festival. I'll be reading at the Metropole Hotel in Cork Thursday Sept. 16th at 9:30. The invitation came as quite a surprise--my last two prose books were the crime novels. A couple of short stories were published in magazines in recent years--tiny mags with small circulation. My only book of short fiction, Loose Ends, is out of print--I'll be lugging my copies to the festival, since they aren't available. Reading a couple of new things, actually trying them out for the first time, a little nerve wracking. Lots of Quality Lit Types are reading at the fest--we'll see how my stuff plays out of Berkeley.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Beyond Parody
Anybody out there read Tables for Two in The New Yorker? Best over the top (table top?) food writing ever.
This weeks review of Ma Peche on 56th street is a prize winner. First time I've seen juxtaposing used in a food review--thought the word was reserved for undergrad English papers. Reviewer is referring to a mix of "voluptuous twists of raw fluke" with strawberries and pistachios. Sounds like the bottom of my trash can! Also described: Tripe and jowl thrown into a frisee salad (from across the room?), and gooey chunks of pig's head...stuffed into a breaded parcel (!)
There's a note about the rice fries, whatever they are: regular fries need not fear imminent redundancy. Now I know what fries talk about when they visit their therapists.
I love the New Yorker.
Let them eat gooey pigs head!
The emperor isn't just naked--he's spread eagle and has peed himself.
This weeks review of Ma Peche on 56th street is a prize winner. First time I've seen juxtaposing used in a food review--thought the word was reserved for undergrad English papers. Reviewer is referring to a mix of "voluptuous twists of raw fluke" with strawberries and pistachios. Sounds like the bottom of my trash can! Also described: Tripe and jowl thrown into a frisee salad (from across the room?), and gooey chunks of pig's head...stuffed into a breaded parcel (!)
There's a note about the rice fries, whatever they are: regular fries need not fear imminent redundancy. Now I know what fries talk about when they visit their therapists.
I love the New Yorker.
Let them eat gooey pigs head!
The emperor isn't just naked--he's spread eagle and has peed himself.
Friday, June 18, 2010
blood and
At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frighted air; and falling back again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst!
Moby Dick
Moby Dick
Friday, June 11, 2010
the wine dark (and edgy) sea
Last month I reviewed a short story collection for the LA Times. Established literary authors, mostly, doing crime fiction. I couldn’t give it a bad review. The stories were deft, fun—vacation reading. The setup—todays great authors write about sex and crime. Dark, edgy…hmm.
Last year I went to one of those dinners that book buyers occasionally get to attend. It was at a really nice restaurant in Rockridge (Brooklyn West—cute eyeglasses, baby strollers…). The author had come up from the ranks, big time school, Yaddo. Paris Review, other major journals that nobody reads. Stories in the New Yorker. Well crafted stuff. Pre dinner chat, before the author came in, was dominated by somebody from the publisher, proclaiming the novel “dark and edgy”. She lowered her eyes before making the claim, hunched her shoulders, then looked up, between “Dark” and “Edgy”, eyes wider. During dinner (fresh, local ingredients. Of course) I heard the word “dark” half dozen times. In the world of mainstream publishing dark was the new black.
I’d read the novel. It held my interest—a going away to college, coming of age in the ( 60’s, or 70’s or fill in your own decade, hair style, slang terms….) book. Featured a possibly psycho student, but not too psycho. This was a literary novel, not crime fiction. It was well written, in that MFA way. No big mistakes.
Dark and Edgy?
I’ve recently read some dark and edgy novels—Nothing Left for the Dead by M. Cazadores, the reprint of Sin Soracco’s Low Bite, last year’s I-5 by Summer Brenner. I’m going to do more reviewing in this blog, so I’ll get to these. But for now—I’m sitting at my desk with the New Yorker’s Under Forty issue. I’ve read some stories, parts of others. They read as one long work— could have been written by the same person. This amazes me, considering the cultural and racial diversity of the writers. Why so? A sort of studied, nonchalant style, a nod to their various cultures—lots of nodding, actually. Serious enough to be dubbed “dark”. Small gestures. Small. The author photos (drawings, actually) tell me something. Nobody’s throwing caution to the wind here. Everybody’s groomed. Subtle nodding in the direction of identity—she could be Hispanic, he could be gay, he went bald had to shave his head….I so often think of the Burroughs quote about hippies—“not a decent fuck in the entire generation”. I can’t imagine these people having over-the-top sex, and, likewise, I think, I can’t imagine these people saying the wrong thing at an awards dinner, embracing an unpopular cause—or, also likewise, twisting the living shit out of a sentence, tossing off a line that they may regret later, following a blind narrative ally, going on a little too long, cutting something off short—all important elements in writing fiction.
Mainstream American “literary” fiction is, mostly, bland, forgettable, throwaway stuff.
Am trying to understand why this is true—and why it’s esp. true in the U.S. Or maybe it’s only true in the U.S.—I don’t have the knowledge to know this, but I sense it, for instance, when I read Bolano.
I don’t think I get it, but then maybe I do.
It’s over for America. We’re on the skids. Undeniable fact. It’s breaking down. Most people have sensed this for twenty years or so, in a theoretical way. Lately, it’s real and it’s here.
Tough trying to make a living in quality lit—with the economy (hell, the entire culture) doing a fast crash. If you’ve got that MFA, and the New Yorker wants you… tough to rock the boat. Especially tough to rock a boat that’s so obviously sinking. Fifty years ago, when Krim wrote Making It, things were different. Those guys (mostly guys) were going for the big prize, taking big, arrogant swings. These people are holding their shit in, hoping to stay afloat. First instinct—the survival instinct--is to keep floating, a little longer—maybe somebody else, somewhere, will save us.
But perhaps a strong survival instinct is a bad thing, in the arts. Perhaps, at times, the most responsible thing a “literary” writer can do is to, at first, seem irresponsible. Maybe it’s time to kick a bigger hole in that leaky boat. Sink it, see who swims to shore, see who can build a new boat.
As mentioned before, I’ve read some fiction that does this. Somewhere, between the literary mainstream (ugh) and the avant guarde (yuk!) there’s dark, edgy stuff. And also some light.
Last year I went to one of those dinners that book buyers occasionally get to attend. It was at a really nice restaurant in Rockridge (Brooklyn West—cute eyeglasses, baby strollers…). The author had come up from the ranks, big time school, Yaddo. Paris Review, other major journals that nobody reads. Stories in the New Yorker. Well crafted stuff. Pre dinner chat, before the author came in, was dominated by somebody from the publisher, proclaiming the novel “dark and edgy”. She lowered her eyes before making the claim, hunched her shoulders, then looked up, between “Dark” and “Edgy”, eyes wider. During dinner (fresh, local ingredients. Of course) I heard the word “dark” half dozen times. In the world of mainstream publishing dark was the new black.
I’d read the novel. It held my interest—a going away to college, coming of age in the ( 60’s, or 70’s or fill in your own decade, hair style, slang terms….) book. Featured a possibly psycho student, but not too psycho. This was a literary novel, not crime fiction. It was well written, in that MFA way. No big mistakes.
Dark and Edgy?
I’ve recently read some dark and edgy novels—Nothing Left for the Dead by M. Cazadores, the reprint of Sin Soracco’s Low Bite, last year’s I-5 by Summer Brenner. I’m going to do more reviewing in this blog, so I’ll get to these. But for now—I’m sitting at my desk with the New Yorker’s Under Forty issue. I’ve read some stories, parts of others. They read as one long work— could have been written by the same person. This amazes me, considering the cultural and racial diversity of the writers. Why so? A sort of studied, nonchalant style, a nod to their various cultures—lots of nodding, actually. Serious enough to be dubbed “dark”. Small gestures. Small. The author photos (drawings, actually) tell me something. Nobody’s throwing caution to the wind here. Everybody’s groomed. Subtle nodding in the direction of identity—she could be Hispanic, he could be gay, he went bald had to shave his head….I so often think of the Burroughs quote about hippies—“not a decent fuck in the entire generation”. I can’t imagine these people having over-the-top sex, and, likewise, I think, I can’t imagine these people saying the wrong thing at an awards dinner, embracing an unpopular cause—or, also likewise, twisting the living shit out of a sentence, tossing off a line that they may regret later, following a blind narrative ally, going on a little too long, cutting something off short—all important elements in writing fiction.
Mainstream American “literary” fiction is, mostly, bland, forgettable, throwaway stuff.
Am trying to understand why this is true—and why it’s esp. true in the U.S. Or maybe it’s only true in the U.S.—I don’t have the knowledge to know this, but I sense it, for instance, when I read Bolano.
I don’t think I get it, but then maybe I do.
It’s over for America. We’re on the skids. Undeniable fact. It’s breaking down. Most people have sensed this for twenty years or so, in a theoretical way. Lately, it’s real and it’s here.
Tough trying to make a living in quality lit—with the economy (hell, the entire culture) doing a fast crash. If you’ve got that MFA, and the New Yorker wants you… tough to rock the boat. Especially tough to rock a boat that’s so obviously sinking. Fifty years ago, when Krim wrote Making It, things were different. Those guys (mostly guys) were going for the big prize, taking big, arrogant swings. These people are holding their shit in, hoping to stay afloat. First instinct—the survival instinct--is to keep floating, a little longer—maybe somebody else, somewhere, will save us.
But perhaps a strong survival instinct is a bad thing, in the arts. Perhaps, at times, the most responsible thing a “literary” writer can do is to, at first, seem irresponsible. Maybe it’s time to kick a bigger hole in that leaky boat. Sink it, see who swims to shore, see who can build a new boat.
As mentioned before, I’ve read some fiction that does this. Somewhere, between the literary mainstream (ugh) and the avant guarde (yuk!) there’s dark, edgy stuff. And also some light.
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