Visions of Alterity: Representation in the Works of John Banville (Costerus NS 151)
The Guardian (Free subscription) | yesterday
In a very strong year, my choices would include Murakami and Mantel along with Doctorow and Didion. How about you? Halfway through the decade already, and we're all a little older, wiser and in my case more gainfully employed though curiously lighter-of-pocket (damn you, student loans) than we were back in the heady first days of the new millennium. We're also, as a planet, more familiar with the...
My Right Word (Free subscription) | 12/02/2009
After failing for the umpteenth time to garner the Nobel Prize for Literature, Amos ('Lefty') Oz missed another first place. This time it is the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award 2009. Jonathan Littell has won the seventeenth annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award, for The Kindly Ones (Chatto & Windus). The prize (a plaster foot) was presented by award-winning actor Charles Dance....
Redlines and Deadlines (Free subscription) | 12/01/2009
by Raelene Gorlinsky Jonathan Littell has won the seventeenth annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award, for The Kindly Ones . The award was created in 1993 to draw attention to the "crude, tasteless, and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in contemporary novels, and to discourage it." The other finalist books include those by some well-known names: The...
PrairiePundit (Free subscription) | 12/01/2009
Guardian: The American winner of the Prix Goncourt, Jonathan Littell, has added another feather to his cap. His novel, The Kindly Ones, was tonight announced as the winner of the Literary Review's 2009 bad sex in fiction award . The Kindly Ones, which tells the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of one of the executioners, beat off stiff competition from a stellar shortlist that included entries...
George Szirtes (Free subscription) | 11/30/2009
So this is the man who won. Jonathan Littell from his Prix Goncourt winning novel, The Kindly Ones. According to the judges: The Kindly Ones, which tells the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of one of the executioners, beat off stiff competition from a stellar shortlist that included entries from Philip Roth, John Banville, Paul Theroux and the literary rock star Nick Cave. The judges paid tribute...
The Observer (Free subscription) | 11/30/2009
Bad sex judges pay tribute to 'part-genius' of winning novel and hope winner 'takes it in good humour' The American winner of the Prix Goncourt, Jonathan Littell, has added another feather to his cap. His novel, The Kindly Ones, was tonight announced as the winner of the Literary Review's 2009 bax sex in fiction award . The Kindly Ones, which tells the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of one...
Flavorwire (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
It may not be the Nobel Prize, but the competition for this year’s “Bad Sex in Fiction” award is just as stiff (cringe — pun intended). Philip Roth is on the Literary Review’s shortlist, and he’s in good company — current nominees include Amos Oz, Nick Cave, and John Banville, while past candidates include such [...] Related posts: Fiction Fix: Hugo Award Nominees...
Crime Always Pays (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
There was a good piece in Publishers Weekly titled ‘Breaking the Wall’ , in which a variety of crime writers discuss what Michael Connelly describes as the ‘membrane’ (as opposed to ‘wall’) between genre and literary fiction. For my money, Tana French (right) nails it to the wall: “When you’re working to make a sentence as perfect as it can be,”...
Emerging Writer (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
As in written about Bad Sex. I've personally written sex badly and written bad sex quote badly too. Here's the nominees for this year. Paul Theroux’s A Dead Hand (Hamish Hamilton) Philip Roth’s The Humbling (Jonathan Cape), Anthony Quinn’s The Rescue Man (Jonathan Cape), Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones (Chatto), Amos Oz’s Rhyming Life and Death (Chatto), Nick Cave’s...
Books, Inq. (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
... Things I will not be writing about . As it happens, I am going to writing about The Original of Laura and may even make mention of what John Banville has to say about it.
the Literary Saloon (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
They've announced the contenders for the Literary Review 's popular 'Bad Sex' award -- typically: not yet at the official site , but Alison Flood has the lowdown in Bad sex award shortlist pits Philip Roth against stiff competition in The Guardian . Embarrassingly, quite a few of these books are under review at the complete review : Paul Theroux's A Dead Hand Philip Roth's The Humbling Jonathan Littell's...
92Y Blog (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
This Wed at Cipriani Wall Street, Colum McCann was awarded National Book Award for fiction for his novel Let the Great World Spin . A novel, the New York Times wrote, “featuring a sprawling cast of characters in 1970s New York City whose lives are ineluctably touched by the mysterious tightrope walker who traverses a wire suspended between the Twin Towers one morning.” On stage accepting...
ArtsJournal (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
"Roth can comfort himself with the fact that a roll call of literary fiction's great and good, from Booker winner John Banville to acclaimed Israeli novelist Amos Oz, Goncourt winner Jonathan Littell and Whitbread winner Paul Theroux," are also in competition this year for the Literary Review's bad sex in fiction award....
The Daily Swarm (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
Singer Nick Cave has joined Booker winner John Banville, Philip Roth and Paul Theroux on the shortlist for this year’s Bad Sex in Fiction award…The annual prize, awarded by Literary Review magazine, focuses on “redundant passages of sexual description”....“Frankly we would have been offended if he wasn’t shortlisted,” a spokeswoman for Cave told The Guardian....
Conversational Reading (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
. . . if you haven't yet noticed. John Banville's review of The Original of Laura is fun. He appears to have thought the text so critically uninteresting that he'd write about everything but that. Good for him. This edition is a triumph of the book maker's art, and the design, by the Nabokovianly named Chip Kidd, is masterly. There will be those who will deplore the production as gimmicky, but the...
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