The Independent (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
What, apart from being dead and, in their different ways, remarkable, do the following authors have in common: Kingsley Amis, Saul Bellow, Roberto Bolaño, Jorge Luis Borges, William Burroughs, Italo Calvino, John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Janet Frame, Allen Ginsberg, Czeslaw Milosz, Yukio Mishima, Edward Said, Susan Sontag, Hunter S Thompson, John Updike, Evelyn Waugh... and Vladimir Nabokov?...
Bibliobibuli (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
The National Book Award winners were announced November 18 during a ceremony in New York City. These are probably the major US awards after the Pulitzer Prize, and there are several categories. The prize for fiction went to Irish author Colum McCann for Let the Great World Spin , which is based on life in New York City in the 1970s. The piece was described as an "indelibly hallucinatory portrait...
Isak (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
No surprise here: The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor won the Best of the National Book Awards Fiction tonight, in a public vote that received more than 10,000 responses in the final stretch. Find my NBA review of the book here, and the nascence of the mild (and, it seems, totally unnecessary) campaign for its win here. O'Connor's book was chosen by readers over the other finalists: Invisible...
Pearlblossom Highway (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
The Invisible Man Originally uploaded by Michael_Kelleher Ellison, Ralph Invisible Man I think I bought this in the mid-nineties at East Village Books, which, I was happy to see on my last trip to the city, still exists. I paid 2.75 for it. I started off thinking I was going to write about my imagination of Harlem, but I keep thinking about how the issue of race played out in my childhood in the DC...
Just One More Page... (Free subscription) | 11/08/2009
This month Wendy supplied us with a list of first lines and asks which books we’ve read and which would make it to our tbr list on the basis of the first line. Bold = the books I’ve read Pink = tbr pile 1. Call me Ishmael. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick 2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Jane Austen, Pride...
Rafe McGregor (Free subscription) | 11/02/2009
It's been some time since my last McConfidential, so I'm very pleased to be back with one of my favourite hardboiled detective story authors, Sean Chercover . The natural successor to Chandler, Parker, and Crais, in my humble opinion... Rafe: Tell me a bit about your latest novel or current series. Sean: Trigger City is the second book about Chicago investigative reporter-turned PI Ray Dudgeon, who...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 10/24/2009
Raymond Carver and Ernest Hemingway are both celebrated for their brutal minimalism – but how much do they owe their renown to the interventions of their editors? As two new 'original' versions of their work are published, the question of posthumous restoration has never been more vexed It's been a good year for dead writers: they have been an uncommonly busy bunch. This year sees the publication...
The Nation Blogs (Free subscription) | 10/21/2009
The school year is well underway, and most of you know how savage the budget cuts have been. Excellent teachers who care about their students –yes, they exist! --are struggling along without proper books, supplies, and equipment. Classroom libraries lack books, science labs lack materials, art programs lack the most basic supplies-- like paint! In wealthy suburbs, affluent parents help...
The Fader Magazine (Free subscription) | 10/20/2009
Menswear line Public School have a muse of their own invention for spring 2010, a fictional character by the name of Eddie Red. He’s a young New York hustler circa 1975, a shadowy figure loosely inspired by Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Red’s monocle-eyed moodiness in the new lookbook is giving just the right amount of [...]
ringShout (Free subscription) | 10/14/2009
Feel free to come out to any and all events! It would be great to see you. Victor OCTOBER 14 6:30 PM New School Wollman Hall, Eugene Lang Building, 65 West 11th Street, 5th floor (enter at 66 West 12th Street) OCTOBER 19 7:00 PM Barnes & Noble 86th & Lexington Ave - Writers on Writing: In Conversation about Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man w/ Asali Solomon and Michael Thomas OCTOBER 20 5:30 PM...
The Huge Entity (Free subscription) | 10/08/2009
After author David Foster Wallace committed suicide last September, his longtime agent, Bonnie Nadell, found herself lost in a maze of words. Scattered on two different computers and in hard copies stashed around the cluttered garage where Mr. Foster Wallace had worked in Claremont, Calif., she discovered multiple versions of his final, unfinished novel. She had no idea which draft he preferred. Mr....
The Fate of the Artist (Free subscription) | 10/06/2009
S ome reading: Ghost Writers - Wall st. Journal, oct 2 A new wave of posthumous books by iconic authors is stirring debate over how publishers should handle fragmentary literary remains. Works by Vladimir Nabokov, William Styron, Graham Greene, Carl Jung and Kurt Vonnegut will hit bookstores this fall. Ralph Ellison and the late thriller writer Donald E. Westlake have posthumous novels due out in 2010....
Neamhspleach (Free subscription) | 10/05/2009
"When I discover who I am, I'll be free." -Ralph Ellison I mentioned previously my problem with the website, The Pursuit Of Harypness. Here is another example with their brand of "feminism." The posts asks "Is No Sex Still Sex Positive?" The fact that they have to ask this question at all bothers me. Why should women, making a reasoned and conscience choice to abstain...
Overheard In Hogtown (Free subscription) | 10/02/2009
Nuit Blanche is a fantastic event for the art lover, but much like TIFF , it requires preparation. And that can be a daunting task. We’ll make it simple for you, courtesy of Martini Boys. This year’s Nuit Blanche is scheduled for Saturday night, October 3rd. They have even made an iPhone app, Night Nav. It will be rather cold with 9C and 5 mm of rain. Of all the great things worth watching,...
Also Sprach Zamolxis (Free subscription) | 10/02/2009
Doua stiri oarecum interesante ma-mping sa sparg tacerea in care m-am cufundat in ultima vreme. De fapt sunt trei, dar doua au de-a face cu Romania. Sa-ncepem cu romanca. Oana Dragan Ce stim despre ea? A terminat recent Ryerson, si-si va sarbatori ziua de nastere pe 18, dupa Nuit Blanche si chiar si dupa concursul de VJ, care se termina pe 13. Si mai e maritata cu Mirjam de Ruiter, ceea ce-nseamna...
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