Friends, we beg indulgence - we’ll still grappling with this stubborn head cold that we picked up in NY and we’re just not clear headed enough to focus on blogging duties. We swear on a stack of Banvilles that we have interesting stuff in the hopper, and it will begin to find its way here any day now. Please just hang in as we heal. Equilibrium will return.
In the meantime, Charles Simic has taken a look at Indignation for the New York Review of Books, and comes to a much different conclusion than ours: His powerful new novel, Indignation, seethes with outrage. It begins with a conflict between a father and son in a setting and circumstances long familiar from his other novels going back to Portnoy’s Complaint, but then turns into something unexpected: a deft, gripping, and deeply moving narrative about the short life of a decent, hardworking, and obedient boy who pays with his life for a brief episode of disobedience that leaves him unprotected and alone to...
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DUTTONS MEMORIESFrom: marksarvas.blogs.com
Post Date: 2008-03-05 09:10:59
Janet Fitch writes in to advise us that she is collecting your Duttons memories: The news of Dutton’s closure has hit us all terribly hard here in literary LA… I got this announcement for Kerry Madden’s book signing Thursday night, and she included this:
It is with bittersweetness that I’m announcing this reading, because Duttons will be closing permanently at the end of April. I gave my very first reading from my first novel, OFFSIDES, at Duttons in 1996. My son, Flann...
more NOTA BENE: THE SAVAGE DETECTIVESFrom: marksarvas.blogs.com
Post Date: 2008-03-05 00:01:00
"For a while, Criticism travels side by side with the Work, then Criticism vanishes and it’s the Readers who keep pace. The journey may be long or short. Then the Readers die one by one and the Work continues on alone, although a new Criticism and new Readers gradually fall into step with it along its path. Then Criticism dies again and the Readers die again and the Work passes over a trail of bones on its journey toward solitude. To come near the work, to sail in her wake, is a sign ...
more PW INTERVIEWFrom: marksarvas.blogs.com
Post Date: 2008-03-04 11:25:54
We briefly interrupt our anniverary hiatus to point you to our Publishers Weekly interview that just went live. (And thanks to Dave Lull for letting us know!) Harry is a complex figure; do you see him as more of a protagonist or a villain?
I have great affection for Harry, despite all of his foibles, and certainly, I think he is clearly my protagonist. But, I think that the most interesting protagonists have a little bit of a villainous streak within them –– they are a lit...
more THE ROOSTER APPROACHESFrom: marksarvas.blogs.com
Post Date: 2008-03-04 08:11:47
Things are dark here at TEV in honor of our first wedding anniversary but we hope the release of the full list of Rooster pairings will be enough to tide you over until we return tomorrow. Matchups begin this Friday. (And feel free to speculate all you like, but we cannot say a thing.)
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