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This Week in Books

March 28, 2009 in book reviews

Currently Reading

(Postethnic America by David Hollinger)

This book has really helped me define what I find so frustrating and discouraging about race studies in academia. The whole discussion has become mired in politically-correct talk, such that the simplest idea must be couched in increasingly tentative and vague language. Don’t talk about identity, talk about affiliations. Don’t even talk about race, talk about ethno-racial blocs. It’s not that I disagree that our identities ought to be voluntary rather than prescriptive, or that I don’t recognize that race is a completely arbitrary and socially-constructed idea. It’s just exhausting to keep up with what is permitted in the discussion of race/ethnicity/culture/affiliation/whatever.

Nevertheless, I’m finding Hollinger’s writing to be remarkably clear, and it serves as both a good primer and refresher course for the developments that have taken place in race studies from the ’60s through the year 2000. I would actually recommend this 200-page (with generous line spacing) book for the casual reader.

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Bring Back Enthusiasm

March 28, 2009 in the literary conversation

This is an oldie, but a goodie: back in January, the Times Literary Supplement ran an article on why the teaching of literature should be impassioned as well as informative. I’m glad someone out there has identified a need to recover an enthusiastic relationship to the text. I also like the focus on “enthusiastic literature,” or books that enact, rather than describe their subject.

(via Bookforum)

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Book Drama!

March 28, 2009 in the literary conversation

On a recent vacation, I took with me the March issue of Harper’s, the best magazine ever. While in the airport, I came across a lengthy article by Gideon Lewis-Kraus called “The Last Book Party.” I have never read such a cogent-yet-snarky summation of the current state of publishing. I wish I could just link to the article here, but Harper’s archives are subscription-only. Oh well. You all should be subscribing to this magazine anyway.

Some choice quotes:

The problem with publishing is the relentlessness of the apocalypse.

Ah, yes. Because this wasn’t the first article heralding the death of publishing, and it certainly won’t be the last. Writers take some kind of perverse pleasure in speculating about the demise of their livelihoods. I suppose there’s no better muse than hand-wringing.

You are holding yourself accountable not only to commercial but to aesthetic standards. This dual standard is fundamental to how book people see themselves. . . . It is tempting to think that the problem with publishing is just too many awful books, but then again 99 percent of anything is mediocre, and people don’t tend to complain that there are too many mediocre widgets. Books are something we have higher expectations for.

Here are two nice thoughts about the perilous balance that most publishing houses establish between the commercial bestsellers and the barely-selling chapbooks and works-in-translation. The next time you feel churlish about the half-million dollar advance bestowed upon the author of Lucy, Dog on the Streets,* think that its sales are funding that year’s release of Polish poetry collections. Feel better?

A young editor [told] me that Morgan [Entrekin, publisher at Grove Atlantic] once asked a Frankfurt cabbie how he felt about the Book Fair and the cabbie said it wasn’t good business for him. Morgan asked why. The cabbie said that he doesn’t many any money on prostitution-related commissions. Morgan said it’s because the publishers all sleep with one another.

There’s nothing like a satisfying burn on the industry. And this is only one of many: I actually took out a pen and wrote BURRRRNNNN in the margins, because the zings were so good. Anyway, if you need confirmation that book publishing is exactly as awesome, gossipy, and culturally relevant as it’s always been, read this article.

*Books about dogs and urban lit are the two best-selling genres out there. The world is waiting for a book about urban dog gangs.

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Of all the feral things

March 18, 2009 in gewgaws

I just found out that there are 20+ feral parrots living in Brooklyn’s Greenwood Cemetery. Feral parrots? What? Where did they come from?

So many parrots!

Yep, definitely from Brooklyn.

(Photos via BrooklynParrots.com, which leads me to believe that wild parrots in Brooklyn are not all that uncommon)

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This Weird Little Business

March 16, 2009 in the literary conversation

We forget, now and again, in the careerist whirl of the weird little business that is made of writing, how much altruism there is among those who do this sort of work. Half the fun comes in passing the literal or figurative hat when one believes in the virtues and virtue of something rare.

(via Sentences)

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Gasp—there are aspects to publishing that don’t involve editors?!

March 16, 2009 in gewgaws

I hardly ever talk about my job on this blog, because I like it too much to lose it over some indiscretion, but I can reveal that I work in the advertising, promotions, and new media department of my particular publishing group. You usually don’t hear too much about this side of publishing, because it’s not about editing or throwing book parties. But The Guardian, one of the few newspapers that still gives a crap about books (not based in the U.S., obviously), has a nice piece from a publishing marketing executive that provides some insight into my 9-to-5 activities.

(via the always hilarious Bookninja)

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Half-Assing Multiculturalism

March 16, 2009 in the literary conversation

Aviya Kushner calls America out for its half-assed attempts at worldliness in this Wilson’s Quarterly article. It’s great and all that we’re newly interested in understanding what goes on outside of our country’s borders, but we’d still rather have someone else tell us about it than read it first-hand:

Peruvian-born writer Daniel Alarcón observes, “There’s a certain curiosity about the world that’s not matched by a willingness to do the work…So what happens is that writers of foreign extraction end up writing about the world for Americans.”

Not enough of a BURN for you? Kushner says it again, but with food metaphors:

We don’t have much time, so we want a taste, some fast food to go. And so we read ethnic literature the way we down an ethnic meal. We can get a burrito almost anywhere, but it’s often mildly spiced, adjusted just for us, and wrapped for those in a rush. So we’re eating a translated burrito, and we’re reading a world prepared especially for us. But we don’t believe anything is missing.

I hate to say it, especially because I often rest on my laurels as a decent multicultural reader, but more than half of the “ethnic lit” I read was originally published in English. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, I love you. But I guess I should also read some Ngugo wa Thiong’o.*

(via Arts & Letters Daily)

*Note: Not a perfect comparison, since Adichie is Nigerian and Thiong’o is Kenyan, but I couldn’t think of a Nigerian author who originally wrote in English and then renounced the language for one’s native tongue. Not off the top of my head, anyway.

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Macaroni and Cheese Battle Royale

March 16, 2009 in gewgaws

As an homage/throwing down of the gauntlet to my friend Brendon‘s post on macaroni and cheese, I made my own. The recipe different from Brendon’s in the following respects:
- Fusilli instead of elbow macaroni
- Cayenne instead of paprika
- My choice of cheeses: Vermont cheddar, Parmigiano-Reggiano, gouda, and mascarpone
It was delicious, especially after adding a few dashes of hot sauce to cut the mild sweetness of the mascarpone.

(Yes, those are my multivitamins.)

So what now, Brendon!? Anything you can do, I can do…adequately.

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The Collected E-mails of Pam

March 14, 2009 in the literary conversation

I think I give good e-mail. I have often thought that if I were to one day become famous, for whatever reason, people would posthumously line up for copies of my Collected E-mails. In college, I fastidiously filed away my best e-mails (both received and sent), in hopes of creating the world’s most solipsistic portrait of an overly-educated college student. (Months after graduation, I somehow lost the entire archive.)

But what about the e-mails of people who are actually famous? Could we see the Collected E-mails of Salman Rushdie…or of John Updike? The New Scientist investigates, yielding some interesting comments:

Gordon Bell, from Microsoft Research, suggested that [the value of collectable e-mails] should actually fall to almost nothing. “Isn’t it about scarcity? Once it’s been copied and distributed the value is gone, it’s just a piece of memory.”

“The nature of digital information is that it’s near-infinitely copyable,” agreed Peter Hirtle, who works on technology strategy at Cornell University Library. To turn it into something of value, “you’re having to deny the nature of the medium”, he argued.

(via Bookforum)

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This Week in Books

March 14, 2009 in book reviews

While I haven’t been telling you about it, I have been reading. Here’s a little rundown:

Currently Reading

I’m not big on poems. I read them more out of duty, because I feel like a heretic for not appreciating them, but like many of the unwashed masses, I often finish a poem and I’m like, “Uh.” But every now and then, I find a poem that actually makes more sense to me than most novels, that perfectly distills into a handful of lines more than a novel can say. And then I get my hands on that poet’s chapbook.

I had read a description of Dear Darkness that made a big to-do out of Kevin Young’s “Ode” series to various southern foods (“Ode to Collard Greens,” “Ode to Okra,” and so on). This sounded more interesting to me than odes to life and death, so I tracked down a copy of this collection, and I’m liking it. I’m not in love, and I still have moments of “uh,” but these poems are so kind and reverent to the foods and people of his childhood.

Back to Orhan Pamuk’s non-fiction—this one is a bit more memoir-ish, about his childhood growing up in Istanbul. Turns out his parents were quite well-off. I’m also learning a lot less innocuous details, too. Gossip: ORHAN PAMUK’S NEW NOVEL COMES OUT THIS FALL AHHHHHH!!!

Ok, that’s it for now. The other books I’m reading have not yet been published, so I’m going to defer my comments until you can read along.

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