Alan Cheuse's Blog, page 3

Blood on Snow

Norwegian novelist Jo Nesbo has just brought out a short but enlivening novel about an Oslo hit man whose boss has ordered him to perform a near-impossible kill.

http://www.npr.org/2015/04/06/3978911...

Geography for a Novel

"All you need are three or four rivers
and a mountain range."

Michael Ondaatje

Too Busy to Blog

Just back from a trip: to Austin, Texas,
and a reading at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. And
a wonderful couple of hours speaking with the Michener Fellows, fiction writers, poets, screen writers, about the art and craft of narrative.
And then on to Ogden, Utah, where I gave a three-day master class to an undergraduate writing workshop at Weber State University.
Some interesting first drafts, which I hope the writers will revise.
And stayed in Ogden for several days of the National Undergraduate Literature Conference, with readings by Michael Ondaatje, Ana Castillo, David Lee, Terry Tempest Williams, and yours truly. And some fascinating Q&A. The group of more than a hundred undergraduate fiction writers and literature students from all around the country made up a terrific audience and their questions stood tall.
And after a trip in which I found myself too busy to blog--home again!

Fig Tree Books

Fine piece in Shelf Awareness about the birth of a new publisher--Fig Tree Books--along with a review of Prayers for the Living, their first title.

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue....

Readings and Talks

Thursday...A lovely crowd in Brooklyn at Book Court,
and then drinks and games at a bar around
the corner.
Saturday, home town advantage, wonderful
group at Politics and Prose, and a party
following at our neighborhood Italian restaurant...
***
Last night on stage at the Historic Synagogue, 6th & I Streets, in downtown
DC, in conversation with the charming and brilliantly forthcoming Kazuo Ishiguro...
600 people!
Wonderful to see all these readers, alive and well, devoted to fiction, giving good cheer to living writers...

This evening

Reading at 6 p.m. at Politics and Prose,
Washington, DC
Come all!

Reading at Book Court

Oh, Brooklyn Readers, do come by and say
hello next Thursday (3/19) at Book Court at 7 pm! I'll be reading from and talking about my new book Prayers for the Living...

http://bookcourt.com/events/alan-cheuse

The Discreet Hero

A grand new novel from Peruvian Nobelist Mario Vargas Llosa, The Discreet Hero, in the greatnineteenth century tradition, with modernist turns...

http://www.npr.org/2015/03/12/3904619...

Interviews

It's always odd, if not a strange feeling, to speak in public about a book you have been so private with, working in silence mostly, for years at a time. And then--if you are fortunate--you find yourself on a stage or at a podium or in front of a microphone or a camera, responding to questions about the work at hand. The questions seem direct and intelligent and interesting. The answers come as a mystery, because they are things that you have worked at alone and in solitude, the answers coming before anyone ever raises the questions, spilling out from your active and agitated finger tips tapping at a keyboard.
The pleasure of participating in a great interview always makes up for the rush of doubt and confusion you may feel about speaking up about something so private. I had that experience in a series of videotaped interviews with Rabbi Dan Ain of the 92nd Street Y. I have listed the link below. I hope, if you try it, that you'll enjoy it.

http://figtreebooks.net/dan-ain-inter...

Negative Reviews

I don't like to write them. The rarer action is to praise rather than blame, though, Prospero says in "The Tempest."
But for me the reverse is true. Mostly I write reviews of books I enjoyed, sometimes even loved with a burning passion.
When I do write a negative review, as in say this piece that came out today in The San Francisco Chronicle--
http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/T...
--I have a certain logic in mind. I say in the piece how much of an admirer of Johnson's I am, and that this book, in which he stumbles badly, is an exception. Which is precisely why, when asked, I wrote the piece. Over along period of work, half a lifetime's work, writers may stumble, and readers ought to know that before they blindly pick up a new book whether or not it is worth the time.
Or so stands the belief of a professional journalist, a reviewer for many decades, author of thousands of review pieces. Not many of those, a tiny percentage, come out negative. Perhaps sometimes because of a flaw in my vision, but mostly because writers sometimes stumble.
I know this is true because I am a fiction writer and journalist first, and a reviewer second.
I hope I haven't stumbled about on this subject.
Tell me, please, if you think I have.