Mark Sarvas's Blog, page 19
March 30, 2010
I KINDA ENVY THE BASTARD
Jim Crace, whose Being Dead is a TEV favorite, announces his plans to stop writing fiction.
Most writers would say that they are driven to write and know no way to fill their time or make sense of the world. Crace is amused by their presumption. "My belief is that I will be quite happy not writing. JD Salinger once said, 'You've got no idea the peace of writing and not publishing,' but I am going to go one better and find the peace of not writing and not publishing. I'm looking forward to...
END DAYS?
Margaret Atwood joins the Twitterati ...
They're sharp: make a typo and they're on it like a shot, and they tease without mercy. However, if you set them a verbal challenge, a frisson sweeps through them. They did very well with definitions for "dold socks"—one of my typos—and "Thnax," another one. And they really shone when, during the Olympics, I said that "Own the podium" was too brash to be Canadian, and suggested "A podium might be nice." Their own variations poured onto a feed tagged...
March 25, 2010
ELEGY
on an obscure mission through the hallway.
Help me, spirits, to penetrate his dream
and ease his restless passage.
Lay back the darkness for a salesman
who could charm everything but the shadows,
an immigrant who stands on the threshold
of a vast night
without his walker or his cane
and cannot remember what he meant to say,
though his right arm is raised, as if in prophecy,
while his left shakes uselessly in warning.
My father in the night shuffling...
READINGS UPDATE
March 24, 2010
VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH SAM LIPSYTE
What happens when an interviewer obviously hasn't read the book. Make sure you watch both parts. Go watch it at You Tube - the video format is wider than my blog supports. (Double-clicking on the image below will open it in a full You Tube window.)
And forgive my little Harvey Korman slip at the end ... Remember, Sam is at Vroman's this evening, and Sheila Heti is at the Hammer Museum. Agony!
March 23, 2010
THE ONLY EXPLANATION
ON MUSHROOM CLOUDS
As the number of people who have actually witnessed an atomic bomb detonation decreases, Jeremy Bernstein records his own experiences at the NYRblog.
What I saw defies description. The photograph above gives some sense but not of the scale. At first there was no noise. Then came the shock wave that made a disagreeable click in my ears and finally the rolling thunder of the noise. The Joshua trees were aflame as if in some obscene pagan rite. The bomb had evaporated the tower. The fire ball...
LRB ON SOLAR
The London Review of Books weighs in with its appraisal of Ian McEwan's new novel Solar.
The elements of farce in Solar have the unintended side-effect of pointing up how farcical many of the events in McEwan's previous, more serious novels are: the lengths the children go to in The Cement Garden to try to conceal their mother's corpse, inexpertly disposed of in the cellar; the drunk ex-husband in The Innocent falling asleep in his ex-wife's wardrobe while waiting for her to come home with...
March 22, 2010
HISTORIC DAY
I'm marveling this morning at yet another piece of history unfolding that I'm fortunate enough to have witnessed firsthand. The fight was long and messy with too many mistakes along the way, but the finish line has been crossed and I'm awfully proud of the steps taken, flawed and modest though they may be. So most of my thoughts today are about health care, not literature, and I leave you with Tom Friedman - who talks out of his ass as often as not but today really nails it:
But that's not...
March 21, 2010
EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES
Well, isn't this always the way? You can go weeks without a compelling reading around here, and then - WHAM - not one, but, of course, two fantastic readings on the same night. And, in a possible TEV first, both writers are long term residents of my Recommended sidebar.
For you guys way out east, Sam Lipsyte touches down briefly to discuss his new novel, The Ask, at Vromans. Details are here.
Over here in the 310, Sheila Heti, author of TEV favorite Ticknor, appears at the Hammer Museum as p...
