Mark Sarvas's Blog, page 20

PEN WORLD VOICES

The always excellent PEN World Voices festival has just unveiled its schedule and the organizers appear to have outdone themselves.  Check it out - it's enough to tempt me into thinking about a trip east to cover this one for all my loyal readers.

TONY JUDT INTERVIEWED

The remarkable and impressive Tony Judt is interviewed in the London Review of Books

In 'Postwar' you argue that Europe's singularity lies not in its laws but its way of life. I live there but do not know what that is.

Every time an opera company comes from Paris or Lyon to Ljubljana, you live the European way of life. The opera house is subsidised either by the country sending or receiving it, or by Brussels. The people who work in it all have contracts, health and pension benefits...

WHEN OPRAH MET SILVER

Alone With You, the new short story collection from the talented Marisa Silver (who recently guest lectured on character to my UCLA students) has been anointed an April Book to Watch by Oprah. 

Silver will be guest blogging here next month, and maybe you can convince her to summarize the lesson on character she gave to my class.

ON COMIC NOVELS

The Times extols the virtues of that under-respected genre (I oughtta know), the comic novel.

ORANGE PRIZE LONGLIST

The Orange Prize longlist has been announced, and contains a special treat - Secret Son, the fine novel by my friend Laila Lalami.  She takes her place beside the likes of Hilary Mantel and Andrea Levy.  Check it out!

IS THERE ANOTHER GLENN CLOSE?

Apparently, Glenn Close and John Banville have collaborated on a script.  There's no punch line.

Variety reports that the period drama 'Albert Nobbs' will tell the story of a woman (Glenn Close) who pretends to be a man in order to survive in 19th century Ireland.

Close, who also starred in the stage version, adapted the script with Irish Booker winner John Banville from Irish author George Moore's original short story.

PEN TRANSLATION CENTER

Pen.org has just launched its translation center which includes goodies ranging from conversations with Anthea Bell to fiction from Robert Walser.  Go!

MORNING WOOD

David Shields's Reality Hunger has been top of my reading pile for a while now, it even made the trip to Paris with me and yet, somehow, I still haven't cracked it open.  But it is surely the most talked about work of the moment, and James Wood has turned his attention to it in the New Yorker. 

His complaints about the tediousness and terminality of current fictional convention are well-taken: it is always a good time to shred formulas. But the other half of his manifesto, his unexamined...

A POEM A DAY ...

I've been paying more attention to poetry these days, something I tend to do when I'm writing as it puts me in touch with language in deeper and more interesting ways.  (I'm currently on an Anne Carson kick thanks to a recommendation from a friend; and I continue to be grateful for FSG's stubborn insistence on continuing to publish all manner of fine poets.)  So I read with great interest Siobahn Phillips's thoughtful post on her daily poetry reading habits:

Like many of you, I would venture...

EVENT: VERMIN ON THE MOUNT