Mark Sarvas's Blog, page 33

PAINTING THE LILY

A few weeks ago I wrote about finding a copy of the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, and I promised to post occasional entries as they amused me.  I was rather charmed by the wry snob appeal of this one:

gild the lily is an accepted phrase for overembellishment, but writers who wish to delight the exacting reader will use Shakespeare's actual words, from "King John": "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily."

Rejoice, exacting readers.

GUEST INTERVIEW: VICTORIA PATTERSON - "THE EDITH WHARTON OF THE OC"

We're pleased to offer a special guest interview today from occasional TEV contributor Kate Durbin, in which she chats with Victoria Patterson, author of Drift, a collection of interlinked short stories, published in June 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in various literary journals, including The Southern Review, Santa Monica Review and The Florida Review.

Former...

TUESDAY MARGINALIA

* TEV Readers in the DC area would be well advised to check out this weekend's National Book Festival.  Stringer reports will be welcomed.

* Deborah Eisenberg is one of three writers who are among the latest batch of MacArthur Fellows.

* According to Ladbrokes, Amos Oz is the current favorite to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

* The 2009 Giller Prize long list has been announced.

Female authors of historical fiction dominate the long list of nominees for the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize – a...

BLISSED OUT

If you're wondering why we're a bit slower than usual answering emails or getting up posts, we present the reasons.  We are luxuriating.  However, we do have a fairly substantial Marginalia roundup on tap for Tuesday, as well as a special reader-inspired giveaway this week, so do stay tuned. 

REMEMBERING THE SHIPPING NEWS

My appreciation of The Shipping News, my contribution to the National Book Award's 60th anniversary book blog, can be found here.

It has been – astonishingly – fifteen years since I read the novel but its memory is undimmed (if bruised by a wan film adaptation by Lasse Hallström), its glorious set pieces still vivid before my eyes. There is the remarkable family house on Quoyle Point that he restores with the help of his steadfast aunt. There are his dispatches as he finds his way covering...

FIRST NOVEL PRIZE SHORTLIST

The Center for Fiction (formerly the Mercantile Center) has announced its First Novel Prize shortlist:

American Rust by Philipp Meyer (Spiegel & Grau)

The Cradle by Patrick Somerville (Little, Brown and Co.)

Tinkers by Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary Press)

The Vagrants by Yiyun Li  (Random House)

Woodsburner by John Pipkin (Doubleday/Nan A. Talese)

The awards will be announced on November 9.  Stay tuned, we will have more to say about this prize.

STYLE OF MANUAL

Loyal TEV reader EG alerts me to this interesting story in my own backyard.  Steve Soboroff, a fellow resident of the Palisades, has an interesting collection of manual typewriters.  What the collection lacks in size, it more than compensates for in historical interest:

'People collect all kinds of things, but these are really rare,' says Soboroff, whose writing machines include those once owned by Ernest Hemingway, George Bernard Shaw, Tennessee Williams and Jack London. His most recent...

DEPT. OF BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

Gordon Brown apologizes - rather belatedly - to Alan Turing, at last addressing one of history's grave wrongs.

It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe's history and not Europe's present. So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work, I am very proud to say: we're sorry. You deserved so much better.

My 2006 review of ...

TEV GIVEAWAY: HOME

We're heading out for a few days in New York (so things will be quiet here through the beginning of next week) but we didn't want to leave without resuming the usual giveaway fun.  This week, we have a copy of Marilynne Robinson's Home, newly in paperback, for one lucky TEV reader.  We usually make a bit more fuss here on these giveaway posts but (a) we're pressed for time today and (b) we can't imagine there's a reader of this site unfamiliar with this book. So let's cut to the chase ...

L.A. EVENT - NAM LE & MARISA SILVER ***HIGHLY RECOMMENDED***

The Fall series at ALOUD gets off with a bang as the author of two of our favorite books of 2008 will be in conversation on September 16.  Nam Le comes to town to discuss his garlanded debut collection The Boat, now out in paperback, and his interlocutor will be Marisa Silver, whose novel The God of War we reviewed with great enthusiasm.  These are two of the nicest and smartest people we've met in our literary travels, and the evening promises to be a real highlight of the L.A. literary...