Mark Sarvas's Blog, page 37

INTERVIEW WITH JOSEPH O'NEILL - PART 4

 (Image via New York Magazine's Vulture.)

(The conclusion of our interview with Joseph O'Neill.  Tomorrow, we'll be giving away a copy of the paperback edition of Netherland.)

TEV: You described yourself as a conventional soul. How so?

Joseph O'Neill: You know, my socks match. Have I – when did I say that?

TEV: In the Telegraph piece that just ran.

Joseph O'Neill: Oh. Well, I suppose I am conventional.

TEV: Well I know I am. But I'm accused of that all the time.

Joseph O'Neill: Yeah. Who's unconv

INTERVIEW WITH JOSEPH O'NEILL - PART 3

(The third installment of our four-part interview.)

TEV: Your wife was your editor at FSG and she turned down your second novel. Have you gotten over that or is it still a thing?

Joseph O'Neill: I'm still punishing her for that ...

TEV: You wrote your first books, while you were working as a lawyer. What sort of law did you practice? Do you miss practicing the law at all? And how did you negotiate your writing time then?

Joseph O'Neill: I was a barrister in London, which means you are self-employ

INTERVIEW WITH JOSEPH O'NEILL - PART 2

(The second of a four-part interview.)

TEV: How do you develop your characters? And how often do they have real-life bases, and how much of that do you coral?

Joseph O'Neill: Well let's just talk about Netherland. I have completely forgotten how I wrote my first two novels.

TEV: (plaintive) But I did all my homework ...

Joseph O'Neill: I know you have. Sorry about that. It was a complete waste of time to do your homework.

Let's say we have a general idea of who the character is going to be. I ne

INTERVIEW WITH JOSEPH O'NEILL - PART 1

 

Joseph O'Neill at The Getty Center, Los Angeles, CA.  February 2009.

Back in February, Joseph O'Neill passed through Los Angeles, and we had the chance to sit down over lunch at the Getty Center for a long talk about Netherland, writing, cricket, literary celebrity, Zadie Smith and other assorted topics.  The Irish-born, Dutch-raised barrister-turned-novelist is the author of three novels and a memoir.  We'll be running the interview in four parts this week, and we'll finish up with a giveaway o

EXCUSES, EDITION # 366

Move day is Monday, so we're going to run silent, run deep for now.  We will try to get the Joseph O'Neill interview all set and pre-posed to run next week, but that could still go either way.  In the meantime, we point you to two new literary concerns - The Second Pass and The Critical Flame - in whose company you could profitably spend our absence.

NBA 60

The National Book Foundation has launched a blog honoring 60 years of NBA winners.  We're on deck for a few titles by summer's end, but for now do check out NBA finalist Rachel Kushner on Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm.  (Had to triple check to make sure we didn't put "Gun" in place of "Arm".)

What is no longer really tolerated, or even practiced, is living to tell the way that he did. Was it ever tolerated? By living to tell, I mean portraying a realm unfamiliar to the literary worl

GOD KNOWS WE WOULD ...

Writing for More Intelligent Life, an exceedingly intelligent Anne Trubek suggests that for all the hue and cry about declining literacy, we are actually writing more than we did a generation ago.

My friends and I write more than we used to, often more than we talk. We correspond with each other and to colleagues, school teachers, utility companies. We send e-mails to our local newspaper reporters about their stories; we write to magazine editors to tell them what we think. And most of us do labo

TdF

It's Tour de France time once again, and regular readers know that can mean a slight drop in timely posting around here.  (Couple that with the fact of a newborn plus moving house yet again next Monday, and things might be a bit spotty here in the days ahead.)

For those new to the Tour, we direct you to this primer, notable for its mention of a certain South African cyclist we admire:

I once asked artist William Kentridge if he'd ever met JM Coetzee. Once, he said, in Chicago.

"We spoke about the

HYPERBOLE NOTWITHSTANDING ...

Talking up the likes of The French Lieutenant's Woman and Le Grade Meaulnes, the Guardian's list of 50 best summer reads ever offers a useful alternative to the generic summer blockbuster.

The Leopard - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

There must be some people who when parked on a beach feel they should be in the permafrost with Ivan Denisovich, but I'm not one of them. No, give me the sumptuous, wistful, sensual, warm-blooded Leopard any day. It may be Sicily in the 1860s but everything is in there:

TOLD YA

Two years ago (yikes), I called Larry Doyle's I Love You, Beth Cooper, "less a novel than a novelization of a movie not yet made."   Well, now it's made and coming to a theater near you.

"The real Beth Cooper was someone I had a crush on in seventh grade," Doyle says. "I thought it would be fun to have a guy have his entire high school experience in one night. He never did anything and now he's doing everything."