Mark Sarvas's Blog, page 38
July 6, 2009
A LAWYER DID SOMETHING GOOD?
A book club for the homeless is in its tenth month in Boston.
The story of the book club, now in its 10th month, is a tale of ordinary city life upended. It began with a stunningly unlikely friendship, between two men from different worlds: Peter Resnik, a high-powered lawyer on his way to work, and Rob, a homeless man guarding a friend's shopping cart on Boston Common. Through months of daily conversations, that began with jokes and sports talk and gradually delved deeper, they found a common in
July 3, 2009
BADASS GATSBY
No giveaway this week, folks. Instead, we leave you to spend the holiday weekend mulling over Cracked.com's storyboards from Michael Bay's adaptation of The Great Gatsby .... (Many thanks to dear old FOTEV GRC.)
July 2, 2009
READINGS, READINGS, READINGS
Numerous updates to the event sidebar, so if you're an RSS reader, click on through and check 'em out.
HOW PERCUSSION WORKS
For the many of us unable to make it, the observer reports on James Wood's tambourine injury at Bryant Park yesterday.
The literary critic James Wood wounded his hand in Bryant Park today while playing the tambourine.
"I picked [it:] up in a rather awkward way and was playing a song with it, and it began to rub away," Mr. Wood said, showing off newly applied band-aids on his fingers. "It just took the skin off."
For those not already acquainted with Wood's rhythmic gifts, we direct your attentio
THINGS ARE TOUGH PARTOUT
It's not just over here that bookstores are going under. The legendary Paris Brentanos is set to close, a victime of rising rents. (Thanks, EG)
July 1, 2009
"THINK FANTASTIC"
To get you in the right frame of mind for our soon-to-be-unveiled Joseph O'Neill interview (in the final editing stages), check out today's story, in which he resists the "Gatsby" tag ...
"I'm slightly wary about putting those two books next to each other," he says. "I'm not going to come out of it well. Gatsby is regarded by many as the seminal American novel of the 20th century, so obviously one is reluctant to invite comparisons! But I must acknowledge that debt. I was influenced by Gatsby to
June 30, 2009
TUESDAY MARGINALIA
* The tweet heard 'round the world. Alice Hoffman is the latest writer to wish for some sort of global undo button. We will never understand - and we oughtta know - why writers think there's an upside in taking on one's critics. (Though we kinda like Stanley Crouch's style ... )
* It's that wonderful time of the year - the winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is announced.
"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Soun
June 29, 2009
L.A. EVENT - KATE CHRISTENSEN
Although we haven't yet read Trouble, we greatly admired Kate Christensen's previous novel, The Great Man (recommended to us by Maud Newton), and if it's at all possible for us to make our way over to Pasadena tonight, we'll check out her Vroman's reading. We have a newborn; you have no excuse, so don't miss it. Details here.
June 26, 2009
TEV GIVEAWAY: THE GOD OF WAR
I greatly admired Marisa Silver's fine novel, The God of War, when it came out last year. Here's what I said about it over at the Barnes & Noble Review:
Common themes of family, guilt, dysfunction, and shame informed many of the stories in Silver's debut collection, Babe in Paradise (2001), as well as her first novel, No Direction Home (2005). These concerns remain present in The God of War, but the story is primarily a sustained meditation on questions of agency and volition; the acceptance (o
June 25, 2009
THURSDAY MARGINALIA
* Carolyn Kellogg offers sensible commentary on the l'affaire de Chris Anderson.
* Edward Hogan has won the Desmond Elliott Prize.
An "extraordinary new voice" with a tale of an albino in a depressed mining community has won the Desmond Elliott prize. Edward Hogan, who describes his previous jobs as "grass-strimmer, pot-washer, conservatory salesman, bloke holding the board in Leicester Square, and teacher", won the £10,000 first novel prize for Blackmoor, a novel set in a Derbyshire village at t
