Mark Sarvas's Blog, page 42
May 26, 2009
MUNRO WINS MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL
Another worthy intrusion - Alice Munro has won the Man Booker Internation Prize.
Judge Jane Smiley, the Pulitzer prize-winning American novelist, admitted that selecting a winner from the 14 longlisted authors – who are assessed on their bodies of work and the contribution they have made to "fiction on the world stage" – had been a challenge, but that Munro "just won us over".
"Her work is practically perfect. Any writer has to gawk when reading her because her work is very subtle and precise," s
GUEST ESSAY: REVISIONING "THE GREAT GATSBY" (II)
Herewith, Part Two of Susan Bell's essay "Revisioning The Great Gatsby," which can be found in The Writer's Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House, and is reprinted here courtest of Bell and Tin House. Bell is the author of The Artful Edit.
Besides research, the writer used visual imagery to flush out his hero. Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda’s drawings of Gatsby must have made Gatsby more tangible, because after spending time with them the author added several superb physical descriptions. Among them:
May 25, 2009
BRIEF INTERRUPTION: MENDELSOHN COMMENCENT
We normally don't like to break up special week-long series, but Daniel Mendelsohn's lovely UC Berkeley commencent address is very much worth it, so here you go.
Exactly thirty years ago today, on a warm day in the middle of May of 1979, at the end of my freshman year at college, I picked up the telephone in my apartment in Charlottesville, Virginia, and called my grandfather in Miami Beach, Florida, to announce that I'd decided to major in Classics.
The news did not go over well.
GUEST ESSAY: REVISIONING "THE GREAT GATSBY" (I)
We get all manner of books on writing around here and they tend to blend together but the offerings from Tin House always stand out. They've just published The Writer's Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House, which includes terrifically useful essays from the likes of Dorothy Allison. Rick Bass, Aimee Bender, Jim Krusoe, Antonya Nelson and Jim Shepard. The collection also includes a bonus lecture CD. But what immediately caught our eye is Susan Bell's terrific essay on revisions, using The Gr
May 22, 2009
OUR NEWEST READER
Please welcome my daughter and TEV's newest reader, Clara Grace Sarvas. (DoTEV, Baby TEV, something will be figured out.) She was born on Thursday afternoon, already appears to be a Banville fan, and mother and daughter are doing well. All in all, a pretty good reason to skip BEA, eh?
May 20, 2009
GONE QUIET
(Artist's Daughter with Doll, Pablo Picasso)
We're observing radio silence for the next few days, for reasons to become apparent presently. Posting will be irregular, if at all, but we do have two back-to-back week-long extravaganzas in the works: Next week, we'll be serializing Susan Bell's marvelous essay on revising and The Great Gatsby from The Writers Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House, culimating with a Friday giveaway of same.
The week after that, we should have the Joseph O'Neill in
May 19, 2009
HERZOG'S HYPERTEXT
If you missed it yesterday, take a moment and listen to Jeffrey Eugenides' fine appreciation of Saul Bellow's luminous Herzog on NPR. His nuanced appraisal of this masterpiece includes an astute comparison to hypertext:
Herzog goes from New York, to Martha's Vineyard, to Chicago, to the Berkshires, penning his funny, serious, brilliant, self-lacerating, accusatory letters, each one acting like a new screen in a hypertext novel that opens an entirely different piece of his life: his immigrant chi
May 18, 2009
MONDAY MARGINALIA (LITE)
Lotsa goodies today but we're a but busy around here, so we offer them up in "soul-of-wit" style ...
Mario Benedetti has died ... Mas Ishiguro ... Thomas Mann's house of exiles (Thanks, EG) ... New Zealand celebrates the Commonwealth Prize by detaining two of its nominees ... A review of the new Gabriel Garcia Marquez bio ... Nora Roberts's B&B ... Kelly Jane Torrance on our Critic-in-chief and Netherland ... Turkey continues to prove itself unfit for EU membership ... The role of British spy th
