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Today's suggestions come from Pamela Ryder:
In the Year of Long Division, by Dawn Raffel
This amazing collection of stories should not be missed. With language as clear and crispDeath,
loss, love are rendered to perfection in this collection of exquisite
stories. Motives are revealed, not by explanation, but by the exacting
language of intimacy and daring.
Today's guest shopping suggestions come from the fantastic Jonathan Evison:
I've been on a one man crusade recently to bring the male reader (en masse) back to the novel, and it's certainly not because I find anything lacking with the middle-aged college educated women readers who are the bread and butter of literary fiction—thank God for every one of them! There's just not enough of them. I don't want to stand by and watch the novel die a slow death because fifty percent of the world's readers (who just happen to have penises) aren't paying attention. And I don't wanna' reduce this to the women are from Venus, men are from Mars paradigm. I think the bottom line is guy readers are harder for publishers to target. If you're a guy, and you're reading this post, you're obviously not the problem. But you probably know a dozen dudes who stopped reading fiction in college. So anyone interested in joining the crusade, here are two books that came out this fall which would make excellent Christmas gifts, and I feel offer just the sort of fare to get these sad-sacks off their asses, put their joysticks down, and join the legion of educated women out there edifying themselves with fiction:
This Holiday Shopping Guide suggestion comes from Lori Ostlund:
In 2006, I attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, where I had the opportunity to hear Richard Siken read “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out,” from his poetry collection Crush (Yale University Press, 2005), which won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. I cannot put into words how I feel about this collection, except to say that it terrifies and exhilarates me, and when I am feeling discouraged, especially when I am feeling discouraged about my own writing, I take this collection out and read from it to myself, aloud. There are some poems that I return to repeatedly, poems such as the one that I heard Siken read that afternoon at Bread Loaf, which begins as follows:
Every morning the maple leaves.The title refers, of course, to the crush of infatuation, though this infatuation is of an obsessive, even violent, nature, and so the title refers as well to the way that lovers crush one another. There are some poems that I love, such as “A Primer for the Small Weird Loves,” but that I sometimes cannot read, silently or aloud. There are others that I have read perhaps a hundred times, poems such as “Boot Theory” and “Scheherazade,” which opens the collection and is a love poem (of sorts) that describes the beginning of romance, a beginning that is giddy and reckless and marked by its own transience:
Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.
How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forget that they are horses.
It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it's more like a song on a policeman's radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means
we're inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.
Two other recommendations: one is a subscription to New England Review,
my favorite
journal. I gave a subscription to a
friend earlier this year, and when I saw her last month, she told me that NER
has become her favorite journal also and that she gives her copy to a friend,
who makes comments on post its as she reads.
In this way, they have a ‘conversation’ about the work. My second suggestion is the recently released
paperback edition of Nancy Zafris’s The
People I Know, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction in
1990. Among my favorite stories are “A Minor Fatality,” “The People I Know,”
and “Grace’s Reply.” I’ve already
started handing this book out to lucky friends.
Lori Ostlund’s
first collection of stories, The Bigness
of the World, won the 2008 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and
was published by the
Well, I don't have a fancy avatar to go with this (yet), but today through Xmas Eve will have the EWN offering you a Holiday Shopping Guide that focuses on books or the literary world. Tis the season after all and as it's a little after 5 a.m. on Black Friday, the stores have opened. The bulk of the shopping suggestions will be coming from well established authors or editors over the next 30 days but the first one comes from me:
Temporary People: a Fable by Steven Gillis
It's a title I've touted here before and can't really see myself stopping any time soon. It's really a perfect storm book for the EWN - written by a great friend, published by a Dzanc imprint, and, oh yeah, it's freaking great! And don't trust just me, the reviews the book has received by those that found it have been stellar.
"Temporary People by Steven Gillis is one of the best fiction novels published over the past few years." - Lene Vanelslander
It's a book that I read in manuscript form when Steve completed it, on my computer screen, straight through, something I'd never done before, and haven't since, with any other manuscript or book. The language is exciting, the plot borders on being a page turner. The novel was prescient in the story line of babies being born with the effects of a company/government looking for big profits, and reminds the reader of what it means to follow your conscience, and personal ethos.
It's a book I've read three or four times now and am sure I'll return to time and again in the years to come. And I know from insider information that its publisher, Black Lawrence Press, as an imprint of Dzanc Books, happens to have a big Holiday Sale going from now through Xmas.
Come on back throughout the next month and see what others are suggesting you consider giving as gifts, be it to yourself, or others.
A truly solid visit from the Postman! today as he dropped off a galley
copy of Ander Monson's essay collection, Vanishing Point (Graywolf Press, April 2010) which is one I've really been looking forward to. Monson may do more with structure in the essay than any other author - okay, I'll say he definitely does more than any author I'm aware of. By the way, Monson's website, a treasure trove of writing itself, has a major league link that applies to this collection.
Also arriving today, Allison Amend's debut novel, Stations West (LSU Press, March 2010)!!! Yes, close readers, that would be a familiar title, as not so long ago, One Story V.1.N.13 came out and it had that same author name/title combo on the cover. An excerpt it turns out. This novel is part of LSU's Yellow Shoe Fiction Series.
I'm going back and forth a bit this morning deciding whether or not I should be surprised or not at how little I've seen about the recent passing of author Donald Harington. Never a big seller, but the type of cult writer that I'd have assumed bloggers might have picked up on his work. His fictional town of Stay More in the Ozarks has received comparisons with Faulkner's own little stamp of soil.
I actually hadn't heard until this morning that Harington had died, back on November 7th. I stumbled across the news when visiting the Toby Press website. The fact that Toby Press has found reason to both re-publish his earlier Stay More titles, while also publishing for the first time his last four titles, is enough reason for me to consider going back to book one and reading straight through.
I've read two of his works - The Cockroaches of Stay More, probably way back in 1989 when it came out if I remember right - and I found one of the earlier Stay More titles (one with humans as the characters) at a used store right after that. I wasn't quite into completion back then as I am these days and also didn't have the internet at my disposal to track down all of the other titles. It's something I've considered doing from time to time, usually while in the middle of reading the collected works of another author - probably a few years ago when I read about 12 Percival Everett titles over the course of a month or so. I feel bad that it's the notice of Harington's death that has prompted this idea once more. I'll probably actually follow up on it this time though.
A few nice tributes to the man can be found here, here, here, and here.
David McLendon
It’s no coincidence that acts of repetition have repeatedly found their way into the pages of Unsaid. Repetition is a tool, an essential tool that strengthens the foundation of any work of art. Music is the most obvious form of art that implements repetition, but one finds it in all the arts when paying attention. You have obviously paid a great deal of attention to these and other details in your reading of Unsaid, and I respect you for this.
Jones is a lyrical writer. There is a rare unsentimental sweetness to his pages that I greatly admire. It’s important to point out that his naming a character “the girl who smelled of honey and smoke” throughout the text has less to do with repetition than consecution. Simply put, “the girl who smelled of honey and smoke” is the character’s name. This compositional choice by Jones has more to do with his lyrical stance than an act of repetition. If he had called his character “Jane” or “Mary” throughout the text, such an act would go unnoticed as one of repetition. By naming her “the girl who smelled of honey and smoke” he creates a lyrical sensation, and this is his great strength as a writer.
Similarly, when writing of an ex-girlfriend in an essay for The Collagist, I referred to her as “the girl who had some secrets” instead of the name she claims in the world. This was a choice of lyrical stance, not repetition. Calling her anything other throughout the the essay--after initiating
her as "the girl who had some secrets"—would have weakened the
integrity and believability of the text. The writer—especially the fiction writer—must stick to his or her initial choices throughout the text. Otherwise, the writing comes across as little more than an act of inattentive recklessness, and the fiction falls short of any truth.
Perhaps at some point you and I can speak at length about compositional acts of repetition. Both in practice and theory, repetition is regarded as essential in the making of great art. This is nothing new, but the act itself often creates a lasting newness. As Søren Kierkegaard wrote, “If the young man had believed in repetition, of what might he not be capable? What inwardness he might have attained!”
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