The Guardian shares Zacappa’s fetish for top 10 lists of must reads -preferably exotic in nature- varying from underground welsh scribblings to unputdownable Chinese masterworks to favorable literary stepmothers to unbeatable boxing books to LA Noir Novels to a seamless endless collection of collections. As a meta masterpiece they have collected a top 1000 of must reads, divided in a few not-so-spectacular categories. Praise, praise.
On Guard: Meta Top 10 link
May 19th, 2010The Museum of Innocence
October 16th, 2008
In 1999, writer Orhan Pamuk bought a three story building in Istanbul to interact as a museum with his new novel, “Museum of Innocence,” a first of this kind of hybrid application… He hired an architect, Ihsan Bilgin, before he started the novel to transform the building into a museum Read the rest of this entry »Foe: an Exercise in Modesty
September 20th, 2008
Retelling a classic story in your own style is a classic way of learning how te become a Great Writer. J.M. Coetzee has nothing left to prove in that area, with a Nobel prize and two Booker in his prize cabinet. Still, Coetzee rewrote the well known Crusoe story (after winning his 1st Booker prize) resulting in the novel ‘Foe’. Why? Read the rest of this entry »
Too gentle for (t)his World
September 13th, 2008
In the legendary movie ‘Down by law’ by Jim Jarmush three refugees (Roberto benigni, Tom Waits and John Lurie) ride a small boat in unkown territory. When they reach a familiar location, one of them exclaims: “We Keep Going in Circles”. At this exact moment the boat begins to sink. And so it is with destructive habits and vices we are unable -or even unwilling- to shake off. Read the rest of this entry »
Eco über Brown
September 6th, 2008
“Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is an intentional attempt to dumb down for a mass audience Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum.” Exactly my thoughts while attempting to read TDVC. Steve Sailor treats us to an elegant comparison review of the two, ending with a Borghesian discovery.
Style über Message
September 4th, 2008
If you would have to divide serious literary writing in two broad categories, style versus message would be a good one, the talented word magicians (Nabokov, Marquez, Flaubert) versus the socially committed (Hugo, Tolstoj, Allende), the writers’ writers versus the mass favorites. If you prefer the first over the latter, like the Zac, you have to admire the Tzumprize. The Tzumprize hands out a yearly award for the most eloquent sentence produced that year in the Dutch world of fiction. The prize is worth the number of words in euros. Last year was a record, with a winning sentence by Jeroen Brouwers .
Everything is Promising
August 31st, 2008
I prefer to read books way after the first appearance, after the review dust has settled, the hype or literary fatwa has faded and -if lucky- the book is nothing more than a sparkling dot on a starry night. If it is still worth reading in this (final) habitat, it’s a good book. If it’s (still) able to stir your perspective on your personal universe, it’s great. Read the rest of this entry »
What we talk about when we talk about Love
August 27th, 2008
Carver had been up all night reviewing Lish’s severe editorial cuts wo stories had been slashed by nearly seventy per cent, many by almost half; many descriptions and digressions were gone; endings had been truncated or rewritten and he was unnerved to the point of desperation
More on Raymond Carver’s relationship with his friend and editor Gordon Lish at The New Yorker