A blog about books and literary culture in San Francisco with nary a post about eggs. Go figure.
From Jonathan Lethem’s essay “The Disappointment Artist”:
Loathing other writers, whether they be one’s teachers or students or colleagues, is likely as basic as Freud’s “narcissism of minor difference,” which explains that we are obliged to denounce those most similar to us because the resemblances are too telling of our vulnerabilities, our wants.
In rearranging the bookshelves this past weekend, I happened upon my unread copy of Phillip Roth’s first novella, Goodbye, Columbus. I set that right, and was energized by Roth’s ability to transform a pat plotline into a nuanced story about American society. From the sterile, mindless Patimkin household to the earthy individualism of the Klugmans, the story reads like a prelude to Roth’s masterful American Pastoral. Class, race, Jewish identity, and the gap between intellect and education are all rolled together in the story of Neil and Brenda’s summer romance.
Walter Kirn’s literary criticism is as astute, cheeky, and culturally relevant as his novels. After praising Vollmann’s dogged, immersive commitment to society’s marginalized in his current book Poor People, Kirn upbraids the author for his “Pyrrhic, postmodern project”:
Poverty presents a host of challenges, but knowing it when we see it isn’t one of them. Vollmann writes as if it were, though. He acts as if he were the Louis Pasteur of poverty, identifying its forms for the first time through the lens of some sociological microscope.
Read the full review.
Jonathan Lethem’s new “rock novel” You Don’t Love Me Yet reviewed by David Kamp in the New York Times:
It’s just a strange experience, watching someone of his powers and years — an accomplished 43-year-old novelist — applying his skills to what seems like first-novel material. Reading “You Don’t Love Me Yet,†I wondered if it was possible that the outline of this book dated back to Lethem’s younger years, if maybe he decided to dust off an old plot from the files and give it a go.
The complete review is here. And here’s a profile of the author in the Los Angeles Times.
Maud Newton guides us to a Harper’s article by Arthur Phillips on the schism between Kundera’s criticism and his fiction.
Salon’s Audiofile picks up the dumbest question in the world (“Are [x band] the greatest band in the world?) and complements it by furthering an asinine comparison:
Arcade Fire does Springsteen-style bombast better than anybody else. Hell, Rosen’s description of Arcade Fire’s music as “a very, very big noise: gargantuan rock symphonies full of lashing guitar lines, swooping counterpoint from strings and horns, and voices raised in wordless chorales and shouts of ‘Hey!’” could just as easily be used to describe “Born to Run” as “Neon Bible.”
Has anyone listened to these two albums? Where are the wordless chorales and shouts of “Hey!” on Springsteen’s albums? Where are Springsteen’s gritty, street-rat 33rpm symphonies on Neon Bible? I didn’t know The Boss (he of the spare Nebraska and downright funky first two albums) had a signature bombast—and if he does, it sure doesn’t resemble what the Arcade Fire is producing.
After fomenting the cause of frivolity, Marchese brings things back aground with this qualifier: “The band is good, but are the Springsteen and U2 comparisons premature?” He’s still missing the point. Of course they’re premature. More importantly, they are misleading. Plenty of bands are honing the Broooce-ian sound at present, Marah and The Hold Steady to name a notable pair. But those bands aren’t sprinting up the charts; the Arcade Fire is—on the strength of their originality, not their tenuous relation to the rock titans that preceded them.
From Deborah Eisenberg’s Twilight of the Superheroes:
You see, if history has anything to teach us, it’s that—despite all our efforts, despite our best (or worst) intentions, despite our touchingly indestructable faith in our own foresight—we poor humans cannot actually think ahead; there are just too many variables. And so, when it comes down to it, it always turns out that no one is in charge of the things that really matter.