In “Who Killed the Literary Critic?” at Salon Louis Bayard and Laura Miller, spurred by Ronan McDonald’s The Death of the Critic (I noted the TLS’s review in March), discuss the future of literary criticism.
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Monthly Archives: May 2008
Bleak House
Posted in Reading, Writing
Tagged criticism, laura miller, literature, louis bayard, ronan mcdonald, salon
Envy by Yuri Olesha
Recommended.
Posted in Read in 2008
Tagged marian schwartz, nyrb, recommended, russia, translation, yuri olesha
Twisted Cinderella
In the Village Voice, Michael Feingold notes a new English translation of Viennese author Stefan Zweig’s The Post-Office Girl. The short novel “displays Zweig’s two facets, the social-psychological analyst and the Romantic sentimentalist, in what often looks like a death struggle for control of the narrative.”
Posted in Reading
Tagged austria, book review, michael feingold, stefan zweig, translation, village voice
Writing Style
Mainichi Daily News interviews Haruki Murakami about his translations of American literature.
Posted in Reading
Tagged haruki murakami, interview, japan, mainichi daily news, translation, usa
Nostalgia Marinade
Ron Charles at the Washington Post reviews Jeffrey Lewis’s Adam the King.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (a Princeton man) set the bar high for anyone who wants to luxuriate in the tragedy of excess wealth and shattered dreams. In his best novels and short stories, the language is so lovely that you don’t mind or even notice how really silly the plots are, how insufferable the characters. Lewis can’t match that poetic style, but his novels have an elegance of their own, sparked with wit and marinated in nostalgia.
Posted in Reading
Tagged book review, jeffrey lewis, ron charles, usa, washington post
Exciting New Voices
Here in the UK we have one of the most xenophobic literary cultures on the planet, with only 2% of the books on the shelves in Britain having started off in another language. Of course it’s partly because of the way the media treats foreigners, but it’s also because of the way that literature, unlike cinema, or music, is so irredeemably local.
Peter Florence at the Guardian covers the celebration of twenty-one years of the Hay festival.
Posted in Reading
Tagged guardian, hay festival, peter florence, uk
The Boat by Nam Le
Recommended.
Posted in Read in 2008
Tagged australia, knopf, nam le, recommended, short story, vietnam
Ideologically Diseased
In the New York Times, Dwight Garner reviews Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, “the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we’ve yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Center fell.”
Posted in Reading
Tagged 11 september 2001, book review, dwight garner, joseph oneill, new york times, usa