by Cindy Orr
Bleacher Reading
Lots of interesting tidbits this week, but first I just have to tell you a story…this absolutely made my week…I’m watching the first game in the American League championship series between Boston and Cleveland (go Tribe!), and the camera pans the stadium to find Stephen King reading a book in the stands!
To be fair, they showed him a few seconds later leaping to his feet to cheer, so he wasn’t completely ignoring the game. When they interviewed him later, he said he was reading The Ghost, a “terrific suspense novel.” I assume he meant the new book by Robert Harris.
King said you can read 18 pages of a book just at the inning breaks in a baseball game, but with Fox TV, it goes up to 27 because of all the commercials. Makes perfect sense. So tell me, what kind of book do you think lends itself to reading between the exciting moments at a baseball game?
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New to the Shelves
It’s another great week for new books (scroll down and look at the right side of the page to see the list of titles to be released in the next seven days). We have Nick Hornby’s new one, Iris Johansen, Mercedes Lackey, a new Star Wars novel, a great new translation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, plus Alice Sebold’s new novel.
On the nonfiction side there are dueling cartoon books: Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain! by Scott Adams, as well as Schulz and Peanuts: a Biography by David Michaelis. Then there’s Oliver Sacks, Joel Osteen, Bill O’Reilly, Donald Trump and probably the biggest one of all–Valerie Plame Wilson’s book on how her CIA cover was blown by the White House. Click here for the complete list.
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Fat Books
This Fall is a great time for fans of big fat books. There’s Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson (624 pages), Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo (544 pages), Ken Follett’s World Without End (988 pages), the sequel to his Pillars of the Earth, (973 pages) which was published in 1989, so you may need to reread the first one if your memory for books isn’t good for 18 years. Then we have a new translation of War and Peace (1296 pages), and now a newly discovered novel by Alexandre Dumas called The Last Cavalier (751 pages). These will build some good arm muscles.
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Literary Ingrate
Ursula K. Le Guin calls Jeanette Winterson’s new book The Stone Gods a “vivid cautionary tale,” but she calls her on “committing genre” while pretending that she doesn’t like Science Fiction. Le Guin really lets her have it: “I can only suppose that Jeanette Winterson is trying to keep her credits as a “literary” writer even as she openly commits genre. Surely she’s noticed that everybody is writing science fiction now? Formerly deep-dyed realists are producing novels so full of the tropes and fixtures and plotlines of science fiction that only the snarling tricephalic dogs who guard the Canon of Literature can tell the difference. I certainly can’t. Why bother? I am bothered, though, by the curious ingratitude of authors who exploit a common fund of imagery while pretending to have nothing to do with the fellow-authors who created it and left it open to all who want to use it. A little return generosity would hardly come amiss.”
Le Guin then proceeds to point out Winterson’s clumsy treatment of weaving necesary scientific explanations into her story–a problem that good genre writers have long ago figured out how to handle.
Go Ursula!
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More on the Fascinating Doris Lessing
And speaking of Science Fiction, here’s what American literary critic Harold Bloom had to say about Doris Lessing winning the Nobel Prize for Literature:
“Although Ms. Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable … fourth-rate science fiction.” He called the Nobel decision “pure political correctness.” Not sure what he meant by that, or who his favorite candidate was, but he does seem to have been unnecessarily mean.
Of course, he has gotten his name in the press many times by attacking authors such as Stephen King, J. K. Rowling, Adrienne Rich, Alice Walker and others, so maybe that’s his goal. Robert McCrum in The Guardian has a wonderful overview of Lessing’s 60 year career, and Harvey Blume in the Boston Globe got it right when he proposed her for the prize a couple of months ago.
Here are links to a couple of audio interviews with Lessing. You can get a good feeling for her feisty personality and her profound curiosity, and it’s pretty amazing to hear her opinions and warnings about Afghanistan (this interview was in 1988) . She also talks about her 1985 book The Good Terrorist and says that some of the greatest writing of our time has been in the genre of science ficton. She bemoans the fact that many of her readers will read only her realistic books, and others only her science fiction. Thanks to Robert Nagle for the links.
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Terry McMillan Slams Street Lit
Terry McMillan is not happy about Street Lit–perhaps because her ex-husband published a novel in this genre which purports to be a fictionalized version of their divorce. Listen here at NPR.
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Virago Modern Classics
Jonathan Coe discusses his literary love affair with Virago Modern Classics in The Guardian. He was a student working his way through the “canon” when he came across a rack of these books and wondered what they were. He could only see two things that they had in common–they were all by women, and he hadn’t heard of any of them. Virago Modern Classics were overlooked works by women which the Press brought back into print. When Virago Press was set up in 1973 by Carmen Callil, Rosie Boycott and Marsha Rowe, using the word “classic” was a bold political statement. Their catalog included names that may be recognizable now largely because of their publishing company–Dorothy Richardson, May Sinclair, Antonia White, Sylvia Townsend Warner and others.
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Fun Stuff
And finally, in keeping with our tradition of finishing up with something fun. How about a visual representation of Finnegan’s Wake.
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Talk to you next week from the Big Apple.
Harold Bloom is a great big meanie. I love the man, though: anytime I need a book to read, I find out what he’s been slamming. Inevitably, I’ll love it.
Too much fun stuff in this post. Loved the Stephen King sighting! And I thought I was the only one who read between innings at baseball games. It’s great to know I’m in good company with the greatest storyteller of our time.
It’s too bad so many people haven’t caught onto the importance of genre as a door not a wall. Some of the best literature of our time can be found in the different genres, often in science fiction.
Thanks again for such a great post.