Serendipity

It's as though the New York Times was using this blog to decide what to write articles about: check out this review of Joseph Roth's newly released collection of essays, Report from a Parisian Paradise: Essays from France, 1925-1939.

- C. Max Magee @ 9:26 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

A Note from a Fellow Reader

Brian, one of my more well read and more ebullient friends, sent me this email emoting about one of the more underappreciated writers of the 20th century, Joseph Roth. Roth's reputation and body of work were recently addressed in a New Yorker piece by Joan Acocella. Here's Brian's reaction:

took the advice of the New Yorker and started reading Joseph Roth's
collection of short stories and am totally overwhelmed. read "Stationmaster
Fallermayer" from the collection on your next break. amazing. i just ordered Radetzsky
March from amazon (along with seamus heaney's translation of Beowulf) --

j. roth is one of those writers that was meant to write as we are all meant
to breathe and move and sleep -- his prose is beautiful: perfect constructions
and his sentences convey much human truth -- one of those guys who writes a
line and immediately we 'know' it as we have felt it a million times but have
never been able to articulate it the way he does... i look forward to pillaging
his oeuvre....

He makes it sound pretty great. Unfortunately I didn't get to read "Stationmaster Fallermayer" during my break at work yesterday, but I certainly intend to soon.

- C. Max Magee @ 4:05 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Books in the News

Some news stories that caught my this morning:

• People come into the bookstore all the time to make lists of books that they want to read. Then they head over to the library to try to find them. Every once in a while a doleful customer will remark that the book that he or she wants to read has an interminable waiting list. From these folks and from personal experience I know that it can be next to impossible to borrow a bestseller from the library. What I didn't know is that adding your name to those waiting lists inspires libraries to buy more books. As this article describes, a waiting list of 296 people prompted the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Michigan library system to buy 96 copies of The Da Vinci Code. So, signing up for library waiting lists is a way to give a boost to the book industry, even if you never spend a buck.
• Amazon's UK site has launched an interesting venue called the Authors' Lounge. The Authors' Lounge features video clips of authors talking about their books. Right now they've got John Le Carre talking about his new book Absolute Friends as well as several other folks.

- C. Max Magee @ 1:48 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Mapping

I'm a map person. There are random maps all over the walls of my house, mostly freebies that my coworkers at the book store, knowing my interest, have passed along to me. Looking around right now I can see a "Rail Map of Europe," "World Terrorism: a Reference Map," and this odd, black and white, line drawing map of Illinois, among several others. When I live somewhere with enough room, I intend to have several atlases. Thus, I was excited to find today a book called You Are Here by Katharine Harmon. It's sort of a popular history of maps with heavy focus on amateur maps, folk art maps, and maps that are related to popular culture. She is especially interested in what maps can tell us about the way we see the world. I'm looking forward to getting this one.

- C. Max Magee @ 7:32 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Looking for a Book?

Are you in the mood to read a page-turner? If you're not afraid to read something in the mystery section at your local bookstore, try Paranoia by Joseph Finder. I keep hearing people talking about it, and it's getting good reviews. Check out this one at Slate.com (the reviewer gets to it after he reviews John Le Carre's latest, Absolute Friends).

- C. Max Magee @ 1:11 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

My Review of Paris Trout by Pete Dexter

I came to read this book because last summer I was given, unexpectedly, a review copy of Dexter's latest book, Train; (my review). I had never heard of Dexter at the time, but I loved the book, and when Dexter came to the book store to do a reading, I made sure I was in attendance (he turned out to be a very engaging guy) and had him sign a copy of Paris Trout for me. And now I've gotten around to reading that very same book. Paris Trout centers around a character of the same name. Though he is clearly a psychopath, he has money and is a business man, so his violent nature is ignored by the citizens of his small town, Cotton Point, Georgia. The book opens with an attack by Trout on a local black family. The town's white population does not want to be seen siding with a black family against a white man, so, from then on they turn a blind eye towards Trout and allow him to bully the legal system. Also involved in this hard boiled drama are Trout's wife Hanna and Harry Seagraves, Trout's good-guy lawyer. The book is framed as the story of a very bad man terrorizing a sleepy town, but the amazing thing about it is the way Dexter slowly turns the tables until it becomes clear that the complacency of the townspeople is a far greater sin than the murderousness of someone who lives among them. Though it reads like genre fiction with gripping suspense and at times remarkable violence, the subtle play on the psychology of a small town elevates the book to a remarkable literary novel. Although, I should say, if this book were not as deep and were merely a legal thriller, I would still have found it to be fantastic based on the strength of Dexter's writing. A great book. (Another Dexter post).

Next Up

I am now embarking upon Edith Grossman's translation of Miguel De Cervantes' classic, Don Quixote. After that I'll be reading Walker Percy's underappreciated classic The Moviegoer

- C. Max Magee @ 1:15 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Literary Hollywood

When I lived in Washington, DC, I remember there being a slew of excitement in the local newspapers and in local bookstores when a book like Primary Colors came out. Local interest is a big seller in books, especially when there's scandal involved. Here in Los Angeles this means that books about Hollywood get top billing, and there are lots of them on the local bestseller lists at any given time. They come in a few different flavors. There's the now-we-can-finally-make-all-those-juicy-stories-public, recent-history-of-Hollywood books. These books come out a generation or so after the action depicted in the book takes place. The main players have either died or they no longer wield any power so their stories are fair game for the reading public. Connie Bruck's biography of Hollywood mogul Lew Wasserman, When Hollywood Had a King and A. Scott Berg's biography of Katherine Hepburn, Kate Remembered are two recent examples. Then there's the down-in-the-trenches, you-have-to-be-there-to-really-get-it, borderline-inside-joke, behind-the-scenes-entertainment-industry-workplace-dramas. Take David Rensin's book The Mailroom, which, as far as I can tell, you would only want to read for one of two reasons. You once worked in Hollywood mailroom and you want to reminisce about those high-energy, low-pay days back before you became a high-powered agent, or you desperately want to become a high-powered agent and you want to read up about what it's like in the mailroom, your first step on the road to glitz and glamour. Finally there is the true story thinly disguised as fiction like producer Robert Cort's recent novel, Action!. I got to thinking about all of this Hollywood literature because of a recent review by Caryn James in the New York Times that assesses the latest crop of Hollywood lit. (LINK). Wading through big-selling tell-alls like Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures and Joe Eszterhas' Hollywood Animal and all the rest, she finds a novel that transcends the Hollywood genre in The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters and also mentions that when it comes to books about Hollywood, The Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West is "unsurpassed."

- C. Max Magee @ 7:33 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Big Changes

You may have noticed: instead of posting about books, I've been redesigning The Millions. I would love to hear any comments or suggestions. Also, check out the new feature: New York Times book headlines, just below the Ask a Book Question area.

- C. Max Magee @ 1:53 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Been Hearing Good Things About...

Looking for some new fiction? Here are the new books that people are talking about:

• The Maze by Panos Karnezis; a profile from The Independent
• The Epicure's Lament by Kate Christensen; a review from the Barcelona Review
• The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer; the San Francisco Chronicle reviews this tale of a backward aging protagonist.
• Bandbox by Thomas Mallon; the Fort Worth Star Telegram likens this one to Wodehouse.
• Waterborne by Bruce Murkoff; the San Francisco Chronicle also reviews this one.
• The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson; it's a Today Show book club pick and USA Today likes it. Could be the first breakout hit of 2004.
• The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe; the Christian Science Monitor wonders if this outstanding Canadian novel will be ignored by Americans.

Coming Soon...

May will see the release of Truth and Beauty, Ann Patchett's follow up to big seller Bel Canto as well as a new collection by E. L. Doctorow, Sweet Land Stories. In June look for new Thomas Keneally, The Tyrant's Novel and a new collection of short stories by David Foster Wallace called Oblivion.

- C. Max Magee @ 8:23 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Books in the News

Some things I've noticed today:

• This review of a new biography of one the founding fathers of fantasy and science fiction, H. P. Lovecraft. What's interesting about this bio is that it is done in the form of a graphic novel, a fitting medium in which to describe the life of a visionary. Lovecraft was almost a movie before it was adapted by Keith Giffen from a script by Hans Rodinoff and illustrated by Enrique Breccia.
• Great capsule reviews at the Christian Science Monitor of the nominees for National Book Critics Circle awards in the criticism category, "far and away the most intimidating [category]." The nominees are Gritos by Dagoberto Gilb, Songbook by Nick Hornby, Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King, River of Shadows by Rebecca Solnit, and Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag. The winners are announced on March 4th in New York.
• And a group reads all of Shakespeare in one day, which reminded me of this awesome big ticket item.

- C. Max Magee @ 7:39 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Lots More Books to Read

I've acquired some books over the last month in various ways, and now I have added them to the reading queue, which at its current swollen proportions will take me over a year to get through. Here's what I've added. As mentioned in this post, I snagged a copy of The Glory of Their Times, an oral history of the early years of baseball by Lawrence Ritter. I can't believe that spring training is only a couple of weeks away. I also got some books from my mom, who is great about sending books my way. She passed along two books by Virginia Woolf (whose work I have never read), To the Lighthouse as well as a collection of her shorter fiction. She also got me the first play to be added to my young reading queue, Jumpers by Tom Stoppard. I rarely read any drama though I should probably read more. In fact, I don't think I've read a play since college... another Stoppard play, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Going in a completely different direction, I've added a graphic novel that my friend Chris, insisting that I would enjoy it, kindly lent to me: I Never Liked You by Chester Brown. I also secured a copy of Absolutely American, a book that David Lipsky wrote after spending four years following one cadet class through West Point. And finally I acquired a couple of advance copies of some books that'll be out this spring. The first is You Remind Me of Me, a new novel by up and comer Dan Chaon. The other is Rick Atkinson's book about being embedded with the 101st Airborne in Iraq. Check out the post where I broke the news on this book back in October. Atkinson won the Pulitzer last year for the first book in his "Liberation Trilogy," An Army at Dawn (also on the reading queue!)

Insider Reviews

Ever since Amazon instituted the customer review feature there have been a fair amount of complaints from authors and publishers that one vengeful reader's review can kill their sales. Other improprieties have also been alleged, like authors anonymously reviewing their own books glowingly while disparaging the books of rivals and enemies. A recent glitch at Amazon's Canadian site lifted the veil of anonymity from the process. This New York Times article describes the fallout. The highlights: John Rechy giving glowing reviews to his own novel, The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens and Dave Eggers writing a positive review of his friend Heidi Julavits' novel, The Effect of Living Backwards.

- C. Max Magee @ 1:42 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

My Review of The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard

I finished the book yesterday during a long afternoon spent in bed recovering from my illness. It was an especially fitting setting. The Great Fire is full of languid afternoons and young men beset by obscure diseases and weary from the war. I enjoyed the setting; the sense of war nearby, war recently ended and perhaps soon to be reignited. It was like a less bleary version of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises it also reminded me a lot of the film Casablanca, but maybe just because I happened to watch it around when I started reading the book. The book revolves around a couple of former soldiers, Aldred Leith and Peter Exley, who have been cast far and wide, to Japan and Hong Kong respectively, in the aftermath of World War II. They are surrounded on all sides by others, women and older folks, whose lives have been similarly touched by the war, and all of whom seem to be searching in vain for normalcy in the aftermath of shattering conflict. The central drama of the book concerns a budding love affair between Leith and a student of his, Helen Driscoll. Helen's dull and menacing parents as well as the vast age difference between Aldred and Helen set up what turns out to be a fairly filmic love story. The chief drama for the reader lies both in wending one's way through Hazzard's elliptical, lyrical prose and in wondering whether or not the May - December romance will ever be consummated.

- C. Max Magee @ 8:29 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

I'm Back

I've been a bit under the weather lately, but I think I'm starting to get better. I'm well enough to post here anyway. Which is good, because I noticed a couple of books that I thought people might be interested in. Remember a few years ago when everyone was suddenly talking about "string theory?" This was because of a book by Brian Greene called The Elegant Universe, which somehow managed to solve a longstanding dilemma in the world of physics, that "general relativity and quantum mechanics cannot both be right," in a book readable enough to become a best seller. Greene proved to be one of those remarkable writers, of which there are very few, who have the ability to make a very boring and difficult topic interesting for everyone. And now he has a new book out: The Fabric of the Cosmos : Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality, in which he continues to unwind scientific complexities with a combination of analogy and wit.

My friend Edan pointed out another interesting, new book to me other day. Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution by the remarkably named, Alma Guillermoprieto. Edan and I both read an excerpt of this book in the New Yorker a while back. I enjoyed the way Guillermoprieto's fierce Latin personality was tempered by her lyrical love of dance. This book seems perfect for anyone enamored by ballet and/or Cuba.

A Note

From the book I just finished: "From his windows at MacGregor Road, he watched the President Polk leave the harbour. He knew nothing of President Polk, but assumed that the shipping company would have checked the record, beforehand, for anything scandalous. Then he did miss Audrey, with whom he could have spoken of such things."

- C. Max Magee @ 7:24 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Hey Rock and Roll Fans

Realistic Records, the record label that Derek and I run out of the crawl space beneath his apartment, has a new cd out! It's the cd version (featuring 3 new songs) of the Recoys record that we put out last summer. So, if you are into the Walkmen and are digging their new album, Bows & Arrows, check out the Recoys, Ham and Pete of the Walkmen's old band.

- C. Max Magee @ 1:48 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Campaigning

I've been having a really good time following the race for the Democratic nomination. As is usually the case with me and politics, I'm far more interested as an observer than as a participant. The daily maneuvering makes for good reading. I've mostly been following the action at The Note, the daily column put together by ABC News' political unit. It's a great behind-the-scenes look at the process. All of this politicking has got me thinking about one of my all time favorite books. Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 combines, in a way that only Thompson can, political reporting with author's deteriorating ability to keep it all together. I enjoy this book the most out of all of Thompson's books because it provides a terrific outsider's look at the mealy insides of American politics. Thompson sharing the back of a limo with Nixon on a ride from Boston to Manchester is priceless. But it is also amazing because it comes at an odd moment in Thompson's career, the point of transition from the clear-headed, idealistic recklessness of Hell's Angels to the addled egotism of his later work. The book got me excited about politics, but I was frustrated that Thompson wasn't able to keep writing at this level for the rest of his career. Still, it remains a fantastic book for anyone who is interested in history or politics, especially if you have taste for Thompson's singular, stylistic flair.

- C. Max Magee @ 2:32 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

News Roundup

Now the much-vaunted "Oprah effect" has hit Britain, where a brief mention of Joseph O'Connor's Star of the Sea on a popular daytime show caused sales to go through the roof. Stunned by the response, the hosts claim that they will once again press their producers to allow them to start a book club. It's amazing to me that the TV book club phenomenon did not actually originate in England, where the world of books is far more integrated into popular culture. In fact, last summer's "Big Read," a sort of all time greatest books countdown show on the BBC, was wildly popular and apparently bumped book sales in England noticeably. Meanwhile, Star of the Sea, a book that received decidedly mixed reviews gets a boost that points to the power of the television in the world of books. Here's the original "Oprah effect" story.

To anyone who has read Dan Brown's mega-blockbuster The Da Vinci Code, here's an interesting article from the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel that tries to separate the facts from the fiction.

The Pulitzer Prizes will be announced in a couple of months and I've been thinking about who might win. I've lately been favoring Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc in the General Non-Fiction category. I'll probably muse over who I favor for the next several weeks, and stay tuned for the First Annual Millions Pulitzer Pool (complete with prizes!). Details to come.

- C. Max Magee @ 1:40 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

One Last Best of 2003

Somehow I waited two months to take a look at the "best of 2003" column from my favorite book critic Jonathan Yardley. For him 17 rather interesting books make the cut, and his two picks for best of the year are The Known World by Edward P. Jones and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's memoir Living to Tell the Tale. Both of these are on the reading queue, and I'm very much looking forward to reading them. Here is Yardley's column.

- C. Max Magee @ 11:50 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Books of the Boom

I caught a few minutes of Fresh Air on NPR while I was out running a quick errand today. Terri Gross was interviewing David Denby, the New Yorker film critic who has a new book out. The book is called American Sucker and it is a memoir of the boom years. In 2000 Denby and his wife split, and he decided that he wanted to keep the Upper West Side apartment that had been their home for many years. In order to do this, Denby hatched a plan to buy out his wife's share of the apartment. Lacking the funds to make the apartment his and cast adrift by the collapse of his marriage, Denby threw himself wholeheartedly into the mania of the stock market boom with the hopes that he, like so many others seemed to be doing, could hit it big. It would be the solution to all of his problems. A sort of addiction to his quest set in and American Sucker was the result. Today, Terri Gross, in her way, was trying to get him to relate his experience to some classic gambling films, Denby being a film critic and all. Denby, however, begged off and mentioned two interesting books that he feels are most analogous to the way he felt during his ordeal. Dostoevsky's The Gambler and a somewhat forgotten Victorian classic by Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now, to Denby's mind, best portray a sense of monetary desperation in the midst of a boom. I'm hoping that over the next few years there will be more books that look at the boom of the late nineties through a literary lens. It was a strange and fascinating time. Denby's colleague at the New Yorker, James Surowiecki has penned a less personal book about business and money called The Wisdom of Crowds which is slated to come out at the end of May. A quick look reveals that Surowiecki has put together a readable tome meant to illustrate a principle that many economists hold dear: the idea that decisions can be made, problems can be solved, and the future can be predicted by the market. Imagine the Nasdaq but replace companies with possible outcomes. At the end of the day the outcome that is trading at the highest level is probably the correct answer to whatever problem was trying to be solved. Using markets you can, as Surowiecki terms it, unlock the "wisdom of crowds." Last summer there was much public outcry when it was announced that one of our government agencies was considering setting a market that was meant to predict future terrorist attacks. The idea of people profiting off of this sort of speculation was abhorrent to many people and the plans were shelved, but, in The Wisdom of Crowds, Surowiecki will likely argue that the plan would have worked.

- C. Max Magee @ 7:40 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post