Books

And it’s the second installment of Diana Gill’s secret histories and con men roundtable with James Morrow, Jeff Ford, John Crowley and Tim Powers. And James Morrow kicks it off with his first contribution:

JM: Tim says, "I suspect not everybody will agree with me on this last point [namely that] I always at least hope that I have nothing ‘to say’ in my fiction. No relevance to here and now. If I see myself starting to write something that’s perceptibly a metaphor for something going on in the world today, I hope I always have the discipline to cut it out. " Well, Tim, you’ve come to the right place–I’m going to disagree with you, partly because I dissent from what I take to be your Poetics, partly because all of this mutual corroboration is starting to get on my nerves. Time to stir the pot, gentlemen.

Yay!

Charles Shields, whose biography of Harper Lee was published earlier this year, is starting work on a biography of Kurt Vonnegut. He would like to hear from any of you about your experiences with Vonnegut, "either personally or with his novels." He can be reached at cjs1994ATearthlinkDOTnet, or if you want a phone number send me an email and I’ll give it to you. 

So, Slate’s book coverage has pretty much been dead to me since the inept savagery of Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club. If that hadn’t done it, I’m sure this would have.

Now comes the proud proclamation that Octavian Nothing actually sucks–really, we’ve all just been snowed. We like a good sermon, apparently. (Although she gets points for referencing Matt’s review.) 

Or maybe such reactionary book coverage isn’t worth the pixels it’s printed in.

Diana Gill of Morrow/Eos hosts a roundtable of John Crowley, Tim Powers, Jeff Ford and James Morrow, talking about secret histories. Since Pynchon’s on everyone’s lips this week, here’s a relevant snippet from John Crowley:

Maybe you could distinguish between books that are about secret histories (like The Crying of Lot 49) and secret histories themselves. What Pynchon got was that we’d rather be titillated by the possibility of the secret history than to hear it explicated. A wonderful new book out now explicates the many variants on Hollow Earth stories–from Ignatius Donnelly to Edgar Rice Burroughs and beyond. I’d say that the Hollow Earth story is about as perfect a paradigm of an actual secret history as Pynchon’s is the paradigm about one. Of course I attempted a combo or trifecta in the Aegypt series, about, embodying, and losing a secret history. (Note: I said attempted.)

Read the whole thing. And, apparently, there are more installments to come, which makes me very happy.

M.T. Anderson won for Octavian Nothing!

Now, please, everybody read this book immediately. It’s that good, quite possibly the book of the year, period.

And yay for Richard Powers’ The Echo Maker. Read that one too.

A very good year at the National Book Awards.

p.s. The AP article contains a snippet of Anderson’s acceptance: Anderson, the young people’s literature winner, also cited the indulgence of his publisher, Candlewick Press. He thanked Candlewick for taking on a long and unusual book by a "neurotic who rarely leaves his house or gets dressed."

p.p.s. True junkies can see the ceremony on CSpan Book TV this weekend, at 10 p.m. Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday.

Of Nancy Werlin, nominated for The Rules of Survival in the Young People’s Literature category. She’s posting photos and commentary for each day of the week. (Oh, to be at today’s readings, which are grouped with one nominee in each category.) (Via Cynthia Lord.)

The ever-wonderful Jenny D reviews M.T. Anderson’s truly amazing Octavian Nothing in the NYT:

In recent years young adult fiction has proved a haven for novelists of ideas who also love storytelling. M. T. Anderson is one of the most interesting. His first novel was the unsettling suburban teenage vampire fantasy “Thirsty” (1997), but he didn’t capture a wide audience until 2002, when his cult hit “Feed” appeared. A surprisingly affecting commodity-culture satire — partly set on the moon, where rich teenagers go for spring break — it earned Anderson a slew of fans and his first National Book Award nomination. His second nomination came last month for his new novel, “The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing.”

What a wise pairing on the NYT’s part!

I suspect anyone who’s going to read this book has already seen a couple of the big spoilers of major parts of the narrative, so it’s okay, if you’re on the fence or are already spoiled: Go read Jenny’s review. But if you’re going to read it and just haven’t and haven’t heard that much about the book, wait and read the review after.

I was very glad when I read it that I didn’t know that much about it going in. Due to the sins of flap copy & etc., it’s so rare to be truly surprised by a narrative (my favorite surprise of the last several years is in Kelley Eskridge’s Solitaire — you should read that one too, but do NOT look at the flap copy first!).

In recognition of some small measure of sanity on the part of some people, I’m gonna give away some books over the next week. Today, I’ve got two copies of the new paperback edition of Kelly Link’s second short story collection Magic for Beginners.

The first will go to the first person who responds with some creditable hint of a possible defense to zombie (or undead) attack. The other will go to the first person who accurately guesses the solution to the first arc (the campus rapes) on Veronica Mars this season* either in this thread or one of the VMT threads.**

*Somebody will. But if nobody does, I’ll choose the most entertaining objection to the culprit reveal.
**Yeah, this one will take a little while (but not sooo long!); and there’s a pretty good chance any of the regular commenters on VM already have the book, so they can also have it sent to another person-a of their choice.

If you’re looking for some appropriate reading material for Election Day, I suggest David Levithan‘s Wide Awake. It’s an excellent, zippy, funny, insightful and above all else political YA novel set in the a (sort of distant but) not so distant future Here’s a snippet from the opening (longer excerpt here):

"I can’t believe there’s going to be a gay Jewish president."

As my mother said this, she looked at my father, who was still staring at the screen.  They were shocked, barely comprehending.

Me?

I sat there and beamed.

p.s. Hunter S. Thompson fans may want to check this out (note: not pretty), but a rousing post. Sentiment heartily agreed with. Although, I think you’re allowed to complain no matter what. It’s in the Bill of Rights.

p.p.s. Local report junkies may want to keep one eye here.

In his lovely introduction for M. Rickert’s debut story collection Map of Dreams, Chris Barzak shares an anecdote from a letter about process she wrote him. She said:

And, I had forgotten this, but in about fourth grade, fifth grade? I don’t know but I was young, and basically fairly unpopular and a skinny, cross-eyed girl with cat-eye glasses and I wrote this story that I decided to perform for the class as a monologue. So the whole thing is about how nobody likes me or plays with me and I don’t know why, and how alone I am, and how I try to fit in. The last line is something like, "Then she turned and walked away dragging her tail behind her."

So I’m the girl with the tail. One of the hardest parts of my life as a writer was figuring that out.

And if that doesn’t make you want to read this collection more than anything else I’m going to say, well, what’s your deal?

Mary Rickert is one of the best short story writers working today. The first story of hers I read was "Bread and Bombs," side by side with a George Saunders story, "The Red Bow," exploring similar thematic territory–her story more than held its own. (Yes, I know technically Ben’s "The Valley of the Giants" separates them, but I’d already read it.) I thought: who on Earth is this writer? Which is what Chris says he also felt when he first encountered Rickert’s work. I have a feeling there’s an army of people (small, but growing) out there with similar stories. "The first time I read an M. Rickert story, I sat up and said, Who is this amazing writer and where did she come from?"

So, the collection. It collects all sorts of her fantastic (in multiple senses of the word) previously published stories–I’ll particularly recommend here "Bread and Bombs," "Cold Fires," "Anyway," and "Leda." But there aren’t any bums in the lot; there are stories I don’t love as much or that maybe don’t rise to quite the same level, but every story in the bunch is worth reading. Every story is thoughtfully, beautifully constructed and has something specific to say. Often collections can have a samey quality that undercuts them; by the same token, you want a collection to feel unified. Each story here is different, its own thing, but Rickert’s voice unites them. Concerns echo, but don’t repeat.

I’ll finish by saying that the title novella, published here for the first time, is as wonderful as anything else Rickert has written. Novellas frequently seem awkward to me. Often, they seem like fat short stories, plump on extraneous detail. Or, conversely, like too-short novels, with the story smushed and abbreviated, thinned out. "Map of Dreams" feels just right. As if it could never have been anything else, as if there’s not a stray word in it. It’s such a satisfying story. A woman witnesses her daughter murdered by a sniper, then discovers she might be able to travel back in time to change things through an intersection of physics and the Aboriginal Dreaming. Her journey is fascinating and surprising, and the combination of odd elements never feels forced. It would be worth buying the collection just for this.

And, more than that, it makes me want a novel from Rickert so so so badly. In fact, I’d try to start a Make M. Rickert Write a Novel movement, except her bio says she’s already working on one. I could start a Make M. Rickert Finish Her Novel movement instead, but you don’t want to rush a writer like this. The wait will be worth it.