Some other books I’ve been reading

Richard Price, Ladies Man (1978) — his third novel; depressed, horny young man in late 70s NYC working as a door-to-door salesman of home products in Greenwich Village.  This fascinated me — that he would stake out an apartment building and go door to door selling cleaning supplies and the like to bored housewives.  Manhattan [...]

Steve Erickson’s Cineautistic *Zeroville*

I found this on the “recommended reading” shelf at the public library — thanks, hipster librarian!  I’d read reviews of Zeroville (2007) when it came out but had forgotten about it and had never read any Erickson.  It’s a great Hollywood novel.  In fact, if I had any minor criticism it might be that it [...]

Penguin Crime edition of Chandler’s The Lady in the Lake

God I love this Raymond Chandler paperback.  Check out that amazing cover.  I think I picked it up from a pile in my mother in law’s house (you can have it back if you want, Suzy!). Great book too. He leaned forward and smiled. “Maybe you’d like a face full of knuckles.” I stared at [...]

Ann Arbor man punched during literary argument

Too awesome! Ann Arbor man punched during literary argument Posted: Mon, Mar 19, 2012 : 3:24 p.m. A 34-year-old Ann Arbor man was sent to the hospital with a head injury after another man punched him on Saturday during a literary argument, according to police. Ann Arbor police Lt. Renee Bush said the man went [...]

Eugenides’ *The Marriage Plot* as Neuronovel

Just finished Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot which I enjoyed very much.  [The following contains no big spoilers but I do discuss the book as a whole, which requires some hinting at the way the plot unfolds.] Of course, as someone who went to school at Brown/ in Providence (a decade after the book’s 1980s [...]

Dana Spiotta’s *Stone Arabia*: a musical tree falling in the woods

The one other novel I read in the midst of my Classic Doorstops was Dana Spiotta’s new Stone Arabia (link to Amazon where it’s for sale for less than $14).  This was also my first Kindle book purchase of over $1.99 or so.  I have to say that the whole Kindle (on iPad) experience was [...]

Excruciating & Tragic Dentistry of Buddenbrooks

I had two wisdom teeth removed on June 3.  Dentists had been telling me to do so for at least 15 years, maybe longer.  I’m not sure how my current dentist convinced me; I think in part because he was pretty lowkey about it, and didn’t seem to be pressuring me.  Anyway, I made the [...]

*Another Year*: Care-giving and the Depressed Person

Remember that David Foster Wallace story “the Depressed Person” — controversial (it elicited many angry letters in Harper’s when first published) because it seemed so unsympathetic to the “depressed person” of the title, a woman whose evenings were organized around phone calls to those dwindling numbers of old friends who were still willing to listen [...]

David Vann’s “Caribou Island:” Frost-Bound World

David Vann’s Caribou Island is a pretty intense read.  It’s the story of the disintegration of the marriage of Gary and Irene, who are in their late 50s or so.  They met at Berkeley where Gary was working on a (never-completed) PhD in Medieval Studies; they ended up in Alaska, where, it becomes clear, he [...]

Hanif Kureishi on the Kama Sutra

Hanif Kureishi on the Kama Sutra in the Guardian, great piece! It suggests that the gentleman should keep away from lepers, malodorous women and anyone with white spots. It is arch, comical and amazing – less Byron and more the sort of thing that Jeeves would have said to a priapic Bertie Wooster had Bertie [...]