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100 for the little ones.

2007-07-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

Lifted whole-cloth from somewhere.

Here is a list of one hundred books selected by the National Education Association as great reading for children and young people. To help make these books more useful, we have added book and author links to any TeachersFirst resources and lesson ideas. For more reading ideas - including books grouped by theme and grade levle - check out the hundreds of titles in our Suggested Reading section.

Books for All Ages
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
Where the Sidewalk Ends: the Poems and Drawing of Shel Silverstein by Shel Silverstein
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Heidi by Johanna Spyri
Books for Preschoolers - More Preschool Titles from TeachersFirst / TeachersAndFamilies
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? by Bill Martin, Jr.
The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister
Corduroy by Don Freeman
The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise
Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney
Books for Children Ages 4-8 - More Primary Reading from TeachersFirst / TeachersAndFamilies
The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
Love You Forever by Robert N. Munsch
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst
The Mitten by Jan Brett
Stellaluna by Janell Cannon
Oh, The Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss
Strega Nona by Tomie De Paola
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by John Archambault
The Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff
The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman
Jumanji by Chris Van Allsburg
Math Curse by Jon Scieszka
Are You My Mother? by Philip D. Eastman
The Napping House by Audrey Wood
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss
Basil of Baker Street by Eve Titus
The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper
Curious George by Hans Augusto Rey
Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox
Arthur series by Marc Tolon Brown
Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes
The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton
Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish
The Art Lesson by Tomie De Paola
Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina
Clifford, the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell
The Paper Bag Princess by Robert N. Munsch
Books for Children Ages 9-12 - More Books by Grade Level from TeachersFirst
Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Little House on the Prarie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan
The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
The BFG by Roald Dahl
The Giver by Lois Lowry
James and the Giant Peach: A Children's Story by Roald Dahl
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert C. O'Brien
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson
Matilda by Roald Dahl
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume
Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary
The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White
The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder - Laura Ingalls Wilder Webquest
Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard Atwater
My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
Stuart Little by E. B. White
Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis
Books for Young Adults - More Books by Grade Level from TeachersFirst
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
Summer of the Monkeys by Wilson Rawls
The Cay by Theodore Taylor
The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare

Check out this "great" web site.

2007-07-18T18:50:00.000-07:00

I hope you've already heard about this, because you attend to the postings at Ward Six, but if not, let me introduce you to "your" next favorite website.

Update on campaign songs.

2007-06-21T09:24:00.000-07:00

I will refrain from comment on the final pick.To be more serious for a moment, the result can be read as a wad of demographic tea leaves at the bottom of Hillary's teacup: The chosen song was by far the most "soccer mom" of the options, pointedly bypassing the civil-rights-era echoes of the Temptations, the more youth-oriented Smashmouth (purportedly Bill C.'s pick, but in general a weird case of wishful thinking and cool hunting that missed the mark), and the overly politically aware U2. For many potential Clinton voters - especially working and middle-class women of all ages, single mothers, new immigrants, exurban families, and many more - the Celine choice is going to be a much more sympathetic and welcomed selection than you would think if you went by the media and the blogophere, which predictably went right into mockery mode. As I argue at length in my book, critics and pundits are, by and large, exactly in the place in the culture least disposed to understanding Celine's appeal, and have always, as they are this week, stood by and jeered while Celine went on to be embraced by hundreds of millions of fans around the world. At least for once Hillary's managed a genuinely populist move here, rather than backing away into the neutral zone her handlers seem to prefer. Although maybe that's because she doesn't make a very convincing populist, which leads to our next problem...Aaaaargh Celine Dion aaaaarrcgh I'm burning

After Dark, chapter one.

2007-06-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

For those of you still wondering: should I? Here's the first chapter of Haruki Murakami's After Dark. And stop wondering aloud, someone'll call the police.

Another tournament of books.

2007-05-10T22:00:00.000-07:00

For those who like this sort of thing, Time Out New York has a tournament going in which readers vote on "which book is most essential to life - and cocktail conversation - in New York City." Being a bumpkin who has lived in Maine his whole life, I'm not that great a judge. And no commentary?

I tell you what though, if Auster's New York Trilogy loses out to The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, I'll eat my red notebook. (And shouldn't the graphic novelization of City of Glass get its own shot at the title?) (via)

One story, every day.

2007-04-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

Dan's the man with the master plan.

While the poets of the world have shrewdly united to have April be National Poetry Month every year, creating a fair amount of attention for their craft, we (proverbial) here at the EWN have decided that we sort of like concentrating on one form for a lengthy period of time, so we're declaring that around here, May will be Short Story Month. While we don't believe that we'll have WITS stories to link to and discuss like we have this month, we do have more than enough short story collections lying around the homestead here that we have been waiting for a reason to crack open.

One of the original ideas behind this Work of the Day idea was to dip into those collections of stories and poems that I didn't think would ever get full reviews. So, in the month of May, while some of the stories will come from online journals, and print journals, there will also be at least one story per day coming from a story collection.

I like to see this sort of thing. I've written in the past about my love of the short story and wondered about its diminished - and diminishing - place in the lives of readers. I finished The Secret Lives of People in Love - short stories - the other night and have been trying to figure out a way to write about it without resorting to outrageous hyperbole. Still working on that.

Stay tuned at EWN.

Having a laugh, are we?

2007-03-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

Here's the best thing I've read about that whole "n+1 hates bloggers, bloggers hate n+1" business. I needed a laugh. Excerpt:

Open Letter to n+1*

Dear n+1,

Can I get my Totebag! embroidered?

2007 Tournament of Books: Round one, match five.

2007-03-13T22:00:00.000-07:00

In Arthur and George, it was clear from the beginning that the mystery would be solved and that the solution wasn’t the sort that could be sussed out by a careful reader. That takes away much of the fun. The weakness is especially apparent in the final third of the book, when the plot seems to slow down and the story disintegrates into a legal tug of war over the fate of George Edalji. It wouldn’t have been so dry had Sir Arthur’s skills been more in doubt; the knowledge that eventually he would tap the correct villain and clear Mr. Edalji’s name took away some of my interest as I neared the end.

Conversely, One Good Turn has a slow start—it’s never completely obvious which of the many characters is the main crime-solver—but the twists and turns of the final chapters (indeed, the final lines) kept me up late, anxious to read just one more chapter rather than go to bed and leave the mystery unsolved. And when I was finished, I was pleased to be able to say that I’d had my suspicions about the character eventually pegged for the crime. Early on I’d thought, Now, that person is acting pretty funny for the circumstances. It is possible for a careful reader to solve the crime in this book, and for this sleuth, that makes a big difference.

Winner. Eventually, Max must stumble.

Auster on Marquez.

2007-03-11T22:00:00.000-07:00

It was the spring of 1970. I was twenty-three years old, writing and
translating poems, writing essays and reviews, but also dreaming of one
day being able to write novels. By then, I had read nearly all the
masters of the twentieth century--Joyce and Proust, Kafka and Beckett,
Faulkner and Nabokov, Fitzgerald and Céline--and was feeling a little
crushed. How on earth could one ever get out from under those giants?

One
day, I read a highly enthusiastic review of a novel by a South American
writer whose name was unknown to me. At the time, thirty-seven years
ago, buying hardcover books was an extravagance I could scarcely
afford, but my curiosity had been aroused to such a degree that I went
out and sprang for the book anyway. I started reading One Hundred Years of Solitude
in the early afternoon and I didn't put it down until I had finished
reading it late that night. Here was soemthing new and fresh and
altogether mesmerizing: an imagination, a voice, a sensibility that
resembled nothing I had encountered before. And yet Gabriel García
Márquez's novel, in the masterful translation by Gregory Rabassa,
contained many old-fashioned virtues as well, most of which can be
summed up in a single phrase: love of storytelling.

This love is
what creates pleasure in the reader, the sense of amazement and
happiness that washes over us whenever we stumble upon one of those
rare books that changes the way we look at the world, exposes us to the
infinite possibilities of what a book can be. Every passionate reader
has had that experience, and each time it happens, we understand that
books are a world unto themselves and that world is better and richer
than any we have traveled in before. That is why we become readers in
the first place. That is why we turn away from the vanities of the
material world and begin to love books above all other things.

(via.)

Soon, "After Dark."

2007-03-07T22:00:00.000-08:00

Quick peek from Bookdwarf at Murakami's forthcoming.

After Dark
by Haruki Murakami (coming in May from Random House)—Short novel from
one of my father authors. Set over the course of an evening, the
chapters cut between several interconnected stories: trombonist
Tetsuya, entering a Denny’s one evening, runs into Mari Asai. He was
once interested in Mari’s beautiful older sister Eri, who has been
asleep for a month, trapped in some netherworld. Meanwhile, a Chinese
prostitute is beaten badly by an officeworker at a love hotel and the
propietor, Kaoru, needs Mari’s Chinese translation skills. The book
doesn’t go anywhere. Rather it seems to be more of an observation on
coincidences and time.

Well, that could be horrible or really great.

Do you believe in Magic for Beginners?

2007-03-02T22:00:00.000-08:00

Audrey Niffenegger sure does; excerpt:

Thankfully, one need pine no longer: after a couple of years' worth of
word-of-mouth buzz on the internet, Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link's
superb collection of short stories, is finally available in bookshops.
Now, you may be thinking, I don't like science fiction. I don't like
short stories. Get over it. This isn't exactly science fiction (it's
not exactly not science fiction either). Link is the literary
descendant of Jorge Luis Borges and Franz Kafka, those supremely
matter-of-fact creators of alternative realities. "Josephine the
Singer, or the Mouse Folk", Kafka's cheery little fable, would be right
at home nestled against Link's story "Catskin", in which children are
created from bits and sticks, turned into cats or princes, and
sometimes drowned in the river.

There's
a narrative uncertainty at times, moments when the author simply tells
us to decide for ourselves, or brusquely informs us that we aren't to
know what happened. But there are Borgesian, labyrinthine levels to
many of the tales, especially in "Magic for Beginners", the title
story, which features the aforementioned Free People's World-Tree
Library. This vast library is the setting for a TV show which is avidly
watched by a small band of ordinary American teenagers, even though it
never appears on a regularly scheduled day or channel. But the
teenagers themselves are in the TV show too, and the characters are
trying to contact them for reasons that are urgent, though hard to
figure out. It's complex; it is also continuously surprising,
compelling and strange.

That's right: Borges. Big name to be dropping, no? Give Stranger Things Happen a try. (Free.)

What isn't the What.

2007-02-28T22:00:00.000-08:00

I've stopped reading What is the What. I've had thoughts of stopping for a little under a week, now, and I kept chalking it up to just not feeling like I have enough time to devote to the book. I read a page, two maybe, at night before the words begin to dance and I drool. I haven't been reading in traffic, or on lunch break. Then I thought that it was the subject matter; not giving me enough of an escape from the everyday. Which is absurd, because Deng in a refugee camp in Ethiopia is pretty damn far from my everyday.

I keep circling around different explanations because none of them seem to fit quite right. Because: it is a very good book. And: I feel glad when I am reading it to be reading it. Also: I look forward to finding out more about what happens, and am enjoying the writing style, so much so that I'm willing to give How We Are Hungry another shot. Etc. I still haven't really settled on an answer I'm comfortable with; it isn't as simple as liking or not liking the book. It may just be a right book/wrong time sort of thing. I think, also, that one of the book's strengths is the way Eggers puts the reader both in Deng's past and his present, moving back and forth as Deng goes over his story in his mind to various ineffectual American service providers, entering and exiting his life; it's a great device, but it's starting to feel like a device, not organic and fluid.

It's about time for me to be starting a "Books started but not finished" pile anyway, and this one will go to the top, for when my mind's in a different place.

Meantime, others are continuing to look at the book:

Deng is kept going by faith, something not exactly in evidence in Eggers before. It draws on a panoply of religions both inherited and encountered, but, except for one suicidal episode, maintains an indestructible faith in a God. Which is to say, in the varying degrees of goodness in others. So maybe Eggers, once a lost, orphaned boy and brother himself, actually comes less strangely than expected to the subject. Deng's beliefs kept Deng honorable, and helped him find one of our more honorable writers for his story. There is even a happy ending beyond the book's (the proceeds of which go to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation). After years of rejection, red tape and set-backs, he's now in his second year at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

Not entirely accurate: at the reading the other night, he mentioned that he's taking time off from school to tour doing readings, and is planning to return to Marial Bal this summer to oversee construction of a community center that is coming together in part thanks to Deng's foundation.

And, of course, the story is not actually finished, despite the publication of the book:

Valentino Achak Deng Foundation: www.valentinoachakdeng.comThe foundation supports organizations and people trying to improve life for the Sudanese in the United States and in Sudan. To donate, tax-deductible checks can be sent to:The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation849 Valencia St.San Francisco, CA 94110Lost Boys Foundation: http://www.thelbf.org/International Rescue Committee (IRC): http://www.theIRC.org

So, obviously, my write-up of the reading is on hold indefinitely. This collection of links includes a YouTube of them reading together, so you... are... there without waiting for me to pull it together.

And the interview? Dave's flight was delayed; he arrived just in time for the reading. And no chance of me catching him afterward, with a couple of hundred people looking for his autograph - and anyway, I had to leave early. So, alas, no interview.

"Lost Highway" opera.

2007-02-25T22:00:00.000-08:00

...Lost Highway opera?

Missing from “Lost Highway” the opera was Mr. Lynch’s sense of spaciousness and relative quiet: the time for events to breathe and unfold. His great movie does not yell at us as does Ms. Neuwirth’s opera. Its anguishes are subterranean, more to be inferred from what is seen than transmitted through electronically bloated shrieks and groans. Music, for all its idiosyncratic power, may be too concrete and ultimately too blatant to adequately translate Mr. Lynch’s indirections. Yelling, on the other hand, is an art form like any other, and Ms. Neuwirth’s “Lost Highway” yells admirably. I would have admired it even more if, for just an hour and a half, I could have forgotten David Lynch ever existed.

Dick Laurant is spinning in his grave.

Second Life, or Why Can't I Hit People.

2007-02-23T22:00:00.001-08:00

Having spent some of my impressionable youth, and many of my father's dollars, "interacting" with other sheltered horny dorks through the magic of my Commodore 64 and QuantumLink, I have felt some twinges of interest in Second Life. A recent series of articles about how not-far this sort of idea has progressed over the years in between has made me have Second Thoughts, har har.

This one pretty much seals the deal; excerpt:

Yesterday I downloaded something called Second Life. It is like Grand
Theft Auto: San Andreas, except you can't shoot anyone, and you can't
hit people. You just walk around. There are no prostitutes, and
everything costs real money, and you can't rob anyone to get money. You
have to use your credit card, with real money, to buy fake money to use
in the game. It's not actually like Grand Theft Auto at all.

Second Life is free to play, and I keep seeing people referring to it
in the news, so I had to take one for the team and just dive on in. I
knew it probably wasn't going to be intriguing when I got to the signup
part and couldn't even make a one-word name. I had to use some
fantasy-ass last name and I couldn't even use cusses. The best I could
do was call myself Wenis.

Wenis Swindlehurst: How do I hit people
Foxbrand Leprechaun: You can't
Wenis Swindlehurst: I need that shit you drive....

I flew up and out of the Freebie Warehouse, and landed in some
quasi-construction zone. There were walls and floors scattered about
the landscape. Occasionally, I'd come upon a red dot, which I'd click,
and it would make my character do some kind of humping motion. That's
what I came to do. Hump in the construction zone.

Everything in Second Life seems to be coated in a preteen's
understanding of sex. It was very titty-booby pee-pee doo-doo. From the
fantasy asses to the cyber-ruins surrounding Freebie Warehouse, there
really was nothing but clumsy cybersex. I wandered through this
wasteland for a while, until I finally came to a normal-looking store,
with windows, and people inside, so I went in.

The store sold penises, and penis avatars. I didn't actually get to see
what they looked like, because I didn't have any fake money to spend
(and I wasn't really interested in chipping in twenty bucks to these
cats' weird sex trip.) A pet penis, which would follow you around and
"come on command" (I'm guessing you have to right-click and load a
script and wait thirty seconds is what they mean by "command") was 100
fakebucks, which converted to US$0.68. Okay, that's not bad.

You could transform yourself into a giant penis for 200 fakebucks, but
one could argue that you do that anyway by spending time in Second Life.

OK, so unless I'm willing to dig up my first pair of glasses (rose-tinted, it's true) and one of my innumerable Cosby sweaters, I think I'm better off without.

This American Life, the TV show: teaser trailer.

2007-02-23T22:00:00.000-08:00

Can be found here. Looks a whole lot like one would expect it to look (and a whole lot like it will actually look to me, watching it in a tiny box on my computer, as I do not have Showtime, where the show will be broadcast.) (Do they still call it "broadcast"?)

What is the What - Deng blog.

2007-02-21T22:00:00.000-08:00

Reading What is the What and it didn't occur to me to see if Valentino Achak Deng has a website, but doesn't everyone now? Some valuable stuff there, including pictures (like the one above) taken by Deng/Eggers on a recent trip back to Marial Bal, Deng's hometown; ten things you can do for the situation in Sudan; and a forthcoming blog, among other things. (via.)

TMN Tournament of Books: 2007.

2007-02-19T22:00:00.000-08:00

The TMN 2007 ToB is upon us. Now with reader participation!

Candidates for TMN’s

2007 Tournament of Books

Click on titles for 30 percent discounts on all candidatesHalf of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieOne Good Turn, Kate AtkinsonArthur and George, Julian BarnesBrookland, Emily BartonEnglish, August, Upamanyu ChatterjeeThe Lay of the Land, Richard FordPride of Baghdad, Niko Henrichon, Brian K. VaughanThe Road, Cormac McCarthyThe Emperor’s Children, Claire MessudThe Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, Peter OrnerThe Echo Maker, Richard PowersAgainst the Day, Thomas PynchonFirmin, Sam SavageAbsurdistan, Gary ShteyngartAlentejo Blue, Ali SmithApex Hides the Hurt, Colson Whitehead

Time spent reading.

2007-01-18T22:00:00.000-08:00

The question:

I want real numbers here. How many hours a week do you spend
reading? I’m not talking about newspapers or online, but time spent
sitting, book in hand, immersed in the text.

I was trying to give myself some resolution on reading. Clearly, I
do not spend enough time reading (and, what is ‘enough’ really?). As
much as I love books and reading, and given how long my to-be-read list
is, it’s crazy that I’m not devoting much time to it. So, how much
time is reasonable? An hour a night? That sounds plausable,
achievable, but is it enough? Do I really have that time, with
everything else I should be doing? How do you find the time to read?

So, tell me, how much time do you spend reading?

The blank slate, and what is wrong with it.

2006-12-28T22:00:00.000-08:00

Seeping into blog posts everywhere is reaction to George Will, with the latest attack on blogging by the "mainstream media". (I already hate this post. Mainstream media? Which is what? Calgon, take me away. I shouldn't be allowed online between Christmas and New Year's. Plus, I've only seen one reaction to it, and I'm only reacting for lack of anything better to gripe about. Even worse, the more I type, the more Will would seem to be vindicated, each sentence another nail in my coffin, another bowtie on his headboard. Nevertheless.)

There are, however, essentially no reins on the Web -- few means of control and direction. That is good, but it vitiates the idea that the Web's chaos of entertainment, solipsism and occasional intellectual seriousness and civic engagement is anything like a polity (a "digital democracy"). Time's bow to the amateurs who are, it strangely suggests, no longer obscure, and in the same game that Time is in, is refuted by a glance -- which is all an adult will want -- at YouTube's most popular videos.

Time's issue includes an unenthralled essay by NBC's Brian Williams, who believes that raptures over the Web's egalitarianism arise from the same impulse that causes today's youth soccer programs to award trophies -- "entire bedrooms full" -- to any child who shows up: "The danger just might be that we miss the next great book or the next great idea, or that we will fail to meet the next great challenge . . . because we are too busy celebrating ourselves and listening to the same tune we already know by heart."

The fact that Stengel included Williams's essay proves that Stengel's Time has what 99.9 percent of the Web's content lacks: seriousness.

OK, well, when you get into hyperbole like that last lazy statement, you're way off track. Let's not nitpick over statistics that are unprovable, though - we could argue the "seriousness" of personal journals at length, but my debate club days are over.

That Brian Williams quote, though, raises some interesting questions. Given the fracturing of our culture's focus so many times over, there's little in the way of a common shared experience, except when it comes through the shared experience of focusing on ourselves - i.e., the personal blog. Which isn't really a shared cultural experience, since the personal bloggers are writing about themselves. I can see that, a bit. Who is the trusted news source of today? Does anyone think it's possible to have another Edward Murrow? (Olbermann?) And do we need him/her? I think it's sort of a problem with picking out particular voices in a din of millions - so much information, so many sources, and so many people more interested in being entertained than anything else. Over anything else. And Williams' pondering of our inability to meet "the next great challenge" because we're too busy adding links to our blogs is made even more interesting by the idea that there's already plenty of challenges facing humanity, and America (right within our own borders) that apparently aren't "great" enough for Williams, or an active majority, to consider. Our eyes aren't on the ball; they're on the football, the YouTube, the Dancing with the Stars. Am I wrong?

Which certainly doesn't excuse Will's lazy defense of the old guard. But he does touch on something with that Williams quote, I think.

I also think I've nearly managed to get my panties unknotted, so more of the smiling book goodness will appear here next week, and I'll go back to ignoring Will.

Pope to test condoms.

2006-11-20T22:00:00.000-08:00

Make of it what you will. Clearly, we are looking a new era of hands-on papal research.

Interview with Brian Evenson.

2006-10-30T21:00:00.000-08:00

Brian Evenson is author, most recently, of The Open Curtain, as well as The Wavering Knife, Dark Property, Altmann's Tongue, and others. Go here for a synopsis from the publisher, Coffee House Press. From my perspective, the seed of the story - a real life murder, circa 1902, carried out through the Mormon ritual of blood sacrifice - was fascinating. The best part is the way Evenson lays it out, mixing the past and the present as high school student Rudd slowly becomes too involved in a research project about the murder. The book is presented in three parts, and through the second part and into the third, you can feel Rudd's hold on reality slipping away from him - not just understand it through the writing, but actually feel it, and it's gripping. I want to tell you more, and can't; that's a good sign.

Brian Evenson graciously agreed to take part in an e-mail correspondence.

----------------

MT: I'm going to guess that you maybe might be sick of answering questions about religion and your writing. Are you OK with going there again?BE: Yes, I don't mind going there again.MT: I've yet to explore your back catalog, though I am looking forward to it, but I know you've written (among other things) both fiction and nonfiction in which Mormonism plays a variety of roles - direct, ancillary, hidden, and so on. I hope I'm not beating a dead horse - I can only guess how many times you've been asked - but can you talk a bit about how the different forms have shaped your thoughts on Mormonism, and vice versa?BE: I've only done a very little bit of non-fiction related to Mormonism, just little short essays here and there. I think that they end up generally being quite direct. In terms of my fiction, there are a lot of different ways to answer. On the one hand, I could talk about the controversy my first book faced when I was a professor at Brigham Young University and an anonymous student objected to my book on moral grounds, and then I was told I could stay at BYU as long as I agreed not to write anything like my first book again. That book, Altmann's Tongue, literally didn't have anything Mormon about it, but it led to a huge controversy within Mormonism. That led by bits and starts to me finally leaving the university and ultimately, several years later, leaving the Mormon Church. Or we could talk about it in regard to some of my later work like Father or Lies or The Open Curtain which are about religion and what religion does to people in some way or another. They're much more overt. In Father of Lies the relation to Mormonism is slightly veiled but fairly recognizable. In The Open Curtain it's really direct and very essayistic. Part of that book for me was trying to capture a sense of a particular place I'd grown up in, and in that sense, even though the characters are very different from me, there's an attention the physical reality of that Mormon world that's very sincere. Or we could talk about how actual religion gets transformed into something very strange in other pieces of mine, like The Brotherhood of Mutilation or Dark Property, both of which are very weird: the first involves a cult that believes in amputation and the second involves a resurrection cult. They don't have real life equivalents, but they're trying to get at something real not only about Mormonism but about religion in general.I guess in all those cases what's important is a real connection to religion, a real interest in it, coupled with a pretty intense skepticism, a fear of the moments where religion or culture in general starts to dry up people's thought processes. Any strict social or religious structure, can end up, at its worse, forcing people into extremes, which is interesting for a writer in that it begins to reveal things about people that they might normally keep hidden. I'm very interested in thinking about how people respond in difficult situations and what that tells us about how people work in general.MT: In a sense, you yourself were forced into an extreme by that strict structure - forced to make some hard choices in favor of your writing. In that sense, I guess, the writing mirrors the writer; is that accurate?BE: That’s probably accurate. I was making a different set of hard choices than my characters tend to make, but they definitely had some pretty long-term effects: leaving my religion, my marriage breaking up at least partly due to my choosing my writing over my religion, etc. I do feel that that whole process though made me realize that what I wrote mattered and that I really had to stand very strongly behind it, which is something that many writers never are quite able to realize.MT: It says in the afterward to the book that this is your last book to explore the Mormon faith, at least in this manner. Can you tell me a little bit about the genesis of this book - was this an idea that you had been sitting on for a while and decided to use for your swan song (re: Mormonism), or had you already decided to move on and just found this idea irresistible? I know that you started this a while back, while you were still working on The Wavering Knife...BE: Much like Rudd in the book I stumbled onto the facts of the William Hooper Young murders and couldn't resist it. It was shortly after finishing Father of Lies, I think, and I wasn't consciously planning to do a book like The Open Curtain but it just seemed like the right story for me. I was intrigued by the ritual qualities of the murder and by what seemed to be madness on Young's part. Even so, it took me a long time to figure out how to write about it.MT: Do you see an arc to the path your writing has taken over the years, looking back?BE: It's hard for me to think of it as narrative, partly because books aren't always published in the same order that they're written. Dark Property for instance was written in 1994 but wasn't published until 2002. And The Din of Celestial Birds was actually mostly written before any of the other books. And the stories in the books are sometimes arranged in a very different order than they were written, with all my short story collections having at least a few earlier stories thrown in with later work just because they feel right together. Having said that, I think my arc has generally been from very, very short stories, sometimes only a page or two long toward longer and longer work. I still like the short forms, but feel right now that what I'm most interested in is best expressed through longer short stories, novellas, and novels. That may change over time. I've also become more interested in writing books that satisfy (or annoy) readers on several different levels.MT: I'll put to you a question I've put to others: why is the short story such an underdog in today's publishing world? You get the larger magazines cutting down or eliminating their fiction sections, and short story collections rarely seem to sell as well as novels. Have you found that true with your work? I think the short story is a great form - One Story magazine has done great stuff - and I would think, given the ever-shortening attention span promoted by our culture, that there would be more parity between sales figures of the forms. Maybe it's just wishful thinking. BE: I don’t know. I like the form a great deal, and I very much like a real strong book of stories. I only know a few issues of One Story but what I’ve seen I really like a lot—Paul Maliszewski had a great One Story piece not long ago. I also know that certain story collections do seem to have a lot of visibility and garner both critical and popular success—Carver’s work, for instance, or Mary Gaitskill’s first collection, or more recently George Saunders’ work. I’ve heard, too, that Anthony Doerr’s story collection did dramatically better than his novel. If good books of stories aren’t measuring up to sales for novels it’s probably because publishing is playing along with the self-defeating mythology about novels selling better than stories. Publishers and their publicists have fallen into predictable ruts and then seem to be playing out a self-fulfilling prophecy: that’ll be the case until they’re willing to just try to sell books on their own terms, whether they be story collections or novels.MT: I'm hesitant to get too much into the details of the book, because it was published so recently and I tend to get irritated with reviews and interviews that give away bits of the story I'd rather experience on my own. That said, I'm dying to hear more about the shed, particularly at the end of part two. (Note: I'm posting the following answer in white text; if you want to read the answer, highlight the text to make it appear. It does contain a "spoiler" of sorts.)BE: Ah, the shed. I'd like to say that I knew what was in the old refrigerator half-buried in the earth and then I hid it or took it out, but I know little more than what I said. Whatever it is, it's fairly directly tied to Rudd and is something that can't be taken completely in. I guess I saw the uncanniness and weirdness of that moment as something that "resets" the book in some ways and helps to make the larger weirdness of the final section possible. But, other than the refrigerator, I think what Rudd (if it is Rudd) is trying to do with the shed is to create an anti-temple; it's the equivalent of what Satanic rituals do with subverting Christian ritual. So the curtain is backward and in the place of a kind of admittance to God we have flies and the half-buried refrigerator. It's a kind of mechanism he's using to accelerate himself out of the world.MT: I like that answer. Part of me was hoping for you to reveal what was in the refrigerator, but I know I'm really happier when there's pieces to a book or film that just leave the reader/viewer with questions. I don't want David Lynch to tell me what happens after the final episode of Twin Peaks, or to explain the shabby man living near the dumpster in Mulholland Drive; it's much more fun to talk it out with someone, explore the different possible explanations. Sometimes the best parts are the ones that don't quite let you see what is going on.BE: Yes, I agree. I like works that hold things back, as long as they’re not doing so in a coy way. As long as you get enough of what’s going on to move you into an uncanny place.MT: I wrote a bit on my site about my own preconceptions about a "literary thriller" genre. Basically, I didn't think the form held any appeal for me; I didn't think I could get the feeling of unease, a chill, "creeped out" - for lack of a better term - from a book. I'm glad your book was recommended, because I've got my foot in my mouth, gladly. Who are your contemporaries in the genre? And are you OK with seeing yourself labeled in that way? Because, if not, I'm going to need to make room for the other foot. (Incidentally, if you were to respond with a fiery "I have no contemporaries!" it would make for great press on the next book.)BE: No, you can take your foot (or feet) out of your mouth. I used to be offended by those labels and then I found myself identifying less and less with what gets pushed as literature, at least by the big presses. I'm very interested in the way that literature can play with genre and give all, or at least a lot, of the satisfactions of it and still do something more. I guess in that sense what I'm doing often crosses lines between "literary" fiction and genre fiction ("horror", "mystery," "thriller," "sci-fi"). I guess I'm hoping that something about what you call the thriller aspect of the book keeps people reading but that they'll go away at the end with the book still eating away at them and other things happening philosophically to them. I think that comes from the fact that when I was young I used to read books that were too hard for me, and that I felt that things were happening that I couldn't quite grasp. But that made them somehow all the more powerful. That was something I loved, and something I keep trying to replicate, I think, in the way my books work for my readers. I guess the other thing I like is to try to bring readers deeper and deeper into the book until they suddenly feel that they're in over their head, and that seems to have a real affinity with the thriller genre. If you saw Michael Haneke's movie "Cache" in the theater, there's a particular moment in that where something amazing and horrible happens and people's response is to make an audible but inarticulate noise and lean forward in their seats toward it, to push themselves deeper into the film. I think that's one thing I'm trying to do, to push readers deep enough into the book that they have a hard time getting completely out of it.I'd like to think of H.P. Lovecraft as a contemporary, partly because I'm living in Providence, partly because he can chill me, but he's a year or two older than me. Kelly Link sometimes makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck, and so does Peter Straub. I love Muriel Spark's work, and Patrick Ourednik's Europeana. There are a lot of writers I really admire writing today, but I partly admire them because they're different from me.MT: Yeah - the way Paul Auster put noir and literature together with his New York Trilogy just blew me away. I'm always hungry for more "literary/existential/metaphysical noir" and I suspect there's some out there, but for some reason I haven't come across it yet. Laird Hunt's The Exquisite hit the mark, though. BE: I like that kind of metaphysical literary noir a lot as well, like very much the New York Trilogy and Hunt’s The Impossible. I also like the European takes on Literary Noir, like Alain Robbe-Grillet’s The Erasers and Leonardo Sciascia’s Equal Danger. My chapbook “The Brotherhood of Mutilation” is a kind of weird noir, a sort of response to Dashiel Hammett’s work.MT: I haven't seen "Cache" yet, but it's on my list. BE: It’s good, and worth seeing. I like Haneke’s work in general, though it’s more overtly sexualized and confrontational than my own work.MT: Where is the line for you, given your weaving of religion into your works, between fact and fiction? Does it move from piece to piece?BE: It's always changing. Sometimes some moments are closer to reality, sometimes other moments. Sometimes I'm trying to capture the essence of something, sometimes the literality of it. It just depends on the way the piece develops, on its organic shape.MT: I'd like to hear your thoughts about the challenge of writing a novel, or story, that deals in some way with 9/11 or its aftereffects. Your writing, at least with The Open Curtain, seems unafraid to tackle the psychological rifts that are opened by uncertainty, loss, and exposure to violence. Some authors have gone there (the 9/11 theme), with varying degrees of success, depending on who you ask.BE: I think 9/11 is a tricky thing to take on, particularly with our troops everywhere in the world and there still being a tremendous political charge connected to it. I'm interested in all the things you talk about--uncertainty, loss, exposure to violence, and the effects these three things have on individuals--but am more likely to pursue those things in a different context. Something like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, for instance, gets at all those things in a different way that resonates differently. The problem with trying to deal with those things in regard to 9/11, at least for me, is that people are always trying to work the psychological issues and rifts back into a politics or at least into an understanding of the situation. I think if you start with the notion that there's something really basically incomprehensible about what actually happened and tried to build on that unstable surface you'd really get somewhere. The only 9/11 book I can think of that does that is Laird Hunt's The Exquisite, which I like very much, precisely because it's really about the internal devastation that takes place and because the main character has such a hard time addressing what he calls "the events downtown." There may be other good ones out there, but I haven't run across them yet.MT: I'm looking forward to reading Hunt's The Impossibly. The description sounds like, for a fan of Auster's New York Trilogy, just about top notch. BE: The Exquisite is great at what it does, particularly at the way it approaches trauma, but The Impossibly is really solid as well, and very funny. I think if you like Auster’s New York Trilogy you’ll enjoy it a lot.MT: What's the best advice about writing that you've gotten?BE: To read a lot. I had a teacher as an undergraduate who was convinced that the best thing to do as a writer was to read voraciously and really think very carefully about how writers are achieving particular effects. I think that's served me in the best stead.

Sony Reader.

2006-10-12T22:00:00.000-07:00

Not actual size.

Treehugger has a little article up about it today - nothing new, the usual save a tree/experience of an actual book debate. They point out that so many books are poorly bound, unattractive, unsustainably made. I don't think the Sony Reader is the solution to this; I think the solution is already there: recycled paper, paper from other products, and it's more the mass-produced books that are unattractive; small presses make attractive books aplenty. Apples and oranges, whether it's audiobooks or e-books.

The gadget lover in me wants a Sony Reader real bad, though. I somehow think it would allow me to surreptitiously read books in situations where it would be inappropriate to pop open a paper book - meetings, holidays, traffic - as though I could pass it off as consulting my schedule, or something. Misguided, but fun.

Condalmo to distribute "Inland Empire"

2006-10-02T22:00:00.000-07:00

OK, not really, but I would if I could. Darby Dixon indicates a fine article on David Lynch (that hair!) and the three hour movie that the Weinsteins should look into, asap. Did I mention that we saw "Mulholland Drive" every weekend, in the theater, four weeks in a row?

Why has "Lost Highway" not been released on DVD?

The Exquisite. Cloud Atlas.

2006-09-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

Jury is still out on similarities, either in the experience of reading it or in other ways. Which is not to say I'm not enjoying The Exquisite. Indeed I am. I'm not sure where it is all going, but I've seen enough to know I'll follow it through to the end.

My Google searches have come up with nothing. I don't think there is anything out there. Anyone? Seen anything? Some sort of comparison? I'll be duly embarrassed if it turns up somewhere simple, like Powell's. (OK, not there, just checked.)

Eggcorns.

2006-09-07T22:00:00.000-07:00

Many years back, when I was working in a middle school, I had gotten hooked up with this standardized testing service that needed to employ people like me over the summer to grade stacks of tests from Massachusetts, apparently the standardized testing capital of the country. I wish I could remember the rubric they wanted us to apply; it would make for a great post here. It was alternately a great job - reading all day, comfy chairs, and so on - and a soul-crushing experience (these were high schoolers writing essays, not Charles D'Ambrosio).

One thing I do remember is that every time I found a phrase that had somehow gone through a meat grinder and come out the other end as something poetic and very amusing, I would write it down. I still have the lists of odd phrases somewhere at home. "When the chickens come home to roast" is cited at an article in the New Scientist; apparently, they're called Eggcorns and there's an entire site devoted to them. Linguistics dudes and gals, feast upon it! (via) (here's the RSS feed, if you just want to go straight to delivered linguistic goodness)

Welcome back.

2006-08-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

To those of you who arrived here through my e-mail, or the MetaxuCafe post, welcome. Some of you may have visited my old site on occasion. I had the old site hosted through Blogger, and last week the site disappeared. I contacted Blogger three times with no response. So - bye, Blogger. It was fun. Now it's serious.

Posting here may be light until I get everything running again.