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"Pynchon novels, like certain dishes, tend to suffer only from excessive explanation. I advocate surrender to Pynchon; letting your mind toss on the wild currents of his language is a lot more enjoyable than treating his novels like puzzles, wondering where the pieces fit: Who is Rachel Owlglass? Why are we in Egypt? Just enjoy the bumps—or try to."
— Alexander Nazaryan looks back at Thomas Pynchon’s first novel, “V.” as it turns fifty: http://nyr.kr/16mlGZv(Source: newyorker.com)
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I saw and heard something remarkable just a few hours ago, something I’m not likely to forget until all the mechanisms of remembering are shot and I’m tucked away for good. Philip Roth celebrated his eightieth birthday in the Billy Johnson Auditorium of the Newark Museum last night with the most astonishing literary performance I’ve ever witnessed….
David Remnick on the Roth-endorsed, Roth-attended 80th birthday celebration of Philip Roth: http://nyr.kr/160afX8
(Source: newyorker.com)
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A Note on Nerdfighters→
In her article about transgender teens in the magazine this week, Margaret Talbot quotes Annette Bening and Warren Beatty’s son Stephen calling himself, among other things, a “nerd fighter.” It might escape the average reader’s notice that this term is more than the sum of its parts. In the teen-age population, “nerdfighter” (as a compound word) has a very specific meaning and etymology. Primarily, it identifies the teen-ager in question as a follower of John Green…
Michelle Dean on John Green and the nerdfighters: http://nyr.kr/XJiBAo
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Welcome Back, Renata Adler
“The novels don’t let you get away with a narcissistic surface reading.” Meghan O’Rourke on Renata Adler: http://nyr.kr/YeqmNz
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Richard Brody on “Philip Roth: UnMasked” and the birth of a meme: http://nyr.kr/10wAUrn
(Source: newyorker.com)
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Keith Waldrop’s Haunted Realism
I don’t think I’ve ever read a less judgmental book, let alone a less judgmental family history. Waldrop refuses to psychologize or allegorize, to excuse, pity, or condescend. Someone looking for a conventional novel or memoir might experience this as a kind of imaginative poverty, but it’s his restraint that allows Waldrop to depict so powerfully the world “as it was and as it is.”
His supposedly poor imagination—his power of attunement to the world—allows Waldrop to present scenes of quiet power most authors would overwrite or ignore…
Ben Lerner on Keith Waldrop’s memoir, “Light While There Is Light”: http://nyr.kr/128rcAD
Photograph via Wikimedia Commons.
(Source: newyorker.com)
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Patricia Cornwell’s Fifty-Million-Dollar Case
Katia Bachko on crime novelist Patricia Cornwell’s recent legal battle: http://nyr.kr/YpsTBf
“Regardless of how it turns out, Cornwell will likely turn the proceedings into fodder for her next best-seller, as she does with many of her encounters. ‘It all gets infused in my writing,’ she told me.”
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Without Austen, No Eliot
”…reading Jane Austen was part of the process by which Marian Evans left essay writing behind.”
Read Rebecca Mead on the connection between Jane Austen and George Eliot: http://nyr.kr/WyTBrg
(Source: newyorker.com)
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Fiction editor Deborah Treisman talks to George Saunders about his new book, “Tenth of December”: http://nyr.kr/Wprlav
Photograph: Damon Winter/The New York Times/Redux
