On Eisenberg’s stories, and her Bakelite heart
My appreciation of Deborah Eisenberg’s Collected Stories — which explore “people’s most complex and secret feelings, ‘mental states … that are just on the border of expressible’” — is up at NPR. An excerpt:
In an early story, “What it Was Like, Seeing Chris,” a teenager who’s “pale and long” like her little sister but believes [...]
Wit, precision, uppers, and God: the Muriel Spark bio
My review of Martin Stannard’s Muriel Spark biography appears at Barnes & Noble Review (and is reprinted at Salon). One of the things that struck me while reading is just how easily Spark — one of the finest and funniest novelists of the last century, or of any century — could have continued to [...]
On illness — real and imagined — and art
My appreciation of Brian Dillon’s The Hypochondriacs is up at NPR. If you have health problems, or worry that you have health problems, or both, you should read this book.
People who never get sick might enjoy it, too — if only for the opportunity to feel superior while jogging around the park [...]
My favorite books, and other highlights, of 2009
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, given how steeped my childhood was in Bible stories, that R. Crumb’s graphic rendition of Genesis infiltrated my thoughts the way that it did, but I was. Because his book was the one that affected me the most this year, it’s my pick for Salon. What I say [...]
Can’t get enough of The Paris Review Interviews
My appreciation of The Paris Review Interviews I-IV is up at NPR. An excerpt:
The advice on offer to aspiring writers is vast– and sometimes contradictory. In his introduction, Orhan Pamuk recalls discovering Faulkner’s interview while he was holed up with his first novel after dropping out of architectural school, and finding the answer to the [...]
Becoming Americans: four centuries of immigration
The novelist Felipe Alfau suggests that English imposes a stiff and unnatural logic on the Spanish immigrant. “He is a queer bird, the Americaniard … His health never suffered when he was at home, but the moment he learns a little English, he begins to consult the directory for physicians and psychoanalysts.” Meanwhile, Gary Shteyngart, [...]
On A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book
In the London Review of Books this week, James Wood adjudged A.S. Byatt “a very ordinary grown-ups’ writer and a very good children’s writer” — a verdict which, notwithstanding her lapses into didacticism, I find ludicrous.
My review of Byatt’s latest novel, The Children’s Book, is at Barnes & Noble Review today. An excerpt:
A.S. Byatt published [...]
Nazi-era Bogotá in Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s The Informers
Speaking of Nazis in South America, Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s first novel, The Informers, is set in 1990s Bogotá, but looks back to the city’s World War II history as a son tries to unravel the lies and omissions his father built their lives around.
Translator Anne McLean “exchanged 200 e-mails” with the [...]
On Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs
My review of Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs is up at the expanded, handsomely redesigned Barnes & Noble Review site.
As an ardent Moore fan — and we are legion — I was entertained, moved, and ultimately disappointed by her latest novel. Here’s the start of what I wrote:
In a recent talk, Lorrie [...]
On A Vindication of Love: acute feelings, acute intellects
My appreciation of Cristina Nerhing’s A Vindication of Love is up at NPR.
Nowadays a woman can claim just about anything as a badge of feminism. She can pursue a career, raise a child, or both; maintain a stable of lovers, marry, or both; serve in the military; sit on the Supreme Court; stay home and [...]
Doomed love list at The Week
In honor of the appearance of Love is a Four-Letter Word,* The Week invited me to contribute this week’s “best books” list.
It’s devoted to “doomed love,” and a reader says it’s available now.
Instead of focusing on autobiographical stories, I chose first-person works of fiction** that (mostly) take the form of confessions: Lolita, Les [...]
The American Painter Emma Dial: proximity vs. creation
My appreciation of Samantha Peale’s The American Painter Emma Dial is up at NPR.
Young artists often mistake proximity to the art world for the act of creation itself. Nowhere is this error more common than in New York City, where being able to paint and make rent is a question of finding “the right imbalance” [...]
In defense of agnosticism
When Bookforum relaunched its website recently, the editors introduced my favorite feature: an idiosyncratic collection of writers’ syllabi on various topics. Mine is devoted to doubt.
The narrator of my novel in progress has a storefront preacher mother and a family legacy of extremism that seem, the more she struggles against [...]
After the Ford-Rhys affair: a correspondence
Today Granta posts my exchange with Alexander Chee about Jean Rhys’ and Ford Maddox Ford’s affair and the vengeful novels they wrote afterward.
The level of acrimony packed into Quartet and When the Wicked Man is comparable to that of the Philip Roth-Claire Bloom book-off, if the Bloom character in [...]
Pity the minimalist: The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys
It’s going to be a Jean Rhystravaganza around here for a little while.
Next week Granta online will publish some correspondence between novelist Alexander Chee and me about Rhys’ affair with Ford Madox Ford, and the novels they wrote afterward.
And today at The Second Pass, I review Lilian Pizzichini’s new biography, The Blue [...]