My mystification that Muriel Spark isn’t more widely read has continued to grow, but last week her editor, New Directions publisher Barbara Epler, offered a theory in email that echoes what Howard Jacobson has said about the devaluation of comedy in literature. “The fact that she is so unbelievably and witchily entertaining,” Epler argues, “has kept her from her full . . .
Jessa, on our often-conflicting tastes: “one of us will be ecstatic about a book, and the other politely says, ‘Yeah, I didn’t read that one.’” See also. Takeaway: read Somerset Maugham.
I took a hiatus from my reviewing hiatus to write about Adam Levin’s The Instructions for B&N Review. The book runs a little over a thousand pages and, by the end, I would gladly have signed on for another thousand. Here’s an excerpt: Adam Levin’s dark, funny, and deeply provocative first novel, The Instructions, comprises the scriptures of one Gurion . . .
“[O]ne of the great failings of literary theory has been that the writing is not only impersonal, it also seeks mightily to be free of contradictions.” –Amitava Kumar
Mark Twain “is akin not only to Swift as a satirist, but also to Tolstoy and Dickens in his feelings for — and against — humanity, and to Chaucer and Shakespeare in his stature.”