12-30-09: Wrapping up 2009 With Jeremy Lassen : Time's Ten Best
Well, I understand why Jeremy Lassen is happy. Congratulations are in order; Paolo Bacigalupi's 'The Windup Girl' was selected as one of the ten best books of the year by Time Magazine. And that's only part of what we talked about for the final Agony Column podcast of this year.
This was the year that saw some great speculative fiction; China Miéville's 'The City and the City,' Warren Fahy's 'Fragment,' as well as the explosion of some genre tropes. But then, who thought that vampires, having pretty much blown up every year since 'Interview With the Vampire' debuted, would continue to do so this year. And this was the year of some low-key heavy hitters; Caitlin Kiernan and Catherynne Valente. To hear our conversation about the end of the year and the end of the world, just follow this link to the MP3 audio file.
Thomas Frank
12-29-09: The Chat Before Christmas With Thomas Frank, December 24, 2009
"I mean, they had their chance, you know?"
—Thomas Frank
If there's one thing that's clear as we lurch towards a new year, it's that everyone is quite happy to be shut of the last ten years. From the Y2K panic to twin tragedies of 9/11 and the Iraq war, from housing bubble to the ugly crash, we are all simply so done. We're eager to draw the line and hope to quickly step over it, bringing nothing from the past that we may have to scrape off our shoes. We are all simply so done.
Let's all join Thomas Frank, then as he hoists a glass to "A Low, Dishonest Decade." While Frank is best known for 'What's the Matter with Kansas?' and 'The Wrecking Crew', this time around we got back to a book he wrote in "the before time," 'One Market Under God,' an excoriation of "Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy." After all, this little tome from Y2K sought to pop the bubble a mere eight years before it was large enough to take down, uh ... the world.
Of course, it wasn't just the sort-of, almost new Depression that rained on our parades. (Unless, like me, you’d invested heavily in BarrelWear once you saw things start to circle the Big Swirly.) There was also the tiny, almost insignificant matter, or pretty much our entire government being up for sale, and unhappily, not even to the highest bidder. It was the sort of decade in which even a man like Jack Abramoff, a guy who wears a black hat in case we didn't get who the bad guys were, starts to seen a little like a tragic figure. Sure, your sympathy might last all of ten seconds, and it is clearly tens second more than deserved, but at least had the decency to get caught and fess up. Everyone on the other side of his deals, with too few exceptions, is still in the business of selling the United States government to business; now they're in business and not in the government, and they're still toxic waste. We've managed to throw away the keys before they got locked up. I suppose it's just a matter of getting things in the right order. Listeners who want to hear to New World Order subjected to some Old World Wit need but follow this link to the MP3 audio file of our conversation.
Jeffrey Ford
12-28-09: A 2009 Interview with Jeffrey Ford at the World Fantasy Convention
"If you want to write, and you want to write a lot, you've got to have a lot of tricks in your bag."
— Jeffrey Ford
Few writers are able to live up to that quote, but Jeffrey Ford is most assuredly at the top of his own list. He does indeed have a lot of tricks in his bag, and it is obvious when you look at the variety of novels he's written. And he was perfectly at home at the World Fantasy Convention, where I managed to get a few minutes of his valuable time. With the pace he keeps, I suspect he could have written a story in that time.
But then, Jeffrey Ford's own story is pretty much speculative fiction itself. What I found really, really interesting, as a reader, in this interview, were Ford's descriptions of how he tortured grammar itself to create a surreal world, or a world that was as bizarre as the world we are living in. Since every day seems to offer up more evidence that reality is cognizant of the rules of reality than either fiction, speculative fiction, or fantasy, it seems that more writers will need to pick up Ford's tricks and tropes. Strap yourself in, if this century is going to be stranger than Ford's fiction, we're going to have some ... interesting times ahead.
New to the Agony Column
03-19-10: Commentary : Adam Nevill Inherits 'Apartment 16' : Home is Where the Hell Is
03-18-10: Commentary : Stephen Kessler Follows 'The Mental Traveler' : Bad Trips and Good Reading
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Alta Ifland and Stephen Kessler : "I had to do it; it was a way of both coming to terms with the experience, of documenting the experience, of commemorating it..."
03-17-10: Commentary : Ted Chiang Charts 'The Lifecycle of Software Objects' : Joshua Blue, Digital Chimps and Lives in Flux
03-15-10: Commentary : Elif Shafak Reveals 'The Forty Rules of Love' : Intimacy and Centuries
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Elif Shafak : "I know that culture that exists in my country, that is carried on by women, generations of women."
03-12-10: Commentary : Karl Marlantes Scales the 'Matterhorn' : World-Building in the Past
03-09-10: Commentary : Paul McHugh Meets 'Deadlines' : Murdering the California Coast
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Paul McHugh : "..the strengths of good writing go all the way, across all the genres..."
03-08-10: Commentary : Joe Hill Grows 'Horns' : Devil and Detail
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Joe Hill : "Eventually, the wicked and the unworthy will get their just desserts on the business end of the Devil's pitchfork."
03-05-10: Commentary : Henry Porter Calls 'The Bell Ringers' : It Takes The Village
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Four Books With Alan Cheuse : Thrillers! : Henry Porter, The Bell Ringers; Keith Thomson, Once a Spy; Jo Nesbo, The Devil's Star; Hennig Mankel, The Man From Beijing
03-04-10: Commentary : Jo NesbØ Earns 'The Devil's Star' : Rewind
03-01-10: Commentary : Adam Haslett Invests With 'Union Atlantic' : Abstract Power Abstracts Absolutely
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview With Adam Haslett : "With her, and with each character, how does the rhythm create a kind of musical argument?"
02-26-10: Commentary : Dan Simmons Heads for the 'Black Hills' : Unstuck in Life
02-23-10: Commentary : Adam Haslett Knows 'You Are No Stranger Here' : Stories from Strangers' Shoes
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Jedediah Berry Interviewed at SF in SF, February 13, 2010 : "...being at Small Beer has actually introduced whole worlds to me ..."
02-22-10: Commentary : Graeme Gibson's 'The Bedside Book of Birds' and 'The Bedside Book of Beasts' : A Feast for Your Mind, Your Eyes and Your Mind's Eye
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2009 Interview with Graeme Gibson : "Our common humanity, our common culture, will help make the connections."
02-19-10: Commentary : Ralph Waldo Ellison 'Three Days Before the Shooting ...' : One Book, Many Stories
Agony Column Podcast News Report : John Callahan and Adam Bradley and 'Three Days before the Shooting' : "I've moved through the phases of my own life, and I find those phases mirrored in the characters of this novel." — John Callahan "...capable of brilliance, eloquence and power; that's how I understand the second novel, as we see it in Three Days Before the Shooting, and that's certainly how I understand, and I think how Ellison understood, America." — Adam Bradley
02-18-10: Commentary : George Mann Scares Up 'The Ghosts of Manhattan' : Hard Core Pulp Action
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Speaking Frankly With Thomas Frank : From Tea to Shining Tea : "When I think about what I'm saying, it's so depressing..."
02-17-10: Commentary : Thomas More, Clarence Miller and 'Utopia' : Politics, Satire, Fantasy
02-15-10: Commentary : 'Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded' by John Scalzi : A Decade of Whatever
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni : "I have to work through the novel and then it comes to me, how it's going to end."
02-12-10: Commentary : Stephanie Merritt Becomes S. J. Parris : 'Heresy'
02-11-10: Commentary : Max Watman 'Chasing the White Dog' : Home-Made Hooch and Rebellion
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview With Sam Farr : : "The money came from Washington, but the uses for that money came from the local community."
02-10-10: Commentary : Anne Lamott Spots 'Imperfect Birds' : The Ties That Unbind
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Speaking Frankly: Thomas Frank on Re-Populism and Re-Launching The Baffler : "I have never seen 'populist backlash in a headline before."
02-09-10: Commentary : Douglas Clegg Returns to 'Neverland' : Is 1980's Horror Returning from the Grave?
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2009 Interview with David Drake, Part 2 / Complete : "I didn't have governor ... that is ... anything, endgame, was me killing somebody.""
02-08-10: Commentary : David Louis Edelman Completes Jump 225 : 'Geosynchron'
