09-08-12 UPDATE:Podcast Update:Time to Read Episode 63: Charles Yu, 'Sorry Please Thank You'
Click image for audio link.
Here's the sixty-third episode of my new series of podcasts, which I'm calling Time to Read. The podcasts/radio broadcasts will be of books worth your valuable reading time. I'll try to keep the reports under four minutes, for a radio-friendly format. If you want to run them on your show or podcast, let me know.
My hope is that in under four minutes I can offer readers a concise review and an opportunity to hear the author read from or speak about the work. I'm hoping to offer a new one every week.
Alice Oswald Memorial, Kevin Powers The Yellow Birds, Peter Heller The Dog Stars
You may hear some background sounds during the conversation I had with Alan Cheuse back in July. We were sitting outside, enjoying the weather and the dogs running around as we talked about Alice Oswald epic poetic re-invention of the Trojan War, Memorial, Kevin Powers evocation of the Iraq War, The Yellow Birds, Peter Heller's life-after-apocalypse novel, The Dog Stars. Odd that such a selection, so seemingly chock-a-block with gloom, was so rewarding.
Alice Oswald's 'Memorial: A Version of Homer's Iliad' is a fascinating remix, really, of Homer's work. The language is stark and intense. It's the sort of work that you will want to and indeed will read aloud. Cheuse observed that some think Homer must have been a battlefield medic for all the spot-on deaths he describes. Oswald's take follows this model; she cleaves unerringly to the timeless nature of death and war. As poetry, it reads very much like prose.
Kevin Powers inverts this equation with 'The Yellow Birds,' a novel version, so to speak of Brian Castner's 'The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows.' Powers is a poet, and this is his first novel, not surprisingly, infused with poetry. It' a dark and aching performance with, to my mind, some joy to be found, around the edges, in the power and precision of language.
We finished up our session talking about Peter Heller's 'The Dog Stars,' certainly the most lovely evocation of a post apocalyptic world you're likely to read this year. It's full of melancholy, love lost and shattering shards of hope. And the dog in the story was echoed by my dog, running around the yard.
"...I knew the story was going to end with a woman waiting at a playground at night...."
—Tom Perrotta
Editor's note: This interview was recorded at KUSP in 2004. The novel and the conversation still seem particularly pertinent.
\I had the pleasure of talking with talented novelist Tom Perrotta about 'Little Children', a novel that you'll devour, I mean devour in a second without even realizing how fast you turned the pages. But Perrotta has a lot to say in those quickly-turned pages, and he and I had a wonderful chat about his past in fiction and his future in film. You can look for a filmed version of 'Little Children' directed by Todd Field, who got an Oscar nomination for 'In the Bedroom'.
In the interim, you can have the inimitable pleasure of the movie for your mind created by Perrotta's almost magically clear prose. He's one hell of a humorist, offering the kind of witty insights that we usually get from our UK imports in a purely American guise. Trust me, even if you think that 'Little Children' is not your cuppa, you'll find that it's utterly irresistible.
That's the way the cookie crumbles!
And now that I've drawn out the suspense, here's the deal ladies and compulsive book-buying bookaholics. The original dust jacket illustration for 'Little Children' has two, yes count 'em two actual Goldfish™ — or at least Goldfish™-enough-like shapes — so as to excite the legal department of Pepperidge Farms. They were there for a reason; they play a part in one of the opening scenes of the novel. Knopf agreed to take them off, but only after the ones already shipped were gone. Everybody's happy, especially those who bought the first printings — with the Goldfish™on the cover. You heard it here first. Now go buy one of the books, whatever the cover, and read it. If you're lucky — and in the Santa Cruz area — you can stop by Bookshop Santa Cruz, which is fortunate enough to have some signed copies.
While you're waiting for your copies to arrive, you can listen to the interview — all 55 minutes of it, uncensored and uncut, talking about things that might get you in hot water on broadcast radio (in an utterly civilized and literary fashion, of course). I've uploaded an MP3 version, schlepping the bits over to the server while I type this article. Fortunately for you, chances are you won't need to wait as long to download as I did to upload. In fact, chances are you can download the thing in the time it takes you read this, instead of the time it took me to write it.
09-03-12:A 2012 Interview with Laura Lippman
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"...there comes a time when I need to step back and not be thinking about the words so much..."
— Laura Lippman
Laura Lippman's 'And When She Was Good' is a novel that sneaks up on the reader. It's very unassuming; a perfect example of writing that creates incredible suspense without the reader realizing it until the last page is turned. As I sat down to talk to Lippman, I knew that I was talking to a writer who was so good that she made what she did look easy. Of course, that is anything but the case.
There's a lot more to this novel than mere suspense. It's a superb novel in what I call the economic fiction genre, as Lippman meticulously imagines just how one might go about running a prostitution ring and how one might try to escape such an occupation without blowing up a carefully constructed life. This is, at its core, a novel about economic re-invention, with a twist of Flaubert.
Lippman and I talked about her method of writing, which at some point includes going text-blind, leaving the words behind. This seems to be more common than one might assume, the process of converting text to colors and shapes, pasting them on the walls or paper and then looking at a visual representation of story. If you like to think of story as words-only, you're going to learn something new.
08-21-15: Agony Column Podcast News Report : Senator Claire McCaskill is 'Plenty Ladylike' : Internalizing Determination to Overcome Sexism [Incudes Time to Read EP 211: Claire McCaskill, Plenty Ladylike, plus A 2015 Interview with Senator Claire McCaskill]
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Emily Schultz Unleashes 'The Blondes' : A Cure by Color [Incudes Time to Read EP 210: Emily Schultz, The Blondes, plus A 2015 Interview with Emily Schultz]
07-05-15: Commentary : Dr. Michael Gazzaniga Tells Tales from Both Sides of the Brain : A Life in Neuroscience Reveals the Life of Science
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Michael Gazzaniga : "We made the first observation and BAM there was the disconnection effect..."
04-21-15: Commentary : Kazuo Ishiguro Unearths 'The Buried Giant' : The Mist of Myth and Memory
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro : ".... by the time I was writing this novel, the lines between what was fantasy and what was real had blurred for me..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Marc Goodman : "...every physical object around us is being transformed, one way or another, into an information technology..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report UPDATE: Time to Read Episode 199: Marc Goodman : Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
