Recently in Lit Bits Category

As writers of nonfiction here in the States worry that they might inadvertently insult their mothers, a fiction writer in Southeast Asia takes a far greater risk for the art.  You have to respect someone who still actually lives in Myanmar/Burma writing a book of cutting-edge fiction, and getting international notice for it. Nu Nu Yi Inwa is nominated for a new Asian literature prize.

You write War and Peace. And you say to your self, "Damn, I just wrote War and Peace."  And then you say to yourself, "You know what? I don't think I'm done. I think I'll keep writing. 'Cause it just ain't War and Peace until it's long enough to stretch to the moon."  But years later, some industrious fellow publishes that first draft, and then...lit fight!

The Unbearable Length of Time it takes to get recognized in your own homeland these days, at least for Milan Kundera, author of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being".  But better late than never.  Interesting footnote in the article, Kundera hasn't allowed his more recent stuff sold in Czech Republic, because of worries about "the quality of the translation."  I'm having a hard enough writing in only one language, so I can imagine the difficulty of porting your stories between two or three.

The vikings are finally invading Spain, but they're being nicer about it than they were to my ancestors in Northern Ireland.  It's a literary invasion this time.  Books are so much nicer than bloody hands.

Following up on an earlier post about Aussie literature and its fading place for Australian youth, I see that the Australian government will be beefing up Aussie lit offerings in schools.

In a town in Texas a teacher faces possible criminal charges for assigning a Cormac McCarthy book to high schoolers. The book, "Child of God", is often assigned in AP classes. The article reports quite a bit of grassroots support for the teacher, who is well liked and has been sent on paid leave.  Nice to see that stereotypes of small town Texas are being challenged by athletes wearing armbands in support of an English teacher. Perhaps the locals have discovered that nothing in any Cormac McCarthy book is any more lurid or graphic than the weekly plotlines of "CSI", "Criminal Minds", or a host of other prime time tv programs...

What? You haven't had enough fall color yet? Shame on you. Redeem yourself below.



At the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, a jewel of a spot this time of year.  Meanwhile, at Carver Park Reserve, the cattails and rushes have gone brown and fall quickly slips away.

On the Mississippi near Ft. Snelling State Park, last Saturday.  Some people have all the fun.



On an un-literary note, I just found out that scientists are using the ground two blocks from my old apartment to predict when the next apocalyptic earthquake will happen in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their conclusion? Yeah, real soon.  Now that I'm safely in Minnesota I can stop nailing my books to the walls.

Ok, let's get semi-literary for a moment. So now JK Rowling acknowledges using Christian themes in the Harry Potter books--something she kept close the chest until the last one was published because--well--we all kinda know how the Christ story goes, and that might ruin the surprise.  My disappointment in this revelation isn't that she's using religious imagery. As a British writer she's steeped in a predominently Christian culture, and the symbols and stories of Christianity can often be found in great literature. What disappoints me is that when I read the last Potter book, the parallels to another giant of children's lit--Lewis' The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe--were awfully close. Now with this additional insight that she, like Lewis, was explicitly modeling the Christ crucifixion/resurrection in an epic fantasy--well, in the context of children's fantasy literature, that's already been done in a very big way.  When you really go back and look at that last book the whole plot structure of Harry Potter starts getting extremely close to Narnia.  Is this formulaic, or just a great narrative tradition?

Ok, so none of us saw this one coming. Doris Lessing grabbed the Nobel prize, and anybody who bet money on Philip Roth is now running from their bookie.  I read Lessing's "Memoirs of a Survivior" in college and remember it as a rich but difficult book; I've read none of her recent work.  Harold Bloom threw a little hissyfit, and some are worried now that Roth and others will forever be overlooked. But as this Forbes article points out, there may be some genre-rivalry involved in the shock of some critics at her selection.  Realistic fiction vs speculative fiction: SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY!!!

Ok, I'll stop. Here's a pretty picture. Lake Maria, in central Minnesota, last weekend.

The Nobel for literature is on tap for October 11, and some names being tossed around include Philip Roth and Italian novelist Claudio Magris. Of those mentioned in the article, I'll confess I have only read Roth, so I will, in my own provincial way, root for him.

The Salt Lake Tribune does one of the better articles in response to a sky-is-falling report about how many Americans read literary fiction.  This one makes note that publishers are emphasizing more nonfiction because men are becoming averse to fiction; I have a simpler answer to why men aren't reading fiction as much.  College grads are far more likely to read fiction. Men are falling behind, drastically, in college participation. A study published 5 years ago had women well into the majority of college students; by now, this trend is likely far higher.

I spent much of my childhood in beautiful Santa Cruz Country, California, and was sad to read that one of its best bookstores has been vandalized by homophobes who targeted the gay literature section.  How sad--not to mention basically stupid--do you have to be to a.) spend your time vandalizing gay literature in bookstores and b.) do it in Santa Cruz County, California, a place where the banishing of gay books (which we have to assume is a goal of these morons) WILL NEVER, EVER HAPPEN. I mean seriously. I realize none of us thought these people were geniuses, but Santa Cruz? Isn't that like trying to scare all the Christian bookstores out of Alabama?

Jonathon Coe over at the Guardian celebrates classics of British literature - written by women, and recalls discovering them at a time when the canon was still a male country club.

Oprah says go read Marquez.

Lit fight! Boris Pasternak's son doesn't like how his father's book, Dr. Zhivago, came to be published and feels that the book's champion, Sergio D'Angelo, got waaaay too much of the profits.  Long story short, the younger Pasternak had his revenge by managing to put a scathing critique of D'Angelo's actions in a rather unusual place--the epilogue to D'Angelo's new memoir. Without him knowing.  Imagine putting out a memoir, and  then some guy who really doesn't like you inserts twenty pages that amount to "you suck."  Wow.

Stay tuned for Sunday fall color pics from central Minnesota.

Aaah, the monstrous fiction class has subsumed the blog. So it goes.  But the literary world scribbles on.  Today we have Zoe Williams, in Guardian, smacking down V.S. Naipaul.

In book form, VS Naipaul's new-blossoming cantankerousness sounds quite droll. It will be quicker if I paraphrase. Jane Austen? Sucked. Anthony Powell? Bilge. Evelyn Waugh? Rubbish. Here is a person, you think, who has lived a long time in maybe a rather close atmosphere and has decided to open a window and enjoy himself. But then he went on the Today programme and, through the power of radio, revealed that this is not a person enjoying himself after all.

Williams also manages to work the term "sodding" into the article, which should be appreciated all by itself.

The Amazon region of Brazil apparently has quite a literary scene and you probably don't know that.

Meanwhile, in Wyoming, some people have nothing better to do than try to ban award-winning books.

And then there was my weekend...back up on the North Shore of Lake Superior again, this time a bit further up with a look at the fall colors just inland.



Above: Grand Marais, Minnesota, view from Artist Point. Note the low water level of Lake Superior, exposing rock previously underwater. Lake Superior is in the midst of the lowest water levels in over 80 years.


Another view of low water at Artist Point.





Above: Two views of fall color at Moose Mountain, in Lutsen, Minnesota on the North Shore of Lake Superior.

James Frey got a new book deal. And yes, this time he's going to try actually calling it fiction. And as no publicity is bad publicity, some of the original fraud will definitely benefit the promotion of this book.  Also with AP here.

In other news. the study of literature is heading downhill fast in France, where students look to sociology or economics as their preferred areas of focus. "Xavier Darcos said that France was in danger of becoming a nation of unemployed sociologists unable to master speech or thought."  Beware the unemployed sociologists!

Literature for Kossacks does Borges, here.

I enjoy the Lee Goldberg blog, and this week he contemplates the common writer predicament: he thinks he sucks.

Amazon is gearing up an eBook initiative, including a $500 eBook reader and a proprietary content format. As we prepare to be underwhelmed, PC World has the first take.  The idea of an eBook has always intrigued me, but years and years have gone by, and it's generally gone nowhere.   Sony already has one of these literary gadgets, and a quick look at it here tells me it's not designed by someone who really loves books. It's a cold, grey, fragile-looking tablet.  My dream for an ebook reader: waterproof, durable, opens and lays out like a book, color screen, 30 hours of battery life, backlit for evening reading without a light, notes capability, wi-fi access & internet browsing, ability to add notes to word docs for editing, and availability of every book in print via some sort of online store.  An eBook Apple might have come up with.

Update: more on the Amazon launch here.  Looks like Penguin is one of their big content providers; Penguin of course has Penguin Classics, which would include lots of material out of copyright. Given the digital rights management issues around music, likely to be similar or worse with books, it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon continued previous ebook efforts to emphasize a lot of non-copyright content.

This New York Times review reminds us that if you haven't thought of something new to write about, you just aren't thinking hard enough:

The narrator of "An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England" is an accidental firebug "with blood and soot on his hands." He committed the unspeakable crime of burning down Emily Dickinson's house. Thus he threw Amherst, Mass., into turmoil, not only because he violated the legacy of the college town's cherished literary Belle but also because he killed "two of its loafered citizens" in the process.

One of the greatest children's authors of the 20th century, Madeline L'Engle, passed away today at the age of 88. Her books, including "A Wrinkle in Time", were imaginative, disturbing, inspiring, and at times bewildering, in a good way.  She lived the life most writers aspire to, writing wonderful things and seeing them widely read.