Condalmo

Mechanical reproduction.

Here's a cover of one of the re-releases in the Penguin Great Ideas series.  Behold:

Popular music about cold-blooded murder.

I would submit the soundtrack to Tombstone, which I listen to and enjoy, but I suspect that "popular" does not apply, except among early/mid-90's college graduates.  What a horrible sentence.  Anyway, look:

I Shot a Man in Reno: A History of Death by Murder, Suicide, Fire, Flood, Drugs, Disease, and General Misadventure, As Related in Popular Song.  I especially appreciate the "general misadventure" category.

Ed Park split into five.

Ed Park, a man of many parts, divides again this week at Five Chapters with "The Oblivion Arms."  He also blogs this week at Powell's, while also editing The Believer, crafting The New York Ghost, and sharing his Personal Days with you.

Soft Skull, Fall 2008.

The Fall catalog's there for your list-making perusal.  Me?  The Delivery Room, Noir, Flying to America, and - of course - Get Your War On.  You?

I vote No on new KFC Nabokov.

Just saw at Maud's that the son will be publishing the father's The Original of Laura.  V. Nabokov has provided me with some especially moving reading experiences over the years.  So, in gratitude, I'm going to abide by his wishes, which seem to indicate that he did not want it read and that it should be burned (a conclusion I reach by referring to his request to have it burned).  Others have made pretty good arguments in favor of publishing/reading it.  But (and can you believe I'm dropping the "but" on Borges?  Who the hell am I?) I don't think we can know the mind of V.N. - maybe he couldn't burn it himself.  Not exactly a wilting flower, that one, but who's to say?

I just think that any intelligent person could think their way into a rationalization of why it should be exposed to the public, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the right thing to do.  An intelligent, motivated person can make a case for anything, right?  I could make a rational(ish) argument in favor of eating KFC every day, but that shit will kill you dead.

Not that The Original of Laura is in any way equivalent to KFC. 

(Or maybe it is, and that's why he wanted it burned.  Someone will have to let righteous me know.)

UPDATE:  Um.

Book deals that Canadians like.

Someone out there is looking at your sites, my friends.  Better tuck in those shirts.

You know that funny Web site Stuff White People Like, the one with the jokes? The Canadian guy who runs it just sold a book to Random House for an advance that publishing insiders said had reached at least $350,000 when it was at auction last week. Unclear how high it ended up climbing, but frankly, $350,000 is already a staggering sum for a paperback inspired by a faddish blog that launched just over two months ago...

I'm starting the bidding here at $5.  Do I hear $6?

Now you'll know your ABC.

Forthcoming pop-up book of typography.  Fun!  (via)

Not necessarily the way they happened.

A friendly PSA from the staff here at Condalmo: available next Tuesday. 

I will not finish this post before one or more children need me.

Nevertheless.  Finished reading Men in Space while on break last night.

---
Seven hours later.  (Don't try this at home!)  Yeah - Tom McCarthy.  Am I as impressed as I was with Remainder?  Hmmm.  Well, let's be clear: McCarthy states himself, in an afterward, that this book

started as a series of disjointed, semi-autobiographical sketches written in what seems like another era, and grew into one long, disjointed document from which a plot of sorts emerged from time to time to sniff the air before going to ground again.

That's about right.  Remainder was a sword - all of one piece, focused, about something; this one's more like a centrifuge, with a number of things tossed in - art forgery, the mafia, the end of Russia and the beginning of the European Union, expat life, a police officer in mental collapse, among other elements - and left to mix themselves up before McCarthy turns the speed up to eleven and it all gets spun out in different directions by the end.  (And a couple of those items get smushed up sort of unpleasantly by the G-force.  Meaning, I was less than satisfied with the smush, but should expect no less from a centrifuge.)  Don't go into it expecting anything like Remainder (though he continues to have a very precise eye for details - like the narrator of Remainder, everything is exactly described and set out) and you'll likely find this book very satisfying, as it's very well written - one particular sequence, a questioning in police custody, is described so perfectly, it's just right. 

It's really a fantastic book; I'm just in a mindset lately of preferring swords to centrifuges. 

Nobody told me this was happening tomorrow. Why has nobody told me?

People.  I can't do this all on my own.  Some people have their Doctor Who, some people their Battlestar Gallactica.  Me, I like it where there's always music in the air, and the birds sing a pretty song.

Observations:

• That is not the recipe for the cherry pie.  What ironic staffer came up with that nonsense?
• Should you buy it?  This will convince you.  If you need convincing.
• The "alumni enjoying current success" section is good for a laugh.  Outdated!  (Ferrer and "that guy who played Windham Earle" were recently reunited on Bionic Woman.  So I hear.)  Meanwhile, where's Andy? Hank got Lost.
• The first soundtrack CD is probably my most-listened CD, ever.  The second CD - from the movie - has its moments, but also some unbearable clunkers.  In what's sure to be the only review of this CD anywhere - as I'm likely to be one of about nine people who actually seek this out - I'll let you know.
• Lastly:  the work day just ended, my friends.  (UPDATE: As of right now, I can't seem to get my "midget widget" (seen below, after the click) to operate correctly.  God willing, I'll never again have occasion to put those words together in that particular sequence.)

Eggers' new book: Wild Things.

Alternate post subject:  "What is the ... He Did Whaaaat?!"  Rejected because, well, you can see why.  We've got to have some law around here.*

This would be considerably more interesting if, in fact, Eggers was writing a novelization of this.  I'd like to see how he writes that scene in the - ...okay, never mind that, here's the real skinny: 

The Eggers book, an adult novel based on Maurice Sendak´s classic Where the Wild Things Are was actually acquired by Ecco last winter, but kept quiet until now. Foreign rights are in play at Frankfurt and Ecco publisher Dan Halpern is predicting, "I think it`s going to be his biggest book. I think it´s going to be huge." Ecco is publishing the book in fall 2008, to coincide with the Spike Jonze movie adaptation based on Sendak´s book, for which Eggers wrote the screenplay.

So... a novelization of a movie version of a book? 

...

I don't know what to say about this, except it seems brave - brash? - and of course I'm curious about what he's done with it.  What will the cover art look like?  What will it be called?  Is Sendak on board?  (An Eggers/Sendak collaboration?)  Will the novel of the movie of the book eventually be made back into a children's book?  You know hungry Eggers-bashers are already drafting their angry/scornful/mocking blog posts.

Related: The first movie.

* Only when one is this tired is quoting Jason Priestley advisable.

Remainder film.

The subject says it all.  Well, not all. 

MT: I understand the film rights for Remainder have been sold? What does this actually mean!? When might we see a film?

TM: A partnership of FilmFour and Cowboy Films have bought the rights and are producing the movie. They’re the partnership behind the recent adaptation of The Last King of Scotland, which was a huge success and won an oscar for Forrest Whittaker. The first draft of the script has been written, by John Hodge, who wrote the script for Trainspotting. I’m not technically involved, but the producer gave me a peek and it looked really good. Next they decide who the director will be. So maybe 2008/9 for the release date. It always takes longer and costs more than you think, apparently...

There are approximately 126 ways this could be bungled.  Lead actor?  I see Trainspotting mentioned, I think Ewan MacGregor, I shrug. 

The interview (part two; part one ran yesterday) also features McCarthy talking about similarities and differences between the first and second books.  My copy of MiS is en route from very, very far away.  This ends your weekly McCarthy update.

More from Space.

More about Tom McCarthy's forthcoming Men in Space, which I promise will not be all I write about until (and after) I get my hands on a copy:

So what’s the book like? Pretentious and unreadable? Too ludic for its own good? Far from it. It is set in central Europe in the aftermath of the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Much of the action takes place in Prague, where McCarthy lived for a couple of years in the early 1990s. The narrative progresses in fragmented chunks, each one written from loosely the point of view of one of the book’s motley characters.

The unifying element is a thriller-like plot concerning small-time Bulgarian mobsters who want to smuggle a stolen religious icon to the West. Working for this bunch of knuckleheads is a former referee called Anton Markov, who compulsively tells appalling jokes. His job is to find an artist who can make a copy of the painting accurate enough to fool the authorities, and he tracks down a talented bohemian called Ivan Manasek who says he’s up to it.

Manasek lives in a gloriously dilapidated Prague apartment with a young Englishman called Nicholas Boardaman, who is bumming around before starting a job at an art journal based in Amsterdam. Interspersed with these strands is the first-person narrative of an anonymous secret service operative monitoring Markov’s associates.

There are some priceless descriptions of counter-culture Prague, including a set-piece that details a Factory-style party in a French artist’s studio populated with beatniks, transvestites and an array of “artistic” types desperate to get wasted. There are also some tense moments when Markov is brutally interrogated by the police and then handed over to his gangster friends, who suspect him of double-crossing them.

But, really, the novel works best when viewed as a study of displacement and isolation, suggesting that we are all trapped within our own skulls like prisoners left to moulder in oubliettes. Few of the characters ever connect with one another. There are repeated images of planets hurtling through space, their orbits rarely intersecting with those of other celestial bodies.

Diary of a Blue Angel Wonder Boy.

Tomorrow's Guardian has an excerpt from JM Coetzee's new novel, Diary of a Bad Year.  "An eminent, elderly writer" is working on a book while also taking notes on the lusty little lady next door.  Uh oh, sounds familiar.  Still:  Coetzee.  Although: meta.  Wonder if Costello will suddenly pop out his closet to scold him for being such a lecherous lout.

Here come the man from the stars.

Tom McCarthy's next novel, Men in Space, will be published abroad in September. 

Set in a Central Europe rapidly fragmenting after the fall of Communism, "Men in Space" follows a cast of dissolute Bohemians, political refugees, football referees, deaf police agents, assassins and stranded astronauts as they chase a stolen icon painting from Sofia to Prague and beyond. The icon's melancholy orbit is reflected in the various characters' ellipses and near misses as they career vertiginously through all kinds of space: physical, political, emotional and metaphysical. What emerges is a vision of humanity adrift in history, and a world in a state of disintegration.

3AM has an excerpt, and to tempt you there, here's an excerpt-excerpt:

The first stage, after the boards have been gessoed and gilded and the drawings transferred onto these, is painting the background colours. On the day after Christmas Day, Ivan Mañásek lays out the materials he’ll be using. His pigments he arranges in two rows, ranging from light to dark, from zinc white on the upper row’s far left to lamp black on the lower row’s far right. The brushes he stands hair-up in a jar beside the phials. He’s using fine best-sable riggers: two each of numbers zero, one and two, three each of numbers three through five and one each of eight through fifteen. He cracks an egg over a bowl, lets it run out onto his hand so that the white slips through the gaps between his fingers, leaving the yolk resting in his palm. Then, pinching the yolk between the thumb and first finger of his other hand, he lifts it up, suspends it above another, smaller bowl and pricks it with a needle so the orange liquid oozes from the skin, which he then throws away. To the decanted yolk he adds roughly nine times its own volume of purified water and three drops of vinegar. He stirs the solution, then transfers it to the compartments of two ice cube trays, to which he adds the pigments, one by one, by wetting a brush in the solution, dipping it into a phial, letting it pick up flakes, then plunging these back into the compartment. The Prussian blue, the terra verte and the raw and burnt siennas are gritty and need to be ground down against glass. It’s just like chopping up speed: he uses the same shaving mirror, hunched over it, watching his own face becoming eclipsed by these powdery tones…

Quotationalistictastic.

It's 1:01AM, Condalmo time.  I was just finishing chapter ___ of Stephen Dixon's forthcoming Meyer and was earmarking/dog-earring (?) a page with a nice quote to share with you, when I closed it and was faced again with the stark, stern warning: uncorrected proof, do not quote.  Then I was faced with the harsh reality that I hadn't actually found three to five sentences to quote here, because that's not how Dixon works, you don't get The Full Dixon unless you read three to five pages.  What happened?  I don't know; it's 1:04AM.

(Sound of me whistling innocently, hands in pockets, eyes rolled upward, walking away, perhaps kicking a can or a small rock, rehashing an old link that you hopefully already clicked on)

The aforementioned anticipated arrival.

How do you choose what to read next after a really great book?  You let Melville House decide for you.

Ooo, yeah: snap into it.

The prolific writer gets writers block.

I, for one, do not (or have not yet) get tired of good writers writing about writing.  (Have you read Tobias Wolff's Old School?  You should.)  As yet, I do not get tired of Stephen Dixon's work.  His forthcoming Meyer (Melville House, who also put together my current read, Old Friends) will deliver the goods, I am certain:

The twenty-sixth book of fiction by the award-winning Baltimore writer sets up a situation that the protagonist-Meyer, a prolific fiction writer from Baltimore-finds preposterous: writer's block. After numerous books, Meyer has never experienced writer's block before, and panic sets in.

In a story rife with Stephen Dixon's trademark zest and style, Meyer proceeds to rifle through all the possible aspects of his life that could make for good fiction, and to try whatever it takes to get writing again. Sometimes sex with his wife helps, so he tries that without luck-several times, just to be sure. He wonders if he should try sex with one of the neighbors. He wonders if he should try writing about his parents' death . . . again. He wonders about concocting awful things for himself and his family. He wonders about concocting wonderful things for himself and his family. He wonders what he's doing, and tries sex with his wife again.

Ladies and gentlemen... trademark zest.  Sold!

Films for the blind.

As Maud noted, Jose Saramago's Blindness is set to be made into a movie, with Fernando Meirelles ("The Constant Gardener" and "City of God") directing and Mark Ruffalo as the doctor, Julianne Moore as the wife.  If there are two actors I'd rather see in a (hopefully) artful adaptation, I can't think of who they'd be.  Both Ruffalo and Moore have the chops.  As for the book, amazing, though I had to leave it unfinished - this was in grad school that I was reading it, and I never did get back to it, not yet.  My wife loved it, speaks very highly of Saramago in general - I think she's read two or three of his other novels - and picked up Seeing soon after it was released in paperback, but found it a bit heavy for an exhausted pregnant person to be slogging through at bedtime, and so we remain The Family That Puts Aside Saramago. 

Simon van Booy's "The Secret Lives of People in Love."

The Secret Lives of People in Love is goooooooood.

Let me share just a few of the many tasty bits.  Here's the opening of "Snow Falls and then Disappears":

My wife is deaf.  Once she asked me if snow made a sound when it fell and I lied.  We have been married twelve years today, and I am leaving her.

This, from "Everything is a Beautiful Trick":

I have encountered thousands of people only once, but they carry a memory of me and everyone else - like sand on a beach, shaping the edge of a living world.

From "Everyday Things" - a story about a man dealing with his wife being in the hospital, critically ill:

He looked at his watch and thought of his old self driving to work, listening to the news, sipping coffee.  He felt a strange sense of shame and naivety and knew that if he let his mind regress, it would pass a countless number of occasions in which he could have been a stronger and brighter version of himself.

How about this image:

It's a blizzard now.

Flakes like clumps of fur ripped from winter's back. 

This book is full of people's pain, and yes, the writing is tight, compact, like a blade of the hardest steel that shines with the imagery.  (His imagery is much better than mine.)  I suppose I chose the blade analogy because the stories felt incisive.  Most of them are quite short, but van Booy does a lot in a few words, he lays down conduits for your thoughts and feelings about the plights of the characters - a man who comes home to find a broken glass and a letter, a letter he doesn't dare read because it likely contains the news that his wife cannot have the children he so desperately wants - needs; a man who starts an apple orchard in Brooklyn as the only way left to him for preserving his dead daughter; the sole survivor of the botched scuttling of a submarine, sitting on the beach and seeing/hearing his mates calling to him, as he tries to plan a future.  A story, in three pages, about the final moments of a woman crushed under a building, leveled by an earthquake.  The book is chock-a-block with rich, rich imagery - at times, reading too much at a stretch was like binging on really expensive dark chocolate - insanely delicious, but too much.  But that's more a reflection on my state of mind than a shortcoming of the book.  Fans of beauty in their short stories would do well to look into this fine debut.

The secret lives of birthday bloggers.

Enjoying a quiet afternoon - these are far and few between, but my lovely wife took my lovely daughter out so I could relax with some reading, some leftover birthday cake, and damn good coffee (I'm resisting the black hole pull that is Twin Peaks, lest this entire blog be subsumed).  Finished After Dark early this morning (after midnight, fittingly) and I'm very impressed.  My initial impression is that I dig 'um as much as nearly anything else I've read by him.  I need to take some time to sort out all the connections in the book before I write about it further - and I need to piece together an actual review, so more on that later.
Today, I'm reading The Secret Lives of People in Love by Simon Van Booy.  (I almost titled this post "Booy oh Booy" but my readers deserve better, at least today.)  I could digress here on the effect of author photo on a book, how it steers my first impression sometimes, fairly or not, but I'll save that for another post.  Or maybe not, because wouldn't that be feeding into the whole "salability linked to author attractiveness" nonsense that has publishers Photoshopping Jane Austen, etc?  Is salability a word?  So much for not digressing.
At any rate, I've read about 1.4 stories here and so far, so good.  Van Booy uses imagery like I use half and half.  Brief examples:

This morning I woke up and was fifteen years old.  Each year is like putting a new coat over all the old ones.  Sometimes I reach into the pockets of my childhood and pull things out.

...and this, of a man dying in a hospital:

As Pierre-Yves lifted himself into the past, he knew that he would not make it back to the present - to the rain and to the ward - but hoped he would make it as far as the garden, which wrapped itself around the cottage and trembled, as summer had trembled and pushed strawberries into the world.

That first quote is the very beginning of the first story, "Little Birds," and the second from the second story, "The Reappearance of Strawberries."  I love what he's got here:  the coat business, the pockets, the lifting himself into memories, unlikely to return.  It's good stuff. 
Back to the cake and coffee.

Murakami: After Dark: excerpt.

Yes, we here at Condalmo are very pleased to be reading, and soon reporting to you, on Haruki Murakami's forthcoming (May 8) After Dark.

From the beginning:

Eyes mark the shape of the city.

Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene from midair.  In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature - or more like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organisms.  Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old.  To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm.  Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city's moan, a monotonous sound the neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding.

Joseph Coulson interview.

I recently reviewed Joseph Coulson's fine Of Song and Water (Archipelago Books)for The Quarterly Conversation.  I took up the book for review knowing very little about it - read a short blurb about it somewhere, saw that jazz was involved, said OK - and, frankly, I was at a bit of a burn-out point on reviewing.  I couldn't have picked a better book to turn that around.  Coulson's writing has jazz in it like an old 50's nightclub has smoke.

He graciously took time from a busy schedule - including preparing for a book tour - to be interviewed via e-mail for Condalmo.

--------------------------

M:  Let's start with some background on your writing.  Lots of ink being spilled about young writers these days, but then The Nation turned that around and made hay about you delivering your first novel a few years past your "young turk" days.  Were you biding your time?  I haven't read The Vanishing Moon yet, but I don't think Of Song and Water could have come from someone in their twenties, or even thirties.

J:  I started writing The Vanishing Moon when I turned forty, and I don't think I was ready to write a novel before that time. I'd been carrying pieces of the story around with me for several years, but I was waiting for those fragments to reveal the full measure of their meaning. I have to have some sense of what the story is about on a level beyond plot and character before I can start writing. It's not that I want to reduce the story to a single theme, but when I begin to recognize the recurring moods, patterns, analogues--the common threads that link or underscore what seem to be, at first, disparate elements--I begin to see how a longer narrative can take shape. For me, the implications that emerge from the first scenes in a novel provide direction and, ultimately, serve to hold the story together.

While I was waiting for all this to happen, I was mindful of something I heard Vonnegut say when I was much younger. He was giving advice to writers who wanted to write a novel. He said, "Make sure you have something to say." It's also true that as a teenager and college student, I never imagined that I would be a novelist. The idea of writing a lengthy piece scared me. I started out writing songs and then I gradually moved to poetry, feeling comfortable with the lyric impulse, particularly given its musical possibilities. I eventually went to graduate school at the State University of New York at Buffalo to study with John Logan and Robert Creeley, and in trying to understand the rigors of their poetics--very different but both very rich--I slowly learned to write, which in large part was developing a better ear for the music of language--its euphonic, dissonant, and rhythmic possibilities.

M:  I was especially taken with the scene that had Otis holding forth on the "death of jazz" and other topics, while simultaneously playing for Coleman:  "it came off as some sort of musical essay, an extemporaneous lecture with a soundtrack."  Then, when he runs out of things to say, he takes all those pieces he'd been noodling over and tries to tie them together, just working it out as he goes.  It's one of my favorite passages in the book, and leads me to two questions: first, do you see Otis as a sort of a surragate father for Coleman?  I got the impression that you were trying to suggest this without it being implicit, necessarily.  Second, where did you draw from in coming up with Otis?

J:  It seemed to me that if I showed the disconnect between Coleman and his father, and then had Coleman seeking out the company and counsel of Otis, then the idea of Otis as an artistic or even spiritual father would emerge. My life was shaped by wonderful teachers, and I was lucky enough to spend a great deal of time with some of them outside the classroom. As a student, I listened carefully to their conversations--Creeley could riff all night--and I tried my best to understand and remember. So Otis is probably a composite of those teachers that had the greatest influence on me. I dedicated the book to my mentor, Steve Tudor, and there's a good bit of him in Otis. Al Young, now the Poet Laureate of California, by way of Mississippi and Detroit, was also a conscious model.

M:  In my review of Of Song and Water I tried to put some emphasis on the skill with which you took jazz and not only made it one of the central pieces of the storyline, but also found a way to evoke a feeling of jazz in the writing itself.  I see that as a high-wire walk; it could easily fall into jazz cliches, maybe some noir cliches, but it doesn't.  I'd love to hear about how you made it work.

J:  When a jazz musician plays what we call a standard, a classic tune, it's very much about the phrasing--how the musician executes a particular line or measure, perhaps a familiar one, and makes it fresh or compelling. Through phrasing, tone, and tempo, the musician can evoke a mood, imbue the song with his or her emotional pitch, and color the piece in ways that are specific and original. I wanted to do the same thing with the words in Of Song and Water. While writing poems, I came to understand the line as a unit of sound and meaning, and I was deeply influenced by the notion of measure in poetry, especially as practiced by William Carlos Williams and Creeley. So I wondered if I could get some of that same feel into the prose. Interestingly, the passage you chose to quote in the review, though it's not about music in any literal sense, is actually a good example of how musical devices contribute to the emotion of a scene and, in this case, shift and increase the tempo to build narrative momentum. The thing I always had to keep in mind while writing Of Song and Water is that Coleman and his trio play ballads, the sort of slow-burn pieces that you referred to in your review. So, in the sentences, I tried to sustain measures and cadences and tonal flourishes that would suggest a song like "Stardust" or "September Song."  I've been interested for a long time in how the language of a story can mirror the situation. I first saw the power of this technique reading Conrad's Heart of Darkness. A contemporary example would be The Hours by Michael Cunningham.

M: I also liked the way you shifted back and forth, timewise, revealing H.M.'s past, Dorian's past, revealing it both to Coleman and to the reader.  Did you work with this idea from the start - the shifting - or did it evolve as you were writing?

J:  The temporal shifts were there from the beginning. It was the only way I could make the story work. I also felt that Coleman's interior life, and this is true for H.M as well, would be the point of entry for the reader, at least in terms of empathy. Surfaces alone are not often attractive or inviting. But I also wanted the energy and inventiveness of improvisation in the prose. The shifting in time and the fluid movement from one image or idea or memory to the next gave me the latitude to try and create the equivalent of jazz riffs and solos.

M:  You dedicated the book to Stephen Tudor, who, like Coleman's father, was lost at sea.  Tell me about that - was Tudor's disappearance one of the starting points of the book for you?

J:  Here, again, there's a lot of time involved. Steve was lost on Lake Huron in 1994, but I didn't start writing the book until August, 2003. So it wasn't so much his disappearance, though the grief of it fuels the book in many ways--instead, my starting point was what he taught me about the lakes and sailing and about the profound connection between art and a life well lived, the importance of craft and precision in all things, and the transcendence of sailing free, whether on water or in a poem. I had no emotional or intellectual relationship with my own father, and so, for many years, Steve took his place. Perhaps only once or twice in a lifetime does one experience such generosity of spirit.


M:  Finally, given the role of music in this story, I'd like to borrow a page from the fine Largehearted Boy site and ask you about some of the music that would comprise your "soundtrack" for this book - jazz that you listened to while writing it, that informed and inspired the story, that you would envision being on Of Song and Water - The Soundtrack.

J:  Coltrane's "A Love Supreme"; Chet Baker's "My Funny Valentine"; Joe Pass playing Duke Ellington; Kenny Burrell, "D.B. Blues" and "Summertime," and Wes Montgomery, "Bumpin' on Sunset" and "Down Here on the Ground." Just to confuse people, I might toss in Willie's Nelson's renditions of "Stardust" and "September Song."

Dan Wickett: editor.

Dan Wickett's got an anthology in the works.  Among some of the familiar names is Bill Roorbach, he of UMF, where I attended undergraduate school. 

From the editor:

While there are tons of great things going on between now and fall of 2008, there is something that will occur then that I can announce.  Press 53 is going to publish an anthology I've edited with stories surrounding the idea of visiting hours and the dynamics of situtations where one person must stay, and the others involved are only allowed to be present during specific hours...

...Many more details will come (including the title - there's a working title, but as it's fairly certain it will not end up on the books, I'll not refer to it as such now) over time;  far be it from me to not keep you all informed...

The authors involved are:

David Abrams
Lauren Baratz-Logsted
Beth Ann Bauman
James R. Cooley
Quinn Dalton
Philip F. Deaver
Rochelle Distleheim
Pamela Erens
Patry Francis
Joseph Freda
Steven Gillis
Nancy Ginzer
Roberta Israeloff
Kaytie M. Lee
T.M. McNally
Michael Milliken
Jim Nichols
Benjamin Percy
Ron Rash
Bill Roorbach
Max Ruback
Gabriel Welsch

And will have an introduction written by Kyle Minor.

Amy Shearn: author.

Amy Shearn (Moonlight Ambulette) is going to be published - her first book, How Far Is the Ocean from Here, should be arriving in the Spring of next year. 

Amy agreed to be interviewed, exclusively for Condalmo.

M:  How far is it, to the ocean?  From here?  (Maine.)

A:  Not so far, but at the same time, pretty far.

Please stop by her (redesigned) site and offer congratulations.   

"Harry, Revised"

Congratulations are in order.  All groweds up.

Upcoming Dzanc.

The young Dzanc Books is getting things rolling in fine fashion:

February 2008 will see the publication of our second book, Yannick Murphy’s In a Bear’s Eye.  Murphy’s collection includes 24 stories, 16 of which have been published in journals such as The Quarterly, McSweeneys, and StoryQuarterly.  The title story will soon be included in The O’Henry Prize Stories 2007 (Anchor, May 2007)...

Dzanc Books will follow In a Bear’s Eye with Peter Markus’ Bob, or Man on Boat in the Fall 2008.  Peter’s fourth book, Bob, or Man on Boat, will be his debut novel.  Markus’ three story collections have shown him to be a master of repetition and rhythm and have earned him a loyal following of readers, as well as seeing his work frequently anthologized.  Markus’ third collection, The Singing Fish, spent its first few weeks atop Powell’s Small Press bestseller list...

Get the whole story here.

Haruki's brand new bag.

For those whom the cover art matters, behold:

"Bessie didn’t wave. She just yelled down, 'Kill anybody today?' 'Not yet,' I yelled back."

Hard Case Crime reports that they have Mickey Spillane's last book on deck.  Seems like a mighty fine time to subscribe.  (Click "join the book club" and scroll - quickly - to the bottom.)  Excerpt:

The street wasn’t dead yet. Not all the way. Old Charlie Wing had given the kids from the next block the last of the leechee nuts, and was packing his meager belongings for a U-haul ride to Los Angeles and his relatives and then on by plane to his home province in China where he would be the richest man in the village and a big daddy to his horde of great and great-great grandkids.

Two houses down, the wicked witch of the neighborhood, ninety-year-old Bessie O’Brian, hung out the window, cushioning herself on a red velvet pillow as old as she was. When it snowed she stayed inside, only sliding the sash up if she heard gunshots. Hardly anything ever happened that she didn’t know about. She saw Findley get killed, the cops nail the pickup truck loaded with five million bucks worth of narcotics, was able to identify over twenty muggers and was the State’s foremost witness when Tootsie Carmody shot The Frog, the super peddler of heroin in the area. She wouldn’t go to court to identify the shooter. She made the court come to her and for one day her tenement building was jammed past inspection requirements by New York’s legal elite.

Bessie didn’t wave.  She just yelled down, "Kill anybody today?"

"Not yet," I yelled back.

When I passed the brownstone where Bucky Mohler had lived, I could still see the faint outlines of the white 703 he had painted there when he was a trouble-making twelve-year-old punk. He had been knifed and shot twice before he was sixteen, then the Blue Uptowners nailed him with the radiator of a stolen car because he messed with one of their chicks.

That was a long time ago.

The Street was starting to die about then.

More on Coetzee's "Bad Year."

Dean comes through with more news about Coetzee's forthcoming Diary of a Bad Year:

More news has come to light now. It is "the story of an eminent, 72-year-old Australian writer who is invited to contribute to a volume entitled Strong Opinions - a platform, of course, for Coetzee to air his views on such issues as the treatment of asylum seekers, Guantanamo Bay and the Middle East".

Well, I can't say as that sounds especially exciting, but JMC gets the benefit of the doubt, no?

New Coetzee novel.

J.M. Coetzee's newest novel, Diary of a Bad Year, will arrive in the UK in September 07.  It weighs in at 304 pages...

(via.)

Small Spiral Notebook - Issue four - free.

Small Spiral Notebook has had their fourth issue held up at the printer.    I've contributed reviews to the online version in the past; the print version has a lot to offer. 

Right now, they're offering a free e-book edition of Vol 3, issue 2.  Have a look to see what you'll be getting for your money.

Free Kelly Link; free Small Spiral Notebook.  At this rate, I'm going to have to start offering the content at this site for free.  Oh, wait.

From "Of Song and Water" by Joseph Coulson.

Running straight out and going slow, he watches for a sign, an indication that he's passed this way before.  He feels his body rising and falling, the skiff beating against the current and in some way holding its own.
He knows he should be grateful for the lake's hard beauty - his father embraced it always - but on this day it seems cruel, almost lonely.  He tries to stay calm.  He wants to hold everything in check, but he feels a pressure in his chest, his heart pounding, and beads of sweat roll down his back.
Without warning, a thin wall within him suddenly gives way.  He wants to break something with his hands, to bulldoze long stretches of the past and start building again from the ground up.
He dreams of pouring the lake away.  He wants to dam out all water and walk the singlehander's course from Port Huron to Mackinac Island, cataloging the shipwrecks, mapping the caves and trenches, listening as whispers rise up from the seaweed and debris.  He wants to search the naked lake bed, cursing the light, cursing the darkness, following the scavengers that circle overhead, their shrill voices calling, until he finds the lost pile of teeth and bones, the bleached remains of his father's body.

Adaptation.

Patrick Brown covers some upcoming book to film adaptations.

Joseph Coulson's "Of Song and Water"

I'm currently reading Of Song and Water by Joseph Coulson (Archipelago Books) for a review.  It's a nice shift for me - I'd read a few of the magical realism-type books in a row, and being completely enamored with that type of story, a break is a good idea, lest I burn myself out.  About halfway through it now, and decidedly not magical realism.  I get the feeling reading this that I do when I read Tobias Wolff - that building feeling of excitement, reading prose so deceptively simple and straightforward that packs such a punch.  As we're currently going over name possiblities for baby #2, I liked this line:

His grandfather used to say that a great name guarantees success.  "It shouldn't be a placeholder," he insisted, "or a catchall for loose ends.  It shouldn't be given lightly, whether to a boy, a boat, or a business, not when dreams, even fate, hang in the balance."

On playing jazz guitar in a trio:

Coleman showed a gift for melody, stating a theme but then leaving it, traveling sad and complex distances until he reached an isolated world, a strange land where viruosity mattered far more than being part of any group or scene.  At that point, having used up most of what he knew, he'd return in unexpected ways, playing familiar strains that seemed part of some deep and reawakened memory.  Brian laid down the bottom with a steady poise, but when he took the lead, bursting out with his smile and his exuberant assurance, the music changed direction, moving into a realm that felt like church, as if a divine revelation were close at hand.  He was also, along with Tom, an arbiter of dynamics, building the moment to a crescendo or reducing it to near silence.  Tom kept all this together, marking time, using the brushes like a magician, reigning the guitar or bass when he thought either had gone too far.

I'll post other excerpts as time allows before I finish the review.  Lots of pages dog-eared in this one.  I like Coulson's understated style, making everything seem like the passing of a quiet day in the life of a somewhat elderly gentleman - which parts of the book are, and other parts are more dynamic times, but still being seen through that older man lens.  I'm enjoying it.

Five Vida.

Five Chapters has "an exclusive first serial" of Vendela Vida's new novel - "Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name" - up at the site.  I started her other book, "And Now You Can Go", a couple of times in the bookstore and thought it was interesting, but not quite enough to make me pull the trigger.  This will be a good chance to try her writing out again.

Saul's son would like to sell you a pamphlet of online writings.

Funny, when I write it that way, it sounds less logical.  Saul Bellow's enterprising son (his layabout son, Eddie, works part time at a Texaco in Florida, and will kick your ass at Mortal Combat.  Excuse me, Kombat.) has started a venture in which ideas will be packaged in pint-sized little booklets and sold to you - like One Story, except not stories.  Adam Bellow hopes to cull source material from the internets.  Not an awful idea, but - well, I can't help but quote sizable swaths of the interview:

My model, the one that I'm hoping to recreate, is an American pamphlet series published in the 1920s, called the "Little Blue Books." They were published by a Jewish, socialist newspaper editor, very eccentric, brilliant guy named Emanuel Haldeman-Julius. He was a very progressive figure and had a little publishing empire going in the Midwest. At some point he decided to put out pamphlets, which he charged a nickel for. It was strictly a mail order business. He sold these things for twenty years. And he managed to sell a hundred million pamphlets in five years. He was very close with the leading polemicists of the day, so some of them had original material. But the pamphlets were also an eclectic mix of history, poetry, proverbs, joke books, sex advice, household tips, occasional pieces of journalism. When I asked my dad, when he was still alive, whether he had ever heard of the "Little Blue Books," he said, "Oh sure, when I used to commute to college from the south side of Chicago, to Northwestern, I'd go down to the IC and there would be a little vending machine. You'd put in a nickel and you'd get out a copy of the poems of Shelley or the stories of Maupassant. You'd read it on the train and then you'd discard it."

You had me at "little vending machine" until I realized that these pamphlets are not available that way - they are mail order.  I suspect that finding some way to make a pamphlet so easy to get, like those Little Blue Books, would be key.  I don't know that people will want to pay $4 plus S&H for something they could read on their laptop in their underwear.  (More on that later.)  You do get a PDF of the pamphlet after you order - to tide you over, until the real deal arrives, but by that point you either will have already read it, or will be wishing you hadn't spent your coffee money on something you could have read online a week ago, or any time.  There needs to be a faster way, with more original content.

Possibly.  Just thinking aloud here.

This makes more sense:

The situation now is different. It's not so much that there is a lack of reading material or higher education like there was then, but rather that people don't have time to take in all the information that is thrown at them. And this in a period when the tone and the level of public intellectual argument in this country has been adversely affected by both the media revolution and by current events. It's been polarized and coarsened by the political climate. It's also been made shallower and more superficial by the media environment.

Not a lot to argue with there, but then Adam takes a bong hit and continues:

So that's on the one hand. On the other hand, I noticed the explosion of activity on the Internet. After 9/11 there was this huge explosion. I think it can best be described cosmologically. First there is a big bang. Thousands and thousands of individual blogs are spewed out. Nobody reads them in particular. They are all just little points sort of flickering in the cosmic gloom. But over time, because the Internet is a kind of pure intellectual democracy, little aggregations form. People are drawn to one another by common interests. And at the same time, certain individuals emerge as large planetary bodies, very often surrounded by circles of other people who share their interests.

Condalmo: the thousandth point of light.  Adam, you had me at little vending machines.  Stop already with the internets-is-a-universe stuff.

But back to laptops and underwear:

And my audience is really twofold. First there is the universe of blogs itself, which is a narrow market but a global one. But beyond that I find that there are many, many people who have become aware that the blogosphere exists and that it is powerful and influential but being busy people with a lot of demands on their time, they haven't got the faintest idea of how to get acquainted with it and find the stuff that would interest them. I had a conversation with Sam Tanenhaus [editor of the New York Times Book Review] and I asked him what blogs he reads, and he is a serious intellectual and a highly energetic guy. And he said to me, "I don't have time, I haven't the slightest idea." That tells you something. For someone like him the pamphlets would offer him the best of the blogosphere.

Paging Ed Champion! 

However, in all seriousness, the idea has merit and Adam seems quite serious, so do check out the interview and his website.

On reviews and free books.

I hope by now you've read the post, and the following comments on that post.  (Ed is not pleased.  No, not at all.)  I feel I should address it here, as I'm thinking of moving more of my own reviews over time to this site.  My thoughts on this might get long-winded and rambling; please, bear with me.

My feelings on this agree with different things that different contributors to the MetaxuCafe discussion have contributed.  I have reviewed books from my own collection, from the library, ARC, RC, and just plain old free copies.  My gut tells me that it would be a bad idea to mark reviews according to which one of these categories they fall under - I don't want readers to ascribe a value to a review without reading the review, and hopefully reading my other reviews, and deciding for yourselves what I'm about and whether or not you want to read the book yourselves.  In case it isn't clear, I'll tell you: I'm deeply cynical about a great many things in this world.  Books are not one of those things.  I was an avid reader throughout my childhood and teenage years.  I took some time off in college to drink copious amounts of cheap beer and pursue promiscuity.  Over the past few years, I found my way home again and now can't imagine not reading.  I experience physical and mental stress when I don't have something worth reading, whether that something is "good" or "bad".  That looks absurd, overly dramatic, written down here.  But it's true.  My bookmark: "I have never found any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve." 

My site is not in a weight class high enough to receive massive shipments of random books; generally, publishers seem to know what audience they're looking at when they send me books.  I have reviewed some of these books for sites that do not accept negative reviews, and because of that have had to return the reader copies they sent me.  I have received free books and not gotten around to reading them; I have received free books and written negative reviews.  I have received free books and thought so little of them, they didn't even get a mention.  I have received free books and given them high marks.

None of this had anything to do with the free-ness of the book.  The publishers I've worked with all seem to understand that I'm going to judge a book based on what I think of the writing, not on whether or not I've been showered with attention.  One publisher has been especially kind to me, and I believe that to be an act of faith on the part of the publicist - faith in the quality of the books she is publicizing.  She not once has pressured me for a review of any sort, much less a positive one; she knows she's got great books on her hands, and is willing to take a chance that I'll agree.  So far, I do.  If she sends me one that I think stinks up the place, I'll say so, and if that means no more RC, that's what it means.  I don't think it will, but that's not relevant.

It should also be indicative of my position on making money for publishers in that I plug BookMooch every third post.  (Not linking this time!)  I'll tell you all day long to go buy this book or that book - let's make book buying and book writing a great vocation - but in the next breath I'll tell you to take a quick look online, because if you've got five books you're done with, you're well on your way to a free book in the mail yourself.

I'm not here to make money or get free books; I'm here because I live in East Bum and this is the closest I'll get to being part of a well-read community, with lively discussions and thoughts about books.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy free books, but sending me a book guarantees neither a review, nor a positive review.  Nor even a mention - there's just too many books, and this blog isn't my full-time job.  I work, I parent. 

I can say that I'll look at anything I get sent, and if I have something (hopefully) interesting to say about it, I will, whether that means it gets a positive or negative review.  And if I love a book, you'll know it - I'm glad that someone gets free publicity, if they've written a book I really appreciate.  They've earned it.  So publishers should know how my tastes run before they launch the newest chick-lit book in my direction. 

With regard to the Brianiads on this site - that's thorny.  I know there's an ad for Firmin coming, and I've chosen to steer clear of that book - I don't want to talk here about a book that will make me money, should you decide to click on the ad.  I can opt out of the ad, but I don't think I'll do that; it looks like an interesting read.  I just don't want to do anything with it here, because I'm not going to be trumpeting books (assuming I'd like it) that in turn would make me money.  That would be lame.

I want to be exposed to really good reads and I want to share my experiences - negative and positive - with readers at this site.  That's it.  Comments on this are welcome, as I'm sort of figuring it out as I go.  (In case that isn't already obvious.)

UPDATE: TDAOC comes clean.  I had my suspicions.  Grammy, you will be avenged.

UPDATE TWO:  I agree.  (He clearly had a better self-edit on this than I did.)

UPDATE THREE:  I agree, despite that it throws some monkey wrenches into my thinking.  Or maybe because it does...

Book giveaway: Paul Auster's "Travels in the Scriptorium"

Lord knows I'm not going to read it again.

However, given that I am but one voice - and, were I on the other side of the fence, I would take any review with a grain of salt, as this is Auster we are talking about, he of The New York Trilogy - there's no good reason for me to sit on a book that I know plenty of people are eager to read.  So, it's a giveaway.  Here's the deal:

1. Sign up for BookMooch, because that's how you're going to get it.  Signup and membership is free. 
2. Once you're prepared with them, you can search for the book in my inventory (member name: Condalmo). 
3. Request it.  In the e-mail that gets sent to me via their site, mention this contest and Condalmo.  Also, tell me what you like about Auster.  (I'll do my best to weed out anyone looking to get the book so they can turn around and sell it.) 
4. I'll take all the best responses, through them in a hat (a real hat, not a virtual hat) and pick a winner at random.

With so many steps, I suspect the hardiest of Auster fans will rise to the top and your chances of getting the book will be fairly good.  Worst case, you get signed up with BookMooch, which I suspect you'll be pleased with; I've had success finding a stack of books I want. 

I'll run the contest for 30 days, which should get you the book by Christmas.  Good luck.

The soundtrack for everything, and other Brian Evenson items.

Largehearted Boy's Book Notes section is great stuff.  I should have mentioned this sooner, but along with the Laird Hunt conversation and one with Lynne Tillman (author of American Genius: A Comedy), among others, there's one from Oct. 12 with Brian Evenson re: The Open Curtain and the playlist for that book. 

In addition, I'll have some notes from a reading that Mr. Evenson will be doing nearby on Dec. 7, and hopefully before that will wrap up an interview (via e-mail) with him and get it posted here.  And there's that review on the way, too...

Well, that's a bit harsh.

A little bit funny, though.

The old man sits on the edge of the narrow bed. His mind is elsewhere, stranded in the figments of his head. Who is he? What is he doing here? Who cares?

There are a number of objects in the room, each affixed with a strip of white tape bearing a single word. On the table, for example, is TABLE. On the lamp is the word, LAMP. And on this book, BOLLOCKS.

Auster spoiler alert at the Financial Times.

I'm not going to link to it, because if you're interested in this book, you won't want to read the review, titled "Haven't We Met Before?" - it contains far more spoilers than you'd want.  I averted my eyes when - well, nevermind, but let's just say if I'd kept reading, I'd probably be apoplectic with spoiler overload.  Furthermore, as is pointed out elsewhere, the reviewer is feeling mighty clever; like it or dislike it, clever gets you nowhere. 

Paul Auster's "Travels in the Scriptorium" (2)

Got stuck in traffic this morning.  Thank you, traffic.  I'm about 2/3 through the book and thought I'd share this:

I have always loved the capital in summer.  There is a stillness that envelops us at that time of year, a trancelike quality that seems to blur the difference between animate and inanimate things, and with the crowds along the avenues so much thinner and quieter, the frenxy of the other seasons becomes almost unimaginable.  (p. 71)

This from the manuscript that Mr. Blank is reading, apparently written by one John Trause.  Those of you who have read up on this one already know that characters - at least by name; hard to say more than that to this point - from former Auster books appear in this one, which makes sense given the title.  I haven't read all of the books Auster draws from.  I've read The New York Trilogy, Leviathan, The Book of Illusions, Oracle Night, Auggie Wren's Christmas Story, and parts of his Collected Prose.  A bit from Bookmunch:

Anna Blum, for example, first appeared in In the Country of Last Things, David Zimmer was a character from The Book of Illusions, Peter Stillman (Jr and Sr) appeared in City of Glass from The New York Trilogy (just as Fanshawe appeared in The Locked Room in The New York Trilogy). Marco Fogg Moon Palace. John Trause Oracle Night. Benjamin Sachs Leviathan. The guy with the poker chips is from The Music of Chance. Walt Rawley from Mr Vertigo is here.

So there's a few folks appearing here that I don't know much about.  So far, no loss, but I'm not sure if there are character traits/story particulars related to some of these folks that would play into the current book.  We'll see.  I can safely report that it hasn't interfered with my enjoyment yet.