opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

11 - 20 May 2006

11 May: Handke, cont'd. | Translation support | More titles in Turkey | Parasite Eve review
12 May: Best work of American fiction of the last 25 Years ? | Enzensberger's losers | Tom Wolfe on the novel (and much more) | Chaos and All That review
13 May: Everyman profile | Alexander Zinoviev (1922-2006)
14 May: Afghan publishing | Shona detective novels | Literary Discourse
15 May: Ugresic interviews | Reading the World, and more | No(n) fiction coverage at the NYTBR | ALA conference | Writer-politicians in Nigeria ?
16 May: Yehoshua at AJC Centennial | Library of Burned Books | Pastior to get Büchner-Prize | Theft review
17 May: Sexiest 25 ? | Tony nominations
18 May: New African Writing | The School of War | Ignacio Padilla reviews
19 May: Book fair in Iraq | Literary translation from and into Russian | Is it ever ... | Qassem Haddad profile | A Castle in Romagna review
20 May: Literary Ventures Fund | NYTBR-25 | J.S.Mill at 200

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       Literary Ventures Fund

       Bob Thompson offers a good overview of the fledgling (if not brand new) Literary Ventures Fund in A Rule Breaker On Capitalizing Book Titles in The Washington Post (story first seen at Arts Journal).
       It's an interesting idea:

The Literary Ventures Fund is a tiny nonprofit, founded last year with offices in Boston and New York, that "seeks to challenge the status quo of literary publishing," as its Web site boldly proclaims. LVF hopes to help exceptional works of fiction, literary nonfiction and poetry find the readership they deserve -- by using an economic model more frequently associated with Silicon Valley.

       Hmmmm.....

LVF invests in books it believes to have both literary merit and commercial potential that might go unrealized without an added push. So far, its investments (there have been fewer than 10 to date) have been made in partnership with the books' publishers, though it plans to work directly with authors as well. The extra money, along with LVF's connections and expertise, can be employed in many ways, with the most obvious being increased marketing to help a book cut through the noise of a crowded marketplace.

If its investment pays off, LVF will take a cut of the book's profits. If it doesn't -- like a venture capitalist funding a high-tech start-up -- it will swallow the loss.

       The portfolio of projects is still fairly small, but if nothing else it is an interesting experiment -- and gives tiny-budget publishers opportunities they might not otherwise have.
       But it's not just the small publishers who are playing along:

Farrar, Straus & Giroux is a bit of an exception. Owned by the giant German holding company Holtzbrinck, it nonetheless remains one of the major publishers most committed to literature. The two FSG books that LVF is backing are The Savage Detectives, a prize-winning novel in translation by the late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, and Gregoire Bouillier's memoir The Mystery Guest, translated from the French by FSG editor Lorin Stein.

"The idea is that we will try some innovative techniques" in marketing the Bouillier, FSG publisher Galassi says. He doesn't actually need LVF -- unlike a smaller press, he's got access to capital if he really wants it -- but he's happy to share the risk. Translated works are almost always a hard sell to American readers and he'd have been reluctant to commit $10,000 of FSG's own dollars to that effort.

       Our concerns include: why is he reluctant to commit FSG's own dollars to such projects ? Sure, one can argue: "Translated works are almost always a hard sell to American readers", but might we suggest that FSG's (and everybody else's) reluctance to commit their own money to these projects signals to readers, booksellers, and the media (which then doesn't bother to review the stuff) alike that they don't really believe in these projects (or the possible (sales) success of these projects -- sales being the main way 'success' is defined in even this business) .....
       Another similar concern: by sharing the supposed risk in this way, FSG is also sharing the reward. Obviously they don't believe there will be much of one, as they are willing to give up what could be an enormous upside, all to save a few thousand bucks. (Bolaño has a small track record in English translation, which might suggest what they can expect, but if any of his titles break out it is going to be this one or 2666 (both of which we can't wait to get our hands on, by the way). Taking a few LVF dollars is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the sales-potential they believe the book to have.)
       (In fact, there are perverse incentives for publishers here: the books they want to get LVF money for are obviously those they desperately want to publish but which they figure are going to be complete sales-duds.)

       Somewhat mysterious, too, their relationship with the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, with which the LVF "merged" last year -- though it looks more like a simple take-over ("LVF will serve as the parent company of the merged entities; however, both non-profit organizations will maintain their own incorporations and separate branding" -- and, yes, that 'branding' concept scares us too ...).

       It's hard to complain about anything that helps publicize or bring to market additional worthy books (and so far they seem to have made some pretty good choices). Still, we wonder how this will play out.

       (See also their board of directors, and Alex Beam's profile, His latest venture is buy the book, from the Boston Globe (11 August 2005).)

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       NYTBR-25

       The New York Times Book Review's recent search for the best American novel of the past 25 years certainly did what we presume it was intended to -- attract a lot of notice. (It will appear in the print issue of the NYTBR tomorrow.)
       We didn't waste much space on it, but there's been some very good commentary elsewhere, notably now at Conversational reading, where Scott Esposito devotes his Friday Column (a great idea, by the way) to it, in Best List ? No Way. (MAO adds: I appreciate the kind words, though as my mention (of my apparently very limited exposure to great contemporary American fiction) suggests, perhaps I'm not the ideal person to play along at Tanenhaus' game.) Lots of links here, too, to other coverage.
       There was even a BEA panel on the list. GalleyCat -- providing wall-to-wall in-depth coverage of BEA -- reports in Canadian Markets and No Brownie Love, while Ed Champion warns Do Not Question the NYTBR ! in his report.
       GalleyCat reports:

Tanenhaus challenged Champion to name a book review section in the country that paid more attention to serious fiction (to which my mental response was, "You did not just say that in Book World's hometown. I know you ain't that crazy").

       With its many pages, and mini-reviews of fiction in its occasional 'Fiction Chronicle' and 'Crime'-round-ups, it is possible that the NYTBR covers (or at least mentions) more fiction than any other book review section in the country. Where they lag, however, is in their coverage of "serious fiction" -- Tanenhaus has (as he warned he would when he took over) embraced coverage of 'pop' fiction (not a bad thing in and of itself, but he's made it one by doing so at the expense of coverage of serious fiction) -- and where the NYTBR is truly mired in second-rateness is in its serious coverage of (any and all) fiction. Sure, a few big books get their due -- even Tanenhaus can't ignore them all -- but it's clear he has little interest in or respect for fiction (and a distinct antipathy for anything that's been translated). His unwillingness to devote proper and appropriate space to discussion of fiction titles borders on the ridiculous (just to remind you: last Sunday's issue had full-length reviews of 2 fiction titles and 14 non-fiction titles (see our discussion)). The mini-reviews (mentions, is more like it) that are found in the 'Chronicle's or 'Crime' etc. round-ups just don't cut it.

       (Updated): The 21 May issue of the NYTBR is apparently devoted entirely to fiction -- admirable, in a way, and it certainly helps balance the review-numbers, but it's the week-in, week-out coverage that counts, not the "special" issues (though, desperate as we are, we'll take what we can get).

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       J.S.Mill at 200

       It's the two hundredth anniversary of John Stuart Mill's birth, and it's good to see he's getting some attention. In The Times Matthew Syed offers Forced to learn Greek at 3: it's no wonder Mill hated authority, noting that:

The author of On Liberty, who was born 200 years ago today, would be as appalled by the current assault on civil liberties as by the shocking failure of its critics to find a vocabulary with which to rally mass opposition. Now, more than ever, we need to reacquaint ourselves with the wisdom of the last great English polymath.

       Indeed !
       See also Richard Reeves' profile in Prospect.

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

       Book fair in Iraq

       They held a book fair in Iraq a few days back, the Erbil International Book Fair and Library Equipment Exhibition. (See some preliminary information here.)
       At the Charkinblog Charles Jenkins (of Palgrave Macmillan) describes his experiences there, in Publishing without frontiers.

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       Literary translation from and into Russian

       In his Salon column in The Moscow Times this week Victor Sonkin reports on a recent conference on "Russian Language in Translation."

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       Is it ever ...

       This week's leader in The Bookseller gives the depressing news that Love 'em or hate 'em, celebrities publishing books are here to stay -- and begins the piece with the observation:

Last week, the top four hardback non-fiction bestsellers were Jade: My Autobiography, Jordan: A Whole New World, Constance Briscoe's Ugly, and Danniella Westbrook's The Other Side of Nowhere. Sitting pertinently at number five was Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit ?

       Indeed.
       (Horace Bent makes the same observation in his column in The Bookseller.)

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       Qassem Haddad profile

       In Al-Ahram Weekly Rania Khallaf profiles Qassem Haddad: The penman of Manama:

Qassem Haddad is Bahrain's best-known poet and literary authority. He is, perhaps even more importantly, one of a handful of Arab voices active on the Internet and eager to network internationally.

       Haddad notes:

Sadly to this day Arab literati are still Internet shy, even despite the freedom and opportunities for interaction it offers.

       See also his official site.

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       A Castle in Romagna review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is our review of Igor Štiks' A Castle in Romagna.

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

       New African Writing

       There's been a bit of coverage of the promising New African Writing project: The New Vision offers a review of one of the four recently launched volumes, finding:

A blend of musical theory and literary skill engulfs A Leopard in my Bed, which is one of the four books recently brought to the shelves by the British Council Crossing Borders programme and Mallory International Publishing.

       A few weeks back in The East African David Kaiza reported on the whole project in his piece on Publishing On Demand in Uganda (here at allAfrica.com, so probably not freely accessible for long). He noted:

It is difficult to get published in Africa. Publishers complain that few of the manuscripts they get from budding authors are worth publishing. They also blame a poor reading culture, which makes it difficult for publishing ventures to make profits due to low sales.

PoD is an ideal solution to these challenges. By reducing the cost of producing books, publishers in Africa will be able to bring out more books from new writers and have the courage to experiment.

       We're certainly keeping our fingers crossed -- and hope to be able to eventually cover some of these titles !

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       The School of War

       On the one hand, we're always pleased when something gets translated, especially from a generally under-represented region. On the other hand: just because it's translated, doesn't mean it's any good.
       Certainly Kaelen Wilson-Goldie's review of Alexandre Najjar's The School of War in the Daily Star, Another war memoir, another sob story (!), suggests this isn't exactly a must-read:

The trouble with The School of War is that it is a modest, meandering memoir arriving late to the canon of Lebanese literature, which is already crowded with examples (a few of them brilliant) of the memoir's tougher, more ambitious and quite often more brutal older brother, the novel.

       (Of course, how much of that canon is accessible to English-speaking readers ... ?)
       As to author Najjar:

According to the jacket copy for The School of War, he is considered to be among the best of the country's novelists -- though not, one hopes, on the basis of this particular book, which should not, and could not, call itself a novel.

       In case you are still interested, see the Telegram publicity page, or pre-order your copy at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com. And you can also check out Alexandre Najjar's official site.

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       Ignacio Padilla reviews

       The most recent additions to the complete review are our reviews of two titles by Ignacio Padilla:

• Shadow without a Name
• Antipodes

       Definitely shows some promise. He has the style, and we're curious to see what he's going to do with it.

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

       Sexiest 25 ?

       PowellsBooks.Blog points us to Playboy's list of The 25 Sexiest Novels ever Written. Well, at least it's more fun than that New York Times list .....
       We actually have four of the titles under review (more than from the NYTBR list ...):

• Crash by J.G Ballard
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• Singular Pleasures by Harry Mathews

       Some imaginative choices (the Mathews ... though you have to wonder: is that sexy ?) -- but the focus is almost entirely modern: Fanny Hill is the only pre-20th century work that makes the cut.

       (German readers can find a bigger dose of erotic (which admittedly does not equate with sexy) lit on the CD-ROM Erotische Literatur von Lysistrata bis Lady Chatterley. 40,000 pages worth ! The list of contents gives you an idea of what's on offer (it's not restricted to novels, which lets more older stuff slip in).)

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       Tony nominations

       The Tony nominations are out.
       The only Best Play nominee we have under review is Alan Bennett's The History Boys.

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

       Yehoshua at AJC Centennial

       Israeli novelist A.B.Yehoshua was on a panel to discuss The Future of the Past: What Will Become of the Jewish People ? (along with, among others, Cynthia Ozick) and things apparently did not go well. Conal Urquhart reports on the event and the resulting to-do in Fury as Israeli writer criticises US Jews in The Observer:

According to Rosner, people at the conference described the writer as 'impertinent', 'tasteless' and 'foolish'.

       And: "He scoffed at Ozick" !

       The great thing about the Internet: you can judge for yourself. Watch the whole (long !) panel here.

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       Library of Burned Books

       Deutsche Welle reports that Library of Burned Books to Recall Nazi Barbarism:

A German foundation plans to create a "library of burned books" to honor authors persecuted by the Nazis.

       It's the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies (though we couldn't find information about the project at the site). They hope to publish 316 of the burned titles, and distribute them widely in Germany, especially to school libraries.

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       Pastior to get Büchner-Prize

       The Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung have announced that Rumanian-born German writer (and Oulipo member !) Oskar Pastior will be the recipient of the € 40,000 Georg-Büchner-Preis, probably the most prestigious German literary honour.
       Typically for German prizes, they give him lots of time to prepare his speech: the awards ceremony is 21 October.

       (The only Pastior title we have under review is his o du roher iasmin.)

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       Theft review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is our review of Peter Carey's Theft.

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

       Ugresic interviews

       Dubravka Ugresic was in NY a few weeks ago for the PEN World Voices festival, and now there's an interview with her at House of Mirth.
       Local barkeep Michael Orthofer talked to her too, and his interview is up at the current crQ.

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       Reading the World, and more

       At the Reading the World-site we learn not only about the current RTW programme, but also get pointed to Bill Marx's wbur review of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's Seven Stories (which, you'll recall, we were similarly enthusiastic about a few weeks back). We're thrilled to see the deserving book get some more coverage (and pleased that RTW is keeping an eye out for this sort of thing as well) !
       Marx also mentions the RTW-efforts -- though he does note:

And why publicize classics, such as Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, when lovers of literature need to be introduced to the neglected brilliance of Krzhizhanovsky and Platonov ? Major writers shouldn't be left out on the margins.

       Meanwhile, if you haven't discovered it on your own yet, note the excellent RTW coverage going on at Emerging Writers Network -- reviews of lots of the titles (and more to come) !

       And don't forget that the Words without Borders book groups are starting up this week, Dalkey Archive Press' Chad Post leading the discussion of Dubravka Ugresic's (see our interview ...) new (to the US) novel, The Ministry of Pain. (Not sure exactly how that is going to work, but the RTW-site (and the links there) should point you in the right direction.)

       (Updated - 16 May): The discussion can be found here.

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       No(n) fiction coverage at the NYTBR

       As we mentioned re. The New York Times Book Review's efforts to identify "the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years", what's most surprising about it is that editor Sam Tanenhaus shows this much interest in anything to do with fiction.
       We've complained about this repeatedly, but even though we sense it's futile -- Tanenhaus appears set in his very narrow ways, and other readers don't seem to be complaining too much -- we can't help complain yet again about the preponderance of non-fiction coverage, and the absence of fiction coverage in the NYTBR.
       Looking at the full-length reviews in the 14 May issue devoted to individual titles (i.e. excluding reviews that lump together several titles in one review), we find: reviews of 2 adult fiction titles, compared to individual reviews of 14 (!) non-fiction titles.
       It's kiddie week at the NYTBR, so maybe Tanenhaus figures the balance of non-serious coverage (which is surely what he thinks wasting space on fiction amounts to) is covered by the 'Children's Books' section ..... (Of one of the books in the kids' section a reviewer even writes: "I strongly suspect it was written for adults", but even if we count that, full-length fiction-reviews are outnumbered 3:14.)
       Yes, this week also has a 'Fiction Chronicle', stuffing "coverage" of five fiction titles (including Dubravka Ugresic's The Ministry of Pain ...) on one page, but this section is so irrelevant that obviously not even the NYTBR copy-editors (much less the editors) actually read it, as suggested by the fact that Michael Agovino's discussion of Gilles Rozier's The Mercy Room includes the baffling sentence:

While it may be fun for book clubs to try to decipher the clues of the narrator's identity, this device that shows little faith in the story itself, which is simple but complex, with themes well worth exploration: heroism and cowardice, domination and submission, war and comeuppance, sexual needs versus sexual wants.

       (Which, even if the missing words had been included, is not great criticism. (We've probably done it at some -- possibly even several -- points in our lives, too, but saying something is "simple but complex" is about as desperate as it gets.)

       So, yes, additional fiction coverage gets squeezed in here and there -- the occasional Crime round-up, etc. -- but as far as stand-alone, one-review-for-one-book reviews go, the NYTBR is looking more than ever like it's non-fiction all the time. The ratio of such reviews covering fiction v. non-fiction in the past nine issues is:

   14/5: 2 to 14
   7/5: 5 to 12
   30/4: 4 to 11
   23/4: 7 to 10
   16/4: 4 to 11
   9/4: 8 to 10
   2/4: 5 to 11
   26/3: 4 to 15
   19/3: 7 to 11

       So in the past nine issues there have never been more than 8 full-length reviews devoted to individual fiction titles, and never less than 10 devoted to non-fiction titles. The totals ? 46 fiction, 105 non-fiction.
       (Obviously, we do things very differently here, and aren't as focussed on current publications, but a quick count suggests the ratio of fiction-to-non-fiction titles covered at the complete review is at least 5 to 1, and probably higher.)
       And this doesn't even take into account what books they're covering (and what books they aren't ...).

       (For what it's worth -- not much, to us, but still -- we do note that there appears to be considerably more poetry coverage under Tanenhaus than under the previous administrations.)

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       ALA conference

       The 32nd Annual Meeting and Conference of the African Literature Association starts in Accra, Ghana, later this week.
       A fairly interesting-sounding programme (the theme is "Pan-Africanism In The 21st Century: Generations In Creative Dialogue"); we hope there will be decent coverage of this.

       (Updated - 19 May): See now also a report on Adzei Bekoe's opening speech at Ghanaweb.

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       Writer-politicians in Nigeria ?

       In the Daily Sun Mike Jimoh makes A case for writer politicians in Nigeria:

But here in Nigeria, politics and writing or politicians and writers hardly ever mix. The two are like oil and water. Whether deliberately or not, writers themselves are the ones putting up the barriers.

       (We do wonder about that picture of Achebe they use to illustrate the article .....)

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

       Afghan publishing

       A bit of information about the situation in Afghanistan in the MNA report, Afghan poets discuss their nation’s literature at Tehran book fair -- including:

Afghan poet Mohammad Hassanzadeh said that the Afghan publishing industry was established several decades ago but there is still no publication in Afghanistan, adding, "Most of the books distributed in the country are published in Iran."

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       Shona detective novels

       In The Herald (Zimbabwe) Wonder Guchu reports that Authors seek to reprimand, shape society in Shona detective novels. Not quite Alexander McCall Smith, but still of some interest.
       No surprise that, as in so many former British colonies (but hardly anywhere else):

For a long time, James Hardley Chase wrote the only known and much-read detective stories in Zimbabwe.

       But apparently there's quite a bit of local stuff now too -- though:

With time, Zimbabwean authors -- Mordekai Hamutyinei, James Kawara and Edward Kaugare among others -- sought to provide fast-paced thriller detective stories in Shona. But just like a typical Shona novel, these books seek to reprimand as a way of controlling the society.

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       Literary Discourse

       The site of The Standard (Kenya) has a number of sections you can click through to -- the usual stuff, for the most part: besides Home, there's News, Sports, Editorial, Cartoon, Your Letters, Special Reports, Columnists, and Politics.
       But there's one more, and we must admit we're impressed. Why don't more newspapers have a section for Literary Discourse ?

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

       Everyman profile

       In The Guardian Lucasta Miller profiles Everyman-series publisher David Campbell, in Bound for glory. The classic imprint was apparently revived by Campbell -- though it's now in the hands of Random House/Knopf:

Everyman's continued survival, Campbell feels, has been assured since it was sold three years ago to the US publisher, Knopf. "I don't think it has really affected Everyman's independent status." The relationship with Knopf was always close; from the beginning, in 1991, Everyman had an arrangement that Knopf buy their books and market them in the States. Without them Campbell, who remains publisher, feels Everyman might never have got off the ground in the first place.

       (See also the official Knopf-Everyman-page -- or don't. (Someone explain to us why the splash page announcing a new website is due up in May has to be a Flash page ... (Flash ranking right behind ActiveX and ahead of pdf as the web-page accessories/formats that we most detest). And isn't it May already ... ?).
       Of course, the new incarnation isn't quite the old one:

Founded in 1906 by Joseph Dent, it had been revolutionary in its day for providing pocket-sized editions of the classics at a shilling. The books were exquisitely produced -- Dent was committed to high design ideals, employing the talents of Aubrey Beardsley, among others. After the paperback revolution of the mid-20th century, the imprint lost its way. The Everyman hardbacks of the post-war years lacked the aesthetic appeal of their predecessors; the introduction of the paperback in 1960 was far too late to compete with its rivals.

       The key word and attribute of course being: "pocket-sized". Oh, how we love that ! They're actually pretty crappy quality, but we still snap up the stray Dent volumes when we find them -- and what a wonderful pleasure it is to be able to slip a volume of the 6-volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire or the 4-volume Clarissa into one's pocket. The modern counterparts are certainly better-quality (physically) but -- except for a few stray titles -- they're of the same ridiculous over-size as most any other hardback.
       But at least the new series does offer some new stuff as well:

The new Everyman's Library differs from its Edwardian counterpart in that it does not simply reprint old texts, such as Austen or Dickens, that are out of copyright. Indeed, it could be said to be establishing a constantly growing canon, including living authors in its list of "classics". It comes as a surprise to discover that once a book, such as Midnight's Children, has gone into paperback, the hardback rights are easy to acquire.

       That's an interesting point -- that the hardback rights become cheap -- but unfortunately the hardbacks themselves remain pricey ....

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       Alexander Zinoviev (1922-2006)

       Alexander Zinoviev, expelled from the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, has passed away; see, for example the BBC obituary.
       For all his dissident credentials this writer and professor of logic (!) made some unusual choices. As the obituary in The Independent notes:

He also performed a U-turn on Stalin, a man he had once derided, claiming that he was the most effective leader the Soviet Union had ever had.

       And don't expect any dramatisations of any of his works to be performed at the Comédie-Française any time soon (cf. Handke, cont'd.). As the Daily Telegraph obituary notes:

A fervent supporter of Slobodan Milosevic, he was co-chairman of an international committee to defend the fallen Serbian tyrant.

       (No word whether like-minded Handke will speak at the funeral on Monday .....)
       See also his official site and the obituary in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

       Best work of American fiction of the last 25 Years ?

       Widely noted and discussed, The New York Times Book Review's editor Sam Tanenhaus:

sent out a short letter to a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to please identify "the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years."

       125 of them responded, and the results -- to be printed in the 21 May issue of the NYTBR -- are now available online.
       Toni Morrison's Beloved came out tops, with 15 votes. (See also A.O.Scott's essay In Search of the Best.)

       Obviously, this will generate lots of commentary, so I'll just make two observations, one general and one personal

       1) No surprise that Tanenhaus -- notoriously indifferent to literature in translation -- would limit his question to American fiction. (Well, a small surprise that he has this much interest in fiction .....) It's fair enough -- but it's also typical.

       2) I read a fair amount -- 200 books a year over the past quarter-century sounds about right, 5000 titles over the period covered, give or take a few hundred -- but I've read a mere two of the titles that received multiple votes: the first Rabbit-novel by Updike (a 1960 work, that somehow slips in as part of the bigger Rabbit-quartet) and Philip Roth's The Plot Against America. So now I'm wondering (as many of you no doubt long have) about my qualifications to run a literary weblog and review site -- and what the hell I've been reading all these years.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Enzensberger's losers

       We recently reported on Hans Magnus Enzensberger's conversation with Philip Gourevitch as part of the PEN World Voice festival, where they discussed his essay The Radical Loser.
       As we mentioned, he has expanded it into a (small) book, Schreckens Männer: Versuch über den radikalen Verlierer, which is now available (in German). (See the Suhrkamp publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.de.)
       Early (German) reactions are now in at Die Zeit (Die Bombe Mensch by Sven Hillenkamp), as well as Der Standard and Die Welt.

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       Tom Wolfe on the novel (and much more)

       We don't much care for Tom Wolfe, and so ordinarily we wouldn't bother linking to an interview with him -- especially if it has a silly title such as: Not Just Another Ice-Cream-Suit-Wearing, Pen-Wielding Master of the Statusphere, as Bruce Cole's conversation with him in the May/June issue of the official NEH magazine, Humanities, does -- but we can't resist sharing some good ol' MFA-bashing with you:

For the novel now, it's all downhill. It's heading downhill very fast because the writers today almost always come out of Master of Fine Arts programs such as the famous ones at Iowa and Stanford. These programs are like standing water. Mosquitoes breed in standing water. It has become unfashionable to put your hands in the social muck of a society and deal with all these vulgar motivations such as social status or greed or anything of this sort.

The psychological novel, which is mainly the novel of yourself at home, is what is taught. Your own experience is the only valid experience that you can draw from.

       Discuss.

       We agree with him that the (American, and now British) novel is on a dangerous road -- though one can't generalize quite as much as he does -- but we are a bit more confident in its staying power than he is:

Anyway, nonfiction was very exciting. It remains, I think, a very strong direction and one that will survive, unlike the novel. There's no reason why the novel will survive, except as an anachronism like epic poetry.

       (We can just see Sam Tanenhaus' head bobbing in agreement .....)

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       Chaos and All That review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is our review of Liu Sola's Chaos and All That.

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

       Handke, cont'd.

       We've mentioned the fun surrounding the Comédie-Française's (well, CF programmer Bozonnet's) decision to strike a Peter Handke play from their programme because he decided Handke's enthusiasm for Slobo Milosevic was simply too unpalatable. There's been some weblog coverage, but overall not much English-language interest -- though finally there's an op-ed piece, in The Times, by Rachel Campbell-Johnston, Two months after his death, Slobo still finds a way to stir up trouble.

       We figured Uwe Wittstock had it right in his opinion piece in Die Welt, Liebe zum Skandal, where he wonders what Bozonnet hoped to achieve -- and notes that it's led to the baffling result of winning sympathy for the otherwise (on this subject) much-reviled Handke. Turns out there's only so much sympathy: we mentioned the manifesto opposing what they see as the censoring of Handke, but it wouldn't be France if there weren't now a counter-manifesto: Olivier Py's A plus tard, Peter Handke (which can be translated as: 'See you later, Peter Handke'). The manifesto in support of Handke had its Nobel laureate supporter -- Jelinek -- , and this one has its -- Gao Xianjian. Among the 150 others who have signed it, agreeing that part of artistic freedom is the freedom to censor (well, some bizarre idea like that anyway) are Hélène Cixous and Ariane Mnouchkine
       See also the article in Libération, Handke mobilise contre lui -- which notes that the manifesto is apparently being called: "Le droit de dire non" ('The right to say No').
       Also in the Libération, the reminder that French minister of culture Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres met with Handke (and his translator) a few days ago. (The minister had previously put some pressure on Bozonnet to change his mind, but to little effect.)

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       Translation support

       The Guardian's Culture Vulture weblog is doing a nice job of drawing attention to international literature. There's their World Literature Tour (currently in Japan), and the occasional other commentary, such as Eric Dickens' Finds in translation.
       Among the authors he mentions:

Yuri Andrukhovych has written one of the few Ukrainian postmodernist novels to have been translated into English -- Perverzion, translated by Michael Naydan -- but he is also a blunt purveyor of home truths when it comes to central and eastern Europe. At Leipzig, Andrukhovych suggested that Ukrainians should be afforded visa-free travel to western Europe. But are they being afforded such travel into the minds of British readers ?

       Definitely not, alas !

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       More titles in Turkey

       As we mentioned yesterday, the American publishing industry has run out of ideas and drastically cut back the number of titles that came to market in 2005. Just to rub in how embarrassing that is, just released Turkish statistics show that even there the number of titles being published is increasing dramatically; see Reader Interest in Turkish Authors Increases at Zaman:

According to statistics for the last six years, a 100 percent increase has been observed in the number of publishers and a 175 percent in the variety of the books available has been recorded in Turkey, as reader interest in Turkish authors has also climbed.

       Admittedly, this hasn't worked out entirely as hoped:

The variety of publications has increased but the number of copies has dropped.

       And we're not sure whether this is a good sign either:

That is the reader interest in Turkish authors increased, Tuzuner said, and a considerable drop in the publication of translated books was also observed.

       (It all depends whether the translation situation was previously like that in the US (i.e. essentially negligible in the first place) or like in a normal country.)

(Posted by: complete review)    - permanent link -

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       Parasite Eve review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is our review of Sena Hideaki's Parasite Eve.

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