Just as the Reagan/Bush(es) spawned Michael Moore, the pendulum is apparently swinging the other way now.
"With a mix of moral lessons, outrage and an apocalyptic view of the future, Mr. Beck, a longtime radio host who jumped to Fox from CNN’s Headline News channel this year, is capturing the feelings of an alienated class of Americans.
In an interview, Mr. Beck, who recently rewatched the 1976 film “Network,” said he identified with the character of Howard Beale, the unhinged TV news anchorman who declares on the air that he is “mad as hell.”
Apparently Glenn Beck, is catering to the ever shrinking Republican base in America and getting the numbers.
His associates concede that it's great television.
Of course you have to shower afterward.
Posted by Dave
Monday, March 30, 2009
Remember to tip the paperboy
Doubleday Canada is set to begin saturation bombing of Toronto with Joy Fielding novels.
'According to a press release the company sent out today, it has partnered with the National Post to give away 10,000 copies of Joy Fielding’s new-to-mass-market 2008 thriller, Charley’s Web, by bundling it into subscriber copies of the paper in the Greater Toronto Area. The giveaway is intended to promote Fielding’s new novel, Still Life, which was released in hardcover earlier this week.'
It should be noted that the National Post has amped up its book coverage of late, but I'm surprised to learn that paper even had ten thousand subscribers.
Posted by Dave
'According to a press release the company sent out today, it has partnered with the National Post to give away 10,000 copies of Joy Fielding’s new-to-mass-market 2008 thriller, Charley’s Web, by bundling it into subscriber copies of the paper in the Greater Toronto Area. The giveaway is intended to promote Fielding’s new novel, Still Life, which was released in hardcover earlier this week.'
It should be noted that the National Post has amped up its book coverage of late, but I'm surprised to learn that paper even had ten thousand subscribers.
Posted by Dave
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Of course the hardest part of forming a band is coming up with a name
The local paper helped out yesterday and as such the Words Worth Men's Book Club is set for Apr 23rd at the shop at 7 pm. Updates will be on the site but for now that's the idea.
I'd like to start with crime fiction and probably branch out from there, but at this point everything is kinda fluid.
Anything for a drink.
Posted by Dave
I'd like to start with crime fiction and probably branch out from there, but at this point everything is kinda fluid.
Anything for a drink.
Posted by Dave
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
allowing for hyperbole
I knew I wasn't the only one who loathed the word "unputdownable", although now it's use suggests full on irony, rather than breathless excitement.
But in Britain apparently they're a bit late on the backlash.
"There are certain turns of phrase in the modern reviewers' arsenal that are guaranteed to turn the stomach of any reader. It is these descriptions that are then shoved on a dust jacket or printed on a giant advertising board slotted on the wall of a London tube station. "Unputdownable" is one: a Germanic agglomerate of a verb, an adverb, an adjectival ending and a privative prefix that bring to mind some indomitable hardback with springs wired into its spine. No matter how many times you throw it away – angrily at first, then in desperate terror – it always bounces back to smack you on the nose."
On the subject though: I've put it down lots of times, but Ron Currie's new novel is so damn good it's....well.
Posted by Dave
But in Britain apparently they're a bit late on the backlash.
"There are certain turns of phrase in the modern reviewers' arsenal that are guaranteed to turn the stomach of any reader. It is these descriptions that are then shoved on a dust jacket or printed on a giant advertising board slotted on the wall of a London tube station. "Unputdownable" is one: a Germanic agglomerate of a verb, an adverb, an adjectival ending and a privative prefix that bring to mind some indomitable hardback with springs wired into its spine. No matter how many times you throw it away – angrily at first, then in desperate terror – it always bounces back to smack you on the nose."
On the subject though: I've put it down lots of times, but Ron Currie's new novel is so damn good it's....well.
Posted by Dave
This book smells faintly of barbecue sauce
The Guardian wonders how to "re-masculate" reading.
' Thanks to the endurance of the stereotype that reading is for girls, is it too late to persuade those in possession of Y chromosomes that enjoying a book (or two or three simultaneously) is a perfectly masculine activity? It doesn't help, of course, that so many books are clad in covers which are bright pink or otherwise offensively girly. I don't want to read them on the bus, so I can only imagine that men must be even more discouraged.'
The problem isn't that too many book covers are pink, the problem is that there isn't a male Oprah or even a subtle male stalking horse out there to begin with.
I'm not sure how to make that happen, but perhaps there's an olfactory marketing ploy waiting to be born.
' Thanks to the endurance of the stereotype that reading is for girls, is it too late to persuade those in possession of Y chromosomes that enjoying a book (or two or three simultaneously) is a perfectly masculine activity? It doesn't help, of course, that so many books are clad in covers which are bright pink or otherwise offensively girly. I don't want to read them on the bus, so I can only imagine that men must be even more discouraged.'
The problem isn't that too many book covers are pink, the problem is that there isn't a male Oprah or even a subtle male stalking horse out there to begin with.
I'm not sure how to make that happen, but perhaps there's an olfactory marketing ploy waiting to be born.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
make me a believer
Zoe Heller pictured here and heard here, has written a beauty of a book that I'm a bit late on.
I've tracked it a bit, but have delayed the proverbial two cents.
But the Believers is really my kind of stuff.
I'm a sucker for the political novel insofar as it can so readily illustrate how we live and choose to live.
Unless you have David Lodge's singular gift for storytelling, most of our hopes, fears, dreams and disappointments inevitably cleave to our politics whether we acknowledge it or not.
What we believe and how we live are the meat of the modern novel and British author Zoe Heller works those rooms very well indeed.
The relationship between Audrey and Joel appears based on a shared revolutionary zeal, even as they barrel into the second half of their lives, complete with three children and a status that comes with the perception in certain quarters of having hung onto their ideals rather than becoming acquisitive suburbanites.
Joel is a lefty lawyer in post 9/11 New York who while defending a "person of interest" has a stroke in the courtroom and spends rest of the book in a coma.
Audrey and Joel have three kids who serve as fodder for her scorn and exasperation at the outset, but each of them struggle under her glare, and fitfully come into their own.
Rosa a socialist who is searching for a new faith, Lenny, an adopted cross addict and worse, politically disconnected son,--and Karla, the dutiful daughter largely unhappy in both her married and professional life, round out the major players.
Anyone who has ever disappointed a parent or who can privately admit that their kids aren't up to par will find a monstrous guilty pleasure in devouring the exchanges between Karla and Audrey.
As Joel is offstage, it's Audrey who is the fulcrum on which this comic and affecting tale rests.
Her ball of resentments and disappointments, her refusal to see anything in a non-political construct, and her reaction to the grenade tossed into her life by a woman claiming to have a child by Joel years earlier drive the book.
Audrey is a fantastic creation, the kind of fully drawn character I'm sure most novelists have in mind when they start their book; but sweat blood to create.
Some reviewers have noted some similarities to Clare Messud's novel from a few years back, the Emperor's Children and that's a valid point.
I was more than ready to like the Believers on it's own merits, but such comparison only added to my impatience for Heller's book to arrive.
It's a bit more comedic and despite the mess these characters create, Heller keeps all of them in check and maintains a lightness throughout.
It's a balance that satisfies almost entirely.
Posted by David
I've tracked it a bit, but have delayed the proverbial two cents.
But the Believers is really my kind of stuff.
I'm a sucker for the political novel insofar as it can so readily illustrate how we live and choose to live.
Unless you have David Lodge's singular gift for storytelling, most of our hopes, fears, dreams and disappointments inevitably cleave to our politics whether we acknowledge it or not.
What we believe and how we live are the meat of the modern novel and British author Zoe Heller works those rooms very well indeed.
The relationship between Audrey and Joel appears based on a shared revolutionary zeal, even as they barrel into the second half of their lives, complete with three children and a status that comes with the perception in certain quarters of having hung onto their ideals rather than becoming acquisitive suburbanites.
Joel is a lefty lawyer in post 9/11 New York who while defending a "person of interest" has a stroke in the courtroom and spends rest of the book in a coma.
Audrey and Joel have three kids who serve as fodder for her scorn and exasperation at the outset, but each of them struggle under her glare, and fitfully come into their own.
Rosa a socialist who is searching for a new faith, Lenny, an adopted cross addict and worse, politically disconnected son,--and Karla, the dutiful daughter largely unhappy in both her married and professional life, round out the major players.
Anyone who has ever disappointed a parent or who can privately admit that their kids aren't up to par will find a monstrous guilty pleasure in devouring the exchanges between Karla and Audrey.
As Joel is offstage, it's Audrey who is the fulcrum on which this comic and affecting tale rests.
Her ball of resentments and disappointments, her refusal to see anything in a non-political construct, and her reaction to the grenade tossed into her life by a woman claiming to have a child by Joel years earlier drive the book.
Audrey is a fantastic creation, the kind of fully drawn character I'm sure most novelists have in mind when they start their book; but sweat blood to create.
Some reviewers have noted some similarities to Clare Messud's novel from a few years back, the Emperor's Children and that's a valid point.
I was more than ready to like the Believers on it's own merits, but such comparison only added to my impatience for Heller's book to arrive.
It's a bit more comedic and despite the mess these characters create, Heller keeps all of them in check and maintains a lightness throughout.
It's a balance that satisfies almost entirely.
Posted by David
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
lists and shockings
The Booker International list is here. A proud Canadian would call it Alice Munro and a cast of others, but I'm hoping Dubravka Ugresic makes some moves. She's a fine writer, the site is cool and I just like saying Dubravka Ugresic.
The Orange Prize list is here, and perhaps most importantly, the Tournament of Books has blown through the first round. A few heavies got bounced, so an upset may be in the offing.
Posted by Dave
The Orange Prize list is here, and perhaps most importantly, the Tournament of Books has blown through the first round. A few heavies got bounced, so an upset may be in the offing.
Posted by Dave
Monday, March 16, 2009
Kim Echlin-The Disappeared
Hamish Hamilton Canada has just published Kim Echlin's third novel
and it's unreal.
The Disappeared is a slim passionate work about the love between Ann Greaves, a Montrealer and her Cambodian lover Serey, a musician and student in self-imposed exile in the late 70s during the time of Pol Pot and the infamous Killing Fields.
Echlin takes on a huge subject with deftness and an extraordinary poetics.
She has effortlessly blended both an evocative language with an almost anthropological telling of Serey's returning to Cambodia during the brief period when the borders opened and before the genocide and Vietnamese invasion.
Echlin has compressed the time-line, so I may be off in that regard.
Nevertheless, The Disappeared is extraordinary--a heartbreaker of a novel possessed of beauty and a fearless surefootedness.
I'd be shocked to read a more affecting Canadian novel this year.
Posted by Dave
and it's unreal.
The Disappeared is a slim passionate work about the love between Ann Greaves, a Montrealer and her Cambodian lover Serey, a musician and student in self-imposed exile in the late 70s during the time of Pol Pot and the infamous Killing Fields.
Echlin takes on a huge subject with deftness and an extraordinary poetics.
She has effortlessly blended both an evocative language with an almost anthropological telling of Serey's returning to Cambodia during the brief period when the borders opened and before the genocide and Vietnamese invasion.
Echlin has compressed the time-line, so I may be off in that regard.
Nevertheless, The Disappeared is extraordinary--a heartbreaker of a novel possessed of beauty and a fearless surefootedness.
I'd be shocked to read a more affecting Canadian novel this year.
Posted by Dave
No refunds, idiots
Chuck Norris, action hero and early (only?) Mike Huckabee supporter has sued Penguin over the book "The Truth About Chuck Norris:400 Facts About the Worlds Greatest Human" alleging that some of the made up facts may actually lead fans to believe that among other things, Chuck Norris can charge a cell phone by rubbing it against his beard.
"Defendants have misappropriated and exploited Mr. Norris's name and likeness without authorization for their own commercial profit," said the lawsuit."
Reportedly, Norris is going to self-finance a Dolph Lundgren biopic with his court winnings.
Posted by Dave
"Defendants have misappropriated and exploited Mr. Norris's name and likeness without authorization for their own commercial profit," said the lawsuit."
Reportedly, Norris is going to self-finance a Dolph Lundgren biopic with his court winnings.
Posted by Dave
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
We knew her when
Marina (Good to a Fault) Endicott has won the Commonwealth Book Prize, along with Joan Thomas.
Endicott is a favourite around here and she should have won the Giller when she was listed.
Good news, that.
Endicott is a favourite around here and she should have won the Giller when she was listed.
Good news, that.
She can time travel wherever she wants
Audrey Niffenegger is doing fine, thanks for asking.
"After a fiercely contested auction, Scribner, a unit of Simon & Schuster, bought the rights to publish the new novel, “Her Fearful Symmetry,” in the United States this fall. The book is a supernatural story about twins who inherit an apartment near a London cemetery and become embroiled in the lives of the building’s other residents and the ghost of their aunt, who left them the flat."
The article notes that big advances don't necessarily turn into big sales numbers for second novels.
I've not read either of Charles Frazier's books, but I wonder if he's being unfairly typecast as the poster child for sophomore jinxes.
Sales figures be damned, that moniker fits more comfortable in a bunch of other places.
Posted by Dave
"After a fiercely contested auction, Scribner, a unit of Simon & Schuster, bought the rights to publish the new novel, “Her Fearful Symmetry,” in the United States this fall. The book is a supernatural story about twins who inherit an apartment near a London cemetery and become embroiled in the lives of the building’s other residents and the ghost of their aunt, who left them the flat."
The article notes that big advances don't necessarily turn into big sales numbers for second novels.
I've not read either of Charles Frazier's books, but I wonder if he's being unfairly typecast as the poster child for sophomore jinxes.
Sales figures be damned, that moniker fits more comfortable in a bunch of other places.
Posted by Dave
Tournament of Books
One a surprise, one not so much.
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri losing to Tom Piazza (mostly because it was a collection of stories, rather than a novel-grossly unfair but that's the state of play) and Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country makes short work of well..a book I've never heard of.
Three more matches to the end of Round One.
Posted by Dave
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri losing to Tom Piazza (mostly because it was a collection of stories, rather than a novel-grossly unfair but that's the state of play) and Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country makes short work of well..a book I've never heard of.
Three more matches to the end of Round One.
Posted by Dave
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Tournament of Books
In a pretty big upset, Joseph O'Neill's Neverland gets bounced by a minor Louis DeBernieres novel, and Mark Sarvas's Harry Revised outhits a Booker winner.
Says the judges,
"So Partisan’s Daughter is going to the next round. Its characters are believable as real people: When Chris thinks he’s caught Roza in a falsehood, when he’s confused about something she’s said, or when she can’t decide how to answer a question he’s posed, they tell the reader of their suspicions. The simpler plot and characters let the lovely writing and story shine through. And that makes all the difference."
and as for the next round,
"Both of these novels are pleasurable reads, but I found myself (much to my surprise) more interested in Harry Rent’s sandwich habits—he doesn’t like the Monte Cristo, even though he orders it every time—than in the perpetual “Darkness” of the Indian street described by Balram. The reason is that Harry’s inner monologue feels sincere, the endearingly authentic output of a confused mind, whereas Balram’s letters are so (over)loaded with cutting social observations that he eventually turns himself into a symbol."
Posted by David
Says the judges,
"So Partisan’s Daughter is going to the next round. Its characters are believable as real people: When Chris thinks he’s caught Roza in a falsehood, when he’s confused about something she’s said, or when she can’t decide how to answer a question he’s posed, they tell the reader of their suspicions. The simpler plot and characters let the lovely writing and story shine through. And that makes all the difference."
and as for the next round,
"Both of these novels are pleasurable reads, but I found myself (much to my surprise) more interested in Harry Rent’s sandwich habits—he doesn’t like the Monte Cristo, even though he orders it every time—than in the perpetual “Darkness” of the Indian street described by Balram. The reason is that Harry’s inner monologue feels sincere, the endearingly authentic output of a confused mind, whereas Balram’s letters are so (over)loaded with cutting social observations that he eventually turns himself into a symbol."
Posted by David
Monday, March 09, 2009
Getting down in Paris and London?
Umm.. it never occurred to me to lie about reading 1984 to impress a date, and surely nobody thinks finishing Ulysses is sexy.
"Nineteen Eighty-Four is the only entry on the list I have actually read. The others include War and Peace, Ulysses, and the Bible. Apparently people lie about having read all these books because they think it'll make them appear sexier. Which begs the question: who the hell earnestly believes that claiming to have read the Bible from beginning to end is going to get them laid? Mention your love of the New Testament on a date and you might as well stick a fork in your face and start screaming about ghosts."
Posted by Dave
"Nineteen Eighty-Four is the only entry on the list I have actually read. The others include War and Peace, Ulysses, and the Bible. Apparently people lie about having read all these books because they think it'll make them appear sexier. Which begs the question: who the hell earnestly believes that claiming to have read the Bible from beginning to end is going to get them laid? Mention your love of the New Testament on a date and you might as well stick a fork in your face and start screaming about ghosts."
Posted by Dave
Tournament of Books goes live
and Round One is a bit of a mismatch.
"Wobbling onto the court on thin, shaky legs, Steer Toward Rock feels the crowd watching her and wilts beneath its scrutiny. It’s never easy for a small, quiet book—one that the crowd had never even heard of before now—to compete in so ferocious a contest as the Tournament of Books."
TOB has been going for several years now, and the line up gets more impressive every time out.
Denied last year, it's looking like Roberto Bolano is unstoppable, but surprises are everywhere here.
This tournament is more fun than Canada Reads, and the list of sixteen finalists generally blows the Booker/GG/Giller out of the water.
Stay tuned.
Posted by Dave
"Wobbling onto the court on thin, shaky legs, Steer Toward Rock feels the crowd watching her and wilts beneath its scrutiny. It’s never easy for a small, quiet book—one that the crowd had never even heard of before now—to compete in so ferocious a contest as the Tournament of Books."
TOB has been going for several years now, and the line up gets more impressive every time out.
Denied last year, it's looking like Roberto Bolano is unstoppable, but surprises are everywhere here.
This tournament is more fun than Canada Reads, and the list of sixteen finalists generally blows the Booker/GG/Giller out of the water.
Stay tuned.
Posted by Dave
Sunday, March 08, 2009
tune in, turn on, twitter, twilight zzzzz......
My man Ron Charles looks at what the campus radicals are reading.
I'm not of the 60s generation (I was liberated from diapers while Woodstock was going on) but some of the big campaigns were for lowering the voting age and having a say on the draft. You know, wanting to be adults. If Charles is right, they college kids these days...want to be kids.
"As young people shift toward the Internet and away from exploring their political activism in books, the blood drains from their shelves. For the Twitter generation, the new slogan seems to be "Don't trust anyone over 140 characters." What you see at the next revolution is far more likely to be a well-designed Web site than a radical novel or a poem. Not to be a drag, but that's so uncool."
Time it was, and what a time it was.
Posted by Dave
I'm not of the 60s generation (I was liberated from diapers while Woodstock was going on) but some of the big campaigns were for lowering the voting age and having a say on the draft. You know, wanting to be adults. If Charles is right, they college kids these days...want to be kids.
"As young people shift toward the Internet and away from exploring their political activism in books, the blood drains from their shelves. For the Twitter generation, the new slogan seems to be "Don't trust anyone over 140 characters." What you see at the next revolution is far more likely to be a well-designed Web site than a radical novel or a poem. Not to be a drag, but that's so uncool."
Time it was, and what a time it was.
Posted by Dave
Friday, March 06, 2009
fantastic news this
It looks like a tough road for one of the best independents in Canada, but at least they're still on it.
Hats off the the good people of Halifax.
Posted by David
Hats off the the good people of Halifax.
Posted by David
No book proposal too greasy
Somewhere there are carnivores slapping their shiny pimply foreheads wondering why they didn't think of it.
Elsewhere morticians are ordering extra large coffins to be ready for the rush.
A couple of guys who love pigs more than.. ..well anything have a book deal.
Posted by Dave
Elsewhere morticians are ordering extra large coffins to be ready for the rush.
A couple of guys who love pigs more than.. ..well anything have a book deal.
Posted by Dave
True to form, CBC
I wanna hold your hand
Bob (from right down the road in Elmira) just made my week via Boing Boing.
Cory Doctorow writes on the network between sales reps and booksellers, and what the Internet can't yet replicate.
"This is the kind of longitudinal, deep, expensive expertise that gets books onto shelves, into the minds of the clerks, onto the recommended tables at the front of the store. It's labor-intensive and highly specialized, and without it, your book's sales only come from people who've already heard of it (through word of mouth, advertising, a review, etc.) and who are either motivated enough to order it direct, or lucky enough to chance on a copy on a shelf at a store that ordered it based on reputation or sales literature alone, without any hand-holding or cajoling."
This isn't to say that a few online king-makers can't make big numbers by themselves, as there are countless examples to the contrary from established authors and Print on Demand neophytes alike.
But despite everything, the relationship between good sales reps and good booksellers works because of the trust and knowledge that has built up between like minded people who've worked in the trade for so long. That can be tough to replicate in the vastness of the Web. It's going to be especially hard given the state of play; for first novels, genre stuff or short fiction collections to break out from the herd, especially when the publisher has committed a ton of resources to the inevitable turds out there, but good booksellers live for finding the good small stuff.
Even in an age of streamlined everything that's not going to go away.
Posted by Dave
Cory Doctorow writes on the network between sales reps and booksellers, and what the Internet can't yet replicate.
"This is the kind of longitudinal, deep, expensive expertise that gets books onto shelves, into the minds of the clerks, onto the recommended tables at the front of the store. It's labor-intensive and highly specialized, and without it, your book's sales only come from people who've already heard of it (through word of mouth, advertising, a review, etc.) and who are either motivated enough to order it direct, or lucky enough to chance on a copy on a shelf at a store that ordered it based on reputation or sales literature alone, without any hand-holding or cajoling."
This isn't to say that a few online king-makers can't make big numbers by themselves, as there are countless examples to the contrary from established authors and Print on Demand neophytes alike.
But despite everything, the relationship between good sales reps and good booksellers works because of the trust and knowledge that has built up between like minded people who've worked in the trade for so long. That can be tough to replicate in the vastness of the Web. It's going to be especially hard given the state of play; for first novels, genre stuff or short fiction collections to break out from the herd, especially when the publisher has committed a ton of resources to the inevitable turds out there, but good booksellers live for finding the good small stuff.
Even in an age of streamlined everything that's not going to go away.
Posted by Dave
Thursday, March 05, 2009
I blame myself
I'm a bit puzzled that someone who works at a newspaper would cheer the arrival of her executioner.
But I've never understood Margaret Wente.
Posted by Dave
But I've never understood Margaret Wente.
Posted by Dave
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
In a tough economy, turn to crime
It’s a tough economy at the moment and knowing the Peter Finch speech by heart doesn’t help.
While I’m not suggesting there’s a cure, there is a temporary measure that’s good for what ails.
Every once in awhile the stars align and a few egregious wrongs are made right. Rather than continuing to exhaust a mature trend (at a recent buying trip, a sales rep for a major U.S publisher said to me, “this book is sort of like Marley and Me only with a pig,”) some publishers are doing grand things indeed.
It’s too easy to credit Barack Obama with this, but some classic American crime writing of the highest order is back in print via Random House and the University of Chicago Press.
One of the coolest American imprints around, the renowned Black Lizard is bringing back the Hap and Leonard novels from east Texan crime writer and Edgar-award winner Joe R. Lansdale.
Hap and Leonard are the heroes in the series and they are as different from one another as two Texans could be. Leonard Pine is an old hippie trying to keep his head above water in the mid 80s and his best friend Hap Collins is a gay black Viet Nam veteran. In each of the first two novels Savage Season and Mucho Mojo, people from Leonard’s past present the pair with opportunity and curse in equal measure in a madcap spree thrill as good as anything Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen ever dreamed up.
Lansdale has a comic touch, but an equal ability to write stripped down hard boiled suspense, perhaps culminating with The Bottoms, an Edgar-award winning yarn out of print for now, but great swaths of work are coming back in 2009. He’s a born storyteller, as able to make one squeamish one minute and laugh out loud the next. No fan of hard boiled crime fiction will be led astray with the Hap and Leonard series.
Joe Lansdale has written comedy, horror, westerns, criticism and works for kids-in short he’s essential stuff. The rest of the Hap and Leonard novels are due in the spring and summer.
Black Lizard produces eye catching paperbacks and combined with a shot of something on ice; it’s a fine way to spend an evening.
Donald Westlake’s recent passing was noted everywhere, and his like won’t be seen again.
Westlake, like Joe Lansdale could do it all. He wrote seamless narrative and could establish a mood early and keep a book moving with style and ease. It’s trite to say, but if at gunpoint I had to pick one writer to stick to from front to finish, he’d be the guy. He wrote over one hundred books under a slew of pseudonyms, and while some of the work is out there, far too much of it is out of print. It’s a cruel irony given that fact that the appetite for James Patterson seems unquenchable, but that’s for another time.
Donald Westlake got started writing pulp in the early 60s and cranked it out so fast that he had to invent pseudonyms. Four books in a calendar year weren’t uncommon in the beginning.
I’ll forgo the accolades, as everything about Donald Westlake’s life and work is here, but to their eternal credit, the University of Chicago Press has brought back the first three Parker novels that Westlake wrote under the pen name Richard Stark. There’s more on the way very shortly.
Parker is anti-hero enough not to need a first name. In the Hunter, the first of six Parker novels, our guy does a stint in a California prison and takes vengeance on a mob fixer who cut him out of a big payday.
Parker’s amorality fits with the underworld in the same way as most bad guys fit with theirs. It’s natural enough that a redemptive quality almost has to present itself; such is the internal logic of the lone wolf’s circumstance. Countless gumshoes have played both sides of the line when they had to; but Westlake’s Parker creation did it very early and very well.
Film buffs will appreciate the job Lee Marvin did in Point Blank, based on the first Parker novel, as well as the Stephen Frears film, the Grifters, for which Westlake was nominated for an Academy Award as a screenwriter. Despite that, Westlake was rarely done right by Hollywood.
Though a giant of the genre, Westlake could write like the Devil. The recent Booker Prize winner John Banville writes the forward to the reissued Parker novels and has called him “existential man at his furthest extremity, confronting a world that is even more wicked and treacherous than he is.
As such he’s no different from the characters in Albert Camus or Franz Kafka. But Westlake’s people are a hell of a lot more fun to hang out with.
While I’m not suggesting there’s a cure, there is a temporary measure that’s good for what ails.
Every once in awhile the stars align and a few egregious wrongs are made right. Rather than continuing to exhaust a mature trend (at a recent buying trip, a sales rep for a major U.S publisher said to me, “this book is sort of like Marley and Me only with a pig,”) some publishers are doing grand things indeed.
It’s too easy to credit Barack Obama with this, but some classic American crime writing of the highest order is back in print via Random House and the University of Chicago Press.
One of the coolest American imprints around, the renowned Black Lizard is bringing back the Hap and Leonard novels from east Texan crime writer and Edgar-award winner Joe R. Lansdale.
Hap and Leonard are the heroes in the series and they are as different from one another as two Texans could be. Leonard Pine is an old hippie trying to keep his head above water in the mid 80s and his best friend Hap Collins is a gay black Viet Nam veteran. In each of the first two novels Savage Season and Mucho Mojo, people from Leonard’s past present the pair with opportunity and curse in equal measure in a madcap spree thrill as good as anything Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen ever dreamed up.
Lansdale has a comic touch, but an equal ability to write stripped down hard boiled suspense, perhaps culminating with The Bottoms, an Edgar-award winning yarn out of print for now, but great swaths of work are coming back in 2009. He’s a born storyteller, as able to make one squeamish one minute and laugh out loud the next. No fan of hard boiled crime fiction will be led astray with the Hap and Leonard series.
Joe Lansdale has written comedy, horror, westerns, criticism and works for kids-in short he’s essential stuff. The rest of the Hap and Leonard novels are due in the spring and summer.
Black Lizard produces eye catching paperbacks and combined with a shot of something on ice; it’s a fine way to spend an evening.
Donald Westlake’s recent passing was noted everywhere, and his like won’t be seen again.
Westlake, like Joe Lansdale could do it all. He wrote seamless narrative and could establish a mood early and keep a book moving with style and ease. It’s trite to say, but if at gunpoint I had to pick one writer to stick to from front to finish, he’d be the guy. He wrote over one hundred books under a slew of pseudonyms, and while some of the work is out there, far too much of it is out of print. It’s a cruel irony given that fact that the appetite for James Patterson seems unquenchable, but that’s for another time.
Donald Westlake got started writing pulp in the early 60s and cranked it out so fast that he had to invent pseudonyms. Four books in a calendar year weren’t uncommon in the beginning.
I’ll forgo the accolades, as everything about Donald Westlake’s life and work is here, but to their eternal credit, the University of Chicago Press has brought back the first three Parker novels that Westlake wrote under the pen name Richard Stark. There’s more on the way very shortly.
Parker is anti-hero enough not to need a first name. In the Hunter, the first of six Parker novels, our guy does a stint in a California prison and takes vengeance on a mob fixer who cut him out of a big payday.
Parker’s amorality fits with the underworld in the same way as most bad guys fit with theirs. It’s natural enough that a redemptive quality almost has to present itself; such is the internal logic of the lone wolf’s circumstance. Countless gumshoes have played both sides of the line when they had to; but Westlake’s Parker creation did it very early and very well.
Film buffs will appreciate the job Lee Marvin did in Point Blank, based on the first Parker novel, as well as the Stephen Frears film, the Grifters, for which Westlake was nominated for an Academy Award as a screenwriter. Despite that, Westlake was rarely done right by Hollywood.
Though a giant of the genre, Westlake could write like the Devil. The recent Booker Prize winner John Banville writes the forward to the reissued Parker novels and has called him “existential man at his furthest extremity, confronting a world that is even more wicked and treacherous than he is.
As such he’s no different from the characters in Albert Camus or Franz Kafka. But Westlake’s people are a hell of a lot more fun to hang out with.
A worthy trio, perhaps
Slate asks that we add a few more to the pile.
It's getting harder to avoid reading the crime stuff of John Banville, given that he's all over those Richard Stark reissues, and it's not like I'm not paying attention to those in the know.
Lovely line from the article:
'Remember pleasure? The pleasure of reading? Believe me, this is not one of those pleas for "old-fashioned" novels with conventional plots and "characters you can identify with." I hate characters I can identify with. I read to escape myself; I'm tired of my identity.'
Extremely well put, that, and as for Henry Chang I've never read a Soho Press novel that I haven't liked.
Posted by Dave
It's getting harder to avoid reading the crime stuff of John Banville, given that he's all over those Richard Stark reissues, and it's not like I'm not paying attention to those in the know.
Lovely line from the article:
'Remember pleasure? The pleasure of reading? Believe me, this is not one of those pleas for "old-fashioned" novels with conventional plots and "characters you can identify with." I hate characters I can identify with. I read to escape myself; I'm tired of my identity.'
Extremely well put, that, and as for Henry Chang I've never read a Soho Press novel that I haven't liked.
Posted by Dave
Monday, March 02, 2009
You're only as old as you feel. Sorry, but it's true
And now an aside to a fine bookseller and passable human being--Scott Hunter. You'll always be young(ish) to me, but because I couldn't find any Harry Chapin I went with this.
Happy Birthday
Happy Birthday
Every Man Dies Alone-Hans Fallada
When the novel Every Man Dies Alone showed up last week, I was impressed by how nicely put together it was; but the Alan Furst blurb and the fact that these guys rescued it from obscurity that cinched it. For everyone who raved over Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise, I think this is going to be the superior book.
The NY Times rave is here.
Posted by Dave
The NY Times rave is here.
Posted by Dave
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