More Updike

The Guardian has several articles and video clips in remembrance of John Updike.

• Here is a video clip.
• John Crace on where a new Updike reader should start
• Or simply go to this page for their complete coverage
• But don’t forget to read the tributes from various writers

Like others have said, John Updike offered a model for the writer’s life.  By writing three pages a day, he produced over 60 books in his lifetime.  The sheer dedication and discipline is admirable.  (And to think, just three pages, not ten, not one hundred. Three.)

The Late John Updike

I can’t believe.  Death never ceases to shock me.  There was a recent article commenting on the number of writers up there in age, and how there’ll be a rush to write the biographies.  How sad that it’s coming true with each month.  We’ve lost one of the most prolific writers of the last century.  Read here and here.

Read Some More

Once again, for those who can’t get enough of book lists or for those who just want to read something but don’t know what, The Guardian has several 1,000 book lists up right now.  They’ve organized them by categories including love, crime, comedy, etc.  Click here for an introduction to the most recent list, then look to the right for links for the other lists.  They include a brief description of the book, and the variety is pretty good.

And here is a slide show in honor of the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth.

The Simple Pleasures

I have a new blog post up at The Other Journal.

This morning I took a lovely, leisurely trip to the Tattered Cover in LoDo.  Since I’ve been trying to read library books instead of buying, I haven’t gone to bookstores as frequently as I used to.  There’s nothing like taking one’s time, browsing every single shelf or looking for a specific book.  I found a hardback copy of Underworld for $6.98, and even though I have my own marked-up paperback copy of DeLillo’s masterpiece, I couldn’t resist a sturdier one.  Besides, last week I found the same bargain in a dream.  Kind of strange.  I also found a bargain-priced copy of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, and picked up Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss.  What a treat to buy a few books.  I think I’ve found a refreshed sense of excitement for reading.

Libraries: the Rise and the Rant

This article says what I’ve heard lately: libraries see new popularity. Now I know it wasn’t just my imagination over the last year and a half when I’d visit the library midday on, say, a Wednesday, only to find it more crowded than before. While this seems promising for our culture and younger generations, I do have a few words to new or inexperienced library patrons, though. In our age of cell phones and laptops and coffee shops, the library remains a whisper zone. If you’re in a designated quiet zone, don’t answer your cell phone, even if it’s to tell them that you can’t talk. When you and your child’s father pick the study carrel area, with several free, don’t choose the one crammed against mine, bring another chair, and discuss names and then start calling your friends to announce your news and ask to use their names. Congratulations, but you’ve got several months to decide and to learn respect. And to the girl with no common sense: don’t come to the library to play around on your computer and conduct loud, obnoxious personal phone calls. We can see that you’re not looking for a job like you’ve told your phone friend. Oh, and you, Mr. Business Man, just because you bring your work with you, does not mean you should bring your business calls, too. In short, show some consideration and save the loud noises for the coffee shop or bookstore.

A Pause from Inauguration Fever

…for some links and books.

Here’s an interesting look at the publishing industry (from the role of agents to editors) published in Poets & Writers.  I’ve tended to stay away from the business of writing (at least when it concerns fiction) because I haven’t had a completed novel that I’d show anyone, let alone an agent.  But slowly I’ve picked up a few tidbits here and there.  Worth the read if you’re interested in reading or writing or the business of selling books.

And this week, since I’ve compiled a few lists of books to read, here are some (writers and books) mentioned in the above article that might prove interesting if you haven’t read them yet:

• Donald Ray Polluck’s Knockemstiff
• Alice Munro
• Eudora Welty
• Julie Orringer
• Jhumpa Lahiri
• Nathan Englander
• Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
• The Kite Runner

Happy reading!

Sunday Reading

Worthy reading:

• Motown turns 50 this year.
• Kathryn Harrison wrote about Kathleen Norris’s Acedia & me in December.  I still haven’t finished the book.
• On early success.
• Book Guilt and the Classics.  And the list mentioned in the article.  I’ve read only a small 66 of the 1001.

Literary Notes for Saturday

This year looks like a great year for books.  Check out the link here for a list, including T.C. Boyle, Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, E.L. Doctorow, Jonathan Lethem, Lorrie Moore (!), Dave Eggers, Zadie Smith, and more.  I’m most excited for Zadie Smith’s nonfiction book Fail Better and for Lorrie Moore first novel in 14 years.  Not included in that list is Holly Goddard Jones’s collection of short stories, due out later this year.

And since I mentioned the article on Bush’s reading habits, it’s only fair to alert you to this one about Obama’s and the impact it may have on the publishing industry.  I only wish they included a more expansive list than the one that’s been around during the entire election process.

On to short stories:  I finally finished New Stories from the South.  It started with ZZ Packer’s fantastic introduction and went on to several great stories, including ones by Holly Goddard Jones and Pinckney Benedict.  Toward the middle I had to skip around because I couldn’t stomach a fairly vulgar and distasteful story, but then came back to the ones I missed later.

The collection ends with Kevin Brockmeimer’s story “Andrea is Changing Her Name” (which I couldn’t help thinking of the line from Cake:  “She’s changing her name from Kitty to Karen”).  The story sounds like a close third-person narrative, but only on the third page do we find out it’s a first-person narrator taking on third-person qualities.  It reminds me a little bit of Jeffrey Eugenides’s narrators in The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex, a first-person plural and a first-person omniscient (if I can call it that), respectively.  Both Eugenides and Brockmeier bend the rules of narration in ways that work.  Brockmeier’s narrator allows the reader to see into the intimate details of Andrea’s life without the sometimes intrusive and clunky qualities of a first-person narrator.  He steps over the boundaries of a first-person’s knowledge, like Cal does in Middlesex when she/he goes back in time to tell the tale of his relatives in Greece and in America before she/he was born.  While the second-person had quite the following after Lorrie Moore and Jay McInerney (though it had been used before), it seems like this kind of stretched first-person sees some use today.

Quick Reading Link

For anyone looking for some reading in 2009, check out this link to several book lists.

The Other Journal

I’ve forgotten to mention that I’ve started to contribute to the blog section over at The Other Journal. My blog there is called “A Pilgrimage of Art and Faith” and I cover topics that loosely fall in the intersection of art and faith. I say loosely because today I wrote about the Gaza conflict. There’s a tenuous connection to art and faith, I’ll attempt, but the conflict in Gaza is too important not to mention.

According to the website, The Other Journal “is a online quarterly journal that aims to create space for Christian interdisciplinary reflection, exploration, and expression. Attempting to remain a notch or two more popular than the typical scholarly journal and a notch or two more scholarly than the typical popular magazine, our goal is to provide our readers with provocative, challenging and insightful Christian commentary on current social issues, political events, cultural trends, and pop phenomena.”

I love the idea of participating in a conversation about the intersection of theology and culture. I’ve hoped that this blog would be a space for something similar. I recommend checking out all the sections at The Other Journal and all the blogs, and I’m not just saying that because I contribute.