“‘A man’s brain is a bomb,’ he cried out, loosening suddenly his strange passion and striking his own skull with violence. ‘My brain feels like a bomb, night and day. It must expand! It must expand! A man’s brain must expand, if it breaks up the universe.’”
The Man Who Was Thursday / G.K. Chesterton
![“Get the hell out of Dodge” is a reference to Dodge City, Kansas, which was a favorite location for westerns in the early to mid 20th century. Most memorably, the phrase was made famous by the TV show “Gunsmoke,” in which villians were often commanded to “get the hell out of Dodge.” The phrase took on its current meaning in the 1960s and 70s when teenagers began to use it in its current form.
[via]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mcv96on39W1qjsf5ho1_400.jpg)
“Get the hell out of Dodge” is a reference to Dodge City, Kansas, which was a favorite location for westerns in the early to mid 20th century. Most memorably, the phrase was made famous by the TV show “Gunsmoke,” in which villians were often commanded to “get the hell out of Dodge.” The phrase took on its current meaning in the 1960s and 70s when teenagers began to use it in its current form.
[via]
Dubliners / James Joyce
Introduction by John Banville
James Joyce was the singular figure of modernism, and to this day his grand vision looms large over contemporary literature and the entire Western canon. His stylistic innovations were revolutionary, yet nowhere is Joyce more accessible than in this volume of short stories, a brilliant collection that celebrates, critiques, and immortalizes the place that Joyce knew better than anyone else: Dublin. From the young boy encountering death in the opening story, “The Sisters,” to the middle-aged protagonist of its haunting finale, “The Dead,” considered one of the greatest short stories of all time, Dubliners is a vivid portrait of the city in all its glory and hardship, and a seminal work that redefined the short form. Featuring a new Introduction by acclaimed novelist John Banville, this edition is not only a breathless portal into Joyce’s “dear dirty Dublin” but a vital literary treasure from one of the great masters of all time.
Here are some suggestions for your weekend
Here we are, in our first post-summer Friday. Here’s what the Picador team is diving into this weekend. Happy reading!
Alaina is continuing to cull the backlist shelves of the book room, and this time she came up with Sigrid Nunez’s The Last of Her Kind.
The book tells the story of two very different women who are college roommates at Barnard in the late 1960s. When one of them discovers, years after their friendship has ended, that the other has been convicted of a violent crime, she looks back at their shared history and comes to a certain understanding of the woman’s place in her life, in spite of their separation. I’m waiting to get further into this one to make judgment, but so far Nunez has proven masterful at portraying female friendship.
A sucker for a good pop culture essay, Gabrielle is reading Dubravka Ugresic’s collection Karaoke Culture.
At first I was concerned that the book would be all about karaoke but as it turns out, Ugresic uses it as a metaphor to explore politics and the arts. So far, it’s a lot of fun.
PJ is reading Gig, a collection of short stories about the ins and outs of people’s jobs.
It is simply a collection of people with disparate jobs talking about what said jobs are like, giving various anecdotes. Surprisingly, ones like “systems administrator” have been more fascinating than “sex worker” or “drug dealer.” Also, like much of the world I’m sure, I’m reading the new DFW biography.
Elizabeth snagged a copy of Farrar, Straus & Giroux’s upcoming title, Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan, a story of a “bookstore that’s more than a bookstore.” (That jacket is pretty awesome, as well.)
Justin is reading The Sportswriter by Richard Ford.
On living in his neighborhood in New Jersey: “Perfect Babbitts, really, all of us, even though to some extent we understood that.”
Kolt is working on Hanna Pylväinen’s debut, We Sinners. Each chapter is told by one of the nine Rovaniemi children, as they come of age in the extremely strict Laestadian church.
“Oy vey! Life’s too short for bad matzoh ball soup!” Read this book.
Books I saw today
The Conde Nast Traveler Book of Unforgettable Journeys, Volume II: Great Writers on Great Places
Edited by Klara Glowczewska
Another spellbinding trip around the globe with some of today’s most celebrated writers and journalists
Condé Nast Traveler is the preeminent travel magazine in the United States, boasting a readership of 3.5 million. This second collection of the award-winning magazine’s best travel writings, includes essays by luminaries such as, Robert Hughes, Russell Banks, E. L. Doctorow, André Aciman, Pico Iyer, and Edna O’Brien.
My First New York: Early Adventures in the Big City as Remembered by Actors, Artists, Athletes, Chefs, Comedians, Filmmakers …
Edited by David Haskell and Adam Moss
“My First New York” features candid accounts of coming to New York by more than fifty of the most remarkable people who have called the city home. Here are true stories of long nights out and wild nights in, of first dates and lost loves, of memorable meals and miserable jobs, of slow walks up Broadway and fast subway rides downtown.
Tin House: Portland/Brooklyn
Edited by Tin House
For thirteen years Tin House has been publishing out of both Brooklyn and Portland, Oregon. We draw our strength and inspiration from these two vibrant cultural centers. For the Fall, 2012 issue, we dedicate the entire issue to Portland and Brooklyn writers, artists, and musicians. From fiction by beloved Portland author Ursula K. Le Guin to provocative pieces about unapologetic hipsters and Middle Eastern enclaves in Brooklyn, we’ve found work that goes beyond the clichéd images of single-speeds and sideburns. This issue brings its readers poetry, fiction, essays, art, and interviews that showcase the unique character of each place, and how these hothouses produce such unique characters and art. It also includes a download code for 16 tracks from Portland and Brooklyn musicians curated by Amy Kline (Titus Andronicus, Hilly Eye) and Liz Harris (Grouper).
![Notes on Writing a Novel
AN ESSAY by Elizabeth Bowen
PLOT.—Essential. The Pre-Essential. Plot might seem to be a matter of choice. It is not. The particular plot is something the novelist is driven to. It is what is left after the whittling-away of alternatives. The novelist is confronted, at a moment (or at what appears to be the moment: actually its extension may be indefinite) by the impossibility of saying what is to be said in any other way.
He is forced towards his plot. By what? By the ‘what is to be said.’ What is ‘what is to be said’? A mass of subjective matter that has accumulated—impressions received, feelings about experience, distorted results of ordinary observation, and something else—x. This matter is extra matter. It is superfluous to the non-writing life of the writer. It is luggage left in the hall between two journeys, as opposed to the perpetual furniture of rooms. It is destined to be elsewhere. It cannot move till its destination is known. Plot is the knowing of destination.
Plot is diction. Action of language, language of action.
Plot is story. It is also ‘a story’ in the nursery sense = lie. The novel lies, in saying that something happened that did not. It must, therefore, contain uncontradictable truth, to warrant the original lie.
Story involves action. Action towards an end not to be foreseen (by the reader) but also towards an end which, having beenreached, must be seen to have been from the start inevitable.
[Read the rest at Narrative magazine]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8nzvlsuMO1qjsf5ho1_400.jpg)
Notes on Writing a Novel
AN ESSAY by Elizabeth Bowen
PLOT.—Essential. The Pre-Essential. Plot might seem to be a matter of choice. It is not. The particular plot is something the novelist is driven to. It is what is left after the whittling-away of alternatives. The novelist is confronted, at a moment (or at what appears to be the moment: actually its extension may be indefinite) by the impossibility of saying what is to be said in any other way.
He is forced towards his plot. By what? By the ‘what is to be said.’ What is ‘what is to be said’? A mass of subjective matter that has accumulated—impressions received, feelings about experience, distorted results of ordinary observation, and something else—x. This matter is extra matter. It is superfluous to the non-writing life of the writer. It is luggage left in the hall between two journeys, as opposed to the perpetual furniture of rooms. It is destined to be elsewhere. It cannot move till its destination is known. Plot is the knowing of destination.
Plot is diction. Action of language, language of action.
Plot is story. It is also ‘a story’ in the nursery sense = lie. The novel lies, in saying that something happened that did not. It must, therefore, contain uncontradictable truth, to warrant the original lie.
Story involves action. Action towards an end not to be foreseen (by the reader) but also towards an end which, having beenreached, must be seen to have been from the start inevitable.
[Read the rest at Narrative magazine]
Another Friday, another great bunch of books from my fellow Picadorians.
Greetings Friday Reads Club!
The clouds are hovering over the Flatiron building but our staff picks for this week are looking terrific.
Gabrielle just finished an amazing parody of a Choose Your Own Adventure book called Love is Not Constantly Wondering If You Are Making the Biggest Mistake of Your Life written by an anonymous author in Portland, OR and started City Boy: My Life in New York by Edmund White.
In true Portland style, the book was originally self-published but after a rave review in Slate the author’s friend who runs a small press was enlisted to help out with the third printing. It’s the story of the author’s years long relationship with an alcoholic girlfriend. His dedication to an authentic Choose Your Own Adventure layout is amazing. I hope it becomes a cult classic.
I just started Edmund White’s memoir, City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and ’70s. I saw him in conversation with Ann Beattie last year at McNally Jackson and thought it was one of the best events I’d been to. Ever since then I’ve been meaning to read his work. This time period and White’s perspective (gay and literary) makes this one hard to put down. Can’t wait to head to a coffee shop with it later.
Elianna is falling deep into the world of Cormac McCarthy’s BLOOD MERIDIAN and when she needs a change of pace from gouged eyeballs and scalping, she’s been perusing the NEW YORK Magazine Sex Issue and learning all about throuples.
Daniel just started CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell and is trying to finish it before Tom Hanks and Halle Berry get to it.
Darin is looking forward to reading Peter Carey’s latest, THE CHEMISTRY OF TEARS.
James is reading Ian Hamilton’s THE WILD BEASTS OF WUHAN, the 2nd Ava Lee thriller we’ll publish in 2013.
Turns out Ava is a fan of Gong Li (and Zhang Yimou). While on a flight from Newark to Hong Kong she takes in both To Live and Raise the Red Lantern. A little heavy for a long flight (I tend more toward Rob Schneider movies when I’m stuck on a plane), but she’s got great taste.
Elizabeth is reading submissions, sushi menus, and the latest issue of One Story.
PJ just read the first story in SMUT by Alan Bennett. In it, a widower has some perverse fun with her two teenaged lodgers, and comes out of her shell via some patient/doctor role play.
Have a great weekend!
I’m impressed with our friday reads
Welcome to the first Friday of August. As summer starts to wind down, our team has recommendations on how to make the most of these last weeks of summer reading.
On her last Friday in the Picador offices, intern Anya has just started Little Century, Anna Keesey’s debut, recently released from Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Both Daniel and P.J. have Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station as their read this week. P.J. recently finished it, and describes it as, “a book about a young American a’ramblin’ and a’wanderin’ around Madrid, sort of writing an epic poem.” Daniel is only 100 pages in, but this passage in particular struck him:
And yet when I imagined the total victory of those other things over poetry, when I imagined, with a sinking feeling, a world without even the terrible excuses for poems that kept faith with the virtual possibilities of the medium, without the sort of absurd ritual I’d participated in that evening, then I intuited an inestimable loss, a loss not of artworks but of art, and therefore infinite, the total triumph of the actual, and when I realized that, in such a world, I would swallow a bottle of white pills.
Alaina just finished Blame by Michelle Huneven, on Jennifer Weiner’s recommendation. She is just getting around to some of her galleys from BookExpo of America, and has plans to pick up One Last Thing Before I Go by Jonathan Tropper next.
Darin is enthralled by FSG’s All We Know: Three Lives by Lisa Cohen, a group biography of Esther Murphy, Merceds de Acosta, and Madge Garland.
High society, fashion, and old school lesbianism: these are a few of my favorite things.
Justin is working on Philip K. Dick’s Ubik.
Gabrielle just finished Christopher Beha’s debut novel What Happened to Sophie Wilder. She says:
It was enjoyable to read not only for its excellent writing but also because it made me think about life’s big issues: family, death, and faith. Christopher will be in conversation with Picador author Garret Keizer on Tuesday, August 21st at McNally Jackson to discuss Garret’s his latest book, Privacy. All in the area are invited. It’s going to be great—and lots of us Picadorians will be there. We’re fun.
This morning, I started Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. I have a serious blind spot when it comes to noir and need to correct it ASAP. I foresee lots of cigarettes, whiskey, and gunshot wounds in my future.
Stephen called Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins the “perfect summer read: absorbing, funny, stylish.”
And lastly, James recommends the “uncommonly honest” interview of Bret Easton Ellis in the Spring 2012 edition of The Paris Review.
![Soon the low red moon will rise in the inky sky, and the first wolf will come out of the ruins, raise its head, and howl, sending a lone call on high, into the icy expanses, to the distant blue wolves sitting on branches in the black groves of alien universes.
White Walls: Collected Stories / Tatyana Tolstaya
[Illustration: Ashmantle]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5empm5QE31qjsf5ho1_500.jpg)
Soon the low red moon will rise in the inky sky, and the first wolf will come out of the ruins, raise its head, and howl, sending a lone call on high, into the icy expanses, to the distant blue wolves sitting on branches in the black groves of alien universes.
White Walls: Collected Stories / Tatyana Tolstaya
[Illustration: Ashmantle]
Here’s a roundup of news surrounding the New Yorker’s science fiction issue
- Easy Writers: Guilty pleasures without guilt (subscription only)
- Literary Revolution in the Supermarket Aisle: Genre Fiction Is Disruptive Technology (Lev Grossman’s response at TIME)
- The New Yorker speaks with four writers featured in the issue
- Weekend Edition interviews Jennifer Egan about tweeting her story from the issue
- Ryan Britt at Tor reviews the issue for his “Genre in the Mainstream” column
- Wired also reviews the issue
- io9 talks about what it means that the New Yorker and Tin House both have a scifi issue
- The Slate Culture Gabfest discusses literary fiction vs. genre fiction in reference to the New Yorker article and Lev Grossman’s response
New in Paperback for June
These forthcoming paperbacks, a mixture of originals and reprints, are sure to keep your June a busy one.
[Follow the link for more info about the books and interviews with the authors]
