This just in: Talented writers are often egomaniacal passive-aggressive jerks (especially to each other).


My favorite description of a writer is a "narcissist with low self-esteem."

just do it itt then

UtV done and dusted.

Really enjoyed, most of it. An English ex consul is contemplating life, alcoholism and relationships in Mexico, just before WW2. Pretty slow pace, which is no problem for me. Sort of book to take into the coffee shop, on a day when you have nothing planned.

The contemplations on life and alcohol I enjoyed the most, just as I like Bukowski type musings.

Only part I didn't like and found a bit boring, was a scene involving his ex wife and brother, on a horse ride. Didn't get why it was in the story.

Also completed DL...LtaWS Letters from a father to a son from 1960's to 1987. The father is an ex army captain who served in WW2 and the son doesn't live up to the parents expectations in the swinging sixties and beyond. The father realises this pretty quickly, and his letters are very funny. I read them in a posh captains voice for extra effect. Recommended.

Not sure what is up next, will check out those lists posted above, or random Kindle choice (have hundreds to read).

last 75 pages of The Lost Scrapbook and about 1/3rd into American Dream Machine. Loving both, this is like the nut high in my reading life right now in terms of multitabling awesome books. And I'm on the waiting list for Building Stories, next.

The first 15-20% of this were really good - it had a really epic, galactic feel, to it. The next 20% have been really annoying 70s spiritual left wing mumbo jumbo.

For whatever reason, last week i counted up the books i have lying around that i'm actively intending to read. I have something like 50 books in my to read pile (about half by my bed, the other half in a pile in the room next door), maybe another 10 odd in my kindle that are active candidates for my next read when i finish a book, and then a small book with about 100 titles in that i've noted down, but not pulled the trigger on yet.

That's probably 4 years worth of reading at my current rate. As someone said on twitter the other day, 'i don't believe in an afterlife, but i buy books like a man who does'. At least for now, my life expectancy > my to read pile.

I empathize. I've had Under the Volcano for twenty-five years now lying around somewhere unread.

I disagree with at least point: Samuel Delaney's Hogg is as reviled as anything written in the last fifty years. Well, maybe not.

When I read Under the Volcano I found the story engaging enough and didn't think much about it as having other levels. I subsequently learned about (and looked at some of) the critical and interpretive machinery that has been brought to bear on the book, which treats it as having more complexity and more layers than, say, Ulysses,, finding allusions to the Bible, the Cabbala, the Faust story and other myths and folklore. If you want to pursue these then David Markson's Malcolm Lowry’s “Volcano”: Myth, Symbol, Meaning (1978) is said to be the best among many.

Dayum. Even Wikipedia's watered-down summary of what happens in that book is disturbing. I want to glance at an actual excerpt and I don't.

Don't you have a blog somewhere on the interwebz? IIRC TTI discovered you by recognizing your style+gushing over Updike.

I would personally pay $5 a month to subscribe to a weekly lagdonk rant. Though since we are internet acquaintances I would expect a discount.

Or you can get free content soon as y'all organize that flash fiction contest.

Yes, an earlier poster put a link up to an UtV primer type thing, which I did take a look at. Thank you, will check out that book.

I just came across this interview with Ben Fountain. He says some interesting things about Billy Lynn:
http://www.bookforum.com/interview/10661

Thanks for that RT. I wish the interview was longer. It makes me want to go back and read the book again.

Great link. TY! It enhanced my appreciation for the book.

I'll announce the flash fiction and the next short story contest next week. Just need to finish up all of the academic things this week.

Counting on you to make sure we get +5 entries next contest.

Thinking you'll be super experimental again? Or maybe your "literary" pieces were you being experimental. I never know with you

Evidently Salter is on the very, very short list of authors who can write perfect sentence after perfect sentence for a few paragraphs.

I can't believe I'd heard of him slightly but never read him or had anyone tell me to read him.

Can't ignore such high praise. Recommend a book/short story of his for a noob?

BEE is all over James Salter's All That Is and American Dream Machine by Matthew Specktor

Any other authors to follow on Twitter recs?

Nick Paumgarten has a fascinating and excellent (I thought, because it expressed my reservations very well) article on Salter in the April 15 New Yorker that doesn't seem to be behind their paywall:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...act_paumgarten. Paumgarten comments on the "beautiful sentence" reputation and on Salter's own feeling about that reputation these days. My overall take from the piece: Salter is a consummate stylist but a very cold person--and it shows in his fiction.

I felt that way reading Salter's 1975 novel Light Years, which is one of his two most praised. (The other is A Sport and a Pastime.)

The prose style was indeed beautiful. Here's a passage:
The novel traces the slow downhill development of the relationship between a couple whose "life is very curious. Their affection for each other isn’t very great, and yet they’re devoted.” The novel’s erotic descriptions of their affairs and adultery from both the male and female point of view is quite striking; the glories of sexual experience seem somewhat overstated (though Salter does also suggest the disappointments and decline in intensity that can also be part of this). In all of Salter’s work, including in his memoir, adultery is a preoccupation.

I found it a powerful reading experience, but I was not moved to read more of Salter’s work.

I am going to read..The haunting of the Hill House & the picture of Dorian Gray horror books.

Picture of Dorian Gray isnt really a "horror" book, but it is excellent, so enjoy

Finished 'A Sport & a Pastime' by Salter, so that would be my recommendation. There's no adultery in this one, the couple the novel revolves around are both young, but there is lots of sex as is his norm.

Onto the funny Maxx Barry, and his novel 'Syrup,' before the movie comes out. I really liked Jennifer Government. And this one got rave reviews from LAT, UsaT, WaPo, Kirkus, et al.

Then 'So Long &....' is up next.

Also finished the Barthelmes' memoir on slots/21 gambling addiction and parents dying. Fascinating on many levels. Reinforced, for me, that gambling addicts truly and deeply want to lose their money. In many cases, you can't even call it 'sub-conscious' it's so obvious -- like an Emperor's New Clothes kind of obsession [with losing].