literature - daydalus blog

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literature

A collection of 13 posts

The Pursuit Of...

Last year I went to the Decatur book festival to hear Jonathan Franzen do a reading from his latest novel, Freedom. The guy had recently been on the cover of time magazine with the headline “Great American Novelist”, and had just been re-inaugurated to Oprah’s book club (despite pooh-poohing

Stoner-opolis

Every so often I’ll head over to newyorker.com and check out the fiction stories they have posted. Most of the time it’s a drab plotless emotional literary blip by TC Boyle or Alice Monroe, but this particular time it was a compelling piece by Jonathan Lethem – Lostronaut.

Haruki Murakami

Wind Up Bird

HBO recently aired a ten part miniseries – The Pacific. It was made by the same guys who did Band of Brothers (Tom hanks, Spielberg), in that same gritty handheld cinematography that made Saving Private Ryan so revolutionary. But this series lacked the crumbling architecture of blitzkrieged Paris, or even the

Poor Yorick

Prior to his death, my only exposure to DFW was his graduation speech “This is Water”. I thought it was apt stuff, insightful on a level uncommon with graduation speeches, which are so often concerned with mindless platitudes like “help others” or “success is inspiration + perspiration” or “wear sunscreen.” Here

david foster wallace

The Novel in the Internet Age

From The Point (http://www.thepointmag.com/archive/hard-feelings/): Whats starts out as a critique of the works of Houellebecq turns into an exploration of what and where literature can go in the 21st century. Found this passage very truthful, especially since I’ve been reading DFW’s Infinite Jest,

american pastoral

Garden State

For the past month I’ve been working in New Jersey. My morning commute is an hour long and identical to the Soprano’s intro. Under the Hudson and straight through the Meadowlands and Newark, this vast stretch of brown industry, acres of cranes and stacked containers and overpasses. So

brief wondrous life of oscar wao

Brief, Wondrous Novel

I recently watched an interview with Junot Diaz on Slate. He was congenial, if a bit shy and smiled a lot – his shaved head and neat little goatee almost gleaming under the studio lights – this smooth earthy brown cocoa and coffee skin. He almost seemed like too much of a

Sex and the City (Paris)

“It is now the fall of my second year in Paris. I was sent here for a reason I have not yet been able to fathom. I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I

airport security

Link Roundup

Haven’t done one of these in a while, but today was one of those classic episodes of procrastination where I fish through Google Reader waiting for Outlook to ping with my next distraction. Fortunately, hooked a few worthwhile reads: My Bright Abyss [http://www.theamericanscholar.org/my-bright-abyss/] – I’ve

Halls of Madness

It was a tarnished paperback, the cover (which strangely sits a 1/4th inch away from protecting the crumpled bulk of pages) torn and fraying. I hefted it, flipped through, the text itself split between Courier and Garamond, odd arrangements of footnotes and text and some pages even barren save

Spectral Scribe

I’d read that Philip Roth was one of the best living American authors, and for a while I’d always had a few of his novels on my ever-growing list of books to read. I think I decided on Ghost Writer wandering around Strand Bookstore: it was propped up

Reading Roundup

Here are the books I wrote reviews on in 2007. Not everything I read got a review, mostly if it was a sequel or I didn’t feel it warrented a review (usually nonfiction). In retrospect, I didn’t realize I read so much genre stuff. In fact, I really

gravity's rainbow

A Screaming Comes Across the Sky

The past two months I’ve been enraptured by the most difficult, dense and brilliant novel I’ve read in years. That book is Gravity’s Rainbow, perched high and dry on a number of best 100 novel lists, by Thomas Pynchon, an elusive writer with a background in rocket