| Sometimes, to ease the weight of long (especially sluggish) novels, it’s nice to pick up a collection of essays and interviews. The best are small, illuminating bites, often by artists on artists, attracting noted names who are given a small space to vent, aggrandize or make a quick buck.
There’s still always room for the classic literary essay, too – everyone from Joyce Carol Oates to Umberto Eco and Jonathan Lethem have taken great, modern stabs at it – although the temptation to indulge in masturbatory celebrity minutiae is stronger than ever, particularly as many have given the approach an artistic legitimacy.
Interesting then, that BlackBook magazine’s collection of articles The Revolution Will be Accessorized (HarperCollins, 215 pp.) openly invites writers to criticize it, an ingenious way to both expose esthetic predilections while providing commentary on their own place within the fashion counterculture. BlackBook, is fronted by ex-Gear editor Aaron Hicklin who knows that his magazine is, to many, just a listing of cool metropolitan events, which is why he’s able to sneak in so much more – biting the hand that feeds with a loving caress. Here, you have Douglas Coupland and Naomi Klein bemuse themselves over the mass of ink given to (what they see as) cultural biohazards; Meghan Daum on New York’s dismantling persona; and William T. Vollmann on the sombre joys of slumming it on a Greyhound bus. Breezy and elitist, in the best sense of the word.
Cynthia Ozick’s new collection of essays, The Din in the Head (Houghton Mifflin, 256 pp.) incites more controversy and she knows it – although, to her credit, she has a much more challenging task on her hands. A successful novelist and critic, Ozick has had her detractors speak out over her non-fiction, with its often class approach to literature and breezy dismissals. Case in point – rather than "review" Sylvia Plath’s journals (which, perhaps, isn’t even possible), she suggests that they almost shouldn’t be read at all, being merely a curio that would distract from the strength of the poet’s words.
Still, anything is illuminating, especially as it pertains to a lost great and even more if all it amounts to is a grocery list of marital complaints and forgotten dinners. Sometimes a mystery is just that, which she explains better in a terse piece on the postcolonial "attack" on Rudyard Kipling. Not that she discredits him, but simply says – give him a chance. Ozick’s choice of subjects (and, occasionally, targets) are timely and, given a sharp eye, sure to delight even her most ardent detractors.
For fans of the poetry mash-up, filling Station returns with another Flywheel Reading Series, on Thursday, June 8 at 7 p.m., at McNally Robinson. On Friday, June 9 at 8 p.m., local poet Dale Wallace returns with his new collection, In Mourning, at a reading with Gary Ryan, presenting his new mystery novel, The Lucky Elephant Restaurant. For more thrills and chills, hear Mike Harrison (All Shook Up) debut his new Eddie Dancer mystery, Wild Thing, on Wednesday, June 14 at 7 p.m.
For sci-fi fans, hear J. Brian Clarke read from his highly touted new novel of alien exploration, Alphanauts, on Wednesday, June 14 at 7 p.m. at The Sentry Box.
In the news, Sylvia Legris and Kamar Brathwaite were announced as the joint winners of this year’s Griffin Poetry Prize, for their collections Nerve Squall and Born to Slow Horses, respectively. The prize is one of the biggest, netting each winner approximately $50,000.
And despite continued fears over the death of the novel, information released by Hill Strategies Research at this year’s BookExpo claims that books are third in "cultural expenditure" after newspapers and movies. Some, like John Updike, claim that the attention span for longer works and the loss of the tangibility of just having a book are the real issues. I agree, although there’s a lot of great buzz around his new novel, Terrorist, so he’s probably more riled up than usual. |
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