Line of the Week

"The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump active little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon."

—Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

Best of 2011

• Best novel: The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill. (Actually published in 2001, I believe, but what a wonderful story. The minotaur of Greek mythology is alive and lonely in the American South, living in a small trailer park (where he likes to work on cars in his spare time) and working at a restaurant (where the manager has the brilliant idea of taking M.—as everyone calls him—out of the kitchen to carve prime rib for customers in the dining area). There is plenty here to make a grotesque southern gothic novel—a half man half bull protagonist; a hirsute woman; a gay civil war re-enactor; a jealous weightlifting husband of an underdressed, attractive, and flirtatious neighbor; a dead dog; aimless young men looking for a fight—but what’s amazing about this book is its tone and tempo: a calm and somewhat bemused loneliness even as various threats loom ahead.)

• Biggest book read: A Moment in the Sun by John Sayles (968 pages).

• Best book of poetry: At Lake Scugog by Troy Jollimore. (How did this book not get more attention? I just assumed it would be up for the National Book Award and a Pulitzer and so on. This guy has as big a brain as anyone else writing poetry today. A professor of philosophy, he writes formal, funny, musical poems that engage rather than intimidate the reader.)

• Favorite new cookbook: Trout Caviar: Recipes From a Northern Forager by Brett Laidlaw. (Laidlaw wrote a couple of interesting novels back in the 80s and 90s. Though they were realistic stories set in the Midwest, their Berrymanesque circumlocutions flew in the face of the plain-spoken minimalism that was au courant at the time. When I met him and mentioned the novels, he seemed genuinely surprised that anyone read and remembered them. Now, without warning, and nearly 20 years after his last book of fiction, a cookbook full of hearty recipes and good, clear writing.)

• Best New Yorker Article: “Dr. Don” by Peter Hessler in the September 26 issue. This profile of a small-town pharmacist in Western Colorado is like McPhee at his best.

• Favorite new band: Avett Brothers.

• Favorite new solo artist: Sharon Van Etten.

• Single of the year: “Miss K” by Dear Tick.

• Best movie: Bill Cunningham NYC.

• Best television series on DVD: Slings & Arrows. (Three seasons of a Canadian series about the goings-on behind the scenes at a Stratford-on-Avon type theater. Wonderfully combines Shakespeare, humor, and poignant drama. I actually watched these at the end of 2010, but certainly haven’t seen anything better since then.)

• Best online video: Ultimate Dog Tease.

• Favorite new restaurant: Cajun Potluck in Shoreview, MN.

• Favorite spice: prosciutto.

• Favorite new breakfast food: smoothies.

• Most awesome national landmark visited this year: Crater Lake in Oregon.

• Biggest fish caught: A twelve-inch brown trout in Hay Creek.

• Prettiest fish caught: A couple small brookies in the Poplar River.

• States I attempted to catch trout in this summer: Minnesota, Iowa, Oregon, and California.

• States I was skunked in: 0.

Please note: "New" means new to me; "best" means favorite; "favorite" is self-explanatory.

List of the Day (Courtesy of Izzy, age 7)

Hiatus

The unofficial hiatus is now official. I haven't written anything of substance for this blog in a long time, and subsequently—and quite reasonably—readership has dropped. And I'm not feeling much that seems blog-worthy these days, and when I do, I don't have time to write it. So . . . it's time to give this thing a break. How long? Who knows? It's been fun, but it's time to take it off my list of things to think about for a while. If you want some good blog reading, this is the one that I've been enjoying lately. This one, too.

Three Novels I Did Not Finish Reading in 2010

• The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. by Robert Coover

• Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

The Complete List of Subjects Treated in the "Partial List of Subjects Treated" in Garry Wills' Translation of Martial's Epigrams

Adult Homosexuality

Artifacts

Baldness

Banqueting

Body Odor

Cunnilingus

Debt Delinquency

Fellatio

Legacy Hunting

Marital Fidelity

Marital Infidelity

Misogyny

Pederasty

The Simple Life

Tributes to Emperors

Tributes to Friends

Tributes to the Dead

Wine

The Writing Profession

For a Good Time . . .

check out the Literature Map. It's pointless, but it's fun.

Line of the (So-Called) Week

"At the height of the battle, when it might have gone either way, the cool Taylor turned to his artillery officer and said, 'A little more grape, Captain Bragg.' Remarks like that were embedded in my head and took up precious space that should have been occupied with other things but wasn't."

—Charles Portis, from The Dog of the South

Faulkner

Pyromaniacs,

fecund summers,

sentences longer than trains.

—Found poem taken verbatim from a conversation with C. Oliver, 11/9/10

Prose Poet David Shumate on Writing Poetry

Poetry is a strange endeavor. You go snooping about. Sticking your nose into other people's business. Turning your soul inside out. Then you huddle over a paper for hours to give voice to what you have learned, and in the words of the great Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, ". . . try to find words that are better than silence."

# # #

I seek words and images that possess the honesty of stones. Of water.

I want the poem to glow in the dark.

# # #

Sometimes, as the pieces of a poem are taking shape, I feel momentarily whole. As if the senses, the mind, the intellect, the ego, and some spiritual core have fallen into synchrony.

This is a seductive feeling. I return the next morning hoping a poem will lead me there again.

I hope the poem conducts the reader on a similar journey.

— from Making Poems: Forty Poems with Commentary by the Poets, edited by Todd Davis & Erin Murphy

Best of the Backlist

The other day I was telling my friend, Jomama, who is a sales rep for a book publishing company, how much I thought of Dave Eggers' post-Katrina book Zeitoun. Ms. Mama had just been down in New Orleans on business, and she commented that many of the bookstores down there were still displaying the book prominently even though it was no longer a frontlist title. Since then I've been re-reading Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, a book that I have loved since it was first published back in 1998, though I hadn't sat down to re-read it until now. Well, it stands up. It's an almost unbelievable story in many ways, and Orlean does a masterful job of telling it. Just because it's not brand new doesn't mean it's not worth reading.

I have also recently noticed that the window for comments on Facebook has shrunk to just a few hours. If people don't comment on a status update or a new photo in the first couple hours, they probably aren't going to. And that's too bad in a way. The update (if it isn't tied to the moment—and most aren't) doesn't really lose humor, poignancy, or validity half a day later. A year or two ago, such comments might have trickled in over the course of a few days, but now the conversation is over much more quickly. It seems to me even more of a loss when people post family or vacation photos. These things seem even less ephemeral, and yet the active comment window remains equally small.

All of which puts me in mind of something Quentin Tarentino said about his video store days. Customers would come in looking for recommendations, and film geek Tarentino would press whatever odd, obscure, great, foreign, or forgotten movie on them only to have them ask if it was new. His response: If you haven't seen it before, it's new to you.

In the spirit of Mr. Tarentino, I bring you the best of the Corvus backlist. The most recent of these is over half a year old, and the others were posted before 2010. They are the ones that have received the most visitors, but which many of you—if you are new to Corvus—may never have seen.

• The poetry of divorce

• The poetry of rocks

• Basketball and marinade

• Reviewing a review

Enjoy!

Line(s) of the Week

"Her voice was a force of nature, her conversation a fast-moving rapid full of deadly churning eddies. She was like Hitler without the anti-Semitism, MLK without the compassion or noble cause."

—Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End

Top 5 Books That I Have Lent to Friends and Which Have Not Been Returned

1. White Noise by Don DeLillo. Just as Hemingway was the most influential American prose writer for much of the 20^th century, DeLillo has been the most influential novelist of the past two decades (at least among male writers), and by DeLillo I mean the DeLillo of White Noise. I lent this to a girlfriend in my early 20s. Lost it in the breakup. I still think of it as a contemporary novel even though Penguin has put it through nearly half a dozen cover changes since then.

2. The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean. One of my favorite works of literary journalism. I will be teaching it next year, so just picked up another copy, which has a pale, much less attractive cover than the rich blue of the advance reading copy of the hardcover edition I owned. Also, the trim size of that was slightly unusual if I remember correctly, and it looks like they’ve trimmed the bottom margins of the current paperback to make it a more orthodox size. Too bad.

3. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. Read this during fall semester of my freshman year in college in a class that was confirming my decision to be an English major. This seems like a book I would really like to re-read. I remember it as a revelation of what a novel could be, and it seems like it would be no less satisfying to read in mid-life.

4. Heft on Wheels: A Field Guide to Doing a 180 by Mike Magnuson. The only book on this list that I’ve read twice, and if I had it on hand I might start in on it again right now. Magnuson’s account of his love affair as a 255-lb., chain-smoking, heavy drinker with bicycling is profane and beautiful. This and Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run are two outstanding books about the compulsions of endurance athletes.

5. Feeding a Yen by Calvin Trillin. The only book on this list I haven’t read in its entirety. I lent it out before I could sit down and read it properly.

Lines of the Week

"It is very difficult to describe an experience of religious significance while you are being sprayed with a garden hose by a laughing, loving woman."

and

"Any game becomes important when you know and love the players."

—W.P Kinsella, Shoeless Joe

Review Review

Without putting too melodramatic a point on it, the printed word is endangered. There have been conversations about the death of the novel, the end of the book, and the miniscule audience for poetry for decades, but it turns out the more fragile species are newspapers and magazines. As these publications fight for their life, slim down, and disappear, one of the first things to go are book reviews and book review sections.

The critic’s craft is an underappreciated one, and its role is diminishing as well. Long ago Rolling Stone drew readers away from the music reviewer’s analysis and reflection by posting bold stars at the beginning of the piece. There was no need to read the text; you could just count the stars. You could probably fit ten current Rolling Stone reviews into one of the reviews during their heyday. Likewise, as Siskel & Ebert’s show gained in popularity, the final decision—a robust “two thumbs up” or a resounding “two thumbs down”—overshadowed the content of their discussion.

Though far more books are still published per year than any human can read, sources for learning and thinking about them are drying up. And among those that remain, few of them are going to give you more than 500 words on a book. I remember interviewing for a freelance reviewing gig with piddling pay for a shortlived tabloid almost two decades ago, and the editor said anybody could review a movie or play, seeming to suggest that most democratic of possibilities: everybody’s perspective is equally valuable.

We now live in an world based primarily on two ideas that the quality of the arts can be mathematically tabulated (if you go to the website Rotten Tomatoes, a movie review website, you will see a score, not unlike a song got on American Bandstand or a wine gets from Robert Parker) or that everyone is a reviewer (say on Amazon.com). What’s missing is the thoughtful analysis of someone who knows the field better than you do, the possibility of learning more about the topic at hand rather than just getting someone’s take on whether something is good or bad.

Well, last night I read a print review of a print book that reminded me of how good a review can be, of how if you give the right reviewer enough space, he or she can reflect, and give you context, and quote at length, and in the end come up with a compelling, thoughtful piece of writing that entertains while informing. I finished reading Wyatt Mason’s piece, “The Untamed: Joshua Ferris’s restless-novel syndrome,” in the February 2010 issue of Harper’s, wanting to know more about this young novelist I’d never heard of, and grateful for Mason’s acute commentary.

Mason is ostensibly reviewing Ferris’s latest, The Unnamed, but he spends the first half of the essay, nearly five full-page columns, discussing his debut, Then We Came to the End. He is in no way entirely laudatory of this earlier work, and he takes other critics to task for the lazy, shorthanded way that they praised it, but in his discussion of it, he brings to the surface qualities that make me want to know more, that in the end make me want to read the novel.

One thing Mason does is quote at length. In the first half of the review, he quotes four separate paragraphs from the novel, and the language in those passages tells me, as much as anything Mason says, that Ferris is a writer I want to spend time with, that he is going to help me see my familiar world in a new and vivid way, something like when I first came upon DeLillo (Ferris’s title is taken from the first sentence of DeLillo’s first novel—important information Mason gives us in the first paragraph of his review).

In the end—or more precisely in the second half of the review—Mason makes it clear that Ferris has fallen prey to the dreaded sophomore slump with The Unnamed, but fortunately, he himself never succumbs to such clichéd shorthand. He quotes from the novel at length again, and explains its unusual premise, comparing it to works by Saramago and Kafka, which gives credence to Ferris even as he comes up short. When he critiques the novel, he does so by quoting shorter passages, and then pointing out clearly and effectively how the prose in those passages lets the storyteller down. You still feel that Mason respects Ferris’s abilities, but that he doesn’t see him executing them as skillfully here as he did in his first book. You also get the idea he will be reading Ferris’s next effort with a hopeful yet critical eye.

As for myself, I will be seeking out Joshua Ferris’s first book Then We Came to the End because of the way Wyatt Mason negatively reviewed his current novel. I encourage you to seek out that review.

Best Books of the Year

Unlike the New York Times Book Review and other such publications’ year-end lists, which are so stodgy—including only books published in the most recent calendar year—my list is comprised of the best books I read in 2009 regardless of when they were published.

1. Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall. McDougall weaves a number of threads together in this engrossing work of journalism that looks at running injuries, ultramarathoning, the Tarahumara tribe of Mexico's Copper Canyon, and the evolution of humans. An unforgettable cast of characters makes this compelling, almost unbelievable reading. McDougall also takes on the sacred cows of the running world, while also returning us to the true childlike joy of running. This book was the closest thing to a religious text that I read this year. Thanks to the good folks at Micawber's for pointing me to this one.

2. Stoner by John Williams. This unfortunately titled novel was originally published in 1965, and it is that rare thing, a work of fiction set in academia that isn’t farcical. What makes it even rarer is that Williams doesn’t hit a wrong note in the entire thing. There isn’t a single word out of place. The protagonist of his sad, beautiful novel with the understated tempo of a Townes Van Zandt ballad is William Stoner, who, we are told in the first paragraph, "did not rise above the rank of assistant professor, and few students remembered him with any sharpness after they had taken his courses." Though he may lead a life of quiet desperation, he is a man of heart-breaking principle. More on this unforgettable book from Morris Dickstein and Steve Almond.

3. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Originally published in 2002, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this novel combines a sympathetic protagonist, Magical Realism, a global and historical scope, and a loving portrayal of that most beleaguered of cities—Detroit. The last chapters seemed to me to lack the imagination and brilliance of the first nine-tenths of the book, but there was so much in the first 400-plus pages that blew me away that I can't complain too much about the slight drop-off at the end.

4. Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams. This novel about a 19th century buffalo hunt in the mountains of Colorado echoes Heart of Darkness and Moby-Dick, yet—like Stoner—it manages to be gloriously understated. It is clear early on that nothing good can come of this expedition, and there is more than just a bit of Ahab's monomania in Miller, the leader of the hunt, but every step (and misstep) of the journey is worth watching. Originally published in 1960, this book is likely to gain a larger audience in coming years as major Hollywood players are signing on to bring it to the big screen.

5. A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean. I almost didn't include this one since it was a re-reading for me rather than the first time through, but it is so damn good. A beautifully-crafted work that is about nothing less than beauty itself, and how rare and brief it is. I was crying among strangers at 37,000 feet when I finished it.

Honorable Mention (because it's not a book): Pat Jordan’s beautiful short essay on aging from Men’s Journal.

A Cormac McCarthy List

A few years ago, I was contemplating teaching Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, but I felt like teenagers would find it boring. I could see them complaining and rolling their eyes almost unanimously. I love McCarthy and The Road, but let’s face it—most of the time not much happens. Page after page, the boy and his dad have variations of the same conversation and the same experiences. A colleague went ahead and taught it—and the kids have loved it! Many of them have raved about it to me.

I thought back on my original approach to teaching it the other day when she told me she had a student complaining that he didn’t understand what was going on in it. If this were an early McCarthy book, I would understand the complaint, but The Road? Every day is more or less the same, and every day the boy is going to ask the same questions, and the dad is going to deal with them in the same way. I’m intentionally making it sound boring or static, because the reasons I love McCarthy have nothing to do with plot. I love the way he uses words and makes sentences. In fact, when I read him, I underline all the words I don’t know and the phrases that blow me out of the water. The words he chooses are lyrical, archaic, earthy, rich. Here’s my list from The Road (with page numbers):

Gryke (11)
Collet (16)
Batboard (17)
Bulldrums (17)
Pipeclayed (18)
Breakfront (21)
Chifforobe (22)
Discalced (24)
Shoddy (as a noun, 28)
Creedless (28)
Feverland (28)
Firedrake (31)
Godspoke (32)
Disclets (38)
Mayapple (39)
Pipissewa (39)
Mastic (48)
Cheroot (56)
Advents (59)
Bracken (61)
Stakebed (61)
Rachitic (63)
Colliculus (64)
Temporal gyrus (64)
Siwash (68)
Truckgarden (68)
Billets (of wood, 70)
Claggy (75)
Skifts (76)
Quoits (76)
Cowled (77)
Catamites (92)
Sedge (94)
Kerfs (98)
Port cochere (105)
Sleavings (106)
Dentil (107)
Haspstaple (109)
Tang (as part of a shovel, 109)
Illucid (116)
Swag (123)
Duff (124)
Chert (129)
Coolingboard (130)
Cakebell (184)
Envacuuming (191)
Slagpools (192)
Lightwires (192)
Loggia (204)
Knurled (209)
Scud (as a noun, 221)
Seacrawl (221)
Isocline (222)
Davits (223)
Turnbuckles (223)
Mae west (uncapitalized, 225)
Gimbaled (230)
Bindle (230)
Pampooties (243)
Salitter (261)
Entabled (261)
Bollards (262)
Gantry (262)
Scarpbolts (271)
Bloomery (271)
Uncalendared (273)
Incinerate (as an adjective, 273)
Ensepulchred (273)
Crozzled (273)
Hagmoss (274)
Counterspectacle (274)
Hydroptic (274)
Wimpled (286)
Torsional (287)

New Lynx!

Clearly, someone has been taking a virtual vacation from his blog: three posts in the past two months—for shame! Fortunately, other bloggers have been picking up the slack for me. I've added two that have caught my attention recently to my Lynx! list, both of them with aesthetic bents: The Book Design Review and Strange Maps. Enjoy!

Coffee Table Display

I’m long overdue for a list, so how about what’s on my living room coffee table. It feels like I am constantly trying to clear it off and organize it, so I can see the table, but then it grows misshapen layers of books and papers. Will a list give it some form, make this mess more acceptable in my sights?

• 20 books on top, including
5 books of poetry
2 kids books
2 photography books
2 books that were given to me
2 books for school
2 books on fly-fishing
1 library book
1 novel unfinished since spring break
1 borrowed book
4 bought secondhand
• 6 books underneath, including
a world atlas (permanent resident)
a book of poetry
3 books bought second-hand yesterday (1 for school and 1 on fly-fishing)
1 borrowed book that is long overdue
• 4 magazines on top
• 3 magazines underneath
• Also a box of tissues (Puffs with aloe vera), two coasters, various photocopies (on stretching and for school), clippings (recipes), my sunglasses, a calendar, and 40 or so pages of loose-leaf typed poems in neatly-stacked piles (more of which are also in orderly stacks on the floor next to the table).

Highly Recommended!

Michael Lewis's article, "Jonathan Lebed's Extracurricular Activities," in Ira Glass's The New Kings of Nonfiction. Who knew that when Huck Finn lit out for the territories, he would end up trading stocks on the internet and getting busted by the SEC? Plus the writing is damn good! The paragraph at the top of page 18 is a work of art.