A Few Of My Favorite Prose Items
10:06, Ben Lerner,
I had to pull myself away to get this done. If you loved Leaving Leaving the Atocha Station (2011) you’ll love this.
A Man In Love, Karl Ove Knausgaard, 2013
Well, this is not the conceptual novel that Kenneth Goldsmith claims it is, but Knausgaard is more intriguing than most. There isn’t a whiff of the structure of contemporary fiction, and by that I mean the artificial plotting and structuring. Note to novelists: fiction stopped being the go-to source for time-wasting years ago: do something else with novels. Knausgaard is on to something here. Gift Appeal: Wide
The Goldfinch, Donna Tart (Little Brown and Company, 2013)
I found this one hard to put down despite being aware of the elements of plot that were conspiring to lengthen my time holding this book in my lap. The world is what gripped me, a Wes Anderson novel world without the OCD. Gift Appeal: Wide
Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood
I stopped expecting anything more astounding to come from Atwood several years ago, but I still buy her books because I still love her and she has earned my enduring admiration so I was more than pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying these. They aren’t profound. They aren’t written in blood. But they are fun, smart, and I had some great laughs. Think Fay Weldon in Yorkville circa 1974. Gift Appeal: Wide
FOR THE NON-FICTION LOVER
Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay
White Girls, Hilton Als
Older, Faster, Stronger, Margaret Webb
Could See Everything
The Paintings of Margaux Williamson, Coach House 2014
How does painting respond to the ubiquitous digital image? What I want from art is to feel fresh. I want to see a banana again for the first time. To feel the way a body feels slumped across a table after a long read in a stuffy room. Apparently Karl Ove Knausgaard has done this for many people in the form of the novel. Death. Domesticity. Boyness. All fresh again.
The M Word,
Theory, A Sunday