“Exercising the blogging might help curb the desire to pollute Twitter,” Young Manhattanite writes. While I would like to think my tweeting has low levels of toxicity, it’s clear that the blogging needs a little exercise.
I reviewed Nothing Right by Antonya Nelson for the Barnes & Noble Review, which went up this week.
the stories here are, in one way or another, about a time of in-between. It’s not what we’re trained to expect from short stories, which with their compact size are built for speed, tight epiphanies and decisive character change. But Nelson — the author of three novels and raft of carefully wrought short stores — works against that convention in this new collection. She’s going for the moments where nothing really happens, or when we have to live with the consequences of what has happened before…. Like less whimsical versions of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Nelson’s stories dwell in the spaces that fiction typically skips over.
Quoting myself is lame, but it’s slightly better than paraphrasing my own writing. Other book reviews and whatnot are pending elsewhere; more excerpts on the way.
The LA Times Festival of Books has posted its panels schedule, and I am thrilled to pieces to be moderating two:
On Saturday, April 26, at 12:30 (it says AM; I hope it means PM). Enough About You
Moderator Ms. Carolyn Kellogg
Mr. Tod Goldberg
Mr. Seth Greenland
Mr. Ben Greenman
Three very funny guys; I’ve read some of their work but I’ll get my hands on the latest tomorrow. But basically, my job on this panel, as I understand it, is to be Gracie Allen — which shouldn’t be a stretch at all, as I’m two inches taller than her. Ba-dum-dum. Thanks folks, I’ll be here all week. I won’t, actually; I’ll be in Young Hall CS 50 for that panel and then elsewhere. Including:
Korn Convocation Hall on Sunday at 3:00pm: Fiction: Closing Time
Moderator Ms. Carolyn Kellogg
Mr. Robert Boswell
Mr. Patrick DeWitt
Mr. Wells Tower
Wells Tower’s debut collection is hothothot — and is fortuitously titled “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned”; Patrick deWitt’s “Ablutions: A Novel” is praised by Luc Sante and Salvador Plascencia. And I’m not sure if I’ll get to read Robert Boswell’s novel “What Men Call Treasure” or “The Half-Known World: On Writing Fiction” — I wager it’s the novel, but either would make me very happy.
And holy moses, I just discovered Robert Boswell is married to Antonya Nelson. Let’s hope they didn’t hate the review.
Hey Carolyn-
It’s Erin, here, from Graywolf. We’re publishing THE HEYDAY OF THE INSENSITIVE BASTARDS, Robert Boswell’s new story collection, this May. Want me to send you a copy? Send me an email (kottke(at)graywolfpress(dot)org) if you’re interested.
Have a great weekend! I just ate a very, very large cupcake and am not moving from the couch for the next 3 hours.
Erin