Early Summer Reading

The first book worth mentioning, when it comes to my early summer reading, is Keith Richards’s Life, with its oft-amusing portraits of life as a Rolling Stone and Richards’s striking common-man writing voice. In the book there are some truly great stories – especially the excellent set-piece that serves as the opening chapter and reminds [...]

Panel for 2012 NeMLA Conference in Rochester

If you’re interested in the work of Jennifer Egan, intellectually invested in contemporary fiction, and/or engaged in studying the role/representation of technology in fiction, perhaps you’d like to send me an abstract? PANEL: Jennifer Egan, Contemporary Fiction, and the Digital Age This panel looks to examine the work of NeMLA 2012 Keynote Speaker Jennifer Egan, [...]

My Summer Reading, or How I Spent a Few Months Desperately Avoiding the Literature of Narcissism

Way back in 1987 or 1988, I was at a party in New York City hosted by my girlfriend’s sister.  At the time I was a college student who was deeply infatuated with the notion of becoming a writer – a poet, a short story writer, maybe a novelist someday.  I loved to spend my [...]

Bloodied and Bruised, But Not in a Good Way

Yesterday, I was finally ready to read.  It’s been a while since I found myself willing to give into a book.  I’ve started a lot – a LOT – in the past few months and every time I’ve closed them pretty quickly.  There have been various reasons: I don’t feel like reading another novel by [...]

(How To Grow Up) To Be a Famous American

In the past year, my son has had occasion to read a few selections from a series of books called the “Childhood of Famous Americans.”  He has read four of them – on Harriet Tubman, Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, and Jim Thorpe – and enjoys them enough, but I’ve come to realize that he likes [...]

The Killer in Me (is the Killer in You)

Yesterday, I stumbled on the fact that there is a film of The Killer Inside Me in the works.  (I guess there was a 1976 version starring Stacy Keach, but I haven’t seen it.) I am so excited to see this film.  This is one of my favorite books, written of course by Jim Thompson, [...]

Pynchon, Detective Fiction, and the Dismissal of Genre

Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, Inherent Vice, is a detective story set in California in the early 1970s.  Like most, if not all, of his previous novels, it contains a number of idiosyncratic characters, surreal settings, unforeseen plot twists, and the occasional song lyric that he has written specifically for this narrative.  It’s a bit whacky, [...]