The longtime readers of this blog know that I like the Portuguese writer Jose Saramago, and I especially like his novel Blindness. In the book, an epidemic of blindness sweeps the nation, and a band of travelers have to survive under quarantine. However, the sequel, Seeing, published in English in 2006, garnered rather unfavorable reviews, […]
Steve Erickson has a new website, and I have to say it matches his eccentric writing (The main page picture changes with each load, but I like the swastika one). Also, the Cal Arts faculty page (the school that publishes the literary journal Black Clock, which Erickson edits) says Erickson’s new novel Zeroville is coming […]
Okay, so in defiance to that whole Write-A-Novel-In-A-Month thing with the acronym that nobody can ever remember, I’m signing up for the mission proposed by Syntax of Things: A short story in a month. And I’m not jumping on this bandwagon because back in Novel-Writing-Month-NaNoWrMoTg-WrSlKillmyself I actually thought I could write a chunk of a […]
I know I’m a bit late with some of these, but they’ve been hovering on my mind while I’ve been trying to get this new site up and running. Check them out: J. Robert Lennon has a new blog called Ward Six, which he writes with his wife. Check out his post on Five Chapters […]
I did not appreciate William T. Vollmann’s review of Anthony Swofford’s Exit A in the New York Times Book Review yesterday. It’s not that I believe he was wrong about the strengths of Swofford’s first book, Jarhead, or even that he was wrong about the weaknesses of Swofford’s first novel Exit A. It’s because I […]
I’m back from my Belizean honeymoon all fired up for 2007. Whoopee! That’s what scuba diving in the carribean and cave tubing will do for you. Now I promised a report on the reading going on down there in Central America, and I always make good on my promises, so here: I reread Richard Ford’s […]
Tomorrow I will double my teampower by marrying a wonderful woman who shall be dubbed Mrs. BookFox (at least online). So please enjoy some of the other book blogs in the blogosphere as I take a honeymoon until January 8th. Best wishes from Belize, where doubtless I will have at least some time on the […]
Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel Lecture. Conversational Reading’s Epiphany on how Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer critiques space (or the lack of a defined, unique space). Syntax of Things makes a list of Underrated Writers. Lastly, Pinky’s Paperhaus comments on After the MFA’s post about whether MFAs should take Lit Crit Class.On that last link . . . […]
From Litkicks: More bad news: in recognizing the "blogosphere", Tanenhaus disparages us (yet again, yet again) as sloppy writers. I insist to the New York Times Book Review staff that the best bloggers out here (and I volunteer to be on the team) can at least hold our own, and could possibly kick the Book […]
While everyone else is busy making lists of Best Books of 2006, I thought I’d respond a little differently and make a literary mix tape of selections from a few of my favorites, all united around the theme of death. Why death? Because I’m morbid. When I was five years old I tried to kill […]
