June 7: All Literature Edition

Tom Junod ponders our linguistic responses to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and enlists Don DeLillo in his argument as our leading contemporary fictional expert on the abuses of official language (in that sense, the true heir of George Orwell). Hat tip to Scott Esposito at Conversational Reading.

Thanks to his unsurpassed talent for capturing and conjuring free-floating dread, he....has the reputation of something of a prophet; there can be no event so horrific but that DeLillo seems to have anticipated it, from 9/11 to the financial collapse and now to the spill or the blowout or the hemorrhage in the Gulf. No, he has never written about Top Kills and Junk Shots and the odd flutter of hope elicited by the words "Containment Dome." But in their suggestion of corporatized violence and above all in the violence they do to the language, they are DeLilloesque.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/naming-the-gulf-oil-spill-060110

There has been quite a bit of healthy debate online regarding John Palatella's piece in The Nation on the state of book reviewing, in which he writes:

A newspaper books section, if one were to total up its costs, loses money. But does not the sports section or the metro section? Yet of all the sections that fail to turn a profit on their own, it's the books section that is most often killed or pinched. Claims that books sections are eliminated or downsized because they can't earn their keep are bogus. It is indisputable that newspapers have been weakened by hard times and a major technological shift in the dissemination of news; it is not indisputable that newspaper books coverage has suffered for the same reasons. The book beat has been gutted primarily by cultural forces, not economic ones, and the most implacable of those forces lies within rather than outside the newsroom. It is not iPads or the Internet but the anti-intellectual ethos of newspapers themselves.

http://www.thenation.com/article/death-and-life-book-review?page=full 

http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/archive/201006a.htm#pz1

As Michael Orthofer points out in his response at The Complete Review, Palatella may well be right with respect to book coverage in the newspapers, but is probably inaccurate when he suggests that online outlets are not picking up the slack. I certainly find enough material to run at PMD.

I like reading reviews very much; it's a habit I formed very young. But since my youthful foray into paid film reviewing, I have a hearty dislike of writing the things, and I try to avoid anything that looks or feels like a review here. At most I offer comments, observations, notes. I also have a perhaps unreasonable horror of PMD being considered a book blog or a film blog; I think of this as an autobiographically grounded general culture blog that also incorporates history, current affairs, sports, animals, clothing, beer, and whatever else strikes my fancy. The blog evolved that way so as to be its own organism, though obviously I rely heavily on more subject-focused blogs and websites.

John Mullan compiled a list of riots in literature that highlights some truly wonderful texts. Any list that includes Flaubert's Sentimental Education is the better for it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/may/29/ten-best-riots-literature-mullan

The Mookse and the Gripes is fascinated and repelled by Egyptian-French novelist Albert Cossery

I found the characters, in the end, repulsive, and the author’s presentation of them fascinating because I feel so very much the opposite.  Things happen that should never be laughed at.  Cossery wrote an absolutely entertaining and compelling book that shows a different perspective.  I’m not sure whether to praise its obvious skill or throw it across the room for its hideous ideas.  I see that New Directions is issuing another of his books later this year.  I suppose that the fact that I’m very anxious to read it gives you my answer, though it is mostly to see this author’s mind in action again.

http://mookseandgripes.com/reviews/2010/05/31/albert-cossery-a-splendid-conspiracy/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Cossery

Iris on Books shares thoughts on two of her favorite contemporary Dutch language novelists, both of whom are immigrants from Islamic countries:

http://irisonbooks.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/dutch-literature-two-of-my-favourite-authors/

Vulpes Libris is a little uneasy about Veronique Olmi's novel Beside the Sea, which apparently boasts a transgressive shocker of a denouement, akin to some of what we've been seeing in arthouse films such as Irreversible and Antichrist:

http://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/beside-the-sea-by-veronique-olmi/

Olmi's is far from the only such novel; for example, Eugene Marten's Waste has gotten reviews that are loathe to go into spoiler territory, but clearly indicate that you're in for a wild ride:

http://quarterlyconversation.com/waste-by-eugene-marten

Killer Covers uses the juicy paperback cover of Sweet Wild Wench as a pretext to provide a first-rate overview of novelist William Campbell Gault's career:

http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2010/05/sweet-wild-wench-by-william-campbell.html

I must say, great blazer/trousers combo. Looks like a gold camel-hair jacket? Awesome.

Among notables born on this date are dandy Beau Brummell, architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, novelists Elizabeth Bowen, Louise Erdrich, Harry Crews, and Orhan Pamuk, poets Nikki Giovanni, Maxine Kumin, and Gwendolyn Brooks, singer/songwriter Prince, pop singers Dean Martin and Tom Jones, conductors George Szell and Neeme Jarvi, bandleader Glen Gray, painter Paul Gauguin, artist Damien Hirst, designer Brooks Stevens, film director James Ivory, television adventurer Bear Grylls, and actors Jessica Tandy, Liam Neeson, and Karl Urban. Charles Rennie Mackintosh is in every respect one of my heroes, inspirations, and guiding lights. Let's talk about him over tea at his amazing Willow Tearooms in Glasgow: