A Letdown Squid

Currently Reading… 1

Currently Reading…

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

The rediscovery and rejuvenation of Richard Yates’s 1961 novel Revolutionary Road is due in large part to its continuing emotional and moral resonance for an early 21st-century readership. April and Frank Wheeler are a young, ostensibly thriving couple living with their two children in a prosperous Connecticut suburb in the mid-1950s. However, like the characters in John Updike’s similarly themed Couples, the self-assured exterior masks a creeping frustration at their inability to feel fulfilled in their relationships or careers. Frank is mired in a well-paying but boring office job and April is a housewife still mourning the demise of her hoped-for acting career. Determined to identify themselves as superior to the mediocre sprawl of suburbanites who surround them, they decide to move to France where they will be better able to develop their true artistic sensibilities, free of the consumerist demands of capitalist America. As their relationship deteriorates into an endless cycle of squabbling, jealousy and recriminations, their trip and their dreams of self-fulfillment are thrown into jeopardy (Amazon).

(Source: amazon.com)

5 April 2012 · Comments

Currently Reading… 2

Currently Reading…

The Eden Hunter: A Novel by Skip Horack

Louisiana-born Horack’s novel (after The Southern Cross collection) offers a stylish, fast-paced, historical narrative based on an 1816 slave insurrection. Spanish slave traders enter the Congo and purchase a captured Pygmy named Kau, transporting him to Pensacola, Fla., where he’s sold to an innkeeper. Five years later, Kau kills the innkeeper’s son and flees into the wilds of southern Florida. Along his wilderness trek, Kau regrets the murder, yearns for his family in Africa, and encounters a “Negro fort” on the Apalachicola River built by General Garçon. The remote fort’s ostentatious “genius” commander befriends the diminutive Kau, who is allowed to take an escaped slave as his mate. The American victory in the War of 1812 makes Garçon, an ally of the British, a target of the imminent American invasion. While sympathetic to the slaves’ desire to be free, Kau realizes the slim chance for success against the Americans; he’s more inclined to follow his heart and “live quietly” in Florida than stand with Garçon. This diminutive man serves as a watchful protagonist in Horack’s crisp, vivid tale (Publisher’s Weekly).

(Source: amazon.com)

5 April 2012 · Comments

2011 Bibliography 6

2011 Bibliography

So, I just finished the second semester of my MFA in Writing at VCFA. I’m at the halfway point. I had to submit a bibliography…

January - July

DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York: Penguin, 1986. Print

Egan, Jennifer. A Visit From the Goon Squad. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. Print

Franzen, Jonathan. The Corrections. New York: Picador, 2002. Print

Le, Nam. The Boat. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. Print

Lopez, Barry. Resistance. New York: Vintage Books, 2004. Print

Muñoz, Manuel. Zigzagger. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2003. Print

Shivani, Anis. Anatolia and Other Stories. New York: Black Lawrence Press, 2009. Print

Smith, Patti. Just Kids. New York: Ecco, 2010. Print

Treisman, Deborah., ed. 20 Under 40: Stories From The New Yorker. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. Print.

July - December

Bolaño, Roberto. The Savage Detectives. New York: Picador, 2008. Print.

Coetzee, J.M., Disgrace. New York: Penguin, 2000. Print.

Hempel, Amy. “Going.” Reasons to Live: Stories. New York: Knopf, 1985. Print.

Joyce, James. The Dubliners. New York: Dover Publications, 1991. Print.

Keret, Etgar. Girl on the Fridge. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. Print

Marechera, Dambudzo. “Protista.” African Short Stories. Ed. Chinua Achebe and Catherine Lynette. Innes. London: Heinemann, 1985. Print.

McCann, Richard. Mother of Sorrows. New York: Vintage, 2006. Print.

Moore, Lorrie. Birds of America: Stories. New York: A. Knopf, 1998. Print.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, “Minutes of Glory.” African Short Stories. Ed. Chinua Achebe and Catherine Lynette Innes. London: Heinemann, 1985. Print.

Perec, Georges. Life: A User Manual. New Hampshire: David R Godine, 1978. Print.

Queneau, Raymond. Exercises in Style. New York: New Directions, 1981. Print.

Silber, Joan. The Art of Time in Fiction: as Long as It Takes. Saint Paul, MN: Graywolf, 2009. Print.

Strunk, William. The Elements of Style. Australia: KT Publishing, 2004. Print.

Vollmann, William T. The Rainbow Stories. New York: Penguin, 1992. Print.

This does not include some of the books I read for fun, like, Mark Dunn’s IBid, or SCUD: The Disposable Assassin. I’m reading more than I ever have and if all I do is get to enjoy more fiction and write literary criticisms I can say that this degree is well worth it. My wife says I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, I’m inclined to agree. BETTER READ = BETTER LIFE.

21 November 2011 · Comments

Currently Reading… 25

Currently Reading…

The Girl on the Fridge by Etgar Keret

Advocates of flash fiction contend you can say a lot with a little. Unfortunately, you can also say a little with a little. Israeli writer Keret (The Nimrod Flipout) confirms both with this hodgepodge of 46 sketches, culled from his first collection. There are whimsical tales like Nothing, about a woman who loved a man who was made of nothing because this love would never betray her, and Freeze! about a guy who can stop the world and uses the power to score with hot girls. Despite an appealing, comic voice, many of these pieces feel insubstantial and leave the reader indifferent. Nevertheless, a haunting theme arises as stories featuring violence accumulate: Not Human Beings, in which an Israeli soldier is beaten by fellow officers when he objects to the cruel treatment of an old Arab man, screams in the face of bloodshed, whereas the irritation of the father in A Bet, when TV news reports on an Arab sentenced to death preempts an episode of Moonlighting, suggests how violence has been normalized. Keret demonstrates how the same short form that produces ineffective trifles can also create moments of startling power. (Publisher’s Weekly)

(Source: amazon.com)

3 November 2011 · Comments

Currently Reading… 2

Currently Reading…

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

Disgrace is almost willfully plain. Yet it possesses its own lean, heartbreaking lyricism, most of all in its descriptions of unwanted animals. At the start of the novel, David tells his student that poetry either speaks instantly to the reader—“a flash of revelation and a flash of response”—or not at all. Coetzee’s book speaks differently, its layers and sadnesses endlessly unfolding. —Kerry Fried

(Source: amazon.com)

4 October 2011 · Comments