ThreeGuys1Book has 1737 followers | By Jason Chambers JE: In the wake of a grim BEA, as the death toll continues to mount in all ranks of the book industry, from writer to editor to indie bookseller, I thought it was high time for all four Three Guys to convene and converse over virtual beers about the state of publishing and the state of books in 2009, as writers, readers, professionals, and consumers. It’s fashionable (and not unreasonable) to saddle fiscally irresponsible corporate publishers with the burden of responsibility for the current conditions of book culture. But who else might share the responsibility? I might argue that writers are just as much to blame, that the sentence is killing the novel, that the literati needs to quit cowering Continue reading THREE GUYS STATE OF THE UNION ROUNDTABLE By Jason Chambers   Nick Laird is a wonderful writer. I reviewed this great book a while back…go here for the review. I’m pleased to present this interview.
Jason Rice: Before you wrote your first book, Utterly Monkey, you were well known for your poetry. What was the jump like from writing in that form to a large canvas like a novel? Nick Laird: Well, the first two books only came out a few months apart in Britain and Ireland, but yes, the poetry came first. They’re very different beasts. The baggage restrictions are different, and I can’t really write them close together, in the same Continue reading Nick Laird Interview, Glover's Mistake By Jason Chambers   I’m halfway through this debut novel and I’m really liking it; I’d suggest you check it out. It’s a little paperback from the up and coming Melville House out of Brooklyn.
It’s about a man who has been followed his entire life by a secret sector of the government; an imaginative Hoover spin off that’s called the Breather program. But why is Jeffery Parker a suspect, and being followed? He mistakenly attended a rally in his salad days and now realizes that everything he’s ever not done, that’s right, not done, is due to this secret group that’s gone around and prevented Continue reading The Blindfold Test – Barry Schechter – What I'm Reading Right Now By Jason Chambers   I’ve always loved the word “ziggurat“. A Mesopotamian temple…sort of zig-zagged…where those strange Middle Eastern agricultural gods, obsessed with sex and human sacrifice, were worshiped. Stephen O’Connor’s New Yorker story begins with a girl in a bar playing a computer game about the tower of Babel called Ziggurat. You’re supposed to build the tower before this blueish guy, representing the creator, knocks it down. Now throw in a minotaur; hanging out in the bar between bouts of human consumption. The bar is really part of the minotaur’s labyrinth. You know this labyrinth. You walk through it everyday. It consists of half-noticed
Continue reading Ziggurat by Stephen O'Connor By Jason Chambers   Tahar Ben Jelloun’s novel is a systematically organized piece of work. There are 40 chapters. Most of them are named after a featured character. It’s like Van Gogh painting a canvas. There’s that brilliant yellow again and, at another place, cinnabar green. Then you step back and look at the whole canvas: wheat field, mother with child, sunflowers…whatever. Most of those characters just want to get out. I can’t say how accurate the picture we get of Morocco is in this story. But there are societies all over the world that have been shut down by their own corruption; reducing options for the majority of the
Continue reading Leaving Tangier by Tahar Ben Jelloun By Jason Chambers I first discovered J. Robert Lennon when I bought a copy of Mailman after reading a great review on Bookmunch.com. I didn’t like it. Then as time went on I heard about Pieces for the Left Hand, when I got that in the mail from Granta. I was stunned, and went on to review it in my monthly column at AICN. Pieces for the Left Hand is a book that should be taught in creative writing classes, and could be a bible for wanna be writers everywhere. Essentially it’s short stories about small towns and the people who occupy them, it’s just been re-released by Graywolf Press in paperback alongside his new novel, Castle. There are no shortage of J. Continue reading Happyland, J. Robert Lennon, Part 1 By Jason Chambers   If you are going to find The Tiger’s Wife believable, in the current, fiction issue of The New Yorker, then you first have to believe in the tiger. Tea Obreht has to win the reader’s confidence immediately or the game is up. I wish I could understand how writers do this. Have you ever been absorbed in a story and then doubled-back…marvelling at how you got sucked in? April, 1941, Eastern Europe: Germans power-bomb a city and the animals in the citadel, the local zoo, are left to starve. The tiger lies impotent in its own waste, dying of thirst. When a wall is breached, the beast
Continue reading The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht By Jason Chambers   A sneak-peak courtesy of Bill Thomas at Doubleday.
JE: By way of a preamble, let me just say that James P. Othmer is one of the funniest writers at work today. Period. His keen eye for the absurdities of the modern world rivals the likes of George Saunders and Sam Lipsyte. You could sharpen knives on Othmer’s sentences. Prior to his 2006 debut novel, The Futurist, Jimbo was honing his mad skills in the advertising racket, as an exec at Young & Rubicam. And though I daresay it was a colossal waste of his talents, I, for one, am glad he endured it, Continue reading Adland – Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet By Jason Chambers   I’ve waited a very long time for something substantial from Mr. Franzen. Of course I’d be lying if I said his last two outings were worth the wait, Discomfort Zone didn’t achieve the lofty heights I’d set Mr. Franzen on, and I whipped through it hoping it would be over and I’d forget it. How to be Alone was rehash, essays, something to feed the masses.
‘The Corrections changed the path of my interests in reading, writing and contemporary American fiction. It hit me at the right moment, and I remember being riveted to the page, absolutely blown away by the incredible Continue reading Jonathan Franzen, Good Neighbors, New Yorker Summer Fiction Issue By Jason Chambers   The Three Guys are giving away three free copies of The Signal by Ron Carlson. The copies will be mailed to you by the publisher.
Send us an email requesting your free copy to our official email address: threeguysonebook@gmail.com. We will say yes to the first three people. Just one thing: don’t ask on one of those blogger “no-reply” email addresses or by using some other email address where we can’t email you back. We had a guy who won a free copy of Kyle Beachy’s “The Slide” but he submitted his entry in no-reply mode so I couldn’t get back to him. Continue reading We Give Away the Signal By Jason Chambers   Feel sympathy for Piotr, married with three sons, in Craig Raine’s new story in the June 1st issue of the The New Yorker? He has betrayed his wife, Basia, in their own apartment. Piotr is sleeping with the poet Agnieszka. She likes to tell all in her verses so Piotr is worried that he going to appear in her next volume. Well, if you know a writer then you are taking certain chances. So I was enjoying myself trashing Piotr but Craig Raine puts a stop to that. Piotr is worried that he may succumb to his family’s predisposition to cancer.
Continue reading Love Affair with Secondaries by Craig Raine By Jason Chambers You are invited to check out the review of Jason Rice’s short story Friends on the very strong Emerging Writers Network…one of the best sites on which to keep up with contemporary fiction. What’s especially cool is that you can then follow the EWN link to JR’s story on FailBetter.com…another one of the coolest lit websites on the planet. Jason moves in only the best literary circles these days. Best wishes to our friend. Review of Jason Rice’s Friends -DH By Jason Chambers   Ron Carlson’s The Signal is on-sale on June 1st. I had a chance to talk to Ron about the book. RC is awesome:
Dennis Haritou: Ron, you have written a novel without a roof. Your characters are almost always outdoors. Why make that creative choice? Ron Carlson: I never ever thought of it that way – no roof! And I didn’t think of it when I was writing as an artistic choice. I worked to keep the story simple and each scene led me to the next – even if the next was in the past – and most of Continue reading The Ron Carlson Interview | |
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