 JE: I had three agents, including a couple of luminaries, before I found Mollie Glick, and what I learned is that having an agent doesn’t mean squat. You have to find the RIGHT agent. I was in fact un-agented at the time I started getting bites for “All About Lulu,” and I interviewed no less than a half-dozen reps, all of whom offered to rep me, before I decided on Mollie. I knew within five minutes Mollie was the right choice. She had an excellent idea of what I was trying to accomplish with my work, as well as an excellent understanding of my longterm goals. On top of that,
Continue reading Agent Talk with Mollie Glick
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I’m a huge fan of Charles Cumming’s novels. Typhoon, his latest, goes on sale today. I’ve been fortunate enough to read the UK version, which the author was kind enough to send my way.
I read A Spy by Nature in huge gulps, and I’ve always been fascinated by the trade craft of the spy business. I’ve faithfully watched MI:5 start to finish, all six seasons, witnessed the rise and fall of several main characters, all of whom I’ve loved and hated to see them go.
I’ve just started Typhoon, and hope to get a review up soon.
In the meantime pick up A Spy By Nature here.
Here are my thoughts on one of
Continue reading Charles Cumming, Typhoon.
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When I say I’ve got one for the crapper, I mean that in the best way possible. Friend of the blog, Nick Belardes released a weird little book earlier this month that I can honestly say is totally unique. Every crapper in America should have a copy of this book accessible. Random Obsessions is one of those trivia collections you can pick up and start reading anywhere. Belardes, a historian and illustrator (he drew the maps for my forthcoming novel, West of Here!) has ransacked the useless information files and uncovered some real gems. To wit: I had no idea Napoleon suffered from crippling hemorrhoids—so bad in fact, a
Continue reading One for the Crapper: Nick Belardes and his Random Obsessions
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3G1B has an ongoing conversation, the subject of which: “what the hell is going to happen to publishing in the future?” disturbs us all. This week we have invited Craig Nova to tell us what he thinks. Craig is the award winning author of 12 novels. His new novel, The Informer, will be released in January 2010.
CN: the first thing that comes to mind when I consider writers and the state of publishing is one of those science fiction movies from the fifties, you know, where some light is seen in the sky and then something like a smoking bowling ball lands someplace and then a couple of geeks get out of a pickup truck. They find a stick and poke the smoking bowling
Continue reading The Smoking Cannonball
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Reading JDW‘s intricate little collection of stories about a small town and the covey of strange characters that haunt it, I was initially at a loss in trying to describe it. Here is this sleepy village, populated by tendancies and residents and laws worthy of a strange, pleasant dream. The inanimate shake with life. The episodes are farcical, but at the edge of every joke or wordplay is a hint of seriousness. Or perhaps it’s the reverse. Punctuating each story is Wood’s artwork, introducing characters and places with drawings that sometimes simplify, and sometimes complicate his subjects.
Be prepared to relax your sense of reality for Woods. One of the earliest tales relates the story of chopsticks,
Continue reading A Complete Collection of People, Places & Things, by John Dermot Woods
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 My father introduced me to the work of Craig Nova, and I’ve never stopped thanking him for the tip. I started with Incandesence, which I pass around to all my friends, and to be honest the copy I have is pretty worn out. Mr. Nova’s books have been a huge influence on me, and the foundation of my collection of contemporary American first editions that I’ve been building up since the early 1990′s.
Somewhere along the way I invited Mr. Nova to read in Manhattan at a bookstore I was working at and I finally go to meet him. This was around the release of his novel The Universal Donor. Since then we’ve
Continue reading Craig Nova Blogs
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Caroline and her father live a simple, meager existence, shrouded in Forest Park, a nature preserve in Portland, Oregon. Ostensibly homeless, they have built a secluded home in the woods, complete with garden, library, and shower. Caroline reads the encyclopedia and runs barefoot in the forest, exploring the boundaries of her domain. Occasionally, she and her father visit the nearby town for food, the library, his SS check, but mostly stay out of the reach of other people.
Peter Rock’s My Abandonment is really a huge surprise. This slim novel examines their lives with dazzling, electric prose, starting with the childish naivete of the opening pages, to the shock of her
Continue reading My Abandonment by Peter Rock
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George Saunders Victory Lap appears in the October 5th issue of The New Yorker. There’s a lot of interest in this story. Kyle Beachy over on his Twitter site says he going to assign it to a class. My take is to separate why you should be interested in this story from why you shouldn’t.
This is a seven page story; allowing for some text leakage due to ads and New Yorker cartoons. (I wonder if I’m the only one who is sick of New Yorker cartoons.)
It’s a two-person plot plus a perpetrator of some violent action. There are parents as background figures. The story takes place in the suburbs which the parents sort-of blend into like they’re
Continue reading Victory Lap by George Saunders
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Harper releases “Totally Killer” this week, a great debut by super-talent and friend of the blog, Greg Olear. TK is a spot on send-up of 90s thrillers like “The Firm,” where conspiracy and pop culture collide in early 90s New York. Smart, funny, fresh, Olear has written a veritable almanac of the 90s. This baby had me humming Whitney Huston (and liking it!). Another friend of the blog, Brad Listi says this about TK: “*Smart*, unexpected, and wonderfully *savage in its humor*. TK nails, without mercy, the mood and minutiae of a weary *America* at the end of the 20th century. Olear’s characters are *perfectly emblematic* of their times.”
Not only is Greg a great big talent, but
Continue reading “Totally Killer” is totally killer
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Before I get started on Amelia Gray, I have to tell you something about this wafer-thin story by Lindsay Hunter that tells more in a few sentences than most novels do. My Brother will kick your ass, it will take just a few minutes to read, if you’re a slow reader like me.
This staple-bound story came in the same package from Featherproof Books, and I’m so glad it did. My Brother goes something like this: your sister is telling her friends about you, but you’re telling her that monsters live in your closet. Your record needle drops on the vinyl and you both agree that you’re father is a pussy. It’s sort of bulletproof like a mile marker
Continue reading AM/PM by Amelia Gray – My Brother by Lindsay Hunter
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I wanted to send this to Hudson corporate or whatever, but I figure it’s more likely to find the right eyes here than in a mail room somewhere.
Dear Hudson,
Okay, so maybe it’s no coincidence I’m in love with your airport stores, after all, you did pick /All About Lulu /for your Best of 2008 (only indie title selected!), and you gave my girl some excellent face time in the world’s best book market—the only market, in fact, that actually /creates/ readers. But truthfully, long before any of that happened, I was impressed with your stores. You pack a pretty damn eclectic selection into a small space (not the newsstands, mind you, but the booksellers). Soft Skull in airports? Dzanc? Fucking Borges?
Continue reading A Love Letter to Hudson
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 This is a dramatic collection, the weight of the book alone makes you feel like you’re holding something substantial. I’ve never been a huge SF fan, I love Alien, and Blade Runner, anything about the end of the world, that stuff gets my attention. Jonathan Lethem wrote a really great essay on J.G Ballard recently (here), and it reminded me of Lethem’s roots in the genre, and he made a point that the stories aren’t all flying saucers and alien’s eating human flesh.
My own mother loved the story in The New Yorker that came out the week J.G. Ballard died, The Secret Autobiography of J.G.B. and after reading it I was convinced that this guy might have
Continue reading J.G. Ballard – The Complete Stories – Minus One & End-Game
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