One other thing I wanted to throw up on here. In case anyone is interested, these are the books we read in my Craft of Writing course this semester. (As an undergrad, I used to browse the graduate fiction writing classes' booklists and then buy and read the assigned books--maybe other people do this too.) We didn't read each story collection in it's entirety, which is why I didn't include some of these in my sidebar book list; I have yet to finish them on my own.
A Model World and Other Stories, Michael Chabon
Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
Success, Martin Amis,
Pnin, Nabokov
Birds of America, Lorrie Moore
Self-Help, Lorrie Moore
Like Life, Lorrie Moore
Selected Stories, Alice Munro
The Early Stories, 1953-75, John Updike
Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld
The Autograph Man, Zadie Smith
In Persuasion Nation, George Saunders
Civilwarland in Bad Decline, George Saunders
Pastoralia, George Saunders
Tell No One, Harlan Coben (our genre novel fun-week)
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace (we read only the last 200 some pages)
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, DFW
Consider the Lobster, DFW
Highlights were Saunders ( I've read the story "Sea Oak" in Pastoralia four or five times; it's just brilliant),
Wallace (particularly the title essay in A Supposedly Fun Thing. I can't wait to find the time to tackle Infinite Jest from the beginning),
the Martin Amis novel,
and Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld (don't be fooled by it's young adult cover. It's about boarding school, yes, but not teen-y. It's a great clinic in compelling structure and building suspense that is satisfying in intervals but not cheap. Wonderful bits of psychological insight and understanding as well)
The Harlan Coben book was fun, despite being a total piece of shit. It's pretty fascinating how Coben hooks and pushes--really difficult to put down. I read almost the whole thing at Barnes and Nobles, on that row of chairs where all the lonely or homeless people read all day. But I gained nothing from it when it was done and some parts were hilariously awful. A charming and addictive piece of crap.
I'd skip Lahiri and that Chabon collection. Wasn't thrilled with Updike, or Munro either, but perhaps I just read the wrong stories. Any Updike or Munro fans want to point me to some favorite stories?
I like Alice Munro, but I liked her awhile ago when I was found this paralyzed graduate student's xanga who was very in love with her and gave speeches about her in Canada where he lived. I read her on airplanes. I wrote essays about her for tests.
ReplyDeleteanyway I'm surprised you don't like her. She is very goddesslike and I heard she'll keep rewriting her stories even after they're published. She sort of reminds me of Virginia Woolf but maybe I'm just so totally unaware of other women authors from the last century that I just lump them all together.
read more! always
time to talk tomorrow? maybe in the morning? chris is trying to get comfortable. he reads Infinite Jest to me while I clean my room or drive home from Lawrence and I am actually starting to think DfW is not the asshole I mistook him for two years ago when I lumped him together with the guy who was presenting Consider the Lobster to Atkin's class. I need to stop doing that.
I think DFW is not the asshole lumped with the guy who presented. I would say DFW is definitely not an asshole, not that I knew him, but more like a very tender person who has thin skin and experiences everything with a heightened sensitivity that most people can't totally understand, and this is very cool, this is very sad. I feel like I stole some of this from somewhere...let me look. Oh yes, George Saunders said some things about him in this Guardian piece--writers on other writers who passed away in the 2000s.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/02/noughties-writers-obituaries-review
What are some Munro suggestions? Good ones?