Blog Profile / Conversational Reading
| URL : | http://conversationalreading.com/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Academics / Literature | |
| Posts on Regator: | 2984 | |
| Posts / Week: | 11 | |
| Archived Since: | March 2, 2008 | |
Blog Post Archive
The Novels of Kim Young-ha
Colin Marshall in the LARB: Within 50 pages, Kim name-checks The Death of Marat, Henry Miller, Oscar Wilde, William Shakespeare, Sylvia Plath, Gustav Klimt, B.B. King, Animal Kingdom, Chupa Chups lollipops, Chet Baker, Antonio Banderas, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Stranger Than Paradise, at which point the book only has 69 pages left. Show More Summary
The Uncollected Fiction of DFW
It’s coming, Dec 1.
Marketing the Bolano
This caught my eye, mostly since I just got through delivering a paper on precisely this topic. Javier Calvo: The other day I saw a book by Alejandro Zambra on a list of the most anticipated books of 2013 in the United States, and IShow More Summary
Gaddis in the NYT
It’s nice to see Gaddis’s letters reviewed in the Times, even if this review is symptomatic of that paper’s decline. Kinda ballsy to make the lede how the critics completely messed up on The Recognitions and J R and then not quote from the Times’ participation in said fiasco...
Technology!
It’s almost as though they learned nothing from the past decade. For the moment, data about how well MOOCs work are diffuse and scant. A cornerstone of the case for them is a randomized study that Bowen helped plan, through the Ithaka organization, a Mellon Foundation spinoff. Show More Summary
On the Road
Traveling this week. Blogging might be a little light.
Gombrowicz’s Kronos
Witold Gombrowicz was a strange guy. Kronos, apparently his last unpublished text, sounds like an especially strange book. The new book lays out Gombrowicz’s meticulous monthly tabulation of concerns – his erotic ventures as lists of partners’ first names and his health and lack thereof are the carnal, corporeal priorities. Show More Summary
Not a Concern That I Have
We seem to be in a weird place right now vis a vis books. For the most part, Jaron Lanier comes across as non-alarmist non-techno-utopian in this interview (e.g., “My cyber-friends think if you can just come up with a perfect scheme,...Show More Summary
Graphs, Maps, Trees
Somewhere at the intersection between the social sciences and literary criticism we find Franco Moretti’s writing on literature. “The form of any portion of matter, whether it be living or dead,” writes D’Arcy Thompson in his strange wonderful book On Growth and Form, “may in all cases alike be described as dur to the action of force. Show More Summary
All for the $$$
Obviously I get the point of why things like this are necessary, and to the extent that artistic endeavors can make a good argument for themselves in the language of capitalism, good for them. But I do also feel that this sort of thing takes away from the message that the arts should be sending: we’re not capitalism and we don’t want to be. Show More Summary
Synesthesia in George Anderson: Notes for a Love Song in Imperial Time
A nice review of George Anderson: Notes for a Love Song in Imperial Time. It’s really nice to see this book continuing to be discussed months after its release. It should be read. A lot. On the copyright page of Peter Dimock’s new novel,...Show More Summary
Just-in-Time Capitalism
Hard to out-Jameson Jameson. In Post-Postmodernism, Nealon argues that culture has changed since Jameson’s 1980s, and that the economy has, too. He defines a new era: “intensification” marks us now, as “fragmentation” marked the earlier period. Show More Summary
Beckett’s Krapp
An interview with longtime Beckett performer Rick Cluchey: On 24 September 1977, Samuel Beckett wrote a letter to the American theatre director Alan Schneider. At the time, the playwright was in Berlin, busily rehearsing a production of Krapp’s Last Tape with the American actor Rick Cluchey: ‘Rick is an impressive Krapp’, Beckett confided. Show More Summary
Things I Do Not Understand
I get that there are larger forces (in part) at work here, but the fact still remains that under Sam Tanenhaus’s leadership the Times Book Review went from God’s-Almighty-Word-center-of-the-universe-of-book-criticism to a somewhat respected midfielder in a large pool of emerging and longstanding critical outlets. Show More Summary
Hypothermia by Alvaro Enrigue
Back when Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction came out, by far my favorite story in that collection was Alvaro Enrigue’s “On the Death of the Author.” There is, however, one story in Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction that does bear...Show More Summary
Interview with Mia Couto
Over at The Paris Review, I interview Mia Couto on his new book, The Tuner of Silences. This is the last question: To close things out, I wanted to ask about the origins of your name. I’ve read that it comes from your love of cats, as the Portuguese for meow is “miar.” Is this true? Yes, that really is true. Show More Summary
Susan Bernofksy Doing New Translation of The Metamorphosis
This will be an interesting translation. Bernofsky has apparently completed translating another old standard — Kafka’s Die Verwandlung (the title generally translated as, sigh, The Metamorphosis … (that word has an exact German equivalent — ‘Metamorphose’ — and if that’s what Kafka had meant, that’s the word he would have used …)).
Best Translated Book Award Ceremony
Don’t miss your chance to be among the first to find out who takes home the BTBAs this year and party in the streets (literally) with Chad Post. First, the specifics: The Best Translated Book Award Ceremony will take place at 5:30 at the Washington Mews. Show More Summary
The Unlikable Protagonist
Was having a conversation about this the other day, about whether or not the cultural mainstreaming of asshole characters in TV and film had made unlikable protagonists more palatable in fiction. As little as 50 years ago, Wayne Booth...Show More Summary
Stoner Killing It in the Netherlands
Yes, it is as close to perfect as a novel can be. And yes, you should read it today. Do as the Dutch do. “Why isn’t this book more famous?” asked the writer C.P. Snow about John Williams’s Stoner in 1973, eight years after it was first published by Viking Press. Show More Summary