Also, Howard Zinn on Columbus Day.
You may have noticed (and probably don’t care) that today is October 10, 2010, 0r 10/10/10 (or 10.10.10, or 10-10-10, or whatever iteration you prefer). But some people like lists. So, with very little thought put into the process, here are three literary lists to celebrate 10 Oct. 10–
Ten Ridiculous Character Names
1. Stephen Dedalus (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, James Joyce. Even Stephen ponders how ridiculous and overdetermined his name is)
2. Major Major Major Major (Catch-22, Joseph Heller)
3. Bilbo Baggins (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien. Sure, he’s a hobbit, but “Bilbo Baggins” is still pretty much off the silly scale)
4. Brackett Omensetter (Omensetter’s Luck, William Gass)
5. Horselover Fat (VALIS, Philip K. Dick)
6. Milkman Dead (Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison)
7. Humbert Humbert (Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov)
8. Lionel Essrog (Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem)
9. Tie: Wang-Dang Lang/Peter Abbott/Candy Mandible/Judith Prietht/Biff Diggerance (David Foster Wallace suffers from Pynchon-fever in his début novel, Broom of the System)
10. Tie: Benny Profane/Oedipa Maas/Tyrone Slothrop/Zoyd Wheeler/Rev. Wicks Cherrycoke et al. — (Various novels by Thomas Pynchon. Yes, Pynchon should probably get his own list)
Ten Excellent Dystopian/Post-apocalyptic Novels That Aren’t Brave New World or 1984
1. Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban
2. Camp Concentration, Thomas Disch
3. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
4. Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood
5. The Hospital Ship, Martin Bax
6. Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
7. VALIS, Philip K. Dick
8. Ronin, Frank Miller
9. Ape and Essence, Aldous Huxley
10. The Road and Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
Ten Movies Better Than or Equal to the Books On Which They Were Based
1. The Godfather
2. The Shining
3. The Thin Red Line
4. Children of Men
5. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
6. Trainspotting
7. No Country for Old Men
8. The Grapes of Wrath
9. There Will Be Blood
10. Jaws
The New York Times profiles Karen Green, David Foster Wallace’s widow. The article details Green’s new art show Sure Is Quiet at the Space Arts Center and Gallery in South Pasadena,California. The article is worth reading in full, of course (it’s actually quite moving), but here are some of Green’s own words from the piece, on Wallace and her art—
David was a big sweater, and I just remember the sweat marks on his pillow when I changed the cases.
. . .
I wanted to redirect my anger, which is useless and fuels nothing, by invading my own privacy and then covering it up.
. . .
There’s been so much chaotic conversation in my head . . . I’ve been thinking, thinking so much. I wanted to take all the chaotic stuff and make it quiet.
. . .
David could be the great artist in the household, I didn’t care . . . I’ve been accused by academic friends of not having the right dialogue with the art world — not being knowledgeable about what’s cool, what’s desirable out there right now. But I’d rather work at Starbucks and make what I want.
. . .
I kept making art because I didn’t know what else to do, and that’s what I’ve always done . . . I felt everyone else was so much more advanced in the grieving process.
. . .
I really was thinking about language, the power of it . . . The power of David’s work, for example, which meant so much to people. But when you get as sick as he was, everything loses meaning.
. . .
You can be charmed and fooled by language . . It doesn’t stop, but it’s never enough.
The massive new volume The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis doesn’t come out until later this month, but you can read the first three stories in the book now at Picador’s website. Read “Story,” “The Fears of Mrs. Orlando,” and “Liminal: The Little Man,” all originally published in Break It Down.
In case you missed it: NPR’s All Things Considered spoke with Philip Roth about his new book Nemesis earlier this week. From the profile–
Nemesis is Roth’s 31st work, and at age 77, he still continues to take risks with his narrative style. In Nemesis, he doesn’t reveal the identity of the narrator until well into the novel.
“It just dawned on me as I was writing along,” Roth explains. “The book educates you about the book.”
Though Roth developed the novel’s narrative structure unexpectedly, he was motivated to do so by a novel that continues to inspire him: Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. In the novel’s first scene, the reader is introduced to Charles Bovary, Madame Bovary’s husband-to-be, as a schoolboy. The scene is narrated by the collective voice of his mocking classmates — a voice that then disappears.
“Well, I don’t have the guts for that,” Roth says, laughing. “That’s what made Flaubert Flaubert, you know. But indeed, it is from the charm of that opening of Madame Bovary that I took my lead.”
The BBC and other sources report that Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa has won the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is the first South American to win the Nobel in lit since Gabriel García Márquez won in 1982.
According to the Nobel website, the prize was awarded to Mario Vargas Llosa “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat.”
Biblioklept and the kind folks at Picador want to give you a handsome new trade paperback copy of James McManus’s history of poker, Cowboys Full — but you’ll have to ante up by taking our literary poker quiz. The first person to post correct answers in the comments section to all three questions will win a copy of McManus’s books.
UPDATE: Commenter Aspher correctly answered the initial questions–only he happens to live in Australia. And the contest is only open to U.S. addresses. Which I knew, but forgot to include in the original version of this post. So. Big sorry out there. I suppose this may confirm one of those American stereotypes–you know, that we see ourselves as the center of the universe. Fortunately, Aspher, via his cordial emails, confirmed a positive Australian stereotype: a good-natured easygoingness about the whole mistake. Mea culpa.
So anyway, there are some NEW questions to answer, under the first set.
1. What Edgar Allan Poe tale of doppelgängers features a duplicitous card sharp?
2. What Faulkner story about two brothers involves a poker game that will decide not one but two marriages? (Hint: although this story can stand alone, it is rightfully part of a collection that is sometimes classified as a cohesive novel).
3. Which British essayist and critic said “Cards are war, in disguise of a sport”?
1. Which Tennessee Williams play ends, significantly, during a poker game?
2. Which Mark Twain story features a poker game set on a steamer headed from Acapulco to San Francisco?
3. Which Russian writer wrote a novel about gambling to pay off gambling debts? (Name the novelist and the novel).
More from The Paris Review’s vaults. Highlights from William T. Vollmann’s 2000 interview (the entire thing is precious. Just precious) —
VOLLMANN: One of the things that I had to do occasionally while I was collecting information for that prostitute story, “Ladies and Red Lights” from The Rainbow Stories, was sit in a corner and pull down my pants and masturbate. I would pretend to do this while I was asking the prostitutes questions. Because otherwise, they were utterly afraid of me and utterly miserable, thinking I was a cop.
. . .
I kept thinking when I first began writing that my female characters were very weak and unconvincing. What is the best way to really improve that? I thought, Well, the best way is to have relationships with a lot of different women. What’s the best way to do that? It’s to pick up whores.
. . .
Also, I often feel lonely.
. . .
I almost never sleep with American prostitutes any more, unless they really want me to—if they are going to get hurt if I don’t.
. . .
Anyway, so when I was in Thailand, I went to a town in the south and bought a young girl for the night. This awful brothel—one of these places hidden behind a flowershop with all these tunnels and locked doors and stuff—was like a prison. I tried to help a couple of the girls but you just can’t get them out. I tried and I couldn’t. I made the mistake of going to the police, trying to have the police get them out—all that did was nearly get them arrested and put in jail, because the police are paid off. I managed to get the raid called off by taking all the cops out to dinner and buying them Johnnie Walker. I bought this fourteen-year-old girl and got her in a truck and drove like hell to Bangkok. I was with this other girl at the time—Yhone-Yhone, a street prostitute, a very happy one. She was my interpreter. She put the fourteen-year-old girl at ease and got her to trust me. We got her set up at a school run by a relative of the king of Thailand. I went up north, met her father, gave him some money, and got a receipt for his daughter. He didn’t know she’d been sold to a brothel. When I met him and told him he said, Oh. I didn’t know that, but, well, whatever she wants. He’s not a bad guy, just a total loser. He’s a former Chiang Kai-shek soldier. They’re all squatters there in Thailand. They can’t read or write. He lives on dried dogs and dried snakes.
INTERVIEWER: You own his daughter?
VOLLMANN: That’s right. I own her. She doesn’t particularly like me, but she was really happy to be out of that place. She loves the school. It’s sort of a vocational school. It’s called something like the Center for the Promotion of the Status of Women. Many former prostitutes are in there.
. . .
The common motif is just prostitution and love.
. . .
I want to take some responsibility and act as well as write. I don’t mean to be an actor, but rather to accomplish things . . . do things that will help people somehow . . . things like kidnapping the sex slave. It would be great if I could make my contribution to abolishing the automobile or eliminating television or something like that.
Jim McManus’s Cowboys Full is a thorough and energetic history of poker. Or, perhaps more accurately, Cowboys Full is a history of how power, will, and guile intersect with luck to shape national destinies. McManus examines poker’s political and cultural influence, from its origins in China to the game’s explosive popularity online today. McManus delineates his program in his first chapter, “Pokerticians,” an overview of the book that details how poker has had a lasting impact on world politics. Covering the gambling habits of Presidents and generals, kings and clerics, McManus’s book makes a strong case for poker as a metaphor of power and capitalism.
This is no dry history tome, however. McManus is a professional poker player and a professional writer, and Cowboys Full reads with a vigor that approximates the energy of a good game. While American presidents and politicians dominate his narrative, there are also outlaws, cowboys, and confidence men. And writers. Lots and lots of writers. McManus draws not just from earlier histories of poker, but also from novelists like Herman Melville and Mark Twain. He prefaces each of his chapters with a quote, usually from a novel or short story or poem, and I’ll confess I warmed quickly to the book after the first two chapters led with some heavy lines from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (McManus also quotes from No Country for Old Men and uses The Road as a visual reference point). He’s also keen on Bob Dylan.
Of course, this is a history of poker (or “The Story of Poker,” rather, as its subtitle declares), and there’s plenty of poker here–famous games, cheating scams, and today’s big names–but not so much to elicit a yawn from a non-player (or a casual player like myself). The second half of the book moves to Las Vegas, detailing the ins and outs of big tournament action. It also seeks to explain how Texas Hold ‘Em became a spectator sport by the middle of the aughties. But McManus’s book does not fetishize (or unduly valorize) the superstars (and wannabes) of big time poker, and the narrative never falls into the kind of catty tell-all tone that often marks insider stories. McManus is more concerned with philosophy and game theory.
At its core, Cowboys Full is a cultural history of poker, and like the talk at many friendly games, there’s a rambling fluidity to McManus’s narrative, a willingness to run on and overflow in disparate directions. At the same time, there’s a considerable syntactic focus: McManus is handy with punchy sentences and sharp anecdotes, and he keeps most of his chapters short and lively. This is a fun book to read. Cowboys Full is well-researched, with a helpful index and a glossary of terms, but it should not be mistaken for a didactic theory manual or a comprehensive account of everything that ever happened in poker. Instead, McManus has given us a rewarding a volume that uses its subject to enlarge our understanding of both our past and our present–and maybe our future. Recommended.
Cowboys Full is new in trade paperback this week from Picador this week.
Check out the frank and funny images at Better Book Titles (via @MelvilleHouse). A few of our favorites–
Download The Chamber Four Fiction Anthology. From their website–
This anthology contains 25 of the best short stories published on the web in 2009 and 2010 as chosen by the editors of ChamberFour.com, a website dedicated to making reading more enjoyable and more rewarding.In this collection, you’ll find traditional, Carver-esque stories alongside magical realist tales of teleportation, long pieces that slowly pull you in, and single-page punches to the solar plexus. Some of these authors you’ve heard of, others you’ll be discovering for the first time, and you can be sure you’ll see them all again.
There is no factor that unifies the pieces collected here beyond their availability online and that hard-to-define but unmistakable hallmark of quality. These stories are as diverse and as wide in scope as the Internet, but each is true to their shared subject: the attempt to reconcile our world to the struggles of the human soul.
This anthology is DRM-free and free to download. Anybody charging for it is ripping you off.
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