Archive for the ‘Literature’ Category
27
Dec
Posted by Tim in Aught Lang Syne, Literature, Sunday Book Review. Tagged: abelard, belicia, book of the decade, condensed epic, david foster wallace, Infinite Jest, Junot Diaz, la inca, lola, New York Magazine, pulitzer prize, sam anderson, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, trujillo, ybon, yunior. Leave a Comment
In its review of fiction in the Aughts, New York Magazine implicitly compares The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao—the decade’s “signature novel”—to Infinite Jest—“the big buzzy signature meganovel of the nineties.” According to Sam Anderson, Junot Díaz’s 2007 novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize, represents the Aughts’ literary downsizing, from 1000-page epics like David [...]
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27
Dec
Posted by John S in Aught Lang Syne, Literature, Sunday Book Review. Tagged: James Wood, the millions, the Aughts, Aught Lang Syne, The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen, white teeth, zadie smith, Human All Too Inhuman, Nietzsche allusions, littleness of the big novel, best fiction of the decade, hysterical realism, the Lamberts, postmodernism, the elderly, depression, academia, novels set in Philadelphia, novels set in the midwest, senility, bizarre love triangle. Leave a Comment
In James Wood’s influential review, “Human, All Too Inhuman,” of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, he discussed what he calls “the littleness of the big novel.” His point, put somewhat crudely, was that as the ambition of novelists grows to include encompassing the entire geographical, political, and philosophical spectrum, works of fiction end up losing their [...]
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20
Dec
Posted by Tim in Aught Lang Syne, Literature, Sunday Book Review. Tagged: a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, Aught Lang Syne, Dave Eggers, goethe, i don't think i mentioned it explicitly but i did spend a lot of time contemplating the bildungsroman, self-consciousness, spotlight on the aughts, the modern memoir, you shall know our velocity. Leave a Comment
“Everything that happens to us leaves traces, everything contributes imperceptibly to our development.”
—Goethe
There’s a hardcover edition of Dave Eggers’ first novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity, in which the text of the story actually starts on the book’s cover. There is no title page or copyright or About the Author; the story comprises the entire [...]
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20
Dec
Posted by NPI in Aught Lang Syne, Literature. Tagged: Al Franken, America: The Book, Aught Lang Syne, Books, consider the lobster, david foster wallace, David Sedaris, Evan Wright, Everything Bad is Good for you, fox news, Freakonomics, Generation Kill, Geoff Emerick, george w. bush, Here There and Everywhere, Howard Massey, Jon Stewart, Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell them, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Mystery, Neil Strauss, Nonfiction, Paul Collier, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Dubner, Steven Johnson, Steven Levitt, the Beatles, The Bottom Billion, The Daily Show, The Game, The God Delusion. 2 Comments
Last week, NPI gave an overview of fiction (in two parts!) of the Aughts. Yesterday, Josh pointed out the popular economics trend in this decade’s nonfiction. Today, Josh and John are going over (in two parts!) what they believe are the biggest nonfiction books of the Aughts.
America: The Book – Jon Stewart and The Daily Show writers
I bought [...]
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13
Dec
Posted by Tim in Aught Lang Syne, Literature. Tagged: don delillo, jonathan safran foer, philip roth, Dan Brown, Dave Eggers, a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, literature of the Aughts, literature of the decade, white teeth, zadie smith, everything is illuminated, extremely loud & incredibly close, falling man, 9/11 novels, the decade's best novels, the plot against america, life of pi, yann martel, then we came to the end, joshua ferris, never let me go, kazuo ishiguro, the da vinci code, meta-enabling. 1 Comment
In case you missed Part I of our quick glimpses of the decade’s most noteworthy fiction, you can check it out here.
White Teeth – Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith’s first novel came out in the first month of the Aughts, and seemed to be an important, symbolic moment for literature at large. For one, it led critic [...]
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13
Dec
Posted by NPI in Aught Lang Syne, Literature. Tagged: No Country for Old Men, Javier Bardem, the Coen brothers, roberto bolano 2666, 2666, roberto bolano, ian mcewan, michael chabon, Aught Lang Syne, the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen, George Saunders, Pastoralia, Atonement, Junot Diaz, kite runner, Cormac McCarthy, literature of the Aughts, literature of the decade, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Khaled Hosseini, Kurt Vonnegut comparisons. 2 Comments
In addition to our Aught-themed Sunday Book Review, which we began last week, NPI is presenting a more general look at fiction of the decade in which we look quickly and some of the most significant works of literature published during this decade. This is Part I of a two-part series.
2666 — Roberto Bolaño
The epic [...]
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6
Dec
Posted by John S in Aught Lang Syne, Literature, Sunday Book Review. Tagged: michael chabon, world war II, adolf hitler, Superman, Spiderman, Batman, the Escapist, escapism, the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, what is the why?, Joe Kavalier, Sammy Clay, Nazis as supervillains, December 1941, comic books, superheroes, River Moldau, Seduction of the Innocent, Prague. Leave a Comment
In keeping with NPI’s December theme of Aught Lang Syne, this month’s Sunday Book Reviews will cover some of the most important works of literature to come out this decade. Today we’re starting with Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
What is the appeal of superheroes? As this decade’s onslaught of superhero movies* [...]
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22
Nov
Posted by Tim in Literature, Sunday Book Review. Tagged: Dave Eggers, zeitoun, a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, hurricane katrina, fema, george w. bush, abdulrahman zeitoun, new orleans, understatement, voice of the generation. Leave a Comment
Note to all potential readers of Zeitoun: It is located in the Biography section at Barnes & Noble, not, as one who has read Dave Eggers’ other more-or-less-based-on-real-life-if-slightly-fictionalized works might suspect, in the Fiction/Literature section. Furthermore, remember that, in the Biography section, it is alphabetized by subject and not author; this is because people don’t [...]
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15
Nov
Posted by Tim in Literature, Sunday Book Review. Tagged: alexei ivanovich velchaninov, crime and punishment, demons, fyodor dostoevsky, notes from underground, pavel pavlovich trusotsky, the adolescent, the brothers karamazov, the double, the eternal husband, the gambler. Leave a Comment
The Eternal Husband is the kind of novel I imagine Fyodor Dostoevsky came up with in a weekend. It could even work as a one-act play with its three basic steps: Take a wife who cheats on her husband, kill her off (before the start of the novel of course), and put the husband in [...]
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