Monday Medley

What we read after shoveling snow…

• Community returned! And it actually had impressive ratings (for NBC). Speaking of which, can NBC ever rebound from its current slump?

• Pope Benedict XVI is resigning, which a pope hasn’t done in, oh, about 600 years. Undoubtedly, Charles V had something to do with this.

• Some reflections on last week’s Super Bowl blackout, and how it revealed the worthlessness of the CBS broadcast team.

• An excellent story on how Jay Williams bounced back from his career-ending motocycle accident.

• Eamonn Brennan on what Notre Dame’s five-overtime epic with Louisville says about college basketball.

• The Justice Department’s memo on the legal case for drone strikes against Americans was released last week, just days before John Brennan, the “chief architect” of the drone program, testified before Congress to become the new CIA chief. It was not the most grueling of job interviews.

• Why don’t bankers go to jail?

• My Bloody Valentine released their first record in 22 years.

• What IS the future of college?

• Roberto Bolaño on writing short stories.

• Probably the most interesting story about headphones you’ll read this week.

Monday Medley

What we read while wondering where Mo Williams will play next year…

• Nate Silver computes a simple but cool “Value Over Replacement Justice” statistic to show by one measure that Elena Kagan was the right pick over Diane Wood. We’re not totally convinced Kagan is an “Organization Kid” but David Brooks writes an excellent column arguing that she is.

• Speaking of Kagan, NYT Magazine has an interesting profile of her former University of Chicago colleague Cass Sunstein, a potential albeit unlikely Supreme Court nominee himself.

• John S reviewed the latest book for David Foster Wallace fans in April, and last week New York got a roundtable around to discuss Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself.

• Two older but still timely pieces from The Millions: Lizzie Skurnick on iPads, The Atlantic, and publishing; and Edan Lepucki on committing “social media suicide.”

• If you’ve read Roberto Bolano’s 2666 (like we did) or simply enjoy following violent drug wars, John Murray’s ongoing series about the violence in Ciudad Juarez–the inspiration for Bolano’s Santa Teresa setting–is a must-read. The LA Times has chimed in on the situation as well with some eye-opening graphics.

• It’s not a trick, Michael, it’s an ILLUSION!

• And for the nostalgic of us thinking about graduation (and limiting our scope to a certain shared alma mater), we present Duke President Richard Brodhead’s latest graduation address and Sam Wells’ sermon from last year’s baccalaureate in Durham. We’re not quite sure if either of them can compete with Steve Jobs’ infamous address at Stanford or the aforelinked speech from Conan O’Brien at Harvard. Of course for us, the standard is and always will be David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College.

Aught Lang Syne: The Decade in Literature, Part I

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 of the Aughts (so long as we’re not counting The Wire), 2666 affords Bolaño the posthumous chance to opine on death in all its forms: from the corporeal to the metaphysical. His characters are deep even when they are fleeting, and his style (in Natasha Wimmer’s translation) ranges from florid to hard-boiled. In contemplating his own legacy, Bolaño pretty much ensured it. 

–Tim

 

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon

I’ve already expanded on my high opinion of Michael Chabon’s novel about the Golden Age of Comic Books; The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay presents a compelling portrait of what it’s like to create fantasies in an era of global turmoil—a particularly resonant story of the Aughts, even if Chabon’s novel came out in 2000. While he deals with themes like evil and fantasy, however, Chabon is adept at depicting a rich setting of New York City in the 1930s.

– John S

Monday Medley

What we read while Google Earth-ing the rest of the Middle East:

• Our friends over at The Millions got a jump start on decade-in-review countdowns, ranking the best novels of the last 10 years. For those who, like us, enjoyed Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, No. 4 on The Millions’ list, they offer a complete “Bolaño syllabus” for how to read more of the still-being-translated Chilean. And if decade-in-review countdowns are up your alley, get pumped for December, when we exercise our own love of rankings and unleash a massive retrospective on the last 10 years.

• We’ve known about Tampa Bay Rays’ outfielder-cum-poet Fernando Perez for over a year now. Perez, a Jersey Guy and Columbia alum, is one of the most articulate athletes to come along in some time, a talent he showcases in an essay on poetry he wrote for the latest issue of Poetry Magazine. Perez has also written glimpses at Major League life for The New York Times‘ Bats blog and at Minor League life for MiLB.com.

• This would probably rank highly on our list of “Differences between South Carolina and what we understand as normality.” Articles containing the words “crossbow,” “alligator,” and “16-year-old cheerleader” don’t normally end this happily. Something tells me she’d do fine at the Jersey school that apparently needs Tim Meadows and Tina Fey to step in to stop hazing.

• John S does not take lightly to anything that in any way critiques the livelihood of Bro-dy Jenner.

• It was more than a week ago that Fire Joe Morgan staged a one-day reunion on Deadspin, but this takedown of Derek Jeter is, to some of us, timeless.

• Josh wrote about the advantages of being tall some time ago; he did not mention the threshold beyond which those advantages kind of disappear–you know, somewhere around 8-feet. The newly-minted world’s tallest man, Sultan Kosen, has been on a bit of a swing through the Western hemisphere of late, attracting sex advice and even a date with an English journalist. Less exciting? His trip to Citi Field.

2666 and Authorial Legacy

Readers, I made a mistake. In the open to my review of Netherland, I talked of the novel’s declaring its own eulogy “in the grand tradition of Louis XIV.” The facts are right; the wording isn’t. Substitute “epitaph” for “eulogy,” understand that in both cases it was accidental, and perhaps I’ll have a shred of credibility left after this week’s introduction.

It is impossible to read Roberto Bolaño’s massive masterpiece, 2666, and not immediately think of the circumstances surrounding his writing of it. Bolaño penned 2666 during the last five years of his life, suffering from the liver disease that he knew would ultimately kill him, as it did July 15, 2003.

As a result, 2666, an 898-page tome of a novel that Kirkus Reviews called “unquestionably the finest novel of the present century—and we may be saying the same thing 92 years from now,” is nothing short of Bolaño’s preemptive and fully conscious attempt to crash his funeral and deliver a eulogy not looking back on his life, but rather looking forward to his legacy.

Bolaño’s preferred subject has always (and here, I mean in his fiction; I am unfamiliar with his poetry) been the writer. His novels and novellas have, hitherto without exception, been told by writers and about writers. Whereas his other major work, The Savage Detectives, explored the lives of writers, 2666 deals in their deaths. The novel is, quite simply, enamored with death and its (non-corporal) consequences.