Monday Medley

What we read on our 48-hour sabbatical from MSNBC…

• The long wait for Conan O’Brien’s new show ends tonight, with the premiere of Conan on TBS. Jay Leno will probably not be a guest. Speaking of Leno and late-night TV, October saw The Daily Show beat its network rivals in the ratings, while Leno fell behind Letterman. I wonder if Dick Ebersol will call Leno an “astounding failure” now.

• Zach Galifianakis, in his early years, was sort of skinny. Also, a fascinating look at Woody Allen’s early years, including his stint on Candid Camera. Erik Voss at SplitSider, meanwhile, wonders if there’s ever a justification for a comedian to steal material.

• Tim wasn’t the only one spending some time on The Simpsons‘ Treehouse of Horror. In the spirit of Tim’s top nine, IO9 had its top 10 and 11 Points did its top 11.

• Speaking of Jews, one of the “numerous future” New York Times Articles comes to life.

• So, there was an election. Post-Citizens United Narrative Failure # 1: Democrats outspent Republicans on TV ads in House Races (and possibly in everything as well). Perhaps the most redeeming aspect of election coverage is Nate Silver’s incorporation into the mainstream media. He shows how unreliable and systematically biased (towards Republicans) Rasmussen Polls were during the campaigns. Oh, and Buzz Bissinger was clearly responding to John’s argument with this tweet.

• Speaking of fraud, comedian Bruce Baum has some pretty compelling evidence that Bruce Marder and Jerry Seinfeld are unjustly failing to attribute to him co-authorship of the hilarious Letters to a Nut series.

• Joe Posnanski had an even better week than usual, with posts on the weakest World Series winners of all-time, the currently active “certain” Hall of Famers, and the late Sparky Anderson.

• Why nobody can compete with the evil behemoth that is Ticketmaster.

• Zadie Smith offers a thoughtful new entry in the rapidly growing genre of “Distinguished Person Over 30 Complaining About Social Media’s Impact On Culture And Society.”

• The CFL–you’ve got to love it.

The Corrections and the Big Novel

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 humanity. As Smith herself said, “It is not the writer’s job to tell us how somebody felt about something; it’s to tell us how the world works.” As a result, Wood claims, the movement that he termed “hysterical realism” produces work that “knows a thousand things, but does not know a single human being.” 

About a year after Wood’s condemnation of contemporary fiction first appeared in The New Republic, The Corrections was published. Jonathan Franzen’s novel certainly does not lack the kind of ambition Wood talks about: The Corrections spans cities, countries, and continents, covers multiple generations, deals with financial disasters and Eastern European political instability, looks at modern academia and middle-class suburbia. In short, the book does seem to know a thousand things.

And yet Franzen’s story remains wholly grounded and deeply personal. At its heart, The Corrections is a story of a Midwestern family, the Lamberts. The Lambert patriarch, Alfred, is a stubborn, straight-laced, intelligent, and principled man who is suffering from early but unmistakable signs of senility as the novel begins. As Franzen puts it:

Aught Lang Syne: The Decade in Literature, Part II

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 James Wood to coin the term “hysterical realism,” a catch-all term for the kind of “big novel” Smith and many other young writers of this decade were writing. While the term was used pejoratively, it is an important indicator of the ambition of certain modern novelists. Smith’s novel traces two families through the entire second half of the century, covering World War II and the 1990s. The scope is an important theme, highlighting the grasp past events have on our modern lives, whether we like it or not.

–John S

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers

The novelistic memoir that propelled Eggers to full-on Voice of the Generation stature, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius does its best to live up to its name. Eggers manages to be meta without being condescending and to be funny without sacrificing poignancy. In crafting a deeply personal story that resonates universally, Eggers proved—for the first time—that he is a fascinating and compelling storyteller of the highest order.

–Tim