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Archive for THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture
May 2, 2013 at 8:14 pm · Filed under A Commonplace Book, THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture
“Turns of speech,” said he, “conceal mediocre affections: as if the fullness of the soul might not sometimes overflow in the emptiest of metaphors, since no one, ever, can give the exact measurements of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sufferings, and the human word is like an outworn, battered timbal upon which we beat out melodies fit for making bears dance when we are trying to move the stars to pity.” – Nick Tosches, “In the Hand of Dante”
A thoroughly strange book, and highly unusual (though not unique) way of telling the story: different voices using divergent methods to bring off auras, effects, and manipulation.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
March 29, 2013 at 4:55 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture, The Prague Blog
This has been a roller coaster two-month stretch of reading. Two BIG books and one decidedly philosophical, though wholly a fiction. Last year was The Year of the BIG Book, yet so far in 2013 I’ve luxuriated in some whopper-length stories and just completed a long-but-oh-so-accessible survey of Western Philosophy (and for anybody who likes philosophy, it’s a winner; for the philo-phtoowee people, you could do a lot worse — and probably have, in which case has determined your aversion ratio).
TUNC by Lawrence Durrell
Durrell has fun with this “novel of science-ideas” in that he plays with language in a way that you wonder if your leg is being pulled from the get-go. This isn’t the case, although the footing which the reader stands upon is moving. Ostensibly, the story follows an applied engineering inventor, Charlock, and his relationship with a worldwide company, the ubiquitous Merlin. To work for Merlin is to be set for life: steady income that grows to real wealth, keeper of your own patents, prestige, freedom of thought and work. But Charlock is a skittish sort, and he wants to know Why? all this must be so wonderful. Thus begins the ride.
2666 by Robert Bolano
Bolano gave us five short novels as he prepared to die (look him up on Wikipedia). The estate-cum-publisher decided to sandwich them, thus presenting a massive tome. But there is not just one story, so that’s okay, too. Each section follows different people, though there is a loose connection between the stories, and sometimes the odd character (or main one) appears in another story. The last story, “The Part About Archimboldi”, was for me the most coherent. Where the others left of as if Bolano died before he typed the last page, the story of Archimboldi is as complete a picture of a human as a reader could hope to get. Really heartfelt stuff, in a world of uncompromising treachery, delivering himself from evil with no help from north or south, and living by his wits.
The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant
This classic survey of “the world’s greatest philosophers from Plato to John Dewey” is such a fascinating read because Durant brings reasoned thought, intellect, wisdom, and humor to a whole ship-full of good prose. I’ve always disliked reading (or slogging through) the actual texts of many philosophers (Niezsche is brutal; Russel is obscure; Kant is dense as twice-baked cheesecake) but I thoroughly enjoy having a mature philosopher to pull out the best (and readable) bits from all those guys. Durant does this so well that I wanted him to give me the delineation on all the included philos’ works; alas, such an undertaking is “voluminous.” Nevertheless, we learn about the men behind their works, which partly explains the reasons they came to their … um … reasoning. And what I came away with this time, at this point in my life, is that most of the major philos were lonely, had been pushed down by society (or gov’t), rejected in love, hounded by peers, and in this built a view of life that, amazingly, captured the attention of those same people and society and gov’t that dumped on them.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
March 4, 2013 at 4:04 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture, Ways of Seeing
On Feb 15th, Lucien Zell hosted his monthly poetry/prose & musical series, SECRET CORDS, at Přátelé Stepního vlka in Prague to an audience of 25 or so. I think the five writers and four musicians made everyone happy with good verbal and musical entertaining for that cold Friday night in the dead of Prague’s winter.
Lucien opened the performances with his trademarked harmonizing number, set to the sounds of box concertina. When he croons he looks like a lone wolf in the forest, or the midnight crier from a far-off village. The song is a wonderful lead-in to readings. A tone of seriousness has been delivered; a bell has been tolled.
Cal Rambler led off the reading with several of his poems, linked by the theme of love, anguish, lost friendship, the potential for lust.
Jan Bičovský played guitar and sang folk tunes with an energy symbolic of the street-musician.
Elise Klein entertained us all with a stirring accordion song, and later played an unbelievably temperamental piano.
We also had a poet from Canada, whose short poems captured couplet-ed themes.
And then there was yours truly reading from my first novel, THE VILLAGE WIT.
Lucien read a few poems as well, naturally. One strong poem I recall is a villanelle, whose linking lines are strong on light & darkness, and the desire to write. (he’ll have to comment on this post and treat us to the entire poem (if he dares) or those two scintillating lines)
What is unique about SECRET CORDS is the blending of music and the spoken word. Art comes at us in different places under various forms. To have two of those forms together, in one evening at a single venue, places us in a position not used so often these years. Actually, it reminds me of something one reads about in the diaries of a Bloomsbury Set, or Gertrude Stein’s Paris salon, maybe NYC West Village in the ’50s (or the Bowery!).
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
February 10, 2013 at 11:31 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture, The Prague Blog
In 2012 I was fortunate to have been able to read 27 books. This year I’d like to read more than 30; if I can read 35 I’ll be truly a happy reader, and better off for the challenge. While I’m not in this for some speed contest, I do make time each day to read, usually about 50 pages.
Here are my first three titles of the year. Oh – I should have dated this column from Jan 22nd, which is when I finished the third book (I always post in groups of 3 books read) but I’ve been busy writing my next novel, and generally occupied otherwise.
Any Human Heart by William Boyd
I didn’t want to like this book after I read the first 50 pages. All the events and coincidences seemed too pat. And then something happened: life wasn’t so cheery and easy after all. And that’s where this book makes its true mark. We readers sometimes forget that, in point of fact, we can put ourselves into the shoes of characters. In this book, it’s inevitable that you think about where your own life has tread, and where it’s headed.
Her tan is complete, opaque brown all over. She continues on without a glance at me, this old man in his cream suit. Two worlds collide at this moment, it seems to me — mine and the future. Who could have imagined that such an encounter would have been possible on a beach in my lifetime? I find it quite exhilarating: the old writer and the naked Dutch girl—perhaps we need a Rembrandt to do it full justice.
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
There is a decidedly poet nature to this short novel that packs so much story into its fast-reading pages. I think the imagery helps fill out what one might think is “missing.” But beware, this story of a love affair (two or three, actually) demands that you peer closely at each scene. There is a world being built, one stone at a time.
Sometimes when she is able to spend the night with him they are wakened by the three minarets of the city beginning their prayers before dawn. he walks with her through the indigo markets that lie between South Cairo and her home. The beautiful songs of faith enter the air like arrows, one minaret answering another, as if passing on a rumour of the two of them as they walk through the cold morning air, the smell of charcoal and hemp already making the air profound. Sinners in a holy city.
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
The notorious Grace Marks was convicted of killing two people outside Toronto in the 1840s. Her story was the topic of newspapers, magazines, books, and the public for months, even years. Just that minute portion of doubt regarding her full duplicity in the crimes saved her from the gallows. Her life of 28 years behind bars, and the days leading up to and after the crime, are chronicled by Atwood’s careful hand, inquisitive mind, and steady pacing.
The minister looked like a heron, with a pointed beak of a nose and a long skinny neck, and a tuft of hair sticking up from the top of his head. The sermon was on the subject of Divine Grace, and how we could be saved by it alone, and not through any efforts on our own part, or any good works we might do. But this did not mean we should stop making efforts, or doing good works; but we could not count on them, or be certain that we had been saved, just because we were respected for our efforts and good works; because Divine Grace was a mystery, and the recipients of it were known to God alone[.]
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
January 27, 2013 at 6:20 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture
The terribly nice and eclectically gifted Patricia Ann McNair (author of the award-winning short story collection The Temple of Air) recently tagged me in a game called THE NEXT BIG THING — a literary game designed to promote a work-in-progress and highlight our literary blogs. All who have played are both authors AND bloggers who aim to create world-wide conversation about the writing and the writing process.
It’s actually taken me several weeks to find writers who are also bloggers and want to participate. And for those who’ve refused, a tongue-in-cheek “shame-shame” to your shyness. Now for the good news.
The two writers who’ve agreed to play the game, allow me to “tag” them, and follow up with their own posts and invitations, are Carl Purdon and Tim Chambers. Carl is fond of saying that he lives “halfway between Tupelo, which is the birthplace of Elvis, and Oxford, which was the home of William Faulkner.” His novel The Night Train is a finely crafted book about a boy’s escape from abuse. He also runs a literary blog where he interviews authors and writes about craft and process. Tim also runs a literary blog, and has written a novel about two fallen plutocrats, called Banana Republican Blues. He’s hard at work on his next book.
There they are, and … TAG … you guys are IT. Now to complete my end of the bargain, below are the questions and answers to my work-in-progress:
1. What is the working title of your novel?
“Max, the blind guy” — which is the most descriptive of my three novel titles. It really says exactly what the story is about—mostly. I’ve toyed with others, but I think this one will stick.
2. Where did the idea for the novel come from?
The idea behind the characters (an older couple, married 40 years, and coming to a crossroads in both thinking about their relationship and an interpretation of their lives) came from my own thinking about long-term relationships — and I’m talking the kind that go the distance, more or less: What’s there to hang on to after so many years? Love??? Is that enough?
With the answers to these questions having been “inertia and comfort”, “maybe not”, and “I don’t really think so, but….” I began to see these characters in a different way. What I saw was not necessarily terrible, but there were plenty of ashes to brush off around the edges.
3. What genre?
Contemporary – Mainstream – Literary – Historical (some parts reach back to the ’50s)? Who the hell knows what these mean anymore!? Okay, it ain’t Sci-Fi and you won’t find fangs or fur.
4. What other books would you compare yours to in this genre?
That’s difficult to pinpoint because I think it’s a unique story, in the method by which it tracks these characters’ lives and loves and tempests. On the other hand, my “reading mentors” such as Philip Roth and Iris Murdoch, Banville and Eugenides and McEwan, Updike and Naipaul and Durrell, Atwood and Sontag (to name but a few) would (have) understand my notion of place and time, scene and character, dialogue and narrative structure.
5. Which actor would you choose to play one of your characters?
Depp or Pitt for Max (they could still play the “young” Max as much as be covered in make-an-old-guy goo); Streep or Jody Foster for Greta.
6. What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Maxwell Ruth, once a thriving figurative artist, is now just a blind guy who’s been married to the same woman, Greta, for forty years, and upon reflection, neither is sure they should have made it so far; so where to go from here?
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I began writing the “chronological” story in August 2012 (after six months of scene development, mostly composed of paragraph-long prompts, or dialogue, or character sketches), and perhaps I’ll finish a first draft in a year. This is a long story, woven from multiple characters over nearly five decades. They have a lot to say. Rewrites shall be fun.
8. Who or what inspired you to write this book?
On a sunny afternoon in April 2009, I was standing on a street corner in Prague, watching people walk through an open-air market. My eyes fell upon a couple who must have been in their eighties. He was obviously blind (the forward stare, the closely held hand on her arm, the duo-shuffling between them) and she was telling him what she was seeing in the stalls. They weren’t smiling (exactly) but there was chatter, and he was chain smoking; their time seemed endless and they hadn’t a care in the world. But what were their lives like back home, outside of a European vacation? I wondered, at that moment, what had kept them together and what kind of love was needed from a woman to care for an aged blind man — husband or mere lover. I let my imagination find all kinds of great goodness, and then realized there wasn’t much drama in the happy-happy of life, although there could be happiness in drama.
9. What else about your book might pique a reader’s interest?
We’re all going to be old someday. And I mean OLD. If we’re (un)lucky we’ll have been with the same person for decades. What could life be like after 40 years of marriage, with its potential for wonderment and disillusion, laissez-faire lifestyles and revenge? That’s the basis of “Max, the blind guy” … but I’ll let you into the start of the story:
The first time Maxwell Ruth heard the accolade — “That guy is a dedicated cunt hound!” — his wife was standing three feet away. Hearing that disgusting phrase made Max smile. Not because the imagery forced a pretty picture, but he thought his wife, Greta, hadn’t heard what some guy he barely knew said about all those years of womanizing. Max’s smile did something else. It gave truth to those words: he was a cunt hound, and other men knew it. Women, too.
We were a group of eight, this island in a ballroom filled with islands. Heads of four and six and eight people hung about in static circles, separated by air and status and booze; all were underscored by the tepid music of a string quartet. High windows along one wall revealed the unfurling Palisades in a jumble of leafy trees down to the Hudson River. Across that brown divide, New York’s knotted skyline glowed against the sunset. Half the buildings looked like golden ingots stood pompously on end, the other half like dominoes. Up here in the high bluffs of northern New Jersey, in winter, shimmering gold and white-pipped ebony looked surprisingly the perfect match.
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What Beauty is my latest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
January 22, 2013 at 9:06 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture, Ways of Seeing
Guy Kawasaki has just self-published a book on self publishing. It has some good advice, about all the advice that you can already find from hugely varying sources, without much effort. Why is Guy’s book significant? Because he’s Guy Kawasaki.
If you don’t know Kawasaki, you probably aren’t particularly tapped into the computer/digital world. He made a name for himself as the “resident guru” to Apple Computer (before it had changed its name simply to “Apple” –– maybe that was one of Guy’s suggestions). He’s highly intelligent, personable, extremely generous with his experience and thus-ly acquired wisdom, and is a funny man, to boot.
About a year ago I read a similar article about Kawasaki’s self-publishing venture. He gave a long list of helpful hints for self-pubbers. But within these hints was also a hurdle. It was almost a caveat: to be successful in your book-marketing campaign, you should expect to pay around $10,000 to really get the word, your name, and the book’s title/cover art out to book buys. Of course, even shelling out money doesn’t mean you’ll sell more than a handful of books.
Unless, of course, your name is Guy Kawasaki.
There’s a new article about Guy on Forbes, and through the Cliffnotes highlights, I could see that Guy is capitalizing on his name and self-pubbing success. The hints, tips, and hard-edged advice are all there. Just what every writer who’s considered self-pubbing should consider before writing another word.
I had to respond:
While I appreciate Guy and Shawn’s advice, they (or at least, Guy) already has a name, and a reputation. Whereas 99% of people now writing (fiction or non-fiction) and are contemplating self-pubbing don’t have a name, reputation, or a track record behind them. Nor do they have the money to do as Guy suggests in order to “get the word out”. I read his early foray into successful self-pubbing (about a year ago?) and, basically, he said it takes a good $10,000+ to do a book up right vis-a-vis marketing plan (the number could be even higher). Now, for Guy to suggest that a no-name writer without a track record, no matter how good a book is, can get traction by simply throwing money around, is hardly helpful advice.
In fact, one of the best things a writer can still do in this mass-digital environment (with all its distractions) is to get a book reviewed. BUT… reviewers DO NOTICE THE PUBLISHING COMPANY, regardless that book buyers may not. And if the book is not from a big-name pub, and the author doesn’t have a name, the book will not be reviewed in the mainstream press.
My small press publisher (Siren & Muse) did all it could for me and my second novel (WHAT BEAUTY), as I did all I could for my own book: we put together galley letters, sent out multiple press releases (and follow-ups), sent ARCs to 45 review sites/newspapers/magazines. The result: Not one of them reviewed the book. But week in and week out, they all reviewed the same five or six books that had just come out that month—from the same 5-6 big-time publishers. Can anyone say “payoff!”?? Meanwhile, reader reviews across the different sales platforms have likened my book to “reading a classic” and other extremely flattering comments.
I absolutely agree with Guy and Shawn that self-pubbers must take their career into their own hands. That means they need to become professional book marketers as well as continue to write books. Fortunately, for the good authors writing quality books, we will not let adversity dissuade us from continuing what we’ve been working on for 10, 20, or sometimes 30 years.
Thanks for a good article.
My lament is not a bitter one. It’s merely, and lightly burned around the edges with, experience. I continue to market my book(s) and am always seeing good numbers come through the sales each month. I’d love for those to be higher. And by good, I mean … more than a handful.
Hey … where are all the readers!?
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
January 16, 2013 at 9:19 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture
A good editor — an experienced reader who understands ALL aspects of a book, fiction or nonfiction, as specified by his particular expertise — will be able to look deeply into the story, right down to the sentence level (the prose). This is “close reading” — and for a good “reading” of your work, you’ll need to pay. In fact, a good editor is worth the money. But finding a good editor is difficult.
Now what I mean by “all aspects of the book” includes far more than structure (in fact, structure is merely a look at the surface, and, frankly, a close-reading high-schooler can do this well). The seasoned, sharp, intuitive-minded editor will understand each of your characters and his/her position in the book. He’ll be able to tell you which character is the most useful, and perhaps could be given more page time, and which character(s) can be excised. This editor will be able to direct you to your best pages of dialogue, and then compare that to your worst pages (the best editor can NEVER tell you how to write, or be a better writer, per se). The editor will be able to look deeply into your narrative abilities and (again) point out the strong vs the not-so-strong. The editor will be capable of feeling your theme and seeing where it can be strengthened through strong imagery, dialogue, metaphor, foreshadowing, the odd phrase and off-hand (seemingly so) comment by narrator/character. And then, the editor will be able to look at your structure and tell you if there’s a possibility to shuffle chapters (not like a deck of cards, mind you) to get more punch up front and better drama at the end.
All that I’ve said here is but a fingernail’s scratch against the breadth and depth of the value a good editor can bring you. Of course, if you’re a capable writer, you can see into your own ms for starters. Being (or becoming) your own best editor is about being able to, firstly, identify all aspects of your story, and, secondly, understand how each fits—as a puzzle piece or an intra-related part (from a distance or page-by-page)—and then, thirdly, when you spot something that’s “wrong,” being able to fix it. Let’s face it: if an editor can show you 5 things that are “wrong” but you can’t fix any of them, or the most important of them, then the story is no good. This can be a real problem, and there are so many ways to get oneself into a problem like this if you, the writer, are not careful with your story all the way through the writing process.
Good luck, everyone, and … Keep on Writing!
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
January 3, 2013 at 9:48 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture
In the last week I’ve been asked by friends, fans and family what seems an obvious question (sometimes): “Where do you get your ideas?”
One way to answer this is simply to say what I really think, which is “I DON’T KNOW!” But that’s not exactly an answer, and certainly not polite. I’ve read that some writers formulate a stock answer to this question because, on their book tours and at book fairs (or just sitting down to dinner at a restaurant) they get this question asked of them constantly (often enough from two people in a row, with the second one having been standing right behind the first!); and if you can’t always come up with a unique answer, then say something that sounds good (even unique) but in fact is about as canned as SPAM.
Hemingway didn’t like to talk about nor answer questions regarding his writing, or where ideas came from. He said they (the ideas) were of a mystical nature and to talk about them “was spooky.” On the other side of the spectrum sat Eudora Welty, who seemed to find story just about everywhere, and took dialogue from anyone, and scene that happened before her eyes (at the post office, on the bus, walking through the park). Neither process is unusual.
I lean somewhere tripping toward Welty. One of my answers last week was, “I’m not so sure, but sometimes shit just flies out at me from some place. I catch it and see if it works.” Another answer I needed to temper for the audience: “They’re not so controlled, but I invite the ideas in because I don’t think too hard about the problem.” (In this case, “problem” refers to scene or character or dialogue or imagery that I’ve been thinking about before and LETTING ALONE for a day or so.) I used to say this very line (please follow the canned response) to my fiction writing students at Columbia College Chicago. More than half of them didn’t understand. And I know why.
You see, they lacked imagination, and writers do not lack this key ingredient to finding, seeing, developing, and … fucking drum-roll, please! … FINISHING the story (which is really not the end to the process because then writers rewrite the story numerous times to fill in those spots where imagination hadn’t been slip-sliding its best that day — get it?).
So then, I sit here to ask myself: Where do your writing ideas come from? The answer, for me, must be delivered as a list (in no particular order):
1. Imagination … 2. Life-Love-Death experience … 3. Inspiration … 4. Understanding Human Nature … 5. Misunderstanding Human Nature … 6. Having Been Divorced … 7. Liking People … 8. Not Liking (some) People … 9. Sexual Experience (and continual experimentation — wink-wink!) … 10. An Understanding for How & When & Why People Speak … 11. Tapping into My Dark Fantasies (read this as you may, or dare) … 12. My Love for One Woman … 13. My Sensitivity and Anger Issues … 14. Not Arguing with SOME Inspiration … 15. Noodling with a Scene … 16. Sleep … 17. Dreams … 18. Deep Thought/Memory … 19. Asking Questions of the Character (through the author, of course, because characters DON’T FUCKING SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES!) … 20. Letting the Characters Speak for Themselves
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
January 1, 2013 at 6:39 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture, The Prague Blog, Ways of Seeing
In 2011 I was able to read 49 books (mostly novels) and don’t know exactly why that count fell to 27 in 2012. I called 2012 The Year of the Big Book because the average page count was 436. By today’s publishing standards, that’s nearly double the book — and double the pleasure.
For commentary on each of the 27 books, look at the Books Read string. Otherwise, the stats for and my chronological list of books read for 2012 follows:
2012: 27 books – 11,776 pages – apprx words: 5.1 million ….
Biggest surprise enjoyment: “The Magus” (it took me back to carefree years of college) … Biggest Disappointment: “Polite Sex” (missed opportunities; perhaps poorly edited) … Weirdest Story: “One Big Damn Puzzler” (life on a Pacific island) … Best Drama: “The Kindly Ones” (life of a Nazi SS commander) … Best Writing: Philip Roth’s books simply kill me, how good a stylist, storyteller, and ear for dialogue he has … Biggest Surprise: “East of Eden” (Steinbeck can write some character!) … Most Memorable Character: Lucy Nelson in “When She Was Good” (Roth) … Funniest: “Solar” … Best Sex Scene: “Rabbit at Rest” (actually, one of only a few in all these books) … Best Narrative Story: “Suttree” (McCarthy can lay down scene & place like few others) … Widest Use of Characters: “Middlesex” (everyone simply worked and was needed) … Oddest Use of Characters: “The Philosopher’s Pupil” (Murdoch’s characters sometimes do the oddest things!) … Most-Traveled Character: Augie March … A Little Disappointed: “Amsterdam” (I expected more, of everything) … My Favorite Book – Maybe: “Rabbit at Rest”
1/10 In the Beauty of the Lilies by John Updike (488)
2/6 The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (611)
2/28 The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (250 – fired)
2/29 Reading Myself and Others by Philip Roth (300)
3/15 Suttree by Cormac McCarthy (465)
3/31 The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow (295)
4/4 Polite Sex by James Wilcox (270)
4/8 Solar by Ian McEwan (386)
4/21 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (320)
4/29 The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (390)
5/20 The Philosopher’s Pupil by Iris Murdoch (550)
6/5 Rabbit at Rest by John Updike (425)
6/30 The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell (975)
7/4 The Secret Life of Words by Henry Hitchings (343)
7/12 Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (278)
7/22 One Big Damn Puzzler by John Harding (450)
8/16 The Magus by John Fowles (642)
8/24 I Married a Communist by Philip Roth (323)
9/2 Basic Bech by John Updike (303)
10/10 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (510)
10/19 All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (438)
11/7 East of Eden by John Steinbeck (590)
11/15 A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis (609)
11/24 Shosha by Isaac Bashevis Singer (274)
11/30 When She Was Good by Philip Roth (291)
12/4 The Ecstasy of Influence by Jonathan Lethem (440)
12/30 The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch (560)
In 2013 I want to read some of my contemporaries, including several Indie authors who have put out books that sound good and read very well. Otherwise, I have lots on my plate, as I’m working on a first draft of my next novel, “Max, the blind guy”.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
December 30, 2012 at 8:55 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture
For the last month I’ve gone to three authors I trust. I wanted to go out of the year (27 books read) with some strong fiction. Roth is always good, and I ask myself each time I read him “Why weren’t you reading this guy 30 years ago!?” … while Lethem is an author I know through his journalism more than his fiction … and Murdoch always surprises me; I think she must have surprised herself most of the time.
When She was Good by Philip Roth
Philip Roth accepts the notion that there are many ways to see a particular incident, or life. Evaluation is all about point of view. A young woman finds that her life must be made acceptable, even livable, through her own strength, intelligence, and management. But what happens when other people become part of that life, or when people from the past reenter? Who’s at fault if things go wrong? I must admit that, by the book’s end, I could accept most of the different points of view, when looked at from only it’s angle. So the question erupts: who are we to judge someone’s course in life?
The Ecstasy of Influence by Jonathan Lethem
This collection of Lethem’s book-culture journalism (with smatterings of his short fiction) has a central theme of “those books/authors/events/things that influence a writer’s work/thoughts. The title is a riff on Harold Bloom’s once-seminal “The Anxiety of Influence” (1973) in which Bloom argued (in terms of poetry) that every writer’s precursor creates a particular anxiety in him/her that makes the new poetry find uniqueness, or fail. While that argument has its detractors, Lethem takes the tack that any influence should be yearned for, accepted, and used to a writer’s greatest advantage. Most of the essays are writerly-centric, and not exactly fit for the general audience, but the good thing about Lethem is that his language is always accessible within its literate scope.
The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch
Iris’s 1985 story of “being good” and “finding goodness” is of course half-ironical because her characters can hardly get out of their own way. How very human, I kept thinking, though the drama of fiction keeps that thought kindling. In this story, Edward Baltram has accidentally killed a friend; his brother, Stuart, wants to drop out of society and into a monastery; and meanwhile, their father is having an affair with a friend of the family. Each character is in search of, or already thinks he/she’s living a good life. Irony abounds. Characters witness their own failures and others’ triumphs. What we learn is that no set plan can make life good, per se, but the half-righteous desire to simply live is … pretty damn worth living.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
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