Another New Book for Me!

Just picked this up. Super excited.

Short Letter, Long Farewell by Peter Handke

New Books for Me!

Some books I just picked up at Half Price Books after trading in some old books:

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders
Frog by Stephen Dixon

Audio of "The View From Mrs. Thompson's" by David Foster Wallace

On this tenth anniversary of The Horror, listen to David Foster Wallace read his essay from Consider the Lobster, The View From Mrs. Thompson's.

All Roads Lead to Michigan

After American Salvage, Q Road is probably Bonnie Jo Campbell's strongest book. I recently interviewed this past summer for Knee-Magazine, so I had the chance to read her entire catalog.

Q Road is a novel told from multiple view points, with each chapter devoted to a single character. As the story moves along, the characters lives begin to intermingle. It is at once about a small Michigan township and of course, like any great story, it is also about the world. While the novel is heavy on characters, Campbell doesn't take the easy way out and leave readers with no plot to latch onto. Let's just say it involves fire.

If you haven't read Bonnie Jo Campbell, then you're missing out.

Northwest Living

Livability by Jon Raymond
272 pages
published by Bloomsbury USA

I read this because it contained the basis for two films I rather enjoyed, Old Joy (titled Old Joy in the story collection) and Wendy & Lucy (titled Train Choir in the story collection). Overall the stories were kinda middle-of-the-road. Characters tended to be a bit flat and sometimes the stories felt a bit MFA-ish. There was just an overarching tone or voice that I feel I've been reading in contemporary American fiction and I don't like it.

But check out the two films directed by Kelly Reichardt. They're excellent. She also directed the recent Meek's Cutoff, which looks amazing and I think Jon Raymond did the screenplay.

I had high hopes because the movies were so great, but I really shouldn't compare the two. I also picked up his novel, Half-Life, so maybe that will be better.

He's A Poet and He Doesn't Even Know It

Love-Lies-Bleeding by Don DeLillo
published by Scribner
112 pages

I had taken a small break from DeLillo after having read his most well known work, White Noise. I was a bit disappointed with it and figured I needed some space, so to speak. Getting back into his work, I'm reminded why I love his prose and dialogue.

Of his three plays, Love-Lies-Bleeding is the first and only I've read. It is sparse territory, taking place in the south western desert of the United States and contains only four characters/actors. The main character, Alex, is an aging artist who has just suffered from a massive second stroke and as such, is in a "persistent vegetative state." So his estranged son and ex-wife have come to convince his second, younger wife to let him die. Or help him die, which is the matter at hand. It examines issues of mercy, mortality, and what it means to actually live in this world.

Its language and dialogue are meditative. Those familiar with DeLillo will recognize his style instantly. Repetition. The naming of things. The dialogue that sounds natural but in reality, no one would ever say. The poetry of his words. It foreshadows Point Omega both in its setting, mood, and tone. Love-Lies-Bleeding doesn't differ greatly from his novels style-wise and it very well could have been just another one of his novellas. But his words still give me the chills.

Of DeLillo's 18 published works (excluding Amazons by Cleo Birdwell), I have five works left. Three novels (End Zone, Great Jones Street, and Ratner's Star) and two plays (The Day Room and Valparaiso).

Archived Suicide

Suicide by Edouard Leve
published by Dalkey Archive Press
144 pages

I don't know why I'm reading this in the summer. Maybe because if I read it in the autumn or winter it would simply be too much. But I came across this slim novel while looking through Dalkey Archive's catalog and its beautiful cover caught my eye. And then I read how the author killed himself shortly after handing in his final manuscript, entitled Suicide. Well, that was pretty much all I needed, seeing as how, like many literary types, I am weirdly fascinated with all things suicide, especially when it comes to writers. The tortured souls and what not. Not quite sure what it is about suicide that so interests me. The finality of it. The tremendous psychic pain. The willful act of taking yourself away from this world. Not sure. Ruminations for another time.

But with Suicide, Leve introduces us to an unnamed narrator as he (the narrator) creates a fragmented picture of a friend who had committed suicide years before. It is all told in the second person through moments, small and large, in the friends life. It is a stark portrait, funny at times, devastating at others. Perhaps a sort of suicide note from Leve, perhaps not.