brain pot stew

I finished Olive Kitteridge last night, and I was a little underwhelmed by the ending. All in all it’s  still a great collection of stories featuring amazingly rendered and memorable characters, but I feel like Elizabeth Stroud missed an opportunity to do something more. There is a chance that I was just so impressed by the heart exhibited through her writing that my expectations were raised to unrealistic heights, but I don’t think so. One of the most interesting things about the book is its structure, and in regards to that things do come a little unwound at the end, and what the reader is left with is just a great collection of short stories. Which is totally fine.

I guess.

To be honest, though, I’m not a big fan of short stories. I find them to be the literary equivalent off popcorn — though I admit this is not always the case. I’ve ready many short stories that are absolutely amazing, and in terms of meaning and complexity on par with the best of novels. I’m just so much more interested in the form of the novel and what you can do with it — and that’s because there is so much more that you can do with it. In order for me to engage with what I’m reading I need a certain level of depth that comes from more than well written characters and beautiful prose, and in my reading experience it takes an extremely high level of skill to do that with short stories (e.g., David Foster Wallace), much more so than the novel.

I’ve been working through these thoughts today, and I’m continuing to do so even as I write this. What I need to do is read more short story collections (I’ve added Runaway to my queue.) and short form fiction (I’m also hoping to read We Don’t Live Here Anymore very soon.) and let it all stew together in my brain. I’m sure I’ll get back to this topic in a month or two.

some reviews

I hope Labor Day festivities were as pleasant for everyone as they were for me.  I’ve almost finished Olive Kitteridge, which is a good thing because it’s completely hijacked the rest of my reading. On the plus side, having a little distance between myself and The New York Trilogy has given my mind the freedom to think about it in ways I otherwise wouldn’t have had — and not necessarily in Paul Auster’s favor. Right now color me mildly impressed. I’ve had a friend recommend his latest, Invisible, however, and after reading a few things about it I’m definitely going to give it a go here in the next few months.

Since I’ve been talking about Franzen and book reviews lately, I thought it would be fun to go back and read some reviews he’s read. Here’s a selection from his review of Alice Munro’s Runaway:

“But who is Alice Munro? She is the remote provider of intensely pleasurable private experiences. And since I’m not interested in reviewing her new book’s marketing campaign or in being entertainingly snarky at her expense, and since I’m reluctant to talk about the concrete meaning of her new work, because this is difficult to do without revealing too much plot, I’m probably better off just serving up a nice quote for Alfred A. Knopf to pull — ”Munro has a strong claim to being the best fiction writer now working in North America. ‘Runaway’ is a marvel” — and suggesting to the Book Review’s editors that they run the biggest possible photograph of Munro in the most prominent of places, plus a few smaller photos of mildly prurient interest (her kitchen? her children?) and maybe a quote from one of her rare interviews — ”Because there is this kind of exhaustion and bewilderment when you look at your work. . . . All you really have left is the thing you’re working on now. And so you’re much more thinly clothed. You’re like somebody out in a little shirt or something, which is just the work you’re doing now and the strange identification with everything you’ve done before. And this probably is why I don’t take any public role as a writer. Because I can’t see myself doing that except as a gigantic fraud” — and just leave it at that.”

The whole review is very interesting and overall Franzen does a great job contextualizing his opinion of Runaway in who he is and what he likes and why he likes it. Plus, he doesn’t give anything away. I’ve tried reading reviews of Freedom as they continue to come out, but I find myself either skipping over paragraphs at a time in an attempt to avoid plot details, or wading through pretentious paragraph after pretentious paragraph of head-in-ass snobbery. Ah, yes. Now I remember why I don’t read book reviews. Still, here and here and here are a couple of the more engaging ones I’ve stumbled upon.

general miscellany

I was at a friend’s house yesterday waiting for him to finish something on the computer so we could go somewhere when I somewhat absentmindedly picked up Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and began to read. Three pages in its hooks were set and I smuggled the paperback out in grocery bag. Though I’m only a quarter in, I very much recommend this book, and I don’t think that sentiment is going to be changed by anything I’ve yet to read.

I spent a lot of time today thinking about possible schedules for what/when/how I write, and in the coming weeks I’m going to be playing around with that. Exciting things are afoot.

In other news, there are a few pretty cool literary events coming up here in Austin. First is “Consider the Archive: An Evening of David Foster Wallace” at The Ransom Center on Tuesday, September the 14th at 7:00 pm (click here for more information). Then on Friday of the same week, also at 7:00 pm, Jonathan Franzen will be speaking (and signing) at Bookpeople as a part of his book tour for Freedom. Snazzy. And don’t forget: October is nearly upon us and that means it’s almost time for the Texas Book Festival. You can see the recently released list of attending authors here.

One more thing: check this out.