A Day of American Fiction
On Wednesday, Paul Auster came to talk at my work, and reminded me that though I may have cooled off on Paul Auster, I am still running hot on American Fiction, and needed a dose. So, I went to Shakespeare & Co bookstore on Broadway and binged.Hours later, I walked out with
- David Mamet's edgy, subversive writing on the movie business ( NPR podcast interview here; David is a genius; his gem Glengary Glen Ross is a must-see movie),
- Nathan Englander's new fiction from last year (Nathan is the writer of a short story collection from 2000, the best I have read in last 10 years or more, and is beyond edgy, pure scalpel),
- and several others.
A day like this does not end there. Essense of binging is excessing. I pulled out Mamet and read it voraciously, over hot soba at Soba ya on the east side, teeth rattling and gums hurting as the angry soup made its way down my gullet. Mamet quotes "In the morning you're making Citizen Kane; after lunch you're making The Dukes of Hazzard."
Labels: Non-CS
posted by metoo at 4:33 PM
4 Comments:
I never got all the fuss about "...Relief of Unbearable Urges". The stories were all pretty predictable, and not particularly well executed. If it weren't for the title story (which makes people think the book is "edgy" because of the subject matter, though it really isn't), I wonder if this book would have received the attention it did.
I did not like the title story. I liked "The twenty-seventh man" (the misfit, finds himself among the greatest Yiddish writers, creates a short story and gets their accolades even as they are lined up and shot) and "The Tumblers" (the clan has detailed, precise rules for going about every day life, and its exactitude eventually leads them to a new, life saving coincidence, sorta like Benigni + Mathematical Logic, if I am allowed to spin it some).
-- metoo
When did you start cooling off on Paul Auster? And why did he visit Google at NY?
Hi Luca!
Authors visit Google. Celebrities do. Also author celebrities. So, that is part of my cooling off I guess, I got overexposed to Paul Auster, who is definitely an author celebrity in NY circles (and France, I learned, in a memorable train ride a long time ago, but that will have to wait for the next time we get together).
-- metoo
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