This week:
- Manic Streets of Perth: Anthology by Dave Franklin
- Word Virus: A William Burroughs Reader edited by James Grauerholz and Ira Silverberg
- Having Cried Wolf by Gretchen Shirm
The cover of Manic Streets of Perth reminds me an Australian Manic Street Preachers fanzine I once read (that was also, now that I think about it, from Perth) where the writers recreated the cover of This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. I was very surprised to find the Burroughs reader in an op shop this week (it must sound like I’m always in and out of op shops by the way I talk about them on this blog, but I only visit them once a week, if that. It’s just that when I do go, I always walk out with, usually, at least one book!) after having watched the documentary about him last week. Hopefully this will be a good way to dip in to his work, see what intrigues me and follow on from there. I also feel like the slightly peculiar smell emanating from this book makes it just that more Burroughsian. Hey, it was 50 cents.
Reviews posted on Start Narrative Here this week
- Monday Mini-Reviews: 3.14159, grammar & gossip girls – “capsule reviews”, as I discovered they are known, of As Easy As Pi: Stuff About Numbers That Isn’t (Just) Maths by Jamie Buchan, My Grammar & I (Or Should That Be ‘Me’?): Old-School Ways to Sharpen Your English by Caroline Taggart and J.A. Wines, and All I Want is Everything (Gossip Girl #3) by Cecily von Ziegesar.
- Transmetropolitan: Volume Four, the New Scum by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson – a welcome return to Spider Jerusalem and political corruption in the City.
Book Criticism, Blogs and Boredom
This week I went to a session at Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre on the position of book criticism in Australia. It was a very uneven session, and I think it spoke mainly about a less “connected” reading audience that us. The discussion centred mainly on criticism in print, the book pages in newspapers and journals. Blogging was briefly mentioned, but let’s just say we weren’t too high on the agenda. I say we, but like I’ve said before, I don’t consider myself a critic – I’m a reader first and foremost. (Though I am wondering if this is contributing to my slight blogging burnout as of late.) That said, don’t these blog posts we write and read and retweet and link to all contribute to a larger discussion about literary culture that is just as relevant as the out of touch dinosaurs writing for print publication. There seems to be a strong connection made between print and legitimacy. Are one hundred word capsule reviews really considered literary criticism? Apparently, if they’re in print, they are a lesser part of the criticism culture; if they’re online, they’re just written by internet cowboys trying to shanghai the serious, canonical cultural discussion. It’s frustrating.
When was the last time you consulted a newspaper review looking for a book to read? Or a literary journal? I know I’m asking a particular audience, a blog reading audience, but I am curious to hear your responses.
Then again, one audience member got up during the question time to say “lift your game, this is boring” so maybe I’ll end the discussion/rant there. Maybe thrashing out these issues is boring, irrelevant and pointless. Here’s a couple of other people talking about the topic in a more coherent way than I can, especially as they’re more involved in that culture:
- Feeding the Hand that Bites: the Demise of Australian Literary Reviewing by Gideon Haigh.
- Bugger the bloggers: old-world critics still count by Geordie Williamson for the Australian.
- Failing Critical Failure: the problem with engaging in real conversation about literary criticism by Rebecca Starford at Kill Your Darlings – a direct response from a panel member on the points raised on the night.
Links
- I found this list of the Best Southern novels “of all time” as compiled by the Oxford American magazine. And then added the list to my own site to keep track of my gradual progress. I love lists, problematic as they are.
- The runners up for Merriam-Webster’s Words of the Summer.
- William Gibson lists his top 5 London novels for Goodreads, including J.G. Ballard‘s Concrete Island which I reviewed a few months back.
- Jonathan Franzen interviewed by Goodreads.
Not mentioned in this post, though I did type it up and seriously considered posting it: a story about a man who insulted me for reading at the pub by using, I think unknowingly, a Dorothy Parker quip.
