In defence of fiction

Experimental fiction, that is... (Only an excerpt of a longer Harper's essay. Thanks to the publicists who hit me with the old bait and switch. You're on The List.)


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Immortalize your doom here
Damn, I should have bid on David Brin's offering. I would have paid at least $5,000 for the rights to Moon Base Darbyshire. Or maybe Ebola: The Darbyshire mutation.

The most unusual offering was probably from science-fiction author David Brin: "How about something original? Let the bidder choose between: The name of a rogue moon on a collision course with a doomed planet, an exotic and gruesome disease of unknown origin, or an entire species of wise, ancient extraterrestrials." The winning bid: $2,250.

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I wonder why Paul Watkins's books are not more widely read. His approach has a romanic poignancy similar to that of Erich Maria Remarque.

Paperback writer hides from own book behind own name

In a clever marketing move, Picador has opted to disassociate the paperback release of Tom Wolfe's widely-panned I Am Charlotte Simmons from the negative reviews themselves by decling to print the offending (and ridiculous) title on the cover of the mass market edition. Hell, remove Wolfe's name as well and I bet your sales would be even better.


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Um, Kathryn, are you being ironic? Does McEwan, apart from his formidable lit skills, not come across in photos and in the flesh like an anglo Norman Bates? So perhaps the book-accepting women were merely hoping to avoid a terrifying interruption to subsequent showers? Just a theory.

Edited by author 09-20-2005 10:15 AM
I'd transgress with this man

Ian McEwan. Oh god, I'm weak in the knees just saying his name. Ian McEwan (I'll try again) handed (Girls? With his own immacualte hands) free books in his local park. On the green green grass. His hand brushed...; oh my! Is it any surprise that it was mostly women who took his gifts?

As in the 18th century, so in the 21st. Cognitive psychologists with their innatist views tell us that women work with a finer mesh of emotional understanding than men. The novel - by that view the most feminine of forms - answers to their biologically ordained skills. From other rooms in the teeming mansion of the social sciences, there are others who insist that it is all down to conditioning. But perhaps the causes are less interesting than the facts themselves. Reading groups, readings, breakdowns of book sales all tell the same story: when women stop reading, the novel will be dead.

He's forgotten all the other complex sociology at work in his gifting, though, hasn't he? How adorably guileless.

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In defence of fiction
Jay McInerney on the relevance of the novel. But who will defend McInerney?

We've been hearing about the death of the novel ever since the day after Don Quixote was published. Twenty years ago, it was common knowledge in American publishing circles that the novel was over. Even as he complimented me on my first novel, which he had just purchased for publication, Jason Epstein, then vice-president of Random House, told me over a lavish lunch that the novel had probably outlived its audience and that people my own age didn't seem to be interested in literary fiction. He was trying to prepare me for the obscurity that was my probable fate.

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Edited by author 09-16-2005 11:13 AM
hi everyone, i have a question about literary agents for emerging fiction writers (EFW)... are they a good idea? how do EFWs know whom to approach? any and all info would be appreciated. i know a lot of you out there publish fiction... and once were EFWs

McCrum vs the New York Times

Is the novel really dead? Or should I say, Dead Again? (God, I loved that movie, right up until the last few seconds. It was a British movie with an American death bed. A giant scissors sculpture? Krikey.)


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She's so heavy

Hunger's Brides hits the US and, at 1,360 pages, people are amazed by its size. No flash photography, please. You'll enrage the beast.


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Latitudes of Disappointment

This year's great American novel hasn't shown itself. Um, there's supposed to be one per year? When were those quotas put into effect? And has anyone informed Wubblewoo? Maybe he should invade Manhattan to protect America's stake in the literary fiction market. Wait, don't give him any ideas.


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Want to be in a book but your loved one keeps forgetting to even write you into the acknowledgements page?
Now you can buy your way in with this charity auction by the likes of Stephen King, Dave Eggers and Jonathan Lethem. I've already put top bid in for Lemony Snicket. So back off.

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Best year for fiction?

A former Booker judge, as part of the press buildup to the award, announces that this year past was the best for Brit-fiction (Brittion?) since the award launched.


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When novelists attack
The TV world is all abuzz with discussions of Over There, a new drama about the Iraq war that depicts the conflict as it happens. It aspires to be sort of a docudrama that avoids politics. Uhh.... Meanwhile, novelists skip the big events themselves and instead focus on the impact of terrorism and the wars on society. I suppose I should make some comment about the mediums, but what would be the point?

Written after 9/11 but before 7/7 meant a thing, Ian McEwan's novel "Saturday" creates a hero who looks out his window, sees London "waiting for its bomb," and worriedly thinks "rush hour will be a convenient time." Today this fiction may seem as prophetic as Chris Cleave's "Incendiary," published in Britain on 7/7 itself, in which suicide bombers kill hundreds of Londoners in a soccer stadium. But both authors agree that their plots are based on sheer common sense and the awful fulfillment of our fears.

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Billy the Kid in literature
Today in Literature has an interesting roundup of Billy's appearances in fiction. Who knew the Kid was such a romantic?

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no man, always read...always. Expand the mind. Love Irving, I'll let you know Kelly.