two umbrellas

I’ve got another review up at WFTC. It’s Mary Gaitskill’s Don’t Cry. Here’s a bit:

I’ve only ever read two of Mary Gaitskill’s story collections: Bad Behavior, her first (published in 1988), and Don’t Cry, her latest. Both are highly charged works of fiction — strong, full of sexuality, intensity, and intelligence. After reading both of these collections, I have come to the conclusion that if I ever had the chance to meet Mary Gaitskill I would be quite intimidated. Her writing is tough and confident, somehow masculine and feminine at the same time, which doesn’t make it feminist — it makes it authentic.

My review of Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun at When Falls the Coliseum is up. Here’s a bit:

There are so many things that could be potentially cliche about Nami Mun’s Miles from Nowhere: the title, the cover, the characters, the plot — just about everything. The main character, Joon, runs away from home when she is twelve. Her father has left the family, which drives her mother to insanity. After leaving her mother, Joon goes down the inevitable path of drugs and prostitution as she copes on the streets of New York City. But there is something keeping this novel from falling into the trap: Nami Mun’s writing.

My ‘New Lit’ column will appear the first Wednesday of each month. Check it out…

On a previous post I lamented my deluge of reading material, especially magazine subscriptions. Too much input! I was starting to feel guilty that I couldn’t read all of the articles and yet still feeling guilty that I didn’t subscribe to more. (Oh the reading paradox!) But the recession has hit – I have let most of my subscriptions lapse and I am starting to feel a drought. I am left with the following:

• Bookforum I know I can get this free online but I just love having the printed version.
• N+1 Truthfully, I have no idea when this subscription runs out. I don’t remember the last time I paid for it; but it still comes in the mail (albeit infrequently).
• Bon Appetit It’s super cheap.
• and Playboy Hmmm, I’m not quite sure why this magazine still arrives – I may have to talk to mr. twoumbrellas about that.

Unfortunately, I’ve had to let some excellent magazines go: Harper’s and I am missing Granta very, very much. The NYRB is just too expensive. I can’t spend $70 for a magazine subscription. I know that can be spread out throughout the year but it’s not worth it since I only read half of the articles (I can’t keep up when it comes every two weeks) and many of the articles are political, which I can only appreciate to an extent.

While my magazine reading is feeling the pinch, so are my bookshelves. I’ve put a moratorium on purchasing books, with the exception of books for the Parasol. I am so fortunate that I have a library, albeit with a mediocre selection of new fiction, two blocks from my house. The FLP has a decent online library system where I can search for books at any branch and hold them with my online account. (If you live in Philly – or anywhere for that matter – please remember to support your local library. In some areas they are desperately needed community centers.*) I have used my library more than ever in the last few months and I am enjoying the freedom of reading for free.

I do miss having new books on my shelf. However, I have 182 books on my many, many shelves that I have not read yet (some of them I purchased in grade school). My habit used to be to buy books much faster than I could read them. This moratorium will give me a chance to get through some of those.

aside I have my opinions about libraries becoming community centers but at a time of economic crisis and people’s desperate need for support from their communities, libraries should be commended for what they do.

As most people had been, I was very excited to see Mark Twain on the cover of Time. I was so excited to see historical, literary relevance in a mainstream magazine that I, in fact, went out and bought a copy. (I will spare a long gripe of how expensive the magazine was.) I have a tendency to be sentimental about certain things in print – I keep a practically useless folder of torn out stories from the New Yorker and Harper’s; but I digress…so I purchased this issue and I am sorry to say that I had.

Other than the photographs of Twain, there is nothing worth reading, unless you’re in the sixth grade and have been assigned Huckleberry Finn for Summer Reading. I was amazed – no, appalled – by the reading level in the magazine and the lack of real focus for the essays. The cover boasts the following taglines: “How he changed the way we view politics”, “Why he was ahead of his time on race”, and “What his writing can teach America today”. Sounds interesting and compelling, possibly even informative or, dare I say, provocative (can we even talk about race?). The essays glossed over each thesis and instead became a collection of some ‘dangerous’ quotes from Twain’s writing and at least two or three paragraphs in more than one essay about how Twain is the precursor to Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, and Saturday Night Live (SNL, I’m sorry to say, is about as relevant and topical as the TV shows and celebrities it parodies). I’ll admit that I am not well versed in contemporary satire but why was there no mention of George Saunders or at least another writer.

I understand that they are going for a large and wide readership. So, can I forgive Time for its lack of depth in its articles? Why must they assume that the average reader, I’m not going to say adult reader either because this magazine could easily be read and understood by junior high students, needs to be hand-held? The entire magazine is laid out as though I were watching television one frame at a time. Yes, I applaud them for respecting Twain, but I can’t forgive them. It is a shame that print media feels that it must compete with visual media, although that may be another issue entirely.

The Guardian reports that Granta names Alex Clark as first female editor

The NYT discusses filming The Road in Pennsylvania. I was beginning to feel some home state pride until I read this:

The producers chose Pennsylvania, one of them, Nick Wechsler, explained, because it’s one of the many states that give tax breaks and rebates to film companies and, not incidentally, because it offered such a pleasing array of post-apocalyptic scenery: deserted coalfields, run-down parts of Pittsburgh, windswept dunes.

Hooray!!

I’ve been taking a bit of a break from my traditional reading pattern, which is basically only reading fiction. However, somewhere during that reading I filled out those annoying little cards that fall from magazines and found myself buried in monthly and (too often) weekly publications arriving in my mailbox just waiting for me to feel guilty for not reading them – don’t worry, I’m not just talking to you, New Yorker. Here are a list of all of the magazines that come to my house – in no particular order:

New Yorker

New York Review of Books

New York Magazine

The New York Times

Bookforum

Bon Appetit

Playboy

Vanity Fair

n+1

Granta

Esquire

Harper’s

I’m almost sure that’s the complete list. (I almost forgot about Harper’s since I have been subscribing for so long.) I’ll admit that some of these publications I share with mr. twoumbrellas (I believe it may be obvious which ones); but I do read them. I find that men’s magazines have much more interesting articles then women’s. Vanity Fair, I believe, is one of the true unisex magazines that appeals on many levels (materialism to intelligence) equally to both men and women. In men’s magazines there seems to be a higher confidence and intelligence level (for the most part – there are certainly good arguments against the intelligence level of some of the features of Playboy; however, this month features an interview with Robert Redford and a story by Sam Lipsyte) that is assumed by the editors of its audience, but, that’s a whole other post entirely.

I think there are two reasons that I love reading magazines and why I seem to be drawn to them recently. First, I can’t read long articles on the computer. I know some magazines offer free content (thanks, Bookforum); but, I just can’t do it. It’s not comfortable and it feels like I am doing work. If I don’t subscribe to a magazine and there’s a long article, I usually print it out and that’s really quite a waste.

Second, I am beginning to find that what I am reading in these particular magazines (I know I’m missing out on a lot – I don’t subscribe to many literary magazines: no Paris Review, no Virginia Quarterly Review, no Tin House (though I am going to purchase the newest issue of women’s writing as soon as I can), etc. etc. etc.), I can’t get anywhere else. I really believe that Granta is the best literary magazine in print. Or, at least, it’s the best of what I want to read. I enjoy the not-always-mainstream-appreciated opinions of n+1. Sometimes it is good to argue and sometimes we can’t always be on the same page, so to speak. I like that it attempts originality and a hopefulness in a new, young (although a bit privileged), intellectualism – not that I always agree. The New York Review of Books always, always delivers the criticism that I never get from the NYTBR. It also provides good international articles that the New Yorker doesn’t quite capture. But then again, there was a terrifying Seymour Hersch article in last week’s NY regarding the current administration’s desire for striking Iran.

There is an immediacy to this material that arrives in my mailbox. If I don’t read it when it first arrives, it will never be read. Books can wait patiently on my bookshelf until the time is right.

Just arrived: September’s Harper’s has a new David Bezmozgis story, “The Proposition.” I can’t wait to read it.

Last week I received the latest issue of Granta, “The Deep End.” (The previous “Best of Young American Novelists 2″ as of now is still online – an issue that was not disappointing and yet not too impressive either). I just happened to read the introduction, which I am sorry to admit I don’t always read, and to my surprise Ian Jack wrote that he will be leaving the helm at Granta:

Granta is leaving Hanover Yard and I am leaving Granta as its editor. I wish I could say exactly why I am leaving…The best I can do is to say it just felt right.

I have enjoyed my subscription under Ian Jack’s watch – I don’t know who will be replacing him. I am very curious to see how the magazine will (if at all) change.

mr. twoumbrellas and I have been NYT subscribers for many years – no matter where we live on the East Coast. (Sorry, Philadelphia Inquirer.) The Saturday edition brings a whole weekend of good reading: the Book Review, the Magazine, Arts & Leisure etc., etc. Every Saturday, I wake up in anticipation of what the paper carrier will leave on my doorstep. However, the Saturday edition is stolen more often than not. It’s got all of the goods (i.e. the above mentioned inserts) so it is very tempting for the literate thief. (Again, sorry Philly Inquirer and The Wall Street Journal, which will sit outside the entrance to my building for days, editions piling up in a make-shift recycling pile – apparently not worthy of being stolen.) So yesterday morning, I woke up as early as I could after a late Friday night and found, once again, to be without the Saturday edition of the NYT.

I have trouble reading longer articles on my computer. And when I am reading the Book Review (one of the few print sections I read regularly), I find that I enjoy handling the newspaper: the ink stains and the turning and folding of page after page. Yet, when I was again without the paper yesterday morning I was relieved of any disappointment or guilt for not reading the Book Review. Each week I go through the table of contents and scoff at the unbalance between fiction and non-fiction titles; the (re)review of fiction books that have already been reviewed by the usual Times staff on the daily book page; the familiarity of the authors being reviewed or the authors writing the reviews; and the often ridiculous or irrelevant essays on the last page. There are weeks when I just flip through the pages, read the article titles, and am completely satisfied by my level of attention to the Review. This week, I went online and read the review of Tessa Hadley’s books – the only one I was interested in reading.

It seems like I have many complaints against the NYTBR; but maybe my expectations are too high. Maybe I expect greater criticism. Maybe I am expecting an arts magazine. Maybe I am expecting the NYRB or the TLS, or even the Guardian. With all of these complaints, I will still anticipate the possibility of a Saturday edition on our doorstep; but, I am no longer disappointed when it’s not there.

aside There was a similar experience over at the millions with the New Yorker. If only that would happen with my subscription – the guilt of letting article after article of that magazine go unread would thankfully be lifted.