NEW MARTIN AMIS
“This remarkably tedious new novel by Martin Amis…” Awesome. If Kakutani hates it, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll love it. Only Liesl Schillinger, whose sour-smug review of Peter Hoeg’s magnificent The Quiet Girl breezily and speciously claimed its narrative “lurches toward pedophilia,” annoys me more as far as NY Times reviewers go. Can’t wait!
Nick Antosca—
Martin Amis’s new novel, The Pregnant Widow, is out in the UK, and once again he’s the subject of much British comment, according to Olivia Cole at the Daily Beast. I cannot wait to read The Pregnant Widow, and I thought House of Meetings was the best novel of his career. Amis recently predicted a “silver tsunami”: “There’ll be a population of demented very old people, like an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants and cafes and shops. I can imagine a sort of civil war between the old and the young in 10 or 15 years’ time.”
6
COOL STUFF
– Jackie Corley’s Word Riot Press, which published Midnight Picnic by me, just announced that they’re going to be publishing collections of short stories by the excellent Paula Bomer, former HTMLGIANT contributor and good friend of mine (here’s a short story by Paula called “A Galloping Infection”) and the excellent Mike Young, editor of NOO Journal and also a good friend of mine (here’s a short story by Mike called “Ten Gallon Bucket of Fries”).
– New story by I. Fontana at Spork.
– I was walking through the grass today and saw a black snake as long as my arm but as thin as a pencil go slithering right in front of me.
– A huge pink-eyed white cat was yowling under my window at dawn.
– Did you read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell? I read it on a plane. It made me think I can never be successful.
– I can’t wait to read The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis. (Great title.) I get the feeling most of my literary peers don’t like Amis much.
NABOKOV SMIRKING IN INTERVIEW (SORRY, KINGSLEY, I LOVE HIS TRICKS)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldpj_5JNFoA
Every now & then I watch this interview purely for entertainment value. Nabokov. My dad gave me one of his books when I was twelve or thirteen, I think, and shortly thereafter I had a dawning-of-comprehension moment, like, this guy [my dad] might actually be pretty smart/have good taste. Which, while not quite a Nabokovian epiphanic moment, actually is a revelation to an adolescent.
I’ve long had the impression that a lot of folks in the HTMLGiant/indie lit crowd don’t care for Nabokov* or at least orient more toward Bukowski/Burroughs/Kafka & what I think of as the “Grits” (i.e. writers whose lifestyles are associated with gritty shit and/or whose writing prioritizes visceral response over sublimity), but I pretty much consider it axiomatic that VN was a genius and maybe the most skilled manipulator of the English language who ever lived. Also, nobody has ever been more successful at translating synesthesia into art. (Btw, do you know what “Martian colors” are? I call that as a title for a book.)
READ MORE >