As has been widely mentioned, the latest issue of Boldtype is gues-edited by the RZA (of the Wu-Tang Clan). Some interesting choices, including plugs for Karen Armstrong’s A History of God, and Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus.
Novelist Kim Ponders (with whom I had the pleasure of reading at BEA) has started her own blog: Femme La Guerre.
Remember that cool vidlit animation for Yiddish for Dick and Jane? Well, author MJ Rose is doing one for her new novel, The Halo Effect. You can see the animation here. But Rose is actually doing something pretty cool with it: For every blog that links to her video she is pledging $5 to the nonprofit literary organization Reading is Fundamental. The goal is to get 500 blogs to post between now and July 19th and raise at least $2500.
The “Minority Opinion” over the LBC winner, Case Histories, was unveiled earlier this week, causing quite a bit of fracas in the comment thread.
From Ursula LeGuin’s “Advice to A Young Writer”:
To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean. Language used as a means to get power or make money goes wrong: it lies. Language used as an end in itself, to sing a poem or tell a story, goes right, goes towards the truth.
A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.
I’ve been thinking a lot about author readings lately–those that work (hi, Marjane!), those that don’t (hi, Jhumpa!), and those in between (um , everyone.) I guess it’s because I’ll be going on tour in a few weeks in support of my own book, and, well, I’m getting a little nervous. I imagine people taking time off from whatever else they could be doing just to come and listen to stuff I wrote a couple of years ago in a coffee shop while listening to Rachid Taha and of course I want them to have a good time.
So this article about Salvador Plascencia’s reading in San Francisco got my interest. Instead of just going through a chapter of The People of Paper, Plascencia had members of the audience read different parts of the narrative (one reader per character).
The overall effect is joyful, magical, darkly humorous — and pretty confusing.
“One editor told me this was the most confusing book she ever read,” chuckles Plascencia after the reading, as he sits behind a small desk and prepares to sign books for a line of readers that snakes along the bookstore’s wall. “That was, as she was turning me down.”
“Pretty confusing” is still a better effect than “boring,” which is what most readings are like these days.