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Monday Links
- A very good article from The International Literary Quarterly which is mostly about Dave Eggers, though it includes some brief commentary on Jonathan Franzen. I have never warmed to Eggers's writing, though I deeply admire his philanthropy and activism. This article tries to show a deep harmony between the two, a harmony which has become obvious (culminating in What is the What) but which was far from obvious (at least to me) back in the days of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I'm still not entirely convinced, but now feel like I should maybe re-read AHWOSG.
- A whole raft of good stuff in the minnesota review. It's the spring/summer issue, so I'm really late, but that doesn't take away from the excellence of the contents. All three interviews are fantastic (tmr consistently has, I think, the best interviews of any academic or intellectual journal)—Hazel Carby, Michael Denning and Jonathan Culler.
- Also in the minnesota review, Paul Grimstad's revaluation of Knapp/Michaels's Against Theory is worth its own bullet point. It certainly addresses the kinds of questions raised on The Valve a couple of days ago, and which I responded to here.
- Zizek in the LRB on Obama.
- A very thorough recount of the n+1 vs. Elegant Variation smack-down.
Comments
this is re your post on 2666. i must admit i have not read 2666 yet, still waiting for my copy. re the above you wrote,
why can't we see Bolano as a surveyor of failures, of poetic failure? his writing, as i see it is a long elegy, for one kind of thing or another, sometimes a poet, another time a love......he creates a mood that leads to a heartache, and in the juvenility of that sentiment, the reader, also now in profuse sentiment, identifies with the failed writer.
Bolano's poets are anarchists and failed revolutionaries and his sentiments are, even after satirizing them, sympathetic.thus, he is the conveyor of failure, of those who, for whatever reasons, have failed. simply.
or something like that.
i am a Bolano enthusiast, as you can see and find the heart fluttering when i read his most mood evoking lines.
nice blog yours.
cheers.
http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/bousquet/carnegie-mellon-stiffs-the-humanities