Sunday Morning LitLinks
Tim Adams profiles “ultimate pessimist” and “reclusive soothsayer” Cormac McCarthy. (The Guardian)
Professor Michael Wutz discusses why the novel will never die. (Salt Lake Tribune)
Gary Dexter returns with a new story behind the name, this time looking at Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim. (The Telegraph)
Dean Radar rounds up the year’s best poetry books. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Borders CEO not too warm on the idea of a proprietary eReader. (Reuters)
Katy Guest looks back at the year’s most thrilling literary launches. (The Independent)
M.A. Orthofer looks at some of the year’s “best of” lists outside of the U.S. and U.K. (The Literary Saloon)
Oliver Marre tries to figure out why people hate Ian McEwan. (The Telegraph)
Louis de Bernières and other British writers are bringing back the days of the literary salon. (The Guardian)
On this day in 1929, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover was banned in the United States. (Today in Literature)
AuthorScoop
December 20th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Hmmm. I’ve only just read my first Ian McEwan, AMSTERDAM, and I thought it was terrific. Couldn’t put it down.
“Much of the recent criticism has, bizarrely, pointed out that McEwan is concerned solely with stories about the middle classes. One particularly cross chap bemoaned the fall of literature in “the country of Dickens”. That is a bit like complaining that Le Carré only writes about spies and then for good measure comparing him to Thackeray.”
Ha! There’s a strange phenomenon that some people think stories should somehow anticipate what we might have wanted them to be instead of evaluating what they are. I don’t know if it’s the click-happy technology making every damned thing from gas pumps to plush toys ‘interactive’ and answerable to our whims, but we seem to be losing the ability to spectate.
It’s as if the balance between action and its equal and opposite reaction is off. And that ain’t just physics, it practice for life. Creation and control are elements of the human experience, but everything’s a bit lopsided when we don’t develop our ability to respond to what never required our input.
December 20th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
the irony, of course, being that the same technology makes it easier than ever to “change the channel,” as it were. instead of trying to cram good artists into some other mold, seek out the author you “want him to be” elsewhere…
December 20th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Definitely. My hope would be that quick access would afford people better opportunity to find something that pleases them.