Villa Incognito is his latest novel. He also has a collection of short stories out now (I looked it up.)
Gavin, ask yourself this question. What are you more afraid of, a giant murderous demon or me?
Lilah ,'Destiny'
Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Laga - Jun 09, 2007 7:21:15 am PDT #2814 of 28176
You should know I'm a big deal in the Resistance.
JZ - Jun 09, 2007 8:02:51 am PDT #2815 of 28176
See? I gave everybody here an opportunity to tell me what a bad person I am and nobody did, because I fuckin' rule.
Mark Helprin, Elizabeth Bishop, Flannery O'Connor, with a side of occasional Chesterton, especially The Man Who Was Thursday, of which I shall never tire.
Hayden - Jun 09, 2007 8:03:59 am PDT #2816 of 28176
aka "The artist formerly known as Corwood Industries."
Big Bill Faulkner, Doubtin' Tommy Pynchon, and Vlad "The Impaler" Nabokov for me.
Hayden - Jun 09, 2007 8:07:25 am PDT #2817 of 28176
aka "The artist formerly known as Corwood Industries."
Mmmmm, Elizabeth Bishop.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.
JZ - Jun 09, 2007 8:21:35 am PDT #2818 of 28176
See? I gave everybody here an opportunity to tell me what a bad person I am and nobody did, because I fuckin' rule.
Oh, Corwood! That's the first poem that ever made me sit up and gasp, "So that's what a poem is!" Not that I hadn't liked poetry before, because I had, very much... but I can remember being nine or ten, in the car on a road trip to Tahoe, coming across it for the millionth time in a big Golden Treasury of Poetry or some such, and getting absolutely stoned on it. The homely fish, his eyes all backed and packed, his beard of hooks and snapped-off lines... oh.
Scrappy - Jun 09, 2007 8:22:16 am PDT #2819 of 28176
Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
Ooh, Nabokov. Maybe I'll bump Heyer off the list. If we are doing read the most, I might have to put SJ Perelman on there. I would also have to say Laurie Colwin.
Hayden - Jun 09, 2007 8:38:35 am PDT #2820 of 28176
aka "The artist formerly known as Corwood Industries."
Wow, I can't even imagine grasping how great Elizabeth Bishop was when only 9 or 10. JZ = of the smart.
I'm ashamed to say that I've never read any Perelman. And I don't even know who many of the other favorites being mentioned are, so I've got to make some additions to my library list.
-t - Jun 09, 2007 8:39:50 am PDT #2821 of 28176
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration
Funny, there's something by each of those writers (that I've read) that I really dislike or am at least meh enough on to wonder that the same person wrote the meh thing and the thing I loved. Probably goes with that whole taking chances and evolving and whatnot that I hear writers do.
Oh, hey, not Virginia Woolf! I've got one, can I come up with two more?
hippocampus - Jun 09, 2007 9:59:57 am PDT #2822 of 28176
not your mom's socks.
Elizabeth Bishop - absolutely amazing. Only person I've ever seen successfully make a villanelle blow up on purpose (One Art). and the dentist poem. And the poem to Marianne Moore ('come flying, come flying...'). Oh.
David Quammen and Elizabeth Bishop today. And Eudora Welty ('cause JZ has Flannery.) I've never read Mark Helprin... what is he? and Lydia Davis. I need to re-set the rules of this game.
JZ - Jun 09, 2007 10:22:33 am PDT #2823 of 28176
See? I gave everybody here an opportunity to tell me what a bad person I am and nobody did, because I fuckin' rule.
I've never read Mark Helprin... what is he?
He's unfortunately a particularly pernicious neocon speechwriter, but he's also the creator of largely apolitical fiction with the voices of angels. Probably his best collection of short stories is Ellis Island, and IMO his greatest novels are Winter's Tale and A Soldier Of The Great War (YGreatestHelprinNovelMV). At its best, his writing is incredibly rich, dense, Dickensian magical realism (the novels, anyway -- the short stories tend to be leaner and more grounded in sturdy sullen fact, but still breathtaking). If you have occasion to go to upstate New York in the winter after reading Winter's Tale, you'll do it with your breath held, just... waiting.
I really really wish that in his non-literary life he were at least an old-school Republican whom I could respect, but when he closes that door and opens the fiction part of his brain what comes flooding out is astonishing.