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Favorite paragraph: "The lean days of determination. That was the word for it, determination: Arturo Bandini in front of his typewriter two full days in succession, determined to succeed; but it didn't work, the longest siege of hard and fast determination in his life, and not one line done, only two words written over and over across the page, up and down, the same words: palm tree, palm tree, palm tree, a battle to the death between the palm tree and me, and the palm tree won: see it out there swaying in the blue air, creaking sweetly in the blue air. The palm tree won after two fighting days, and I crawled out of the window and sat at the foot of the tree. Time passed, a moment or two, and I slept, little brown ants carousing in the hair on my legs." - John Fante, Ask The Dust
Email: steve@skylightbooks.com
Los Angeles Review of Books Naked Bookseller (not my typos): http://tumblr.lareviewofbooks.org/post/44401183405/the-naked-bookseller-...
A spot on crack-up of a book that is perhaps pulls something from the literary ether that Barthelme, Vonnegut, and Saunders breathed from. The absurdity and chaos of our working world distilled down to one man's effort to figure it all out by quizzing his co-workers and himself. "When was the last time you felt happy?"
A rare treat. A book that feels contemporary and classic, a novel told in short stories, a work that made me feel not only for the characters but for the beauty of the sentences, the intricacy of the structure, and even for myself. The stories often revolve around characters involved in music, rock music. Egan knows how music can effect us and place us in a certain place and time, how it conjures memories and feelings from our past - time is oppressive and consistent, truly a goon.
These essays/articles are moving, funny, and smart. John Jeremiah Sullivan has that rare gift of being able to plug into the universal while exploring the personal. And exploring through articles about: Axl Rose, electrocution, christian rock, southern writers, and other intriguing worlds.
Heartbreaking tales of contemporary life so masterfully told that I am surprised no one has brought this author to my attention before. I am reminded of some of my favorite short story writers like Raymond Carver, Richard Yates, and John Cheever. Dubus is someone that understands how a moment can shape a lifetime and expresses it with an uncanny insight.
I've been reading some the Roald Dahl stories that I either skipped when I was younger or just want to read again. One of the all time great stories that has stuck with me since I read it when I was a single digit is the The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. In this bit of meta-fiction Roald Dahl has been asked to tell the story of playboy turned philanthropist Henry Sugar. Henry then tells us the story of his mentor, a man that has learned the art of seeing through solid objects. Maybe one of my first exposures to mutating the real and the make believe and the power of genre bending.
My favorite book by my favorite author. A wonderful and strange experiment that takes place in the slash between real/fiction.