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Books Update: Rick Moody's Big Splash
Books Update from NYTimes.com
Date:
Fri, 23 Feb 2001 22:41:51 -0500
From:
The New York Times Direct:
To:
medei@UOL.COM.BR
Friday, February 23, 2001
------------------------------------------------------------
New Books by Rick Moody, Michael Tomasky, Julian Barnes
1. In Sunday's Book Review: Rick Moody's "Demonology"
2. Also Reviewed This Week: "Hillary's Turn"
3. Featured Author: Julian Barnes
4. New in Stores: Muriel Spark's "Aiding and Abetting"
5. In the News: Knopf to Pay $4 Million Advance
6. New on the Best-Seller List
7. In the Forums: Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"
I want to draw your attention to our feature on Rick Moody,
the author of "The Ice Storm," whose new collection of
stories, "Demonology," is reviewed this week. First is the
review of the book by Walter Kirn, literary editor of GQ.
Kirn writes that the book is "uneven in the highest, most
ambitious sense." We also have an audio interview I did with
Rick Moody, a transcript of which is also available on the
site. (I also wrote up the interview as an article for the
Book Review, and you can read the piece in that format if
you prefer.)
1. In Sunday's Book Review: Rick Moody's "Demonology"
=====================================================
Lexical Overdrive
Rick Moody's stories examine the ways in which language can overcome --
and be overcome by -- loss.
DEMONOLOGY
"Good short-story collections, like good record albums, are
almost always hit-and-miss affairs," writes reviewer Walter
Kirn of Rick Moody's new collection, "Demonology: Stories."
"Successful if they include three or four great tracks,
wildly successful if they have five. And that's as it should
be. Moody has spirit and drive and talent to burn, and so he
burns a little, as is his privilege. A gusher that doesn't
spray and spill some oil isn't a gusher, it's just another
well."
Stories.
By Rick Moody.
306 pp. Boston:
Little, Brown & Company. $24.95
This is an uneven book, in Kirn's view, and sometimes the
stories "go awry. More often, though, they excite and
enthrall. Every good laboratory has some broken test tubes,
and every hit has a flip side. Enjoy the hits."
An Audio Interview With Rick Moody
Moody talks about his life and work, including the death of
his older sister, which was the inspiration for the title
story in "Demonology." In summing up his work, Moody says,
"Messing around with form is great, but I still want stories
to save lives." Listen to the interview -- and read along
with a transcript of the talk.
Flirting With Disaster
My profile of Rick Moody, which appears in the Book Review,
is based on the interview.
2. Also Reviewed This Week: "Hillary's Turn"
============================================
Running With Hillary
A magazine columnist who covered her campaign chronicles the former
first lady's race for the Senate.
HILLARY'S TURN
"Hillary's Turn: Inside Her Improbable, Victorious Senate Campaign," by Michael Tomasky
Inside Her Improbable, Victorious Senate Campaign.
By Michael Tomasky.
309 pp. New York:
The Free Press.
$25.
Reviewing his book about Hillary Rodham Clinton's successful
run for the Senate, New York Times political reporter Adam
Nagourney asks, "Given the saturation coverage of this
ultimately spare subject, could there possibly be much left
to say?" His answer is that this first book on the Clinton
campaign is "a brisk and breezy recapitulation of the
events" that began when her potential candidacy was raised
on a Sunday morning talk show in January 1999 and ended with
her victory over Rick A. Lazio last November.
According to Nagourney, Tomasky, who writes about politics
for New York magazine, has written "a clearheaded and,
ultimately, nonideological examination of the personalities
and forces that determined the election result that caught
many people by surprise. But for the most part, that is
about as far as it goes. Tomasky and his publisher chose to
rush the book into print as rapidly as possible, for obvious
competitive reasons, and there is a price to be paid for
speed, especially when it comes to this famously inscrutable
personality."
-----
"Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy," by James T. Patterson
Reviewing this history of the landmark civil rights case,
Laura Kalman, a professor of history at the University of
California, Santa Barbara, and the author, most recently, of
"The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism," calls it an
"absorbing book. At the time, many saw the 1954 decision as
the greatest civil rights advance since Emancipation.
Since then, there have been "detractors in droves," Kalman
writes. She says that James T. Patterson, the Ford
Foundation professor of history at Brown University,
synthesizes much of the debate "with admirable balance."
Drawing on Richard Kluger's pathbreaking history, "Simple
Justice," Patterson suggests that Brown provided
"considerable, though incalculable, symbolic value" for
white liberals and many African-Americans by permitting "a
'reconsecration of ideals' -- ideals of justice and
equality."
Kalman concludes, "Would race relations in this country have
been better and African-Americans better off if the Supreme
Court had not handed down Brown? Despite Patterson's
level-headed defense of the decision, this controversy will
probably outlive us all."
-----
"Cause Celeb," by Helen Fielding
In 1994, years before "Bridget Jones's Diary" spawned a cult
following, a sequel and a soon-to-be-released film, Helen
Fielding published her first novel. Reviewing "Cause Celeb,"
which is only now being released in the United States,
Maggie Galehouse, a reporter at The Sarasota Herald-Tribune,
says that the book "has the clean writing and quick pace of
the Bridget books, but it operates with an utterly different
directive. Less catchy and consumable than its successors,
it is also more challenging."
Set in England and Africa in the mid-1980's, when the plight
of third-world countries was developing a queasy but
mutually advantageous relationship with the promotion of pop
stars, "Cause Celeb" is "A serious story that doesn't take
itself too seriously." Galehouse concludes that Helen
Fielding's first novel is "a wonderful surprise."
3. Featured Author: Julian Barnes
=================================
"Love, Etc.," by Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes is one of the very few contemporary writers
who "can pull off the postmodern trick with no appearance of
strain," writes reviewer Sven Birkerts, the author of five
books of essays. "Love, Etc.," Barnes's ninth novel, is the
"sad and antic continuation" of "Talking It Over," his 1991
account of the ups and downs of two youngish friends, Oliver
and Stuart, and Gillian, the woman they both love. "That
novel pioneered, if not invented, the technique of having
characters alternately speaking about their lives, giving
their versions of events off the page -- to the reader
certainly, and possibly to the author as well."
Yet, Birkerts writes, "the advantages of Barnes's approach
-- its playfulness and immediacy -- are offset by some basic
liabilities. So self-parsing are the characters, so
fundamentally ironic is the crosscutting of their views,
that we have little sense of gathering mystery beyond the
soap-opera-style question of whether Gillian and Stuart will
get back together." But despite the novel's flaws, Birkerts
says, "Barnes has certainly left room for -- indeed, has set
the stage for -- a concluding volume. I hope he writes it."
Featured Author: Julian Barnes
Find out more about "Talking It Over" before considering its
sequel, "Love, Etc.," with The Times review, as well as
reviews of "Flaubert's Parrot" (1985) and "Metroland"
(1987), articles written by Barnes for The Times and an
audio recording of a reading from 1989.
4. New in Stores: Muriel Spark's "Aiding and Abetting"
======================================================
"Aiding and Abetting," by Muriel Spark February 20
In Spark's new novel, based on a sensational real-life
crime, two men claim to be Richard John Bingham, the Earl of
Lucan, who vanished in 1974 after his wife was assaulted and
the family nanny murdered. Michiko Kakutani reviewed the
book on Feb. 20.
5. In the News: Knopf to Pay $4 Million Advance
===============================================
In an unexpectedly intense auction, the Knopf Publishing
Group has agreed to pay an advance of about $4 million to
the Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter for the manuscript
of his first novel, a mystery thriller with an
African-American protagonist, and another novel to follow.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/20/business/20BOOK.html?0223bk
For a digest of this week's book news, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/yr/mo/day/daily/index.html?0223bk
6. New on the Best-Seller List
==============================
Hardcover Nonfiction
#7) "IBM and the Holocaust," by Edwin Black
The author's account of a "strategic alliance" between the
American corporation and Hitler's Germany.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/yr/mo/day/bsp/index.html?0223bk
A note on our best-seller policy: The Times on the Web
publishes the New York Times best-seller lists a week in
advance of the printed Sunday Book Review. The best-seller
lists published this week on the Web will appear in the
print edition dated March 4 and are based on sales through
last weekend.
7. In the Forums: Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"
===============================================
In our British literature forum, readers have begun a
discussion of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." Reactions have
been mixed: "This was one of the worst written 'good' books
I've ever read," said one reader. Another participant cited
the book's "cliches," "hackneyed prose," "weak motivation"
and "tortured plot line," while still concluding, ". . .
it's one of my favorite books, and always has been."
But Shelley also has unambiguous defenders in the forum: "I
thought that it was nearly perfectly written, and very
beautifully." There has also been a discussion of the
influence of Milton's "Paradise Lost" on the theme of
"Frankenstein." One reader called the book "revamped
Milton," but another argued that Shelley updated and altered
the model by making her hero a scientist.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/forums/index.html?0223bk
Those of you who live in the New York area might want to
watch to my weekly appearance on WNBC's "Saturday Today in
New York" (Channel 4, 9-10:30 a.m.). In this week's segment,
I'll talk about Rick Moody, Amy Tan and Maeve Binchy, whose
new novel, "Scarlet Feather," will be published next week.
Please let me know your reactions if you have a chance to
tune in. The videos of the last few segments are now
available on a Web site jointly created by The Times and
WNBC:
http://www.wnbc.com/bookreview/weekend.html
Feel free to forward this e-mail to a friend, and to drop me
a note with your feedback about the site. I enjoy hearing
your opinions, ideas and suggestions and will do my best to
respond individually to each e-mail.
Bill Goldstein
Books Editor
The New York Times on the Web
bill@nytimes.com
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------------------------------
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