Ruth Prawer Jhabvala passes away at 86

For years, people who read Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's novels assumed she was born in India. She wrote about swamis, social climbers, duplicitous landlords and other characters from the Indian bourgeoisie who inevitably found themselves colliding with curious visitors from the West.
But Jhabvalawas a Westerner herself: a German Jew displaced by war to England, who married an Indian man and settled in his country. She absorbed enough of subcontinental culture to portray it with clarity and comic sensibility in books that earned her comparisons to Jane Austen

George Saunders quote

Justice is the most important thing in the world, and the birthright of all people. Especially for me and the people in my immediate circle. For people just outside my circle, I believe in it somewhat less, I suppose. For those way out of my circle, I am not necessarily against it, but tend to not fight for it very hard. For those as far out of my circle as one can possibly get, I am very much against justice. But it’s funny – as they move closer to my circle, I am more for it.

ToB Rooster goes to Adam Johnson

 Adam Johnson who was bumped at one point of ToB resurfaced by readers' vote (big readers, these ToB addicts) and now wins the Rooster, thanks to judges.

I'm happy the most-deserved novel has won. Truth to tell, I've just read bits and excerpts of TOMS from here and there. But I'm now hungry for the whole book. Sure I'm going to buy it.

I was a first -timer at ToB, but I must admit I enjoyed it a lot. Every night, on returning from my clinic, I would log on to ToB page and read the judge's review, then the match commentary and finally the readers' comments. It was a great and enriching experience for me, and I would go to bed with a unique learning happiness every time.

 Thanks to ToB team and viva lectura!


I’ll admit I’m a ToB addict, so it’s a special honor to be included in the bracket and to survive some fascinating matchups. And to get bumped, only to Zombie back? My highest achievement. Really, I read it all—the reviews, the color commentary, the reader comments, the NOOK ads—and it always got my day going by thinking about books: why we write them, how we read them, how we speak to them, what they mean to us. 

I will now demand that my publisher place silver Rooster stickers on all the paperbacks. But first: Deliver unto me one live rooster! It will live in our backyard in San Francisco, until my sleep-deprived neighbors murder it. And if readers will make suggestions for what we should call it, I promise to select a name from one of the comments. 

Finally, a special thanks to all the readers, reviewers, and authors who contributed to a pretty dang awesome celebration of books.

Morning News Tournament of Books: BS knocks out TOMS

In the semi-final of The Morning News Tournament of Books, Chris Ware's  Building Stories knocks out Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son.

The Orphan Master’s Son has masterfully pulled back the curtain on life in North Korea—and, as Dennis Rodman’s recent unexpected visit seems to indicate, we may soon begin to learn much more about our planet’s most mysterious country—but Building Stories has pulled a curtain back on what it means to be human. For that, I say that Chris Ware is not only a good draw-er, but the best damn writer of 2012.

Mikhail Shiskhin on The novel

The novel is a boat. Words must be revived in order for the boat to be genuine, so that I may climb aboard and sail out of this solitary life to a place where they love us and are waiting for us all. Save myself. And take all of my characters with me. And the reader too.

Related Post
Mikhail Shiskhin interview

Michael Frayn interview

We try to understand the world by seeing it in terms of some kind of narrative, and I think most of my plays and books are about that process. But I think there are some things about which it's theoretically impossible to have precise knowledge – namely, other people's intentions and feelings and probably one's own as well.

Chinua Achebe dies at 82

Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian novelist seen by millions as the father of African literature, has died at the age of 82

Related post
Chinua Achebe on literature and ethnicity

George Saunders' new concern

I don’t think you could ever make a good story by thinking if it would sell. But there is some kind of intersection between trying to write as sincerely and truthfully and well as you can and then some idea that a good-hearted reader would connect. That much you can control, I think. But what you can’t control, I am noticing, is once the book is done and it either does really well or really poorly. You can’t predict that. There’s an element that you can’t predict or control. So I don’t think you can make much of it. It’s just luck.

 In The Morning News George Saunders discusses his audience problem and other things with  Robert Birnbaum.

Richard Nash's idea of business of literature

The business of literature is blowing shit up. 

Even when there's money in writing ..

But the truth is, there’s a reason most well-known writers still teach English. There’s a reason most authors drive dented cars. There’s a reason most writers have bad teeth. It’s not because we’ve chosen a life of poverty. It’s that poverty has chosen our profession.
Even when there’s money in writing, there’s not much money

Why Mikhail Shishkin refused to participate in Book Expo

A country where power has been seized by a corrupt, criminal regime, where the state is a pyramid of thieves, where elections have become  farce, where courts serve the authorities, not the law, where there are political prisoners, where state television has become a prostitute, where packs of impostors pass insane laws that are returning everyone to the Middle Ages—such a country cannot be my Russia. I cannot and do not want to participate in an official Russian delegation representing that Russia.

via Blog of a Bookslut

Are you watching the Morning News Tournament of Books?

I've been following, the first time, the Morning News Tournament of Books with great interest. As of now, I have no clue as to how they get their books for the 'tournament' except that they are all published in 2012. But I see they have excellent judges on board - great literary tasters - and I'm enjoying their words to such an extent that some of their observations I find myself copying  in a separate notebook.

Example:
It’s a reminder of what fiction has the power to do: Change the way you see the world. It’s a book that warrants close reading (by everyone) and it’s one that we’ll still be reading 50 years from now. And it’s the clear winner in this round. Where’d You Go, Bernadette can’t compete with the ambition and scope of The Orphan Master’s Son.

This is  Elliot Halt writing about The Orphan Master's Son. I wonder if any reviewer would be so much open and generous about a book today..

Equally interesting is the match commentary between Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner, both novelists, but great readers at the same time. You get gem in their conversation, and I'm simply blown away by their intelligent and incisive dissection and interpretation of novels with their individual but insightful approaches.

Example:
 What impresses me is that Homes can get me to take these people seriously as they ricochet from oddness to oddness. I see her as a kind of post-post-modernist. There’s something Pynchonian about her book, but rather than swallowing the world and leaving us a black hole, like Pynchon does, Homes lets some light escape. It’s considerably more hopeful than some of her previous work, which I think disappointed some of her longtime fans, but I thought it was her best book yet.

 I highly recommend this tournament -for discerning readers, of course.

Sayed Kashua quote

I wasn't sure I could write about love and drinking in Arabic. Perhaps God cannot read Hebrew.

Matias Viegener's take on tweeting and texting

Tweeting and texting may not have led to better writing, but I’d argue that they’ve led to better close readings. Look at the way a cryptic tweet gets scrutinised. For many people today, reading is a kind of code-breaking. I’m fascinated by the powers of condensation, quotation, and metaphor, for which social media has tremendous potential. If an emerging writer wanted a form of realism that reflected our “lived” experiences, it seems to me that working in and through these new modalities has more potential that the narrative novel, essentially a 19th century invention.

Marilynne Robinson's favourite genre

Oddly enough, my favorite genre is not fiction. I’m attracted by primary sources that are relevant to historical questions of interest to me, by famous old books on philosophy or theology that I want to see with my own eyes, by essays on contemporary science, by the literatures of antiquity. Every period is trapped in its own assumptions, ours, too, so I am always trying, without much optimism, to put together a sort of composite of the record we have made that gives a larger sense of the constant at work in it all, that is, ourselves. The project is doomed from the outset, I know. Still. 

Elizabeth Strout interview

I researched Somalia and the Somali community population in this country and even the camps. The research I did was just enormous. I would say there were four or five years where I just had books piled up. I got very interested in it. But even as I was doing it, I thought, "I don't think I can take on a point of view," but wanted to. There was so much I absorbed—all these Somali proverbs. I realized in the final version that there is not one Somali proverb, and I learned 300. 

Related Post:
Elizabeth Strout wins 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction

Mo Yan on Marxism

What Marx wrote in the "The Communist Manifesto" was of great beauty. However, it seems to be very hard to make that dream come true. But then again, I look at those European, specifically Northern European, states and societies and wonder: Would these welfare states even be thinkable without Marx? We used to say in China that in a way Marxism has saved capitalism. Because those who benefited most from his ideology seem to be societies in the West. We Chinese, Russians and Eastern Europeans seem to have misunderstood Marxism.

Related
Mo Yan according to his translator

Deborah Eisenberg interview

I write down some little thing, and then eventually something comes out of that, or doesn’t. I’m just trying to get down one accurate sentence and then another accurate sentence. And most of my time is spent rearranging the little counters in the sentence. And then the little counters on the page, and then the little counters in the whole.

Is Philip Roth the greatest living American novelist?

 Roth was never just a novelist to readers but an iconoclast and narcissist, a Jewish cultural hero (villain to some), a (probable) misogynist, a literary celebrity who folded his own life into novels like they were tabloids (or metafictions?) and, after Toni Morrison, our great American hope.

But is he the greatest living American novelist?

Finnegans Wake a bestseller in China!

A Chinese writer friend attributes the good sales of Finnegans Wake to media hype and unusual advertisements, which is at least partly true. Xinhua net reports that large outdoor billboards for the book have appeared in eight major Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing. Deploying such billboards for a book is itself unusual. Shanghai’s DF Daily notes that the book’s first print run of 8,000 copies was sold out in three weeks under “intensive marketing.” A Shanghai resident commented on Sina weibo that she passes by a billboard for the book every day and it makes her “really want to challenge the high difficulties; but what if I can’t understand?” This reminds me of another comment I saw — at an online bookstore website — from a young woman who purchased One Hundred Years of Solitude: “I simply wanted to know why this book was selling so well.” She found the book hard to understand but “felt different after careful savoring.” 

George Saunders on his writing process

 For me, that process of taking a first draft and working with it over a period of months is EVERYTHING. That’s where a person finds out what he really means and (you could argue) who he really IS. So I suppose one danger is that we might get the idea that, you know, “to blurt, is to be.” The idea that whatever comes out is good and is us. Whereas someone who has really worked with text realizes - well, that neither one is “really” you, but that the considered version might represent a “higher” you - brighter, less willing to coast or condescend, funnier, and (mysteriously) also, I think, kinder.

Related
A conversation between George Saunders and his editor

Jerry Pinto bags The Hindu Literary Prize 2012

Journalist-author Jerry Pinto has bagged The Hindu Literary Prize 2012 for his novel Em and the Big Hoom.
I've not yet read any fiction by Jerry Pinto. But I have read his witty and hilarious columns, specially in the Statesman. He's a superb prose writer.

Haruki Murakami has a new novel in April | Believing in Fiction

New Murakami Novel
Literary giant Haruki Murakami is set to release his first novel in three years in April, publisher Bungeishunju Ltd. said.

Believing in Fiction
I have moments when my faith in fiction falters and thencomes to the edge of collapse. I find myself asking, “Am I really a believer?” And then, “Was I ever?” First to go are the disjointed, upended narratives of experimental fiction. Oh well ... Next, the virgin birth miracle of magical realism. But I was always Low Church on that one. It’s when the icy waters of skepticism start to rise round the skirts of realism herself that I know my long night has begun. All meaning has drained from the enterprise. Novels? I don’t know how or where to suspend my disbelief. What imaginary Henry said or did to nonexistent Sue, and Henry’s lonely childhood, his war, his divorce, his ecstasy and struggle with the truth and how he’s a mirror to the age—I don’t believe a word: not the rusty device of pretending that the weather has something to do with Henry’s mood, not the rusty device of pretending.

Confessions of a translator

As I was approaching 40, not an easy milestone for anybody, I suddenly realized that I had lost the urge to translate. It had become a routine, and that had always been my idea of a senseless existence – when life becomes routine.

The Tarantino of Russian literature | Asia's obsession with graphic novels

Vladimir Sorokin,
Many people don’tlike Sorokin, sometimes they hate him and more often than not they don’tunderstand him, mistaking the views of characters for the author’s own. 

Asia and Graphic novels

Printed graphic storytelling is an extension of all that has been performed for centuries across Asia, whether translating the ancient Mahabharata from verse and stage to the illustrated page in India, Cambodia and Nepal, in China’s Shuihu Zhuan (Outlaws of the Marsh or The Water Margin) moved from verse to scrolls to comics, Osamu Tezuka’s reaction to his war experiences in the hugely popular tales of Astro Boy, or Shaun Tan’s stunning The Arrival. These are seen as being as legitimate and masterful as novels solely of the written word because in Asia, and particularly where symbols are used rather than alphabet, the image is also the word and carries perhaps more potency and power than any arrangement of letters.

Is the novel's time up?

“No one really knows what’s coming, what new economic models will exist, whether there will be a market,”

Lars Iyer interview

Both my manifesto and my novels are intended to foreground the difficulty of maintaining such a link between past and present, between neoliberal capitalism and European Modernism. For me, neoliberalism has deprived us of the conditions under which a certain literature – the literature, in particular, of Modernism – thrived. The vanguards have disappeared because there is no one in particular to offend. Literary fiction lives on, but it has become, for the most part, a kind of kitsch, depending on the most schematic ways of presenting character, plot, etc. – on a ‘realism’, a standardised system of representation, that is completely at one with the generic models of taste on which advertising and marketing depend.

It takes years to become a writer: Cheryl Strayed

Grace Paley said that she would write so she could taste life twice – she’d have the experience and then relive it in writing. I think that that’s true for me, too.
I couldn’t have written this book at 26. I wasn’t yet the writer who wrote Wild. It takes years to become a writer. I had to throw myself into that experience and then I had to grow up to understand what it meant.

Yan Lianke interview

I understand the Chinese political and cultural environment well. I understand people who don't use their voice. As an intellectual and author I should require myself to do it first. If I don't do enough, I can't require other authors to do so. There's always a reason. There's always one book or another; timing. But I think as an author I could have taken more responsibility and I didn't.

           Yan Lianke is one of the  Man Booker International Prize 2013 finalists. 

Howard Jacobson quote

 In Jaipur, I saw a future for the book. 

In support of Salman Rushdie

The literary and film community today came out in support of controversial author Salman Rushdie and blamed the West Bengal government for cancellation of his visit to the metropolis. 

My apology to Salman Rushdie. Kolkata is my city and I'm ashamed you were refused permission to visit it.The fact is Kolkata has long been stripped of its cultural and intellectual identity, and is now  totally messed up with politics(capital P). How strange that the powers-that-be have no problem with Amitav Ghosh, but they see red in whatever you do, say and write without having any sense or vision of a real writer. Sorry Salman, and my apology to you once again on behalf of the city which was once the cultural capital of India.. 

Alejandro Zambra interview

I feel that writing a book is opening oneself up to deep inner scrutiny, to a long contemplation in a glass that is sometime a window and other times a mirror.

Robert McCrum on Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies

Mantel has made her career with fiction and non-fiction of stunning originality. Naturally brave, she has been the opposite of predictable. This novel, however, is nothing if not reassuring. First, it takes one of medieval England's greatest thrillers (the persecution, trial and death of Anne Boleyn) and gives it a clever contemporary spin. Mixed with sharp, modern dialogue, the narrative exploits the historic present tense to give an essentially hardcore historical novel some extra literary pizzazz.

Mario Vargas Llosa's mind | Nadeem Aslam on his writing life| Nabokov's lecture on Kafka's The Metamorphosis

Mario Vargas Llosa must be one of the few great writers ever to have argued that society should place less trust in great writers. “The mandarin writer no longer has a place in today’s world,” he has observed. “Figures like Sartre in France or Ortega y Gasset and Unamuno in their time, or Octavio Paz, served as guides and teachers on all the important issues and filled a void that only the ‘great writer’ seemed capable of filling, whether because few others participated in public life, because democracy was nonexistent, or because literature had a mythical prestige.” But today, “in a free society, the influence that a writer exerts—sometimes profitably—over submissive societies is useless.”

The City has an interesting article by Adam Kirsch on Mario Vargas Llosa. the 1980 Nobel Laureate, who defends liberty and reason, and at the same time seems fascinated by fanaticism and violence.

Nadeem Aslam on his writing life

"I've more or less realised my writing has cost me almost everything. Sometimes friendship, love – because there's not enough time to be with people, and never enough money. Work can take so much out of you, with 12- or 13-hour days. A study is a laboratory first – then a factory."

Nabokov's lecture on Kafka's The Metamorphosis

         The Kafka Project has a new post.

Of course, no matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of music, a picture is discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain blank and spines that remain unkindled. "To take upon us the mystery of things"—what King Lear so wistfully says for himself and for Cordelia—this is also my suggestion for everyone who takes art seriously. A poor man is robbed of his overcoat (Gogol's "The Greatcoat," or more correctly "The Carrick"); another poor fellow is turned into a beetle (Kafka's "The Metamorphosis)—so what? There is no rational answer to "so what." We can take the story apart, we can find out how the bits fit, how one part of the pattern responds to the other; but you have to have in you some cell, some gene, some germ that will vibrate in answer to sensations that you can neither define, nor dismiss. Beauty plus pity—that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual. If Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" strikes anyone as something more than an entomological fantasy, then I congratulate him on having joined the ranks of good and great readers.

         

Dave Eggers on Future of Publishing

There's never been a better time, I don't think, to be a writer or publisher. The playing field is more democratic than ever, in that any small publisher can get a book to any reader in the world with relative ease. That's very new, and good for everyone. I'm also encouraged because it looks like ebooks' share of the market might be levelling out. I always hoped there'd be a plateau, and after that, ebooks and physical books would enjoy a kind of permanent détente. At least for the moment, that seems to be what's happening.

Jeet Thayil wins the DSC Prize 2013

Narcopolis emerges as the winner from a shortlist of six to take the US $50,000 DSC Prize

It's good to see Narcopolis being awarded at long last.

Man Booker International Prize 2013 finalists

Anyone who could have guessed even five of the 10 novelists who have just been revealed as the finalists for the fifth Man Booker International Prize deserves a mass cap-doffing from the wider reading public. 

I'm familiar with works of just two of these novelists: U.R Ananthamurty (India) and Intizar Hossain (Pakistan). Both of them are iconic writers, and hugely respected across the sub-continent. Hossain's classic Urdu novel "Basti" has recently been translated  by Columbia University South Asian scholar  Frances Pritchett.

Junot Diaz as new prose Messiah | John O'Brien as publishing messiah

Junot Diaz
New prose Messiahs are often announced but rarely stick around. Junot Diaz might well be the real thing for American prose: his has been celebrated for being lithe and alive since his first book, Drown, but more so since the Pulitzer-winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

John O'Brien
The most interesting writers for me are the ones who do the unexpected, the ones who take big risks and want to do what hasn't been done before. Oftentimes, this newness will be formal in nature, but just as often it's a newness in how the world is perceived. This literature is everywhere present, but is kept safely in its place and generally ignored. I suppose that one perverse point I wanted to make is that the impulse to write a novel is an impulse to have fun, to play with the form: that this is the origin of fiction and novel writing, and that this kind of writing can be found in all countries and cultures.

Globalization debasing literature?

"As a result of rapidly accelerating globalization we are moving toward a world market for literature. There is a growing sense that for an author to be considered “great,” he or she must be an international rather than a national phenomenon. This change is not perhaps as immediately evident in the US as it is in Europe, thanks to the size and power of the US market and the fact that English is generally perceived as the language of globalization, so that many more translations go away from it than toward it. However, more and more European, African, Asian and South American authors see themselves as having “failed” if they do not reach an international audience."

George Orwell in the air | What is a great book?

George Orwell Day 
"Orwell is in the air. I think he is very relevant today. He puts truth before self. Very few of us can bear to do that. It's a vocation. But nonetheless, we need people to do that, and he reminds us of that. It's that bleak realism, expressed beautifully – it is what will keep us decent … Both his writing and in an odd kind of way his personal life stand for integrity. If there was one value that politicians, bankers and journalists, and in a curious way our society as a whole, needs, it's no jargon, and more integrity."

Ogochukwu Promise on great books

Great books never fail to leave something of their greatness in the hearts and minds of people who read them. Books that are thoughtfully, painstakingly and skillfully written; books that tell poignant truths about the state of our affairs, motivating us, enlightening us with the depth of their meaning, wealth of their language – full of grace, candour and meaning are worthy of being pored over.

The Melville House principle

"We try to stay on top of the basic scene, but on the other hand, I don’t really care about the basic scene. I don’t really care what the big houses are publishing. I don’t really care what the big media is selecting to review and write about. We’re trying to do something different, and I don’t want to get too bogged down in that stuff, because we might start to publish that stuff. We’re following our own artistic tastes and our own political tastes. Often enough, that really works"

Philippe Claudel interview

I never research for a book. I work with my imagination and memory.

Daniel. Selvaraj interview

"Frankly speaking, all my works can be classified as propaganda literature. But when the writer resorts to faithful description of life, his works will not appear to be propaganda. It has also been said that the characters in Tolstoy’s monumental work War and Peace are the combination of historical figures of the Napoleon era and the imaginary characters of the ancient Greek poet Homer. I have adopted this technique in my novels."

Age of trade publishing over?| Haruki Murakami app

Age of trade publishing over

For much of the market bookshops are now irrelevant – they will continue to exist and for the upper ends of the market will remain important, but they are no longer the commercial motor of publishing. Online is. And online is a marketing black hole: it will eat everything you throw at it and come back for more.

 Haruki Murakami App 
Of course, it's  a fun app especially for Murakami fans. You would now get Murakami diary app in iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Despite being a promotional device, it's a calendar, with entries from Apple's iCal system and quotes from Murakami's backlist of novels and short stories – all sharable via Facebook, Twitter and email.

Lit News: Antonio Munoz Molina wins the Jerusalem Biennial Prize for 2013

Spanish novelist Antonio Munoz Molina, the author of A Manuscript of Ashes and Sepharad,  has been awarded the Jerusalem Biennial Prize for 2013.

 Munoz Molina, according to the jury,  is 'one of the world's greatest literary figures of the 20th. and 21th. Centuries.'

Ma Thida interview | why write novel in the beginning?

Ma Thida interview
As a doctor I do scientific work, but as a writer and editor I do an artist’s work. I feel I’m useful to the Burmese people by using two different professional skills.”

Why write novel in the beginning?
There is an interesting thread in the Reddit started by a musician who asks: I have done some research and have found that many of my favorite authors began as journalist and short story writers. This did not surprise me at all. Why then isn't this the norm?
There are some cool, well thought-out responses too. Check it.

A conversation between George Saunders and his editor

 Ward: The role of fiction.

Saunders: Transfer energy from writer to reader.

Ward: The role of short fiction.

Saunders: Do that quicker.

Ward: Realism.

Saunders: Realism is to fiction what gravity is to walking: a confinement that allows dancing under the right circumstances.

Ward: Your reputation as a satirist.

Saunders: Slight thorn in my side.

Source:: The Slate Book of Review 

George Saunders interview/2

I guess my point is, I know I write about class, but I try not to think about writing about class because then it can be reductive. Suddenly you're a crusader, whereas if you let the subconscious lead you, it often is about class and about something else.  That guy (in "The Semplica-Girl Diaries") has class issues, but he also has personal issues and you kind of don't know what they are until you let him talk for 30 or 40 pages. I do think in American life, work and scarcity — or maybe paucity — and the possibility of failure has always been just huge for me. I suspect it's the same for a lot of people whether they're wealthy or poor.

George Saunders interview/1

Ben Fountain interview | Thomas Pynchon to publish new novel

 I’m 54 years old and I am a debut novelist.

Thomas Pynchon will publish a new novel called Bleeding Edge this fall with Penguin Press.

And now "Fifty Shades.." goes to university!

Sex educator and American University adjunct professor Stef Woods didn't see "mommy porn" when she first heard buzz about the E L James erotic romance bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey at a doctor's office, where the receptionists, nurse, and doctor were all reading the book. She saw a potential class topic. Having taught college classes on activism and social media and sexuality and social media, Woods found the combination of number of books sold, media hype, and issues related to female sexuality, fan fiction, and social media compelling enough to successfully propose “Contemporary American Culture: The 50 Shades Trilogy,” which she will teach to 25 students starting in January.

God help us all.

An end-of-year bonanza: English translation of Intizar Hussain's Urdu novel "Basti"

Anglophone fans of South Asian literature get an end-of-year bonanza this week when Intizar Husain's 1979 Urdu novel Basti, regarded as a contemporary classic among readers of Urdu, receives its belated first American publication

Jeffrey Eugenides's advice to young writers

Facing up to what haunts you and finding a form and structure for it can never be a commercial enterprise. That stuff’s too chaotic and unpredictable, too messy and gorgeous, to fit a popular template. But it’s the source of your originality and may well prove popular in the end.

Mo Yan's writing is like a sharp needle ..

"Mo Yan’s writing is like a sharp needle that pierces the veins to draw blood. Like all great writers he has the ability of speaking in many different voices, often simultaneously. And his characters sometimes give the impression they are creating Mo Yan, not the other way around". 

Consuming fiction on Twitter

"Indeed, the working title of Egan’s story was “Lessons Learned,” and in virtually every tweet the text illustrates how thoroughly the protagonist has absorbed not only the practical wisdoms of her training as an undercover agent but also the ethos of her culture, the tenets of her tribe. This observation points to the most significant messages the story conveys: that our thoughts are not our thoughts (they are culture’s thoughts), and that even our intimate experiences are filtered through limited emotional constructs learned from society. Rather than despair at such apparently bleak conclusions, however, Egan’s story suggests we should approach them with an HTML-era mindset—one that accepts the limits of authenticity by embracing masquerade with a stoic playfulness and with a highly engaged intellect comfortable with irony and paradox."

Rohinton Mistry in WLT | Deborah Levy on new thinkers

World Literature Today showcases Indian-Canadian novelist Rohinton Mistry in its January/February 2013 issue. A part of it is available online. Incidentally, Rohinton Mistry is 2012 Neustadt Prize laureate.Samrat Upadhyay has an interesting essay on Mistry's works.
Mistry is not a writer of linguistic riffs, he is not enamored by language for its own sake—and thank god for that. He’s a writer who’s interested in telling stories . . . stories about the human heart and the human mind and of how we all struggle in this world, whether we are migrants or bank workers, beggars or college students, tailors or pavement artists.

Deborah Levy on new thinkers
Every generation throws up its new thinkers and they tend to make a cultural revolution. They have energy and purpose and sometimes wear really nice shoes. They make everyone else look exhausted and clapped out. That is how it should be.

The books they loved and lost as publishers in 2012

I'm no fan of "Best books of the year" lists. Every list seems random or compiled without much thought or consideration. May be some of them have their own agenda. So I don't really follow them. What interests me is the publishers' take on the books they published or lost or wished they'd published.  It also offers a fascinating glimpse into the minds of today's big publishing personnel and their attitude about literature and quality of books.

I didn't get exactly elated to learn that Jamie Byng of Canongate, wished he had published Fifty Shades, but Philip Gwyn Jones of Portobollo Books made my day by saying," To see great literature triumphant is always energising. It proves again that publishing can be surprising, and the masterpieces can still sell to the many."

So take heart, not everything is lost in traditional publishing.. There are still some editors out there who care about good books and literature.

Bolano condemned to suffer the fate of Jim Hendrix

Bolaño the literary rock star may be condemned to suffer the fate of Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison about whom Mr. Bolaño also wrote, in which every last scrap and fragment of the deceased’s creativity is marketed to his most ardent fans.        
In NewYork times, Larry Rohter reviews "Woes of the True Policemen" by the Chilean Master.

William H. Gass's literary message | Reading Proust

"It’s an incredible, horrible time. Huge changes. We are parasitical on the Earth, and we could destroy the host. And there are many catastrophes awaiting. We don’t seem to learn. And that’s my, I guess, literary message if I have any. Of course, that isn’t helpful." 
Reading Proust 
One of the reasons I love Proust that it is endlessly interesting; one always discovers something new in the text. Perhaps above all, I am always captivated by the beauty and the absolute originality of his style

Mikhail Shiskin interview/2

When I read I tell myself this: no compromises for the publisher, no compromises for the reader. I write for my ideal reader. This is the only condition that allows me to finish a book. Of course when you don’t compromise, at the end of the day you risk being left all alone with your ideal reader—just you and the guy in the mirror. But I’m lucky enough to have found my reader in reality. The reading process is like a blood transfusion. I am sharing the most important essence of life with my reader. But we need to have the same blood type.
Mikhail Shiskin is interviewed by Elizabeth Kiem in The Morning News
Also read an excerpt from the Maidenhair

Alaa al-Aswani interview

Writing a novel is an organic process, like falling in love. I can't say OK now I'll write a book about the revolution. Just as I can't say: This week, I'm going to fall in love with this woman."

Contra Mundum Press making waves with exceptional literature

 Many American artists continue to exist in an aesthetic vacuum and don’t create within a larger continuum and lineage. Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Salinger, all highly over-celebrated, rather average writers, are absolute oddities, though not in a positive way. That they wrote what they did post-Huysmans, post-Musil, or post-Hofmannsthal is baffling.

           - Rainer J. Hanshe, founder of Contra Mundum Press

Eduardo Halfon interview

"It’s a constant feeling of being outside, of wanting to be outside. It’s not a choice. I’ve just never felt that I belonged anywhere—not in Guatemala, not in the United States, not in Spain. I don’t know why that is, but it’s my reality. It’s a very fluid existence. I can pretend to be where I’m at: I’m very American if I’m in the U.S., and I’m very Guatemalan if I’m in Guatemala, and I’m very Spanish in Spain. I can modify my voice and my physical appearance and pretend to be from where I’m living at the moment. Yet I’m not really there."

Noémi Szécsi interview

I like being an outsider, because I want to keep the privilege of an observer, I want to keep the distance. I don’t like getting involved in causes, communities and movements, I don’t like building Hungarian or cosmopolitan identities for myself, because I insist on moving freely between categories, on keeping every door and window open. This is my notion of freedom as a writer.

Starting a bookstore in the age of Amazon

"Maybe it’s working because I’m an author, or maybe it’s working because Karen toils away like life depends on this bookstore, or because we have a particularly brilliant staff, or because Nashville is a city that is particularly sympathetic to all things independent. Maybe we just got lucky. But this luck makes me believe that changing the course of the corporate world is possible. Amazon doesn’t get to make all the decisions; the people can make them, by choosing how and where they spend their money.  If what a bookstore offers matters to you, then shop at a bookstore. If you feel that the experience of reading a book is valuable, then read a book. This is how we change the world: We grab hold of it. We change ourselves."

Mo Yan's Nobel lecture

"For a writer, the best way to speak is by writing. You will find everything I need to say in my works. Speech is carried off by the wind; the written word can never be obliterated. I would like you to find the patience to read my books. I cannot force you to do that, and even if you do, I do not expect your opinion of me to change. No writer has yet appeared, anywhere in the world, who is liked by all his readers; that is especially true during times like these."

I'm moved by Mo Yan's simple, honest and unpretentious autobiographical details in the lecture. Forget the controversies, he deserves to be read and tasted as a writer. 

Censorship in China| Vikram Seth in vodka ad

Censorship in China: two views
Nobel Prize laureate Mo Yan, who has been criticized for his cozy relationship with China’s Communist Party, has compared censorship to security checks at airports, suggesting it is unpleasant but necessary.
But Han Han, China's most popular literary star, writes in This Generation, “My first book, Triple Door, for instance, took forever to be published because it was too downbeat. Downbeat is a fatal flaw, because you can always revise something that’s a bit sloppy or straighten out the kinks in a ropey argument.”

Vikram Seth in Absolut vodka ad
You can now call him Absolut Seth. Yes, it’s our own suitable boy, Vikram Seth, in the Absolut vodka ad, etching a blue bottle for the brand. via 

Russsian Booker for Andrey Dmitriev | Excerpt from bad sex award winning novel

Russsian Booker for Andrey Dmitriev
“I’ve written about my past, my own feelings and impressions and places that I know and love. Without them I would never have written this novel.”

Bad sex award 2012 for Nancy Huston
Read an excerpt from Infrared, the award-winning novel, if you are in the mood for it

Lydia Millet interview

We’re seeing a mass homogenization of culture right now through the loss of languages around the world, as smaller, more traditional cultures are subsumed by dominant cultures and the last speakers of native languages die off.

Guardian first book award 2012 | Thirty great one-liners

Guardian first book award
"While few will have expected the war in Iraq to bring forth a novel that can stand beside All Quiet on the Western Front or The Red Badge of Courage, The Yellow Birds does just that, for our time, 
as those books did for theirs."

Thirty great one-liners
I never forget a face, but in your case I'd be glad to make an exception - Groucho Marx
rest ones

Rescue Operation for Anthony Burgess| E. L James Publishers Weekly's "Person of the year'

Rescue Operation for Anthony Burgess| 
Open Letters Monthly brings out a special issue on Anthony Burgess. Of course, they have put in huge and sincere efforts and time in it. But I wonder if there is any audience for Burgess in this age. Editors agree, in their conversation (I enjoyed reading it), that Burgess is suitable neither for bestseller crowd nor for the Pynchon crowd ( I liked their using 'crowd' for 'fans'). So why do they bring a whole issue on Burgess? The trigger is the reprinting by Europa Editions of Anthony Burgess’ epic novel Earthly Powers. Editors hope that "this special issue of Open Letters, and this republication, can help get the rescue operation underway." Go read the issue. Read also Earthly Powers, if not any other book by Burgess, to have a taste of the earlier times.

Publishers Weekly honors "Fifty Shades of Grey" author
E.L James, author of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy has been named Publishers Weekly's Publishing Person of the year
 Is it the nadir moment of our civilization?

Herta Müller interview

"I lived through 50 or more interrogations, but I wouldn't be satisfied with directly transposing events. Working with language requires beauty for me. I doubt you could do that in the same way in a memoir." 

2012 Cervantes Prize | Kurt Vonnegut’s Letters | Indian literature for kids

2012 Cervantes Prize
Spanish poet and essayist Jose Manuel Caballero Bonald has won the 2012 Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world’s highest literary honor.

Kurt Vonnegut's Letters
Reading these letters, it seemed like Kurt Vonnegut’s biggest obstacle to happiness was Kurt Vonnegut.

 Indian literature for kids
Complete with a think tank, a doodle wall and an outdoor bookstore the children’s literature festival, Bookaroo 2012, was a mini wonderland of sorts that brought together authors, illustrators, storytellers and publishers.