Peter Selgin’s first book of short stories, Drowning Lessons, was the winner of 2008′s Flannery O’Connor prize for short fiction, so we had high expectations when we headed to KGB Bar’s Sunday night fiction series to hear him read. Luckily Selgin did not disappoint. In fact, we so thoroughly enjoyed his brisk reading of “Color of the Sea,” the story of an unlikely pair of traveling companions, that we asked if he would tell us about his favorite short stories.
After the jump, a list of Selgin’s influences. We’re sorry that one of our favorite authors, Flannery, didn’t make the cut, but we’re excited to have a few new names to explore — starting with first generation feminist Tillie Olsen.
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This past week we were lucky to notice a few books new to us on the 1 train. The more we observe our fellow subway riders, the more we realize how different their tastes are. Yes, there’s a certain vampire novel that keeps appearing, but in general diversity beats out the bestsellers.
Among the more obscure choices we spotted: The Stainless Steel Rat for President. Amazon wasn’t much help with this one, but after a quick Wikipedia search, we discovered that this book is part of series of science fiction novels by Harry Harrison, written between 1961 and 1999. Its zany illustration and vintage cover are what caught our eye — it looked like it’d been salvaged from a rotting storage box or plucked from the dollar cart at a tiny used bookstore.
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When Natasha Wimmer’s translation of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives was first published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2007, it was an immediate hit among literary enthusiasts. The story begins in the 1970s and chronicles the wanderings around Mexico City, and later the world, of two Visceral Realist poets Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, and their quest for enigmatic poet Cesárea Tinajero.
After The Savage Detectives there was a clamor for Bolaño, and his unfinished, apocalyptic epic 2666, about the serial killings of numerous women in a town called Santa Theresa. It was published posthumously in 2004, a year after Bolaño’s death. After Wimmer’s translation of his final work came out last month, she sat with Edith Grossman, veteran translator of Spanish and Latin American literature, at the Strand to discuss the often problematic tradition of literary translation.
Naturally we jumped at the opportunity to ask Wimmer a few questions about her experience translating the most buzzed about Latin American author since Gabriel García Márquez. Check out our interview after the jump.
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When we kept running into Todd Zuniga, founding editor of Opium Magazine, around town at literary events, we decided that we had to introduce ourselves and ask for a reading list. Opium is not just a biannual venue for fiction and poetry, but a “platform for curious and clever types” to exhibit their art of choice. With Opium 7, the mag opened itself up to your ideas with its “Special Projects,” currently featuring the Jesse Nathan-curated section of illustrations, making it one of the most diverse and unique reads around.
Zuniga is also the founder of Literary Death Match, an event that assembles four up and coming writers for a duel of words; it transforms the standard, oftentimes awkward and boring literary reading into a performance-oriented exercise in wordsmithery (that is nothing short of awesome). No surprise then that he’s an expert on emerging writers you should be seeing in a bookstore near you. After the jump, check out Zuniga’s favorite writers to come out of Opium since Issue 1.
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Ronan Noone’s The Atheist, co-produced by Culture Project and Circle in the Square Theatre, is a one-man show starring Campbell Scott as Augustine Early, an unscrupulous Kansas journalist determined to snag himself a full-time position at a newspaper. When the perfect story falls in his lap, Augustine uses any means necessary to expose it for his own gain. Means of choice: blackmailing, leaking pornography on the internet, and seducing widows. He recounts the methods behind his conniving stride to success; the enabler being his lack of belief in anything.
Of course, there’s much more to it than that — see for yourself at the Barrow Street Theatre until January 4th. It plays every other week, so there are only three weeks left! After the jump, Flavorwire snagged a quick Q&A with Scott to entice you further.
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Nicholas Sparks appeared twice on the 1 this past week — you can do better than that. Are we the only ones that think that Sparks is the Thomas Kincaid of books? Please put it down now and pick up Natalya’s recommendation from last week, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.
Things started looking up with Saul Bellow’s Ravelstein, which we noticed The Strand recommends, when we browsed the fiction tables on Monday before Natasha Wimmer and Edith Grossman talked to us about translation. Roberto Bolano’s 2666 is now out in English so head on over to your favorite bookstore and pick it up.
We saw a little mystery with The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith and an enormous volume of Charles Burns’s comic series Black Hole (which we recently recommended to Barack Obama).
John Berednt’s Southern gem Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was being read avidly by commuter on the platform at 42nd Street.
And finally, a woman was proudly reading Real Sex For Real Women by Dr. Laura Berman, which is about how “to combine the reality of everyday life with fantastic sex.” On another note, according to Amazon, one percent of people who buy this book also buy Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. We know, we promised but that’s just too good.
Keep up the reading ladies and gentlemen. If you’re in need of something new, head on over to Housing Works Bookstore and Cafe and support a good cause. We saw some good ones lining the stacks and donation bins last night at their annual Fall Book & Gin Mingle.
When Karan Mahjan’s debut novel, Family Planning turned up on our desks one week, and again between our hands at Harper Perennial’s blogger party at KGB Bar the next, our interest couldn’t help but be piqued. So we broke down, read the synopsis on the back cover, and immediately got sucked in.
We had to discover how (and WHY?) the Ahuja family manages to consist of no less than 13 children. Look out Jon and Kate Plus 8 — you’ve got nothing on this family.
After the jump check out the first page with us and find out whether or not we keep reading.
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Occasionally when we’re on the 1 scoping out all of your reads, there’s a title that we just can’t see no matter how much we squint or how long we wait for a page turn, or train lurch that shifts the book ever so slightly. We’re intrigued and we crane our necks (as inconspicuously as possible) in hopes of seeing it. We wonder if people are starting to notice.
This morning, there was a particularly frustrating lady sitting diagonally from us with a behemoth of a library book between her hands. There was a dead white guy on the cover. MARK TWAIN? No. EDGAR ALLAN POE? No. Blast! We didn’t recognize the face, and wow was the protective, plastic covering reflective, making it even harder to make out what the tiny black font said.
As the train screeched to a stop at 18th Street, and the lady closed the book and stood up to take her leave, we managed to catch the fine print as she walked past and waited for the door to open. VICTOR HUGO! Mystery solved. A quick Amazon search confirmed that the cover was in fact that of Modern Library’s LES MISERABLES. We hope you appreciate our dedicated detective work.
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RAYMOND CHANDLER immortalized 1940s Los Angeles with crime novels like THE BIG SLEEP, the now legendary protagonist, Philip Marlowe, at the center of the burgeoning metropolis.
JUDITH FREEMAN, author of THE LONG EMBRACE: RAYMOND CHANDLER AND THE WOMAN HE LOVED, studied Chandler’s marriage to CISSY PASCAL, a woman twice his age and twice-divorced by the time they married.
Pretty unique relationship by 1940’s American standards, eh?
After the jump, Freeman discusses her own “detective work,” and her fascination with Chandler and Cissy with Flavorwire.
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