The routine is always the same here in the Bay Area. Wake up, get in the car, listen to Forum on KQED. Today, the host Michael Krasny invited listeners to call in and pick the best books of the year, or those they plan to give as gifts this holiday season. To get some good reading/gift tips, you can listen here (iTunes — Feed — MP3) or simply read the printed list here. (Forum can be found in our collection of Ideas & Culture Podcasts.)
Talk has recently focused on the passing of Norman Mailer, a novelist remembered for many things. As The New York Times put it, he was “a prodigious drinker and drug taker, a womanizer, a devoted family man, a would-be politician who ran for mayor of New York, a hipster existentialist, an antiwar protester, an opponent of women’s liberation and an all-purpose feuder and short-fused brawler, who with the slightest provocation would happily engage in head-butting, arm-wrestling and random punch-throwing.” He was, of course, also a novelist, and, for some, “the greatest novelist of the second half of the American century.” That’s at least how George Packer sized him up on his New Yorker blog.
For Packer, Mailer achieved his literary greatness when he ventured into the realm of “New Journalism,” helping to create a new genre that brought fresh literary techniques to conventional journalism and historical writing. We need only mention The Executioner’s Song, Mailer’s heavily-researched account of the execution of Gary Gilmore, that earned him the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1980.
Although Tom Wolfe officially coined the expression “New Journalism” in 1973 (see the book with the same title and related book review), this literary approach was not entirely new. Other authors had already written masterpieces in the genre but referred to it by different names. More than anyone else, Truman Capote gave form to the genre when he published In Cold Blood in 1965. Famously centered around the 1959 murder of the Clutter family in rural Kansas, this “nonfiction novel” was written to give reality to something Capote believed for 20 years — that journalism was “the most underestimated, the least explored of literary mediums” and that in the right hands “journalism, reportage, could be forced to yield a serious new art form,” (See Capote’s interview with George Plimpton, 1966.)
In Cold Blood originally came out in four successive printings of The New Yorker. And as the current editor of the magazine describes it, “people were literally chasing the delivery trucks down the street.” Quite nicely, you can find the first installment of the novel in the New Yorker’s online archive (for free). It covers the first 70 pages of the currently published book, and here the stage for the rest of the nonfiction novel is set. To paraphrase a line from the recent film starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, it’s in this section of the novel where two Americas collide — the quiet conservative America and its violent underbelly.
Quick afterthought: The New Yorker should consider reprinting the four copies of the magazine which introduced In Cold Blood to the world. I imagine that copyright/contractual issues might stand in the way. But if they didn’t, it could be a pretty exciting media event and reading experience. Subscribe to Our Feed
After recently publishing its list of 100 Notable Books of 2007, The New York Times has narrowed things down and selected The 10 Best Books of 2007 — five fiction, and five nonfiction. Have a look.
Gift buying season is now officially upon us. If books are part of your gift buying plan, then have a look at this list just published by The New York Times. The 100 books listed here include fiction, poetry and nonfiction. Among others, you’ll find Philip Roth’s latest book, Exit Ghost, and I mention it simply because you may want to listen to an interview with Roth that aired earlier this week (iTunes — MP3 — Feed — Web Site).
You should also spend some time looking at our list of Life-Changing Books, all of which were selected by our readers this fall. Definitely some good, time-tested reads on this list.
Finally, a quick heads up: Apple is running a one day sale, which gives up to $100 off some computers and $30 off iPod classics. Plus there’s free shipping on all products. If you have Apple products on your holiday list, then it may be worth your time. Again, the sale ends at midnight.
The Kindle, Amazon’s new eBook reader, is just now hitting the streets. The promo video below overviews its basic features, including the Kindle’s “paper-like” screen, ergonomic design, and free wireless access to content. As you’ll see, the $399 reader, which holds 200 books, promises to succeed where other digital readers have failed — to offer a satisfying reading experience and unlock the potentially large digital books market.
Not surprisingly, Amazon is backing the Kindle’s launch with a fair amount of marketing. Videos on the Amazon site feature Toni Morrison, a Nobel Prize Winner, talking up the Kindle. Then, there are these comments by Michael Lewis, a bestselling author, “It’s so simple you could be a moron and it works.” “It takes no intelligence at all. Anybody who can read a book can function with this thing.” “It’s easier on the eye than the printed word.” “[A]fter about — I’m telling you! — 5 minutes, you cease to think, ‘I’m looking at a screen.’ It’s not like looking at a computer screen.”
A notable downside to the Kindle (one that’s pointed out by ZDNet) is the cost to access content. Books usually go for $9.99 or less, which is perfectly reasonable. But you’ll pay $9.99 to $14.99 per month for newspaper subscriptions, $1.99 to $2.99 for monthly magazine subscriptions, and 99 cents per month to subscribe to individual blogs. This is all pretty illogical, given that most of this content is otherwise free on the web.
If you get your hands on the Kindle, definitely let us know what you think.
Earlier this month, The New York Times Book Review launched an online Reading Room that lets readers tackle great books with the help of “an all-star cast of panelists from various backgrounds—authors, reviewers, scholars and journalists.” The first reading starts with Leo Tolstoy’s 1200+ page epic, War and Peace (1865–69), and it’s led by book review editor Sam Tanenhaus and a supporting crew consisting of Bill Keller (executive editor of The Times), Stephen Kotkin (a Russian history professor at Princeton), Francine Prose (author of Reading Like a Writer), and Liesl Schillinger (a regular reviewer for the Book Review).
At the outset, Sam Tanenhaus’ introduction leaves the impression that the “Reading Room” will offer a fairly structured reading of Tolstoy’s text. But that’s not exactly how things turn out. Often quite fragmentary, the conversation mostly operates outside the text itself and veers in many different, though often intriguing, directions. At one moment, Francine Prose tells us that Tolstoy’s account of the Napoleonic wars reminds her of today’s war in Iraq. For Bill Keller, it evokes the waning days of the Soviet Union. And, for Liesl Schillinger, it’s her youth in 1970s America. (You can get a feel for the flow and focus of the discussion here.) Ultimately, what you think of this new project depends on what you want to get out of the experience. If it’s a more structured reading (as we were hoping), then you may not be completely engaged. But if it’s a more free-flowing conversation that moves in and around great works, then you’ll want to join the conversation. And, yes, there’s a role there for the everyday reader too. Take a look at the Reading Room and let us know what you think.
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