Moving straight on to Murakami, and his What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, I find that, though partially a sort of memoir, it is still very much a book of philosophy. Murakami runs. A lot. And when he does he thinks about things, so to him running is not about running, but what his mind works on while running. This, he says, is the sole reason why he has been able to run a marathon every year for the past twenty years. I am still not through with the book, but I plan on being done in a couple of days.

When done with that one, my guess is I’ll move on to Joseph O’neill’s Netherland, which I’ve been looking forward to. Now, if only my friend would remember the book next time. It’s been a while since I’ve read a book set in NYC, a city I’ll hopefully be seeing a lot more of next year.

At the New York Times, there is a review of a new book by Tristram Hunt. Marx’s General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels seeks to show the importance of Engels in relation to Marx. This may be the right time for a book on Engels, in these times where many people are thinking about capitalism’s murkier sides.

The television series Mad Men is in the early stages of its third season, and still not very hyped here in Denmark. The show has been theme-material for many men’s magazines, incl. GQ and Details. This is how I’ve heard of the show, because of its style and attention to period detail. Following a New York City advertising company through the 60s, and probably onwards, the show is a stylized look into what went on in yuppie circles during that period. As I prefer to watch this kind of show at my own leisure I’m going to watch it on DVD when I can afford it. Looking the show up, I came across an old piece by Mark Greif for the London Review of Books, which makes me want to watch it even more. These days, though, I’m catching up on Weeds and following the boys on Entourage. Both shows come highly recommended; Weeds is typical “suburbia and conformism is bad” while Entourage is Sex and The City for guys. Yeah.

Newsweek has an article on Quentin Tarantino’s “rewriting” history with his latest, Inglourious Basterds (spelling is intentional). I may have had a chance to see the film, which may be original and striking filmmaking, with certain narrative flaws. No doubt, the movie will divide people; I don’t see any problems with what Tarantino has done here. I like it, and I very much like the beautiful Mélanie Laurent. She, not Brad Pitt, plays the main character in this movie, insofar as there is one. And she does a great job. The movie’s villain, “The Jew Hunter” Col. Hans Landa as played by Cristoph Waltz, is equally great.

In other, somewhat cultural news, it turns out that 90 % off all American Dollar bills have been in contact with cocaine. That’s some impressive statistics, or maybe it’s just me. I must admit I did a double take when a friend sent me the link to that one. It’s in Danish, but I’m sure it’s old news in the English-speaking world.

Good night, and good luck.

“Minor Characters”? Beat ‘Others’ 1

Beat ‘Others’, 2 – Racial Othering

In additional readings, I would like to highlight The Elegant Variation’s recommended list, found in the right side of their front page. I’ve found The Elegant Variation to be one of the most accessible and informative online resources for the avid reader. They carry some really interesting interviews and reviews, but also some different off topic elements from time to time. So definitely worth a look every now and then. Joseph O’Neill and his Netherland features prominently on their list; this novel keeps popping up on every fiction-related place I visit. Maybe that’s a sign. A friend of mine, who is not big on American literature, has been raving to me all the way from Glasgow for over 6 months that I need to read this one.

I’ve only read about a hundred pages, but a pattern is starting to emerge. The narrator, his son and two of their friends are on a motorcycle road trip, going into the Northwest, and the difference in opinion between the narrator and his friends on the details of motorcycle maintenance gets him started on elemental worldviews, logic, hypotheses etc. So far, these wise words have been fairly banal, but ¾’s of the book have yet to be read. The really interesting aspect, as of now, is the use of the first person narrator, especially since it is revealed that he may have previously suffered from a split personality; his other personality was a university dropout in pursuit of… what? To be continued.

Coming off a road trip of my own, with dear friends, this novel/philosophy book right now is soothing to me, and is, at this stage, recommended.

Foregoing further news on books this week, ‘cause there really isn’t a lot of really interesting stuff to report, I’ve decided to briefly comment on two movies currently playing in Danish cinemas. The first one is Brüno, which most people seem to be wildly enthusiastic about. With this movie, and the current Outgames taking place in Copenhagen, flamboyant homosexuals seem to be everywhere. I enjoyed Brüno, but did not laugh as much as the rest of the cinema did. Why? It’s scary, and I’m not talking about the “pranked” people’s reactions to Sacha Baron Cohen’s insane display of homosexuality, but about the American people’s ignorance in almost every aspect displayed in this movie and in 2006’s Borat. I have absolutely nothing against homosexuals, but the degree of public inappropriateness practiced by Cohen as Brüno in this movie is completely unrealistic, and there were places in the movie where I could see the similarities to a minstrel show as mentioned by certain gay rights groups in the US prior to the movie’s premiere. The reactions of the people in this movie are outrageous, but they are also to a large degree forced. That being said, the movie is very funny.

So is The Hangover (bad Danish title: Tømmermænd i Vegas). This is a movie for anyone who has woken up without a clue what they did after 9 pm the day before. A friend of mine once woke up in a basil bush, curled up like a fetus. He smelled like pesto for the next two days. He will love this. This one comes highly recommended, and then buy your guys a round afterwards. Cheers.

“In the immemorial style of young men under pressure, they decided to lie down for a while and waste time.”

Michael Chabon
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Pardon the absence, but Portugal and Italy and I apparently did not equal any kind of efficiency. Back to the real world and hopefully an interesting season ahead of us. What season? That’s a good question. Summer is still in vogue, at least in other countries, and there is relaxation and fun to be had even though some of us have to go back to work (or start working… the student life for me is over for now). This little column will be a pleasant rock in what will probably be a sea of manual labor. I am looking forward to going into more depth on raised subjects, and also to revisiting some older posts and articles from this site.

The Elegant Variation has a four part interview with Joseph O’Neill plastered all over their front page. O’Neill is the author of the critically acclaimed NYC/9/11/Cricket novel Netherland.

Much in the spirit of what I’ve failed to do these past three weeks, the Guardian has a list of a selection of famous people’s favorite beach reads, mixed with the paper’s own choices. A kind of inspiration can be found here; there are at least a dozen books on this list I’ve never heard of.

So what about my planned reading? I read and liked Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, but didn’t get further than that. Only about 50 pages of A Confederacy of Dunces on the plane from Rome to Prague, so thoughts on that one will have to wait.

My overall impression of Invisible Man was clearly marked by the fact that the book was written in the fifties, and reflects its own times. There is a kind of universal relevance in the novel’s themes, but they are nevertheless themes that have been treated in all forms of media ever since those years. Most of all, the book’s narrator is invisible because he is seen by not being seen; he is being looked at, not seen, by the non-black peoples; a bit trivial. The most interesting contemporary example, if we were to discuss this aspect, would be the academic debate on Representation and Post-colonialism, and how one achieves legitimate agency. The more interesting aspect of the book is the way it chronicles the North American experiences of a Southern black man, and his “backwardness” is used efficiently to expose the upsides and downsides of the social and political climate in New York City. The book is very well written, but I do feel that maybe I shouldn’t have read Ellison’s 30 year anniversary introduction, in which he discusses writing the book, before reading the actual book. It can sometime take you out of the world of the novel when you, mid-sentence, start thinking about the exact phrasing used by the author. Leave that for genetic criticism.

We are going to finish off with some bad news: Frank McCourt, who won the Pulitzer for his debut novel/autobiography Angela’s Ashes, the story of his impoverished childhood in Limerick, Ireland, has passed away, aged 78. McCourt, a New York City schoolteacher, followed up his acclaimed debut with T’is a Memoir and Teacher Man, which complete his story of how he came to be a beloved NYC schoolteacher for most of his life. He taught for many years at Stuyvesant High School. My aunt went to Stuyvesant, and when she graduated, Frank McCourt, retired, delivered a speech she still talks about today.

Michael Bérubé of Crooked Timber talks about the state of the Humanities, its utility and futility, using an essay by Mark Deresiewicz as his starting point. Drawing on the recent fad for Darwinistic literary criticsm (literature and criticism in an evolutionary context) Deresiewicz mentions the fear of going back to humanistic stereotypes such as impressionistic readings and belletristic writing. Now there’s a word: belletristic. The word refers to the appreciation of writing for its aesthetic qualities rather than for its informative or active content. But belletristic is itself a beautiful word. Much like dyslexic. Yeah. Ask a dyslexic to write that one. Bérubé has some really valid points here though.

The Guardian has an interesting little piece featuring the top 10 most famous ménage a trois in literature. If nothing else, it’s a little funny.

And finally, Associated Press announces that Dick Cheney has signed a book deal. The book is due in the spring of 2011. This should be interesting. Story from the Boston Herald.

Note how the above sentence opens with a conjunction. That’s not belletristic writing. I love that word.

The books I’m planning to read are a result of neglected should have reads and recent purchases inspired by recommendations and random input. First in line is a book I was fairly sure I had read: Ralp Ellison’s The Invisible Man. I thought I’d read this one, but turns out I had read excerpts only, the prologue and epilogue and selected chapters in between. Inspired by Professor Brent Hayes Edwards, of Columbia University in New York City, and his closing NAAS 2009 plenary “Ralph Ellison and the Grain of Cosmopolitanism,” this one went straight to the top of my list. I’ve only had time to read the author’s introduction to the 30th Anniversary Edition, so more on this next week, hopefully.

Next up is John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, the famous story of educated but slothful Ignatius J. Reilly and his exploits in and around New Orleans, getting and losing a variety of jobs (sounds oddly familiar…). This is one I should have read, and since I bought it for my brother some time ago and borrowed it when he’d done read it, It’s about time I get down to business.

Then there is Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March, but the order of books at this point is slightly blurred. I also have, in a different vein, Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, and the very much less famous Revolt of the Cockroach People by Oscar Zeta Acosta, Hunter Thompson’s attorney (and the inspiration for the character of Dr. Gonzo in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas).
In lieu of my travel plans this summer, where hedonism could (my friends would say will) end up the theme of the day, I may be going straight for the Wolfe selection after A Confederacy of Dunces. Suggestions are more than welcome.

As for this weeks literary output:

The estate of J. D. Salinger is suing young Swedish author Fredrik Colting on the basis of his re-imagining of Salinger’s most famous novel, The Catcher in the Rye: full story at the Times.

Over at Edge, Lera Boroditsky has an interesting piece up, entitled “How Does Language Shape the Way We Think?,” which is about exactly that.

Curious Expeditions has a lovely collection of images to show you: the most beautiful libraries in the world. For someone like me, who’s just spent the better part of two months holed up in a meh library in a building that looks like a modern correctional facility, this is inspiring to look at. Who doesn’t associate the word “library” with polished wood, intricate tile work on the floors, and an air of fifteenth century Florence? I know I do.

And finally, at The Australian, a plea for professors of English and Literature to give up particular readings when judging, or merely describing, a piece of art. This is slightly comical to me, but I also agree to a great extent on the futility of these “methods.” Indeed, I’ve just spent an entire term at Comparative Literature at the University of Copenhagen getting to grips with “readings.” My final written exam, last Friday, even turned out be a Lacanian reading of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. I feel the same way about readings as I do about postmodernism, and for that matter, religion. I don’t believe, but I am fascinated and would like to know more. And I think that’s a pretty sound place to come from.

The major difference, I think, is that a blog is a continuous process, whereas a column is traditionally published at a set date, with a real deadline. Many of the blogs that I happen upon when doing this column are updated once a day, often by several people, and contain fresh and relevant commentaries on current events and publications. This is one of the benefits of online communication, but it also makes the job a helluva lot easier for the writer (or author or whatever), since he/she is free to always go back and edit former pieces. I mentioned this briefly in an earlier post, but it really is true. When reading a column by someone used to the old, printed format, it feels meatier and more urgent. Thompson’s “Hey Rube” column for ESPN is but one example. Another is “The Polysyllabic Spree” by British Nick Hornby (About a Boy, High Fidelity) or the current column/blog kept by movie critic Roger Ebert at the Chicago Sun-Times.

What makes these columns engaging is their conversational and personal style: the authors are not afraid to interject or ramble on. Thompson’s “Hey Rube” would often consist solely of his daily doings and angry ravings, and then a quick comment about the current football scores. He could get away with it, due to his status as a famous reporter. Nick Hornby structured his column around the books he read, and used that as a thread to tie each episode together. So far, my thread has been a round up of literary news and “news” and I will be interested in seeing how things develop from here.

This week:

The New York Times has an article up on the discovery of a memoir by William McMasters, the Boston publicist who exposed Charles Ponzi and what subsequently became known as the Ponzi Scheme. McMasters finished the memoir in 1962, six years before his death, but the manuscript has just now been discovered as part of app. 2000 books, pamphlets etc. which have been acquired and catalogued by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Full story here.

The so-called decline of the newspaper industry (why am I not hearing more about this?) is further scrutinized at the Edge of the American West. The decline is now spreading to encompass the publishing industry as well, with Penguin and other large publishing houses apparently going through massive lay-offs.  Karl Jacoby, author of Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History, has a guest post up in which he shares his insights from a historian’s perspective on the effects of the web on the publishing industry.

The Boston Herald presents a preview of the assumed summer season bestsellers, aka the Beach Books. The list contains the latest from Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club), available yesterday, to Elmore Leonard’s Road Dogs, available May 12th, which brings back Jack Foley, the character played by George Clooney in Soderbergh’s adaptation of Leonard’s Out of Sight.

In a somewhat less literary, yet still literary notion, Roger Ebert ponders how his blog/column at the Chicago Sun-Times has led him to finally discuss his own mortality, a somewhat unexpected subject, he claims, since he has never been afraid to die. His surprise that he finds himself talking about death reminds me of the Jack Gladney character, teacher of Hitler Studies, in Don DeLillo’s White Noise who states that all plans move slowly towards death, and that all plans are an attempt to avoid this move towards death. In the book, Gladney claims that he just made up this notion as part of a faux academic display, but here we are talking about death.

On a more upbeat note, the reboot to the Star Trek franchise is released in the next couple of weeks, and it is supposedly good. I have never seen any of the previous Star Trek movies or TV-shows, nor do I know anything whatsoever about it. Not a sci-fi person at all (don’t like Star Wars), but it actually looks cool. The Onion reports on fan reactions.

And to regrettably continue in the same vein, Henry Farrel of Crooked Timber has an obituary up on the recently deceased author J. G. Ballard, perhaps best known for Crash and Empire of the Sun. Both of these novels were adapted for the big screen by David Cronenberg and Steven Spielberg, respectively.

The Pulitzer prizes were given out Monday April 20th, at Columbia University, New York City. The most interesting prize, for me at least, that of fiction, went to Elizabeth Strout’s collection of short-stories Olive Kitteridge. The other recipients can be found at the official Pulitzer website.

T. J. Clark at Threepennyreview talks about what piece of art he is the most ashamed of not having appreciated. His conclusion is the work by Manet. This got me thinking along similar lines, though more in the vein of guilty pleasures than guilty omissions. Dan Brown. Yes, I read The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons… and Digital Fortress and Deception Point. Forgive me, for I was in Thiravananthapuram (now Trivandrum) in Southwest India, and there was nothing else to read. Did I enjoy them? Kind of: I felt like an idiot but I could not put them down. That is a skill for an author, if nothing else. The best one was by far Angels & Demons, which is out in a Hollywoodized, Tom-Hanks-with-a-mullet version this may. Dan Brown has more for us, though. There was probably an article in every newspaper in the western world covering the reveal of the publication date for Mr. Brown’s latest pulp fix, The Lost Symbol. The thing will be out this September.

There was nothing of real interest in the Danish press this week (in the AmLit dept., anyway). John Grisham’s Playing for Pizza continues to get bad reviews (Danish title: Touchdown…), this time from Berlingske.dk. Interesting, though, is that at all the literature sections on the online versions of the major Danish newspapers, the front page has Dan Brown and The Lost Symbol in their top three stories.

I had heard of him but had yet to read any of his works, though both came highly recommended from several friends and fellow students. I was intrigued by the fact that a “new” author, one that I had heard of and wanted to read, was visiting the university, so I decided to go. When I got there only to find I was alone in waiting outside the auditorium, I started to get nervous. When a couple of girls showed up I started to relax again, only to find a man coming towards us, announcing that the whole thing had been called off. Too bad.

When I got home, I noticed one of my teachers commenting on the “Moody, Perez, Díaz” event on Facebook, and was fairly puzzled. Turns out the girls I was waiting with had shown up for some other event, which had been scheduled for the same time at the same place, and that it was that event that had been cancelled. Blame this on my gullibility, and on the guy not letting me know. Turns out the event went off well and everyone had a good time.

Fast forward, March 2009, Junot Díaz has won the Pulitzer Prize for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which has now been translated into Danish. He is to give a reading at Louisiana, free entrance, reservations 10 DKR. I decide to take my younger brother, who has also read and liked both of Díaz’s outings. On the day of the reading, an email from Louisiana: Díaz is stuck in New York’s JFK due to a freak blizzard.

Two points here. One: Not enough literary things are happening within American literature in Denmark, since a public reading of a single author can get one (me) so worked up. Maybe these things are happening and I’m just not aware. Either way, info is sparse. Even at Literaturhaus, a literary venue at Nørrebro, they’ve had but two events on American literature. One was on the Beat Generation as part of the release of a Danish book on said subject, tied to a documentary on William S. Burrough’s visit to Copenhagen many years ago. This whole event was in Danish. The other event I did not attend: I didn’t know it was happening. One of my professors went. How he knew I never found out.

Two, and the reason I’m writing this: Let’s make something happen. The network here is an excellent opportunity to spread the word about events and ideas and opinions, and anything else. I will do what I can to scourge out interesting stuff, and I hope some of you will point me in the direction of something interesting and new as well.

This weekly column is an attempt at creating some sort of loose “index” that’ll make things a bit easier to fathom. I’ll try to put together a brief run-down of interesting matter floating around in the media, this with an emphasis on the literary. What follows is basically a short blurp on each item, with a link to the proper website for further reading. The length of this column will vary from week to week, depending on the amount of interesting stuff i stumble across. In addition, I will be posting other notes at a more irregular basis, including current events or the like, and I hereby encourage you to do the same. This is an excellent opportunity to create a communicative network for sharing information on American literature, culture and media-happenings in Denmark.

Over at The Edge of the American West, in a post dated April 10th, Eric Rauchway commemorates the publication of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, on April 10th 1925. This novel, recognized by many as one of the great works of American fiction, was greeted with good reviews by happy reviewers, but Fitzgerald feared that the critics misunderstood his book. Rauchway discusses what the book is “really” about, and how. His conclusion is that the book deals with “the myth of the classless society? Certainly, but not in the boring way that Dreyser’s books are about that.”

3quarksdaily has an assortment of bit pieces up, linking to various newspapers and magazines. From the Boston Globe, an article discussing what may have led Henry David Thoreau to writing his Walden. Another piece, from Times Higher Education, highlights the debate between atheists and believers, with a focus on David Hume. This reminded me of the book I Don’t Believe in Atheists, by Chris Hedges, which argues that staunch atheists are, in their methods and arguments, no better than firm believers, and goes on to say that there are indeed atheist fundamentalists on the same, albeit less publicized, scale as there are Christian and Muslim fundamentalists.

At the New York Times’ book section, they have an article up about the increase in the demand for romance novels. The article looks to the current recession as a reason for this, and claims that in these times of hardship many people crave escapism. The same explanation has been put forth about the small bump the US Box Office experienced in early ’09. Besides romance novels, there has also been an increase in the sales of fantasy and sci-fi, which shouldn’t surprise anyone.

I personally have not felt any increase in the interest for escapist/pulp literature, not even counting European literature (an exception to this would be the Swedish Stieg Larsson bestsellers, unread by me). As of now, my knowledge of romance novels is limited to the fact that Fabio (who was great in the movies Zoolander and Bubble Boy) is/was apparently the poster boy, and that is all I need to know. But the article makes one think, yet again, about the role of society in relation to literature, only this time not in relation to what kind of books are written but as to what kind of books the people want.

Is Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series such a big deal because people have no money?

In Danish news, Josh Bazell’s Beat the Reaper, which was published in the US earlier this year, has now been translated into Danish as ExGangster and receives a nice review from Politiken. Another newly translated book is Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road, popularly known as the best forgotten American novel. Remembered almost solely because other, more famous authors have championed his name over the years, Yates and his novel can finally be said to have entered the American literary canon. The translation is celebrated over at Information.

Daniel Logan