Postscript E.L. Konigsburg: “Konigsburg taught, in her famous novel, that “happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place, but there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around.” She may be gone, but her books still teach that lesson.” http://nyr.kr/ZH0v2q
Colbert: Why do you write short stories? America likes big. Go big or go home. We like big, huge, huge, huge novels.
Saunders: I’ll tell you why. If you imagine this, let’s say you were madly in love with somebody and your mission was to tell the person that you love them. So here’s two scenarios: one is you can take a weeklong train trip with the person, take your time, you’ll be in boring situations, beautiful scenery, everything. That’s a novel.
Colbert: Sounds good, sounds really good.
Saunders: The second scenario is she’s stepping on the train and you’ve got three minutes. So you have to make all that declaration in three minutes. That would be a short story.
Colbert: Can I get on the train with her?
Saunders: No, you’ve just got to shout it as she goes.
Colbert: Why can’t I get on the train?
Saunders: Because it’s a short story. You’re not allowed. You have to end it in eight pages and get out.
Colbert: But this is the short story I want to read — where is she going? Why can’t I go with her? We’re on to something here. Does she love me back? I’ve got to know!
Saunders: I don’t know yet! Sometimes a short story will just end with that question — does she love me back? So it’s a very special kind of beauty.
Saunders will be at the library with another legendary talk show host, Dick Cavett, next Tuesday, Feb. 26 to talk about his much-lauded latest story collection, “Tenth of December.”
Favorite author on the cover of my favorite weekly magazine, touting what will probably my favorite book of the year. Crying rn; subscribing to the Sunday NYT was the wisest decision of my life: etc.
Books of 2012
Ten Thousand Saints, Eleanor Henderson
My Misspent Youth, Meghan Daum
Unnatural Selection, Mara Hvistendahl
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
In Zanesville, Jo Ann Beard
The Fault in Our Stars, John Green
The Adults, Alison Espach
Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffeneger
The Fallback Plan, Leigh Stein
Girl, Blake Nelson (YA)
Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo
The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje (reread)
When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead (YA/middle-year readers)
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott
Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami (reread)
Drinking at the Movies, Julia Wertz (graphic novel)
Irma Voth, Miriam Toews
Fart Party, Julia Wertz (graphic novel)
1Q84, Haruki Murakami
Are You My Mother?, Alison Bechdel (graphic novel)
Jellicoe Road, Melina Marchessa (YA)
The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood (reread)
Tomorrow When the War Began, John Marsden (YA; reread)
The Dead of the Night, John Marsden (YA; reread)
Letters from the Inside, John Marsden (YA)
See You At Harry’s, Jo Knowles (YA/middle year readers)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz
Wonder, R.J. Palacio (middle-year readers)
Dream School, Blake Nelson (YA)
Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood
The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion
The Best of Everything, Rona Jaffe
Flight, Sherman Alexie
Digging to America, Anne Tyler
Birds of America, Lorrie Moore
Unlikely, Jeffrey Brown (graphic novel)
Love in Infant Monkeys, Lydia Millet
Funny Misshapen Body, Jeffrey Brown (graphic novel)
Ghost World, Daniel Clowes (graphic novel)
Mercury, Hope Larson (graphic novel)
Stuck in the Middle, ed. Ariel Schrag (graphic novel)
Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud (graphic novel)
The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood
The Boys of My Youth, Jo Ann Beard
Drown, Junot Díaz
This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Díaz
Dairy Queen, Catherine Murdock (YA)
Swamplandia!, Karen Russell
48 books, 12,422 pages (excluding rereads and graphic novels). Favorite new ones: Drinking at the Movies, Jellicoe Road, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and Alias Grace.
A few banned books on Better Book Titles!
The Better Book Titles Book (that I’m sure will get banned by SOMEONE) is here: “How Not to Read”
Love in the Time of Death Panels
There is a common superstition that “self-respect” is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation … people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an access of bad conscence, to receive absolution fro the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being named co-respondent.
… To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have such few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out—since our self-image is untenable—their false notions of us … At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they begin.
”Joan Didion, “On Self-Respect.” The first section of Slouching Towards Bethlehem, “Lifestyles in the Golden Land,” was interesting but not quite intriguing. “Personals,” however, is KILLING. IT. I’m only two essays in, and I already have so many pages dog-eared that I want to quote from. I wish this post weren’t a huge block of text, but I can’t bring myself to cut anything. Just go read the whole essay, which some kindly Wordpress blogger has reproduced in its entirety.
“At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they begin.” “Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.” I can’t decide which I admire more: how truthful this whole piece is, or how elegant her turns of phrase are.
