Hotel Zero

Carver-Lish Revisited

The New York Times revisits the Raymond Carver-Gordon Lish saga today, in a piece about Tess Gallagher's desire to publish Carver's first book of stories in its original, pre-Lish state. For those unaware of what's at stake, the piece gives a brief overview and refers to D.T. Max's 1998 New York Times Magazine piece: but curiously fails to link to Max's piece in the body of the story. Max's piece--almost 8000 words long--is one of the essential pieces of literary journalism: it's fantastic. Motoko Rich's piece today is pretty good, but is essentially an update whose most fascinating item is the possibility that some future Library of America volume devoted to Carver (I'm dying for that) will include the original, unedited stories in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love under a new title, Beginners, and relegate WWTAWWTAL to an appendix. This seems backwards to me, but either way: it's a great idea to include both--it's not as if the cat hadn't long-since left the bag about Lish's heavy-handed editorial instincts and Carver's regrets.

Your Campaign Contribution to Hotel Zero

I am going to do some actual reporting next year, especially with Iowa so close and the Republican Convention coming to the Twin Cities (and really: how fun would it be to hang out with the anarchists outside and the Republicans inside?), but also blogging heavily about some bigger-picture political themes as the 2008 race progresses. As a result, I'll be doing lots of reading this winter/next spring.

Specifically, I'll be going back over my short-list of classics of political reportage/defining books in American political life—while hoping I find a few new ones, too. Just got, today, my two-volume Library of America Debate on the Constitution (and really, where have Publius and Brutus and Cato and Agrippa and Centinel gone? A-blogging!), and am putting together my short-list (in no particular order):

Stuart Chase's A New Deal
A.M. Schlesinger's The Vital Center
Kevin Phillips The Emerging Republican Majority
Garry Wills' The Kennedy Imprisonment and Nixon Agonistes
Robert Caro's "LBJ-a-thon"
Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm
Timothy Crouse's The Boys on the Bus
Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
Richard Ben Cramer's What it Takes

... that kind of stuff.

Question is: "What's missing?" I'm looking to generate a list of about 15-20 must-read classics to blog over the course of a month or so next spring/summer (and help me frame the thoughts behind my reporting). I'm looking for post-1896 books that are not specifically political theory or political philosophy (so: no Gramsci, no Rawls, etc.—but I suppose a book like Scott's Seeing Like a State might qualify, so what the hell: suggest what you will), but which have as their legacy either a) a defining importance in a U.S. election (we get the name of FDR's policies from Chase's book, which was a run-away best-seller during the 1932 election) or b) look back on a particular campaign or election and suss out its lasting impact (the outstanding example of which is Perlstein's Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus).

The Artifact as an Object of Hope

The new editions McSweeney's and Virginia Quarterly Review came yesterday and looking at them on my desk I think: "These beautiful objects, these artifacts of our culture, carry with them a kind of hope." I have only had a chance to browse the actual contents of these issues (a kind of double-entendre that), but I know from getting VQR since Ted Genoways took over and from owning every McSweeney's but one or two (subscriptions: would that there were some sort of meta-subscription management service by which you could track all your subscriptions, their expiration dates, etcetera), as well as nearly every issue of Granta (my grandmother gave me the entire back-list last year, all the way back to their first issue) and most of the new Paris Review under Philip Gourevitch's tenure, that so long as quarterlies have not only great writing with in them, but also an amazing taste in design, photography, binding, etcetera, they will continue to work as physical vessels of culture no matter what else happens with the 'Nets onslaught of "free" on the paid bastions of culture. Holding an issue of any one of these quarterlies in your hand is enough, without reading a page, to raise the thought: "This should--no, this will--survive."

Tuesday Afternoon Cornerback, Wednesday Edition

Is it Time to Shoot the TV?

The Fighting Elvii are evidently in their barbituates and booze season, having thus far failed even to fight to an 0-4 record. With LaDanian Tomlinson traded and Marvin Harrison and Calvin Johnson out for next week, it looks like their only hope will be... that there is no hope. The only team more pathetic in the GCFFFL is Grendel's Mother: the mitochondrial monster's team has thus far only scored one touchdown the entire season.

But really, what a strange season it's been: Who would have guessed that Ronnie Brown would outscore LaDanian Tomlinson by six points a game? Or that Tony Romo would be the best player in the NFL this year? Guess his psyche has recovered from that fumbled snap against Seattle last winter.

Quick Hits: Reviewery Edition

Yellow Ribbons and Flag Waving

Nathaniel Fick, author of the first-rate memoir One Bullet Away, has a nice piece up at the Poetry website:  a review of recent war poetry. A highlight is Nate's personal use of poetry while commanding Marines in Afghanistan--and his appreciation for Brian Turner's Here, Bullet. I gave Here, Bullet a rave review last year in Rain Taxi.

The Savage Critic

I don't think Heidi Julavits got the credit her essay against snark deserved (it wasn't as namby-pamby as people said it was), but you know: I don't think I could live without snark. I love a good negative review. Especially of over-hyped books or books by famous authors who aren't living up to their talent. They can go overboard, as Michiko Kakutani did with her Caulfield-eque review of Benjamin Kunkel's worthwhile freshman effort, Indecision, a couple years ago. But still: keeping up our USRDA of schadenfreude requires negative reviews, and no one does a negative review better--more accurately, with more humor and understanding--than William Logan. His piercing of Pynchon's Against the Day in this summer's Virginia Quarterly Review is a must-read.

Hooray for Shay: 2007 MacArthur Winner

Just got back from MacArthur announcement site and was thrilled to see that Jonathan Shay received a 2007 MacArthur Fellowship. If you haven't read it yet, stop what you're doing and go pick it up: Achilles in Vietnam is one of the best books about war you'll ever read. It is also, along with a small handful of others that combine science and literature and hard thinking about interesting problems  (I'm thinking Hofstadter's Göedel, Escher, Bach and Steven Johnson's Emergence, and just about anything by John McPhee or Michael Pollan) to form a narrative that's as fascinating as it is a joy to read. Of course, there's no joy in Shay's subject matter: but his book is so effortless in its presentation that even as you are wiping a tear from your eye with one hand over the powerful stories of war that Shay is telling, you're reaching to wipe a tear from the other eye over how beautifully, how profoundly, he's told them.

Bravo!

The Pugilist at Cost

Stopped by local neighborhood bookstore today and thought I scored a couple of huge deals: 1st Edition, with HC/DJ of both James Salter's Light Years and of Thom Jones' Pugilist at Rest. The Salter did turn out to be a steal: $10 for a book that sells for $40+ ...but the Jones? Paid $10 for a book that sells for... $4 online. A major author's first book, a book that won the National Book Award... fetches only $4 for a first edition? Makes the fact that you can get a first of Baghdad Express for a buck a little less depressing, I suppose: but man, where's the love for literature?

As part of a big, but largely amorphous, project I'm working on, I've spent the last couple months annotating a list (and in more limited way, buying) for a would-be collection of 20th century war memoirs and novels. It's been a pretty instructive exercise in literary reputation and fame. A very small number of books are worth more than $10 or $20, even in nice first editions. One or two are worth $100 or more: Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone ($1500--and man, I had a chance a couple years ago to pick one up from local bookseller for $200... oops!), Eugene Sledge's With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa ($850). Most? Books like Chickenhawk or Born on the Fourth of July or Paco's Story... four or five, maybe ten bucks--twenty is high-end. Even Michael Herr's Dispatches--an undisputed classic--is commonly found for $20 in a fine first.

I know, you can still get these things in paperback, that I'm not doing these authors any good in buying handsome firsts, & especially that the hardcover first fetish is one of the worst symptoms of book-lover's disease, but come on, people: Don't we all feel a little embarrassed that we'll spend more on a bagel and coffee than on a classic of 20th century literature?