Currently viewing the category: "Reading"

Book (Buying) Tour

By On October 26, 2012 · Leave a Comment · In e v e n t s, Publishing, Reading

My book tour is officially over.

(Or at least the part that involves me going to bookstores. I’m doing Literary Death Match next month in L.A. (Nov. 7) and I’ll be attending the Miami Book Fair as well.)

This time around, I had the pleasure of reading and Q&Aing at an amazing [...]

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DFW on Fiction & Nonfiction

By On October 13, 2012 · Leave a Comment · In deep thots, Reading, tips, Typign

This seems wise & articulates something I’ve been thinking for a long time now, so I thought I’d share it.

Fiction’s abyss is silence, nada. Whereas nonfiction’s abyss is Total Noise, the seething static of every particular thing and experience, and one’s total freedom of infinite choice about what to choose to attend to [...]

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Two Advance Reviews for PANORAMA CITY

By On July 18, 2012 · Leave a Comment · In gnus, Publishing, Reading

PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY gives PANORAMA CITY a STARRED, BOXED review in this week’s issue:

Wilson’s second novel (after Interloper) is fresh and flawlessly crafted as well as charmingly genuine. Oppen Porter is almost 30, a guileless man who lives in a small central California town with his reclusive father in a house overtaken by nature. Untouched [...]

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“It’s a kind of totemistic thing, you know.”

By On March 22, 2012 · 1 Comment · In kultur, Reading, Typign

A long time ago, when I was just a tadpole, I read a book called V. by Thomas Pynchon, and it helped me decide–along with The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster and Another Country by James Baldwin–to set aside my premed studies and pursue writing exclusively.

And so way back then, [...]

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2011 Books Roundup

By On December 7, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Reading

Tis the season for lists, folks, so here we go.

Favorite Books from 2011 by guys named Ben:

Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner
Stories for Nighttime and Some for Day by Ben Loory

Other Favorites read in 2011:

Dancing Lessons for People Advanced in Age by Bohumil Hrabal
The Sweet [...]

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A Few Words about House of Holes

By On July 22, 2011 · 2 Comments · In Reading

We all have writers who we feel, at certain moments, are writing to us, for us, and at us. For me, one of these writers has always been Nicholson Baker.

The Mezzanine. The Size of Thoughts. U & I (even though Updike has always left me cold). Human Smoke. VOX, Checkpoint.

And, of [...]

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Why I Love Your Book Group

By On July 14, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In blank stares, e v e n t s, kultur, Publishing, Reading, Typign

One of the pleasures of publishing a book is getting to hold a reading at your local bookshop. Family and friends show up, along with a few fans, former students, and, if it’s been promoted well, a handful of curious strangers.

You sell books, which is nice. And no matter how modest your advance, or [...]

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In the Way of Experience…

By On February 5, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In deep thots, L-I-V-I-N, Reading

Yet five minutes after…I realized I had not actually seen the three plants in the little colony we had found. Despite all the identifying, measuring, photographing. I had managed to set the experience in a kind of present past, a having-looked, even as I was temporally and physically still looking. If I had the courage, [...]

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The Lemoine Affair

By On December 1, 2010 · 3 Comments · In Reading

Back in 2000 I found myself with a lot of time on my hands and no particular urge to write. I’d just finished an MFA and a pile of stories and so was tapped out, creatively speaking.

I was living in a farmhouse outside Iowa City, getting ready to move to Madison in the [...]

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Why I Gave You that Blank Stare, and Why You Gave Me One, Too

By On July 28, 2010 · 3 Comments · In blank stares, Publishing, Reading

When you publish a book, and people read it, and they want to say nice things to you about it (or maybe they’re avoiding saying mean things about it), they often tell you that some part of your work reminds them of some other book they’ve read.

These encounters can be some of the most [...]

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