Posts Tagged ‘literary fiction’

Paul Vidich discusses his new iPhone, iPad, and iTouch app with me as well as how short stories are marketed, how The New Yorker curates fiction, and how people will be reading in the years to come on The Daily BR!NK.

Erin Blakemore’s debut book chronicles the most important heroines of the literary canon as well as their authoresses. Beginning with the life stories of writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Betty Smith, and Harper Lee, Blakemore then transitions to the inspiration behind their most notable protagonists, marking financial hardships, marital woes, and the illnesses that obstructed their respective literary paths.

Blakemore mines these literary figures for inspirational qualities, looking to Janie Crawford in Their Eyes Were Watching God for faith, Celie in The Color Purple for dignity, and the infamous Claudine in Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette’s Claudine novels for indulgence.

Blakemore applies an autobiographical read of these classic literary giants when analyzing characters like Scarlett O’Hara or Jo March, inviting the reader to study the kernels that gave them such notable fictional females.  Louisa May Alcott’s poverty-stricken childhood and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s complex relationship with her daughter are shared in an effort to understand how these experiences may have shaped their work.

Blakemore’s indisputable passion for the literary canon, and more specifically for the women who have helped punctuate it, make this pocket-sized dose of literary criticism a very quick read. Her light-hearted study of the many functions and facets of these classic literary figures evidences a childhood, as well as a womanhood, devoted to understanding literature. Employing a feminist understanding of Mary Lennox and Lizzy Bennet, Blakemore always looks to the circumstances, history, and societal expectations of both heroine and authoress.

What makes The Heroine’s Bookshelf a gem amongst leather-bound tomes, however, is Blakemore’s unassuming narrative; she presents complex literary themes and character analysis in ebullient prose. Much like the fervent notes you might scratch to yourself in a college level English course on women characters, The Heroine’s Bookshelf reads as the diary of an impassioned student rather than the essay you would turn in.

A delight for seasoned readers of classic literature or younger first-timers, The Heroine’s Bookshelf prompts a revisit to favorite novels while encouraging others to tackle what they have not yet read.

To read more about Erin Blakemore, click here.

Claire Messud’s highly praised novel about the aimless wanderings of New York City’s young, intellectual, and elite is both humorous and emotionally engrossing. Messud’s three main characters met while studying at Brown University: Marina, the aspiring writer and daughter of an established literary icon, Julius, the perpetually temping Village Voice has-been, and Danielle, the studio-dwelling melancholy. Nearly ten years later, all three characters are approaching 30 with little to show for their Ivy League education, their developed opinions, and privilege.

Marina, the daughter of pretentious journalist and novelist Murray Thwaite, was offered a book deal at 23 to do an analytical study of children’s attire as a reflection of cultural attitudes. Seven years later, Marina has yet to make any progress on the book and flummoxes about her parents’ uptown apartment, contemplating getting a job but fearing that it would ultimately make her “too ordinary.” She attends parties on her father’s arm, defers to him on all things remotely literary, and generally invites the reader to implement a Freudian interpretation of their relationship at every turn.

Julius sleeps with his boss, moves in with him, then proceeds to destroy the relationship with a string infidelities. He too is jobless. Danielle spends much of her time at Marina’s house, catching up with the parents of her college friend as they still envision her as the over-zealous 22-year-old with a penchant for smart ideas. They hug her, pat her  on the head, and have her over for dinner often. But when Murray, Marina’s father, asks Danielle to meet him on the sly to discuss Marina’s crumbling literary career, Murray and Danielle fall into the throes of an illicit, borderline incestuous affair.

Messud is a detailed writer with a fondness, and a talent, for character portraits. In The Emperor’s Children, her protagonists are drawn out in outstanding detail; they could very well function as stories of their own regardless of the larger plot that unfolds. Her tendency to overwrite their personas, ticks, and quirks can be tedious at times, but does reflect a more traditional and time-honored approach to character description that goes absent from many contemporary novels. Messud’s voice is both charmingly chatty and uncompromisingly literary — a rare find, as well as nuanced. She captures many moments between her Woody Allen-reminiscent characters with fine overtones.

However, her comment on the unsavory intersection of privilege and intellectualism is resounding and clear. By weaving the stories of Marina, Julius, and Danielle together into a complex friendship of mutual entitlement and respective purposelessness, Messud offers readers an intricate peek into the downside to being young and brilliant.

To read more about Claire Messud, click here.

The recent Jonathan Franzen-induced debacle of sexism in the world of literary criticism has sparked many responses. The Internet seems to vibrate with disputes pitting literary fiction against commercial fiction in a contemporary class war.

The Huffington Post interview given by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner contains many noteworthy observations about how books are sold, marketed, reviewed, and digested by the public. The type of prejudice Picoult and Weiner describe is real; women writers often get corralled into various sub-genres of literature such as commercial literature, chick lit, or pop fiction while male writers are often deemed “literary.” As someone who is dedicated to writing and understanding writing myself, I have often wondered why when I do read New York Times pieces highlighting strong literary fiction, the book is more times than not written by, as Weiner describes, “white guys living in Brooklyn or Manhattan, white guys who either have MFAs or teach at MFA programs.”

However, Picoult and Weiner make no mention of quality writing when commenting on what is deserving of literary criticism.

Picoult and Weiner assert that commercial fiction should be given more literary acknowledgment by major publications because it appeals to the masses. Picoult says:

Because historically the books that have persevered in our culture and in our memories and our hearts were not the literary fiction of the day, but the popular fiction of the day. Think about Jane Austen. Think about Charles Dickens. Think about Shakespeare. They were popular authors. They were writing for the masses.

Austen and Dickens absolutely had mass appeal, and of course, there will forever be the struggling high school sophomore who realizes amidst Great Expectations that Dickens got paid by the word. However, it should be noted what Dickens did with those words — that is, he formed some of the strongest, most resilient literature in the English language. To say that Shakespeare “persevered in our culture” because he wrote for the masses is to deny the enduring nature of his themes and the utter brilliance of his craft. That’s why he’s still remembered nearly 400 hundred years after his death and the only people who remember Jacqueline Susan 40 years later are those who first recall the biopic starring Bette Midler.

Collectively, we have now arrived at a time in literature, and even our culture, in which popularity and quality have completely diverged. There is the occasional overlap but only individual cases, especially in writing, to speak of. Popularity alone can no longer serve as a testament to strong, well-written, reflective literature. If it did, He’s Just Not That Into You could be considered a classic or “The Real Housewives” could be deemed a powerful drama. Popular identification with a work does not automatically affirm a piece as poignant or well-crafted.

What has yet to be said in this debate is that, regardless of sex or race, commercial books are simply not on par with literary fiction when it comes to producing provocative writing. The recognized style of commercial books is cheaper, less authentic, more formulaic, and more predictable, known for comfortable endings and neatly packaged characters that function more as cartoons than representations of actual people. When it comes down to fiction writing — solid, genuine fiction writing — that attempts to push boundaries and say something unique about our nature or the way we live, commercial lit doesn’t have that kind of reach. If it did, it would be called literary fiction.

Commercial books do not deserve serious critique because, generally, the writing does not merit it.

Clearly not everyone reads fiction looking for powerful imagery, subtle metaphor, innovative sentence structure, or complex characters. Many readers like to kick back on their vacations and train rides with something that can be more easily consumed and, for those reasons, commercial lit belongs on the designated shelves where it can be found, enjoyed, and celebrated by its consumers, not in The New York Times book review.

The question I feel that should be asked in the literary community in lieu of this sexist uproar is not why are commercial books not being reviewed seriously, but why are there so few prominent women writers of literary fiction?

Earlier this summer, I read a piece in The New York Times books section entitled “Bright Young Things.” It highlighted two new books by young writers Sloane Crosley and Emily Gould. Being a young female writer myself, I was delighted to see two women being featured in such a prominent way. Yet, I found both books to be rather lackluster and, in the end, I wondered why these two writers, who were being showcased by The New York Times as “bright young” female writers of today, were not as strong as I had hoped.

With the exception of a few female literary giants who are regulars in The New Yorker and The New York Times, it seems that even when a big publication does take note of a compelling female voice, she isn’t nearly as strong a writer as her male colleagues.

It concerns me to see endless profiles of “white guys living in Brooklyn or Manhattan,” who do tackle family, love, and heartbreak with startling prose while many women contemporaries communicate the same themes superficially.

Where is the new biting Lorrie Moore of this generation? The up-and-coming Sigrid Nunez of today? The next Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie? Another young Lydia Davis?

They’re certainly not on the “New Releases” table in Barnes & Noble nor are they being profiled in The New York Times. And although there is the slight possibility that this mythical Moore-Nunez hybrid is merely biding her time on the chick lit shelves, cashing in her royalty checks while she thinks up her own rendition of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, I highly doubt it.

Read this entry on The Huffington Post.

What He’s Poised To Do by Ben Greenman, author of Please Step Back, Correspondences, and Superbad, is a collection of original romantic tales that analyze the tenuous nature of heterosexual love.

Exploring failed marriages, infidelities, trysts, and one-time encounters, these 14 stories capture the intimate moments between lovers in contemporary Boston, 1940s Havana, seventeenth-century North Africa, and Atlanta in 2015, among other scenarios. Within each is the theme of letter-writing, a carefully used device that sometimes manifests in an epistolary form or a well-served detail between characters.

In one story, a man unhappy with his marriage and family has an affair with a woman he meets in a hotel bar. The two communicate via postcards that they leave on the bed after sexual encounters. In another, a character falls in love with a woman at first glance and writes her more than 2,000 letters, none of which he actually sends to her. An unnamed male narrator in a different story receives letters from his fiancée’s mother about current events in London; all the while, he harbors a deep infatuation with her.

The stories are delicately composed with a fluid narration that deftly slips from first person to second person, and sometimes back again. All these complex characters cross the page with a very unique and individualistic longing that seems as intrinsic to them as the story Greenman imparts. Infused with tasteful ambiguity, the stories of What He’s Poised To Do don’t conclude as much as they wane exquisitely.

This sophisticated collection offers a varied depiction of romantic relationships, with many sentiments and voices that are uniform only in their excellence.  Greenman’s writing conveys a specific elegance that echoes classic literary influences while also flirting with the experimental. Nuanced, slightly mysterious, and romantic, the stories of What He’s Poised To Do present the amorous with mature restraint.

To read more about Ben Greenman, click here.