Mark Liberman has chosen Wiggins' The Shadow Catcher over Tom McCarthy's Remainder in the Tournament of Books.
Readers of this blog may not be aware of the full extent of my admiration for Mark Liberman - the only reason I don't link to several Liberman posts a day is that I assume everyone is reading them anyway. (A similar reasoning explains the rare links to Languagehat.) But I'm now baffled.
Look. Let's say you have a female character from a cultured family who is left an orphan by a freak accident. She travels out west with her young brother to stay with friends of her parents who have offered to take the children in. She is attracted to one of the family, a strong, silent man who keeps going off and disappearing for long periods. At one point he brings back a brass bathtub, supposedly as a gift for the whole family. They're all living together, crammed into the house; there's no privacy. One day, for some reason I now forget, everyone in the family except Clara goes off on some excursion; they'll be away for days; she has the place to herself! She fills the bath with water and bathes in it. The strong, silent man appears on the rooftop. She stands up so he can see her naked. He falls off the roof. She nurses him back to health.
You just can't.
You just can't.
Well, you can, obviously, since Marianne Wiggins did. And it is apparently possible to read this without howling, since ML seems to have found the story of Edward and Clara compelling.
But you just can't.
(Do they do the dirty deed, you ask? Now honestly. Need you ask? What would be the point of getting everyone else in the family conveniently out of the way, if not to allow the male and female leads some highly implausible quality time à deux?)
Readers who enjoyed Susan Sontag's In America would probably enjoy the book.
Showing posts with label rooster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rooster. Show all posts
Monday, March 24, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Monday, March 10, 2008
wha-?
Over on the Morning News, Elizabeth Kiem dashes my hopes of getting a free copy of The Savage Detectives.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
They're off...
The Rooster Tournament of Books has officially begun, with Tobias Seamon judging the first match.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
when I referred to Socrates I meant, of course, St Paul...
The Morning News has sent me a chart of the play-offs for the Rooster. As it turns out, Remainder is up against On Chesil Beach, not The Savage Detectives; The Savage Detectives is up against Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, not Remainder. I can't remember whether I once had a memory. At any rate, the tournament officially starts Friday.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
rooster
Several months ago I agreed to be a judge in the Rooster, a literary competition on the Morning News. The competition is set up as a knock-out - each judge in the first round is sent two of the books under consideration, of which one goes on to the next round.
In most competitions the judges must work their way through a very large number of books, which does take up time; on the other hand, if a brilliant book has been entered for the competition the judge will certainly have the chance to read it. In a knock-out you get your two books, look at the complete list of entries and discover that some other lucky sod got Robert Bolanos' The Savage Detectives AND Tom McCarthy's Remainder. If you had been reading from a pool that included The Savage Detectives, you could be pretty sure of reading at least one brilliant book, and then you could confine your public comments to enthusiastic remarks on the brilliance of X (and possibly Y and Z which you reluctantly decided where not QUITE as brilliant as X). In a knock-out, you may find yourself not only reading two books you would never have chosen to read, but forced to say something about them to justify sending one on to the next round. The two correspondents with whom I shared uncensored anguish asked whether it was actually necessary to vote for one of the books; as the competition is set up, yes. Perhaps it would have been better to refuse to cooperate, perhaps it would have been better to toss a coin. I was tired.
A week ago I got an e-mail from the organiser explaining that they would be announcing the names of the judges the following week and would need a brief bio, as well as any conflicts of interest relating to the books in the competition. The e-mail explained that any conflict of interest must be mentioned because the prize, unlike other prizes, made a point of transparency. It then explained that it would be nice if those with blogs were to mention the competition, but they must not mention the fact that they were judges.
A reader has asked in a comment why I have not been publicising this competition. I would have been happy to mention the competition if I had not been asked to conceal my participation as a judge. The other judges include Maud Newton, Mark Sarvas of the Elegant Variation and Mark Liberman of the incomparable Language Log, all well established, highly regarded bloggers; I'm sure they too felt they could not mention the competition until their participation was a matter of public knowledge.
The winner of my first-round pair-off will come up against the winner of The Savage Detectives and Remainder, and the two books will be judged by Mark Liberman.
In most competitions the judges must work their way through a very large number of books, which does take up time; on the other hand, if a brilliant book has been entered for the competition the judge will certainly have the chance to read it. In a knock-out you get your two books, look at the complete list of entries and discover that some other lucky sod got Robert Bolanos' The Savage Detectives AND Tom McCarthy's Remainder. If you had been reading from a pool that included The Savage Detectives, you could be pretty sure of reading at least one brilliant book, and then you could confine your public comments to enthusiastic remarks on the brilliance of X (and possibly Y and Z which you reluctantly decided where not QUITE as brilliant as X). In a knock-out, you may find yourself not only reading two books you would never have chosen to read, but forced to say something about them to justify sending one on to the next round. The two correspondents with whom I shared uncensored anguish asked whether it was actually necessary to vote for one of the books; as the competition is set up, yes. Perhaps it would have been better to refuse to cooperate, perhaps it would have been better to toss a coin. I was tired.
A week ago I got an e-mail from the organiser explaining that they would be announcing the names of the judges the following week and would need a brief bio, as well as any conflicts of interest relating to the books in the competition. The e-mail explained that any conflict of interest must be mentioned because the prize, unlike other prizes, made a point of transparency. It then explained that it would be nice if those with blogs were to mention the competition, but they must not mention the fact that they were judges.
A reader has asked in a comment why I have not been publicising this competition. I would have been happy to mention the competition if I had not been asked to conceal my participation as a judge. The other judges include Maud Newton, Mark Sarvas of the Elegant Variation and Mark Liberman of the incomparable Language Log, all well established, highly regarded bloggers; I'm sure they too felt they could not mention the competition until their participation was a matter of public knowledge.
The winner of my first-round pair-off will come up against the winner of The Savage Detectives and Remainder, and the two books will be judged by Mark Liberman.
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