“Blood in the Sky,” my review of Helen Macdonald’s memoir H Is for Hawk, appears in the 23 April 2015 issue of the New York Review of Books (subscription required).
Prospect Park in the snow
An excerpt of “Necessary Errors” in Czech
The spring 2015 issue of the Czech literary journal Revolver Revue prints an interview with me conducted by Veronika Tuckerová, which she has translated into Czech, as well as an excerpt from my novel, which she has also translated. Very happy about this! Tuckerová reviewed the book in an earlier issue of Revolver Revue, and an English translation of her review has been published by the Aspen Institute.
In other news about the novel: the English-language book made an appearance in the 2014 year-end roundup of the film critic Daniel Carlson. An interview with me, translated into Italian, appears on the website Gioia, in the course of which a pretentious reference of mine to “negative capability” is transfigured into a new word, “kidcapability.” And a set of elegant photos of the Italian edition of the book appear on the website Federico Novaro.
Led astray
Reading this much of a critic’s work will also alert you to his tics. Lane has only one that annoys me: He will cross the street, walk around the block, catch a cross-town bus and wait in line for an hour to make a dopey pun, and unfortunately we are forced to go with him. For the pun-averse this can sometimes feel like engaging in one of those seemingly straightforward conversations that turns out to be the wind-up for an evangelical pitch or an obscene phone call; you wonder if Lane has enticed you through a whole paragraph on “Braveheart” solely so he can hit you with a groaner like “Fast, Pussycat! Kilt! Kilt!”
Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare:
Shakespeare with his excellencies has likewise faults . . . A quibble is to Shakespeare, what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation. A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was content to purchase it, by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth. A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it.
A talk in Portland
Reed College and the University of Portland have invited me to give a talk at the end of March in Portland, Oregon. I’ll be giving the same lecture at both places. The title is going to be “The Disenchantment of Literature in the Age of the Hit Counter,” and here are the details:
- Monday, March 30, 4:30pm. Psychology 105, Reed College. The David R. Eddings Lecture.
- Tuesday, March 31, 7:30pm. Campus Bookstore, University of Portland.
Both are free and open to the public. Please come!