The Literary Link List

Links to pieces, old and new, on literature:  

• Betting on the Nobel Prize in Lit?  Head over to BookRiot and check out your favorite author's odds of winning.
• Darryl Campbell on what a book review should be over at The Millions
• Jeffrey Brown speaks with Tea Obreht over at PBS's Art Beat
• An interview with DT Max about his recent biography of DFW (which I need to own ASAP), also over at The Millions
• On sucking at reading challenges (which I can absolutely relate to, as I am currently biting-the-mat-on-the-verge-of-abandoning-altogether my 30 Before 30 personal literary bucket list due to total lack of self-control when it comes to new books) over at Dead White Guys

And now, James Dean reading.  Though he looks a lot like James Franco here.  Regardless, you're welcome.

In honor of Super Saturday at the Open, DFW on playing tennis...in the wind...

From his essay "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley" from the essay collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace talks about the challenges of playing tennis in the wind (as Murray and Berdych are attempting to do right now):

"Wind did massive damage to many Central Illinois junior players, particularly in the period from April to July when it needed lithium badly, tending to gust without pattern, swirl and backtrack and die and rise, sometimes blowing one direction at court level and in another altogether ten feet overhead.  The precision in thinking required one to induct trends in percentage, thrust, and retaliatory angle--precision our guy and the other townships' volunteer coaches were good at abstracting about with chalk and board, attaching a pupil's leg to the fence with clothesline to restrict his arc of movement in practice, placing laundry baskets in different corners and making us sink ball after ball, taking masking tape and laying down Chinese boxes within the court's own boxes for drills and wind sprints--all this theoretical prep went out the window when sneakers hit  actual court in a tournament.  The best-planned, best-hit ball often just blew out of bounds, was the basic unlyrical problem.  It drove some kids near-mad with the caprice and unfairness of it all, and on real windy days these kids, usually with talent out the bazoo, would have their first apoplectic racket-throwing tantrum in  about the match's third game and lapse into a kind of sullen coma by the end of the first set, now bitterly expecting to get screwed over by wind, net, tape and sun." (page 9).

Think positive thoughts for Nole this evening!!!!

The Literary Link List

Links to pieces, old and new, on literature: 

• Pantone presents literary living room color palettes over at Paris Review
• My neighborhood (Astoria) is getting an indie bookstore over at the Daily News
• The Millions talks about getting a lit agent
• Every word learned by reading DFW's Infinite Jest over at PWxyz
• And the best book reviews money can buy over at The New York Times

The Literary Link List

Links to pieces, old and new, on literature:

• The Most Cryptic Titles in Literature (And What They Mean) over at Flavorwire
• Nine Writers and Publicists Tell All About Readings and Book Tours over at The Awl 
• The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do over at McSweeney's Internet Tendency
• "Suicide is Preferable":  Ralph Waldo Emerson on Jane Austen over at Book Riot
• Even David Foster Wallace Nods over at The Millions ( I LOVE the back and forth in the comments over whether or not my beloved DFW did or did not use a not-right-enough word).

30 before 30!

A week or so ago, I turned the big 2-9, and given that I only have just under 360 days left in my 20s, I'm putting together a literary bucket list of sorts:  My 30 before 30.  This is comprised of books I've either been dying to read, should have read by this point, or want to revisit with the perspective of age.


Classics:  
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald **
Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger **
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy **
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
Pale Fire by Vladmir Nabokov


Contemporary:  
Arcadia by Lauren Groff
Celebrity Chekhov by Ben Greenman
Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe
Blindness by Jose Saramago **
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruiki Murakami
Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart 
Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
Men in the Off Hours by Anne Carson
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson **
The Descent of Alette by Alice Notely **
Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky
The Leopard by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal
The Old Child and Other Stories by Jenny Erpenbeck
Spirit Seizures by Melissa Pritchard

Nonfiction/Essays: 
The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
The Possessed by Elif Batuman
Zona by Geoff Dyer
Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford


** rereading


Of course I'll supplement with my typical diet of new releases and review all along the way.  Looking forward to getting started!!!

Did DFW take a bit of artistic license with his non-fiction pieces?

It would surprise me...nor would it diminish my love for his work or awe of his talent...