My Holmes J.M. Coetzee is Getting Called Out…
Wednesday, June 25th by Shane
The other hand’s holding a shank
This article derides Coetzee’s Booker-winning Disgrace as garbage and it’s wrong. The “clumsily-handled coincidence” of the book is obviously understood to be calculated, Coetzee’s characters are fleshed out even if they may tend to react in frustratingly counter-intuitive ways, and a review of how the characters interact with each other, while ignoring the totality of the dogs at the animal hospital, seems like he was planning on trashing the book from page one. Then again, I could be wrong. But I’m not, so shut up.
There may have been some confusion earlier, but it’s all sorted out now- Ian McEwan doesn’t hate Martin Amis because Amis hates Muslims. It turns out that Amis hating Muslims means Ian McEwan loves him. Great. Also, they used that damn gangsta picture of McEwan again.
It’s not coming out until September but Philip Roth’s new ugly ass book already has a review up. It’s about sex, of course, but what it lacks in chastity, it makes up for in sounding totally boring.
Speaking of boring, Ed throws some good questions at Tobias Wolff but Wolff’s voice was not made for the radio because it will lull you into uncomfortable sleep.
The Millions discusses the hurdles of having an IMDB-type site for books. It highlights some of the closest sites available, but there still is a noticeable gap. In the comments, Garth says that for 10-20 grand, this would be a piece of cake if someone is willing to fork over the kitty. So, who wants to invest in The 360 Degree Review?
And finally, more book hate. Maya Angelou, Cervantes, Zadie Smith, and especially Anthony Powell get the big, greasy finger from various people. The Elegant Variation (who scored me a couple links above) was wondering why there’s so much “This book sucks and is overrated…” talk going on right now, but I’m just wondering why the last time I was asking for it you guys didn’t come through. Let’s get it together, guys. What highly respected author do you wish would get tossed off a bridge while wrapped in a carpet?
June 25th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Hey cut Tobias some slack. He had a bad cold when I talked with him. (I cut out a lot of his coughing.)