Sorry to hear that

Scott at Conversational Reading is giving some more impressions about Bolano’s last novel 2666 which, even though unfinished, is seriously two hundred and fifty thousand pages. While I hope he expands on the idea, Scott makes the point that 2666 is not a perfect novel and like many large books finds itself getting lost in its own labyrinthine themes, some much too big to not occasionally dead end or cloud over. But he also says that this overreaching can be much more admirable than the economically-produced works that read easier but don’t have the breathing room to tackle these (universal?) topics. So right now it seems that either Scott is surprised but impressed by 2666, or he’s just such a big Bolano fan he’s fooling himself. Hopefully we’ll find out soon.

But speaking of Scott, if you have an itch that only an online literary magazine can scratch go and find out how to submit to the next Quarterly Conversation.

Three different articles I found via Bookslut- How to trash David Sedaris, the best adaptation of Dante’s Inferno ever, and…

This Slate article about the semicolon. Bookslut is sick and tired of hearing about this particular punctuation mark because it takes away from another article about Shalom Auslander or teenage sex poetry, but I’m pretty into it. Maybe the semicolon is getting too much attention compared to other punctuation, but it is definitely the most controversial (is it elitist or just ugly?) and with its use declining every year I don’t know how those of us interested in writing would criticize more discussion of a possibly invaluable tool. At least we’re not talking about, ugh, brackets.

Libraries looking the coolest way possible, via Booksquare.

And finally, via Enter the Octopus, the trailer for the last Lemony Snicket book that rules so insanely hard I… I don’t know, it’s just a good trailer, and some dude tells us five reasons why. One reason is because the narrator is this guy, and another because the song at the end is sung by this guy.

Posted Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:33:43 and filed under Shane, Writing, Writers, Literature. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.