A few years ago I bought the 900 page book The Selected Short Stories of Mavis Gallant. I was struck by the last paragraph in the author’s preface to the collection. It’s advice I recall when ever I find myself struggling to get though a epic collection – like the collected Nabokov stories I started a while back…

“There is something I keep wanting to say about reading short stories. I am doing it now, because I may never have another occasion. Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait.”

I enjoyed this book enormously! I’m not sure if the first part will resonate with everyone, but the semiotician are a rich source of humor.

I recalled this quote this morning, and was pleased to find it in it’s entirety on Google Books. From Waters’ 1987 book Crackpot – which I recommend picking up. I was telling someone about the scene is Pink Flamingos where a drive-in had a Marguerite Duras triple feature….

“The Films of Marguerite Duras. Miss Duras makes the kind of films that get you punched in the mouth for recommending them to even your closest friends. If there is such a thing as good avant garde cinema, this is it. Even though I believe pretension is the ultimate sin, Marguerite Duras has taken pretension one level ahead of itself and turned it into a style. She is the ultimate eccentric. Her films are maddeningly boring but really quite beautiful. After seeing her work, I think I know what it must feel like to be hypnotized.”

“Perhaps her most impossible opus to date is The Truck. The entire film consists of the director sitting in a nondescript room with Gérard Depardieu as they read the script of the film while every ten minutes or so the monotony is replaced by yet another monotonous shot of a blue truck, endlessly but serenely driving through the French countryside. If Warhol did it for the Empire State Building, why can’t Marguerite Duras do it for French trucks? All I know is that on my first trip to Cannes, in the cab from the Nice airport, I saw Marguerite’s “trucks” a hundred times on the highway and felt hypnotized all over again. That’s more than I can say for The Car or Car Wash.”

Johnson’s have the dual affect of making me want to read more, while making want to avert my gaze to the impending tragedies in his characters sad lives. Told with a comic touch to soften the inevitable blows.

I highly recommend Johnson’s books, though they’re not for the feint of heart.

In retrospect I realized I’d read a very positive review of this in the NYT not too long ago. It’s a very short book, comprised of short chapters (or stories), written in a spare style. I was a bit scared on the first couple of pages due to the use of first person plural (which I tend not to like) but I was impressed with the style in which it was used here, and to see the shift to first person singular later on in the book.

I really enjoyed the episodic style of store, and the use of imagery. The scene where the narrator dances in front of a film clip of Niagara Falls, or where the boys fly garbage bag kites are quite stunning.

I especially love the Hard Case Crime series for it’s covers. I’m currently enjoying this one from Mickey Spillane. I felt as though my reading habits were getting a little too high brow

This was just shortlisted for the Man Booker prize… and I’d be entirely taken aback if it won. Would I recommend it? Sure, though not before a whole list of other recent books. It’s worth the few hours it takes to read – though I couldn’t help thinking that there were likely a lot of other books out there just like it…

If you’d visited my site in the last few days you likely got a 500 Internal Server error.

With a bit of research I found that it was an easy fix:
Rename/delete the existing htaccess file.
Launch the wordpress admin area.
Go to settings > permalinks and click save.
A new htaccess file will be generated.

Simple as that.

An interested collection of related, though not interconnected stories. I enjoyed the stories, with their often terse conclusions. The book as a whole – I’d have to read it again… I will say – one of the ugliest book covers I’ve seen in years, which is strange coming from Knopf.

I read The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories on a whim a few years ago, enjoyed it and picked up Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Not my usual fare, but well written, and briskly paced.