Salon.com > Books

Salon.com > Books http://www.salon.com Fri, 04 Jan 2013 03:27:59 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Tim O’Brien tries to make sense of wartime chaos http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/tim_obrien_tries_to_make_sense_of_wartime_chaos/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/tim_obrien_tries_to_make_sense_of_wartime_chaos/#comments Thu, 03 Jan 2013 19:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13161000 Tim O’Brien is best known as the writer of “The Things They Carried” and “In the Lake of the Woods” — two works of fiction about the Vietnam War and its aftermath that can be safely counted among the most accomplished, affecting, important, troubling and pleasurable documents of the 20th century.

The foundation for those books was laid in Vietnam itself, where he began writing his first book, “If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home,” a memoir, in the last hour or two of daylight, from the foxhole he had dug to keep himself alive, a story he recounts in an interview bundled with the newly released 40th anniversary audiobook edition of the memoir. By the end of his tour, he had accumulated, by his count, 30 or 40 handwritten pages, which represented the beginning of a lifelong reckoning with what O’Brien now calls “that terrible decision”: “What do you do when you get a draft notice and you think a war is wrong? And I struggled with that for months prior to my being inducted into the army, and I’m still struggling with it, 40 years later.”

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/tim_obrien_tries_to_make_sense_of_wartime_chaos/feed/ 2 “Jungleland”: In search of a lost city http://www.salon.com/2012/12/31/jungleland_in_search_of_a_lost_city/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/31/jungleland_in_search_of_a_lost_city/#comments Mon, 31 Dec 2012 02:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13157082 The true story Christopher S. Stewart has to tell in "Jungleland" resembles nothing so much as the set-up for one of H. Rider Haggard's old pulp adventure novels. It's got a fabled lost city somewhere in the midst of a trackless rainforest, intrepid explorers, stoic guides, assorted dangerous animals and sinister bad guys, and a dash of espionage. Even the local tribesmen get in on the act, issuing forth vague warnings about "forbidden" zones, the voices of the dead, evil spirits and monkey gods.

Stewart, a journalist specializing in war and organized crime, first heard about Ciudad Blanco -- the White City, a magnificent ruin rumored to be buried deep in the jungles of the Mosquitia region of Honduras -- while reporting on the booming Honduran drug trade in 2008. An American ex-soldier who had been involved in training the Nicaraguan contras told him about the legend while describing Mosquitia as the "shittiest, buggiest shithole jungle in the world." Stewart was soon obsessed, and in a few months, he was on a plane for Central America.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/31/jungleland_in_search_of_a_lost_city/feed/ 4 “The Tinkerers”: How corporations kill creativity http://www.salon.com/2012/12/30/the_tinkerers_how_corporations_kill_creativity/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/30/the_tinkerers_how_corporations_kill_creativity/#comments Sun, 30 Dec 2012 19:50:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13156079 A few years ago I engaged my then two-month-old smartphone, a BlackBerry of some sort or another, in a very nontechnical road test: I sat on it. I only noticed the damage when one afternoon I reached to check my email. The small screen, usually jittering and scrolling with plenty of new messages, was suddenly a disconcerting Technicolor swirl with a huge black spot in the middle.

I drove in a mild panic to the nearest Verizon Wireless store and met with a sales representative. After asking for my vitals, he typed for a few seconds and waited. Then he typed, then he waited. Then he sighed.

“You can get a new phone,” he said. “At retail price.”

“How much is that?” I asked.

“Four hundred fifty dollars.”

Could I get my current BlackBerry fixed? The rep shook his head sadly. “They don’t let us repair the phones in the store anymore,” he said.

I felt his pain. Having grown up tinkering with Radio Shack electronic kits, I used to love taking things apart—radios, tape players, anything I could get my hands on.

But in the last twenty-five years or so, the number of household devices we can easily tinker with has dwindled.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/30/the_tinkerers_how_corporations_kill_creativity/feed/ 24 Slavoj Zizek: I am not the world’s hippest philosopher! http://www.salon.com/2012/12/29/slavoj_zizek_i_am_not_the_worlds_hippest_philosopher/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/29/slavoj_zizek_i_am_not_the_worlds_hippest_philosopher/#comments Sat, 29 Dec 2012 20:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13156104 Almost 25 years ago, philosopher Slavoj Žižek broke through the intellectual cul-de-sac of Slovenian academia — making his mark on the English-speaking world with "The Sublime Object of Ideology" (1989), a wily fusing of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Frankfurt School idealism, and reflections on the 1979 blockbuster horror flick "Alien."

Today, he’s everywhere. The notoriously unkempt “radical leftist” philosophe has become the unlikeliest of celebrities: a cult icon and spiritual guide for Europe’s lethargic left.

Žižek has published more than 50 books (most recently: "The Year of Dreaming Dangerously") and starred in several documentaries. A journal, The International Journal of Žižek Studies, is devoted to his works. Žižek has been called “the Borat of philosophy,” “the Elvis of cultural theory,” and “the world’s hippest philosopher.” These are titles he abhors.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/29/slavoj_zizek_i_am_not_the_worlds_hippest_philosopher/feed/ 43 Journalists behaving badly http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/journalists_behaving_badly/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/journalists_behaving_badly/#comments Thu, 27 Dec 2012 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13153488 Oh, that we should find ourselves nostalgic for the media circuses of the past, but so it is for the modern-day journalist reading Evelyn Waugh's classic 1938 satire of the newspaper business, "Scoop." Through a series of preposterous mix-ups, a timorous homebody of a nature columnist, William Boot, gets sent to cover a brewing civil war in the (fictional) East African nation of Ishmaelia. By another equally preposterous chain of events he ends up delivering the story of a lifetime.

Previously, the only audiobook versions of most of Waugh's celebrated novels -- from "Vile Bodies" to the colonial parody "Set Out More Flags" -- were so severely abridged that they made no sense at all. (An exception was Jeremy Irons' recording of Waugh's most popular book, "Brideshead Revisited.") This was ridiculous; the new unabridged audiobook version of "Scoop" -- just released with 12 other Waugh titles to coincide with handsome new print editions from Little, Brown -- is less than seven hours long, substantially shorter than most other audio titles. There's not a lot of fat in Waugh's fiction, and cutting any of it is a crime against the reader.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/journalists_behaving_badly/feed/ 0 Five books I bailed on in 2012 http://www.salon.com/2012/12/26/five_books_i_bailed_on_in_2012/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/26/five_books_i_bailed_on_in_2012/#comments Wed, 26 Dec 2012 02:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13152951 Every week I pick one book to review for the column What to Read -- a book about which I feel genuinely enthusiastic. That doesn't mean I read only one book per week. It often takes me several tries before I find a title I can wholeheartedly (or most-heartedly) recommend. Sometimes I sample books you've never heard of (and probably never will hear of), but many's the time I take a pass on a widely celebrated title. Here are few of the more notable books that failed to impress me in 2012.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/26/five_books_i_bailed_on_in_2012/feed/ 16 Lydia Millet’s “Magnificence” offers anything but http://www.salon.com/2012/12/25/lydia_millets_magnificence_offers_anything_but/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/25/lydia_millets_magnificence_offers_anything_but/#comments Tue, 25 Dec 2012 14:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13152743 Fifty pages into Lydia Millet’s novel "Magnificence," her heroine Susan Lindley, a recently widowed secretary, inherits an enormous mansion from an uncle she barely knew. The mansion, located in an upscale neighborhood of Pasadena, is filled with a small museum’s worth of stuffed wild animals: gazelles, a full-grown lion, eagles and owls, a pink flamingo, and an entire room full of bears.

The novel, which until this point has been flatlining through page after page of perfunctory-seeming scenes of Susan being angry at herself for not mourning her late husband enough, suddenly perks up as the reader thinks: What a great place to set a novel. Then, for another hundred pages or so, it becomes clear that this weird old house full of dead animals isn’t so much the setting for Millet’s novel as a distressingly accurate metaphor for the experience of reading it.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/25/lydia_millets_magnificence_offers_anything_but/feed/ 3 Salon’s ultimate book guide http://www.salon.com/2012/12/24/salons_ultimate_book_guide/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/24/salons_ultimate_book_guide/#comments Mon, 24 Dec 2012 15:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13149859 Need a last-minute gift? Or sitting on a gift card and need a great book to read over the holiday break?

You could check out our What To Read Awards for the top-10 books by our Laura Miller as well as our favorite critics. Or, you could get some recommendations straight from the authors of some of our best books of 2012.

As part of a long-standing Salon tradition, we asked the authors of the books that we loved most this year to tell us about a 2012 book they read and loved. Junot Diaz, Gillian Flynn, Lauren Groff, Andrew Solomon, Tana French, Victor LaValle, Jess Walter, Maggie Shipstead and more contribute their picks below. Take the whole story shopping.

David Abrams, author of “Fobbit” (Grove Press, Black Cat)
“Breed,” by Chase Novak (Mulholland Books)

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/24/salons_ultimate_book_guide/feed/ 5 Who will be the Maccabees? http://www.salon.com/2012/12/24/who_will_be_the_maccabees/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/24/who_will_be_the_maccabees/#comments Mon, 24 Dec 2012 14:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13153174

The Weeklings

Have you ever read an old comic book?

By old, I mean from the 1940s and 1950s, the genre’s Golden Age, when "Superman," "Batman," and "Wonder Woman" were just being scribbled to life. Since I was weaned on comics from the '80s and '90s — titles like "Sandman," "Swamp Thing," "X-Men," "Hellboy," all of which were captivating, literary, and, to those willing to overlook popular stigmas, sophisticated — it was difficult for me to access early "Superman" archives in any genuine emotional sense. Though I ended up reading them through, I found the content, while left-leaning and vivid, very much a product of its time, sometimes gruff, sometimes macho and, as far as current standards go, predictable. The main interest I took was historical, anyway, a glimpse into wartime and American identity as portrayed by Jewish immigrants, with identities of their own. But being brought up around the onset of the millennium I often felt as though I was being asked to marvel at the genius of a fort composed from twigs and mud, knowing all too well that the museum housing it had walls concealing reinforced titanium.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/24/who_will_be_the_maccabees/feed/ 2 “The Lost Carving”: Meditations on the creative life http://www.salon.com/2012/12/24/the_lost_carving_meditations_on_the_creative_life/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/24/the_lost_carving_meditations_on_the_creative_life/#comments Mon, 24 Dec 2012 02:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13153393 There's a booming and rather dubious genre of inspirational book aimed at people who want to do something creative -- usually writing. (Rule of thumb: If you spend way more energy and time psyching yourself up to work than you do actually working, there's a serious problem with your approach.) Much rarer are those books written by and about the working artist; perhaps the best-known and most-cherished is Annie Dillard's "The Writing Life." To this select company we can now add David Esterly's profound and wondrous "The Lost Carving: A Journey into the Heart of Making."

Esterly is that uncommon thing, a visual artist who can coax as much beauty from words as he can from his primary medium. The medium is wood, specifically limewood, a "charismatic" material noted for its creamy pallor and, among woodcarvers, for its "crisp and firm" texture and reticent grain. The great master of limewood carving was a 17th-century Dutch-born Englishman named Grinling Gibbons. His works adorn several London churches and stately homes, among them Hampton Court Palace, a royal residence in Richmond upon Thames.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/24/the_lost_carving_meditations_on_the_creative_life/feed/ 1 What To Read Awards: The Salon Book Critics’ Poll http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_the_salon_book_critics_poll/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_the_salon_book_critics_poll/#comments Sun, 23 Dec 2012 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13151468 .articleContent a img:hover { opacity: .5; }

We live in a golden age of top-10 lists -- that is, if you really like drowning in year-end rankings.

That's where the first annual What To Read Awards come in. We wanted to bring some clarity to the barrage of bests. After all, top-10 lists should be a chance for readers to get a sense of what was really important over the last year. That's what Laura Miller does every week with her What To Read column, by selecting the one must-read book that she can really recommend as worthy of your attention.

And that's the goal of these awards. We surveyed almost 20 of our favorite critics, both print and online, veterans and newcomers. We aggregated their top-10s to generate a consensus of what the smartest critics see as the most essential titles of the year. The results are below.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_the_salon_book_critics_poll/feed/ 3 What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 slide show http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_top_10_books_of_2012_slide_show/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_top_10_books_of_2012_slide_show/#comments Sun, 23 Dec 2012 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13152203 http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_top_10_books_of_2012_slide_show/feed/ 0 The What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/the_what_to_read_awards_top_10_books_of_2012/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/the_what_to_read_awards_top_10_books_of_2012/#comments Sun, 23 Dec 2012 15:58:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13151319 For Salon's first annual What To Read Awards, we surveyed our favorite book critics, both print and online, from high-profile publications to the hottest literary blogs. We asked for their top-10 books of 2012, and then tabulated the winners by assigning 10 points for a No. 1 selection, 9 for No. 2, all the way to 1 point for No. 10. Some critics did not want to rank their top-10; we assigned a fixed value to those ballots. Our voters' top-10 is below.

"Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day." -- M. Rebekah Otto, the Rumpus

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/the_what_to_read_awards_top_10_books_of_2012/feed/ 3 What To Read Awards: More winners http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_more_winners/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_more_winners/#comments Sun, 23 Dec 2012 15:57:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13151430 Debut of the year, Katherine Boo's "Behind the Beautiful Forever" and Kevin Powers' "The Yellow Birds." A new fiction writer and a brilliant reporter tied for the best first book. Boo's "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" was named the best book of the year, and four of our judges also named it the year's strongest debut. But four voters also went for a lyrical debut by an Iraq War veteran, Powers' "The Yellow Birds." In naming it one of the year's strongest titles, Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor called it a "vivid and haunting portrait of friendship and war as a young soldier remembers the death of his teenage friend." Other books with multiple mentions included "Girlchild" by Tupelo Hassman and Ben Fountain's "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk."

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_more_winners/feed/ 0 What To Read Awards: How they voted http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_how_they_voted/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_how_they_voted/#comments Sun, 23 Dec 2012 15:56:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13151306 .articleContent a img:hover { opacity: .5; }

Back to the What To Read Awards

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_how_they_voted/feed/ 0 What To Read Awards: M. Rebekah Otto http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_m_rebekah_otto/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_m_rebekah_otto/#comments Sun, 23 Dec 2012 15:55:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13148553 M. Rebekah Otto is the books editor of the Rumpus.

M. Rebekah's Top-10

1. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso
2. "HhHH" by Laurent Binet
3. "By Blood" by Ellen Ullman
4. "Curiosity and Method: Ten Years of Cabinet Magazine"
5. "NW" by Zadie Smith
6. "Between Heaven and Here" by Susan Straight
7. "Tiny Beautiful Things" by Cheryl Strayed
8. "The Lifespan of a Fact" by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal
9. "How to Get Into the Twin Palms" by Karolina Waclawiak
10. "Hang Glider and Mud Mask" by Brian McMullen and Jason Jagel

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_m_rebekah_otto/feed/ 0 What To Read Awards: Eric Banks http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_eric_banks/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_eric_banks/#comments Sun, 23 Dec 2012 15:55:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13148577 Eric Banks is the president of the National Book Critics Circle.

Eric's top 10:

1. “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity” by Katherine Boo
2. “Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story” by Jim Holt
3. “At Last” by Edward St. Aubyn
4. “Bring Up the Bodies” by Hilary Mantel
5. “Far From the Tree” by Andrew Solomon
6. “From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia” by Pankaj Mishra
7. “Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights” by Marina Warner
8. “The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy” by David Nasaw
9. “HHhH” by Laurent Binet
10. “The Letters of T.S. Eliot: Volume 3 (1926-27)” by Valerie Eliot and John Heffendon (eds.)

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_eric_banks/feed/ 0 What To Read Awards: Roxane Gay http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_roxane_gay/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_roxane_gay/#comments Sun, 23 Dec 2012 15:55:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13148600 Roxane Gay's criticism has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and many other publications.

Roxane's top 10:

1. “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie” by Ayana Mathis
2. “How Should a Person Be” by Sheila Heti
3. “Battleborn” by Claire Vaye Watkins
4. “Beautiful Ruins” by Jess Walter
5. “I Am a Magical Teenage Princess” by Luke Geddes
6. “NW” by Zadie Smith
7. “The Round House” by Louise Erdrich
8. “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn
9. “Forgotten Country” by Catherine Chung
10. “How to Get Into the Twin Palms” by Karolina Waclawiak

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_roxane_gay/feed/ 0 What To Read Awards: Lev Grossman http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_lev_grossman/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_lev_grossman/#comments Sun, 23 Dec 2012 15:55:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13148607 Lev Grossman is the book critic for Time magazine.

Lev's top 10:

1. “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green
2. “Bring Up the Bodies” by Hilary Mantel
3. “My Friend Dahmer” by Derf Backderf
4. “The Casual Vacancy” by J.K. Rowling
5. “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” by Ben Fountain
6. “At Last” by Edward St. Aubyn
7. “The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There” by Catherynne Valente
8. “Are You My Mother?” by Alison Bechdel
9. “Building Stories” by Chris Ware
10. “Code Name Verity” by Elizabeth Wein

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_lev_grossman/feed/ 0 What To Read Awards: Laurie Hertzel http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_laurie_hertzel/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_laurie_hertzel/#comments Sun, 23 Dec 2012 15:55:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13148618 Laurie Hertzel is the books editor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Laurie's top 10:

1. “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” by Katherine Boo
2. “The Age of Miracles” by Karen Thompson Walker
3. “Burying the Typewriter” by Carmen Bugan
4. “Escape From Camp 14” by Blaine Harden
5. “Far From the Tree” by Andrew Solomon
6. “The Healing” by Jonathan Odell
7. “Illuminations” by Mary Sharratt
8. “Last Nights of the Shadow Catcher” by Timothy Egan
9. “Louise: Amended” by Louise Krug
10. “The Round House” by Louise Erdrich

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_laurie_hertzel/feed/ 0