Colm Toibin

Colm Toibin has the best interviews of anyone I've read of late. The comment about getting no pleasure from writing was incredible, and this bit about being bald as well as gay was a nice zinger.

On keeping things separate

Image via ThomasMoronic.

I had with me a copy of Le Rouge et le noir. He riffled the pages. Do you like this?

Yes. I read it first in Arabic. Now I'm rereading it in French. And I added: Julien's family life is like my own in some ways. One thing in particular is almost identical: Monsieur Sorel bound out his son Julien to the mayor of the town for three hundred francs a year, and my father rented me for thirty pesetas a month to a hashish-smoker who ran a cafe in the quarter of Ain Khabbaz where we lived in Tetuan.

I see your trouble. And you're not the only one. You'll never find beauty in literature that way. You shouldn't read with that sort of thing in mind, with the idea that the life of one or another protagonist has something to do with your own life. You have to keep things separate. Your life is nobody else's life.

-Jean Genet in Tangier by Mohamed Choukri, translated by Paul Bowles (page 7)

Exercise

by ReadingWritingLiving.

Plimpton Prize and latex leggings

Factory photo via Bouncing Red Ball.

Peter Matthiesson loves you, Alistair Morgan.

It's cute that you can write a whole article about letter-writing making a comeback without any evidence to support it. (via The Elegant Variation)

In old news, everyone seems mystified by The Way We'll All Make Billions On the Internet.

MIA might be an apologist for the Tamil Tigers, but she is indubitably pregnant.

Two great links from BoingBoing: photographs of factories in Japan, and of a broken-down hospital in Maryland.

Oh! And one more! I've been meaning to post recipes for making your own toothpaste, laundry detergent, etc., but BoingBoing links to How To Make Your Own Latex Leggings, which seem to be a New York essential these days. You're welcome.

Joe Meno

Can we please talk about Joe Meno for a few minutes?

I've posted before about his novel Demons in the Spring. I once recommended The Boy Detective Fails to a stranger at the Brooklyn Book Fair, and he loved it so much he wrote to me to say thank you. I dragged my roommate to see Meno read at the KGB on his Spring book tour, and she loved his reading so much she bought the whole book even though it was $27 in hardcover. An extremely thoughtful person I am lucky enough to know bought me a copy of Tender as Hellfire for Christmas and I recently finished it in an airport after my flight was canceled.

Here is what Meno always gets right: the complex and unusual way that characters think. There is a level of detail that he strikes that few authors can match. He never underestimates his readers. However, Meno's first novel is messy and unedited. It's a testament to his talent that his characters endure this, that they are as resonant as they are; that Val, the diner waitress whom Dough worships, can appear beautiful, disgusting, and tragic all at once.

Meno really hits his stride in The Boy Detective Fails, a book that combines the traditional with the modern. This book makes me think of The Royal Tenenbaums - it's equally dark and funny. Meno uses the traditional format of a children's mystery book, and practically opens with an unsatisfactory ending. He asks, what happens next? What does a famous detective do when he's past his prime? What happens when the source of your fame and identity unravels, and you feel it's all your fault? Meno weaves in a secret code on the bottom of each page, using ROT-13 (the geek term for A = 13, used in primitive computer coding). Not to mention the stories in Demons in the Spring, which are simultaneously heartbreaking and hysterical. The illustrations in this volume are the icing on the cake, making the book a valuable art object as well as a polished work of fiction.

You can read an interview with him on Bookslut, or listen to an interview with him on NPR.

He's also an excellent reader, and an amiable person. I believe firmly that he's got the right balance of traditional story-writing and the DavidFosterWallace/DaveEggers generation quirkiness to endure the weight of the recession.

I cannot tell you how excited I am to read his upcoming novel from W. W. Norton, titled The Great Perhaps.

His short story "An Apple Could Make You Laugh" was published in Ninth Letter, and you can listen to it read aloud on Ninth Letter's website. I would like to record this story aloud. I would like to read you, Dear Reader, a short story each week. I will think about this idea when I am back in New York with my (former boss's) Mac.

Honestly, he's worth it. Look into Demons in the Spring or The Boy Detective Fails when you next reach a bookstore. I'll let you know how Hairstyles of the Damned is when I've finished it - hooray!

Itty bitty letters

Today I am rather enamored of the World's Smallest Postal Service. (via CoolHunting) Also, Lea Redmond's blog is adorable.

Getting Under Their Skin

Pictured above is my very own right arm, bearing the unofficial symbol of the Kenyon Review writing programs.

I'm always up for more reports of authors' tattoos. I'm proud to hear Dorothy Parker had a star on her elbow. Great article, TheElegantVariation (and thanks, Sergei, for the link!).

Livejournal, in its infinite wisdom, has a community for literary tattoos. Glad to hear others feel so devoted to words, they want them literally under their skin.

My favorites are: the definition of bibliophile, Margaret Atwood's "You Fit Into Me," and simply the word "to." My favorites are usually the ones you can change for seasons or quotations you can alter. I dress my tattoo up for Halloween and Christmas. I have plans for Easter. Hurray for ink!

Upon the subject of my chosen title

"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards." - Robert A. Heinlein

All right; here we are. I haven't always something to say, much less something worth sharing, but I'll do my best.

First entries are always contrived. Hello! I shall begin fresh (not "afresh," as E.B. White makes clear in his letters) in the next entry, when salutations are superfluous and we can get down to business.