Has anyone mentioned Michael Gorra’s “Portrait of a Novel”  (about Portrait of a Lady)?  Many of David Lodge’s academic novels introduce (and explain) literary history and theory, actually using theory as a plot element– “Small World” and “Nice Work,” for example.

Thank you!

…or else, be among the first and help define the style and length of contributions (re the latter, we’ll risk starting at 1000 words)

Dear Alexandra (and of course you can use my first name 🙂

I’ve read the Latin American authors in Spanish a while ago but judging by the quality of the publishing houses they should be good translations. I found a couple of Bolaño’s essays in The New York Review of Books if you are…[Read more]

Dear Carlos (may I?), thank you!

I’d be delighted about a contribution from you. To my shame, I haven’t read any of your suggestions — and now I will, asap.

Starting the journal was worth it for all recommendations in these forum alone.:)

Indeed!

Ah, speaking of Latin writers, how about Horace, On the Sublime?  Short, and big.

Hi Alexandra,

Your project sounds really cool, I hope I can send a contribution in the future.

As for suggestions, I thought of Orhan Pamuk’s The Naive and Sentimental Novelist and to include the Latin American tradition in the conversation: Roberto Bolaño’s Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles, and Speeches, 1998-2003, García Marquez’s Li…[Read more]

Thank you so much!

I’ve actually met Glyn Maxwell and we had a great talk on poetry (and yes, I’m very much into it; the topic of my own first book, Brodsky Translating Brodsky, was poetry in self-translation).

Do have a look at readingsjournal.net, it might suit you. (I’m starting this journal more or less on my own, in my spare time, and am…[Read more]

Thank you!

To which I would add the nonfiction of Kundera, Testaments Betrayed and The Art of the Novel.

Wonderful question, wonderful answers–I’ll just toss in four more: Borges, Seven Nights, Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium, and in case anyone out there still considers poetry part of what we mean by “literary” (many non-litterateur friends of mine do, but I’m drawn to poetry-lovers), Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry and Glyn M…[Read more]

I love Artful!

Such a pleasure to share tastes; I’d be delighted if you submitted to readingsjournal.net

Dear Steve,

thank you very much! All your suggestions are either books I like, or (incl. the beguilingly entitled work of your own) books that I probably will like. You are very warmly invited to join the journal I’m launching  as an author and/or reviewer.:)

Call for Papers and Reviewers

Best,

Alexandra

If you do recommend Azar Nafisi’s “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” I would also strongly recommend that you suggest that they read Fatemeh Keshavarz’s trenchant critique of it, “Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran.” Nafisi’s book is full of problems and, as Keshavarz argues, it–like Khaled Hosseini’s “Kite Runner” and many other…[Read more]

Reading Lolita in Tehran never grabbed me, but it sure resonated with a broad public and has been translated into many languages. Ali Smith’s Artful is a strange amalgam, in which a well-done, ghoulish narrative of grief drives some otherwise not terribly interesting literary remarks, but the novelty of the form deserves a look. Then there are…[Read more]

Hi Alexandra,

Books such as Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer come to mind, as do Jane Smiley’s 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel and Charles Dickens: A Life. In general it looks like literary biographies and collections of author letters are most likely to be read for pleasure. A good example is Phyllis Rose’s Parallel Lives: Five Victorian…[Read more]

Hi Alexandra,

Books such as Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer come to mind, as do Jane Smiley’s 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel and Charles Dickens: A Life. In general it looks like literary biographies and collections of author letters are most likely to be read for pleasure. A good example is Phyllis Rose’s Parallel Lives: Five Victorian…[Read more]