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From The Guardian:
James Joyce’s Ulysses has topped poll after poll to be named the greatest novel of the 20th century, but according to Paulo Coelho, the book is “a twit”. [. . .]
Writers go wrong, according to Coelho, when they focus on form, not content. “Today writers want to impress other writers,” he told the paper. “One of the books that caused great harm was James Joyce’s Ulysses, which is pure style. There is nothing there. Stripped down, Ulysses is a twit.”
Here are just a few of the things that are wrong with these statements:
1) I’m willing to go out on a limb here and claim that Ulysses has had, oh, approximately 0% impact on the writing of the vast majority of today’s popular/influential English writers—J-Franz, Richard Ford, 90% of MFA graduates, most all Oprah book club authors, etc. etc.
2) Can a book even be a “twit”? That’s confusing. The other day I was on a rant that NBC should get crabs, but even I realized the absurdity of that statement. Hey, Paulo—Ulysses is a book. It is fiction. It is not a living breathing thing.
3) And “twit”??? Who even says that?
4) THIS sort of “I APPEAL TO EVERYONE” crap is what I think is ruining contemporary literature.
Speaking to Brazilian newspaper Folha de S Paulo, Coelho said the reason for his own popularity was that he is “a modern writer, despite what the critics say”. This doesn’t mean his books are experimental, he added – rather, “I’m modern because I make the difficult seem easy, and so I can communicate with the whole world.”
Nothing like a bit of stupid to get me back into the swing of this blogging thing . . . .
This is something I’d like to do, but I don’t know that we’d be able to get everyone to go along with it:
But if I had known about The Pirate Coelho, a blog, established by the million-selling author himself, I might not have wasted my money on the Alchemist after all. You see, Coelho has been happily “pirating” his own work for years, spreading electronic versions of his novels over the BitTorrent filesharing network for potential readers to download. The pirate blog encourages potential readers to seek out the electronic versions—in several language translations—by helpfully providing links to the files. He recently told a conference that rather than hurt his sales, this act of self-piracy has actually sent them through the roof.
Our problem isn’t that we’re going to sell a million books, and that these free electronic editions would be cutting into our sales. Our problem is getting attention for our authors and getting people to put the books in their hands. Giving readers a chance to test the waters in this way—free, online, accessible—could only help.
Reviewed by Rachael Daum
The Urdu word basti refers to any space, intimate to worldly, and is often translated as “common place” or “a gathering place.” This book by Intizar Husain, who is widely regarded as one of the most important living Pakistani writers,. . .
Reviewed by Vincent Francone
The Whispering Muse, one of three books by Icelandic writer Sjón just published in North America, is nothing if not inventive. Stories within stories, shifting narration, leaps in time, and characters who transform from men to birds and back again—you’ve. . .
Reviewed by Camila Santos
Luis Negrón’s debut collection Mundo Cruel is a journey through Puerto Rico’s gay world. Published in 2010, the book is already in its fifth Spanish edition. Here in the U.S., the collection has been published by Seven Stories Press and. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
“South”
To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bank of shadow to have watched
the scattered lights
my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the ring of. . .
Reviewed by Larissa Kyzer
When Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason first published LoveStar, his darkly comic parable of corporate power and media influence run amok, the world was in a very different place. (This was back before both Facebook and Twitter, if you can. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
When starting Hi, This Is Conchita and Other Stories, Santiago Roncagliolo’s second work to be translated into English, I was expecting Roncagliolo to explore the line between evil and religion that was front and center in Red April. Admittedly, I. . .
Reviewed by Josh Billings
Christa Wolf’s newly-translated City of Angels is a novel of atonement, and in this way the work of art that it resembles most to me is not another book, but the 2003 Sophia Coppola film Lost in Translation. Like that. . .
