A pleasant surprise, courtesy of the Washington Post and my friend Ann
Today I had lunch with my intellectual buddies. At one point in our always lively conversation, one of the group, Ann, turned to me and remarked: ” I read your piece in the Post yesterday.” I looked at her in astonishment. My…what? She went on to explain the subject matter, and then the nickel dropped, though I was still amazed: “You mean, they printed it?”
In fact, the reference was to a letter I’d written to the Washington Post about five weeks ago in connection with an article on literary landmarks in Los Angeles that appeared in the March 11 Sunday magazine. I received no acknowledgement from the paper – not so much as an auto-responder – and so I assumed that my missive had fallen into the proverbial bit bucket, never to be seen from that time forth.
I was away this past weekend, and although I did receive yesterday’s paper, I hadn’t had a chance to read it. Hence, my bewilderment at Ann’s comment.
The column in which my letter appears is called, “Your Turn: Reader reactions.” It contains two letters; mine is the second. Newspapers and magazines always warn you that letters sent to them might be edited, and so it was in this case. Here’s the full text of what I actually wrote (should you be interested):
I very much enjoyed “City of Angles” Bill Thomas (WP Magazine, March 11, 2012). I do wish, though, that Thomas had mentioned Ross MacDonald’s Lew Archer series. MacDonald’s depiction of mid-twentieth century southern California as a land of material riches and moral and spiritual bankruptcy has rarely been equaled. His mix of noir cynicism with an empathetic view of human vulnerability makes for a strangely heartbreaking reading experience. Here’s a quote from The Zebra-Striped Hearse:
“The striped hearse was standing empty among some other cars off the highway above Zuma. I parked behind it and went down to the beach to search for its owner. Bonfires were scattered along the shore, like the bivouacs of nomad tribes or nuclear war survivors. The tide was high and the breakers loomed up marbled black and fell white out of oceanic darkness.”
Your readers might also be interested to know that in 2009, two American mystery writers and a French journalist made a starting discovery:: Some sixteen minutes into Double Indemnity, Raymond Candler makes a brief uncredited appearance. How strange it is that some sixty-five years after the film’s initial release (and after years of intense study of this landmark film noir), the presence of this cameo should first be detected and reported by two unrelated parties in different countries. Follow this link to an article in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jun/05/raymond-chandler-double-indemnity-cameo
Also, the scene in question appears in a YouTube video, at normal speed and in slow motion: http://youtu.be/vN9THMXxndw
Ross MacDonald 1915-1983
Still, all in all, I got a chance to sing the praises of Ross MacDonald, a writer whose work I deeply admire.
I also took the opportunity to present my own take on literary Los Angeles in a post entitled Los Angeles in literature.
Recent articles of interest
First – This speaks for itself. I found it very moving:
“Site of Holy Ark Uncovered in Excavations of Great Synagogue in Vilnius”
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John Granger is obviously a great proponent of the Harry Potter opus. But in “Imagining the World Without Harry Potter,” is he going a bit too far in crediting J.K. Rowling’s magnum opus with saving the habit of reading on Planet Earth? I’m not sure…. (As a great fan of crime fiction, I understand only too well the craving for story that is ingrained in the human psyche.)
I myself have read only the first of the Harry Potter books – actually listened, to Jim Dale’s marvelous performance on audiobook. When I started the second, I found I was not inclined to go on with it. Nevertheless, I have great respect for Rowling’s achievement, and for the pleasure she’s given to so many readers.
At any rate, Granger’s article is provocative – especially when he castigates the likes of A.S. Byatt, Donald Bathelme, and John Barth – whose Sot Weed Factor I love, BTW – for disdaining the art of storytelling, preferring instead to bore readers senseless with their “literary experiments.”
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I feel no ambivalence about Carol J. Adams’s delightful “Five Myths about Jane Austen.” This piece may precipitate yet another Jane Attack. I’ve already read through the entire canon twice; is Round Three in the offing, perhaps..? Revisiting these wonderful works via audiobook is a distinct possibility, I’d say!
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And speaking of the canon, Simon Schama, Britain’s gift to these shores, reminds us in this recent Newsweek article of the continuing – might one say, eternal? – relevance of Shakespeare to American life.
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And finally, no one is going to accuse Harold Bloom of reticence in expressing his views on the Zeitgeist in general and literature in particular. For example, the following appears in How To Read and Why (2000):
…Maupassant is the best of the really ‘popular’ story-writers, vastly superior to O. Henry (who could be quite good) and greatly preferable to the abominable Poe….
Whether Maupassant can make us see what we could never have seen without him, I very much doubt. That calls for the genius of Shakespeare, or of Chekhov.
That’s Maupassant damned with faint praise and Poe dismissed out of hand! Along with many others, I have a deep regard for the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Moreover, in the past year I’ve read a story – “Looking Back” – and a novel – A Life – both by Maupassant and both quite simply superb. I’ll have more to say about them in a later post.
When I found out that Harold Bloom had a new book out – The Anatomy of Influence – I was not sure that I wished to attempt it. But then, upon reading “3 Books on Literary Criticism” by Michael Lindgren, I thought I might reconsider. This is mainly due to Lindgren’s quoting Bloom’s assessment of contemporary culture; namely, that it is racing “down the cliffs to intellectual suicide in the gray ocean of the Internet.”
Wow.
In fairness, Harold Bloom wrote one of my all time favorite works of literary criticism: 
Book news & reviews
These reviews bumped two titles up to the top of my to-read list:
In his review of Started Early, Took My Dog, Kevin Allman compares Kate Atkinson to Ruth Rendell. Judging by my reading of Case Histories and When Will There Be Good News, the comparison is apt. Speaking for myself, this is about the highest praise I can give to a writer of crime fiction.
Michael Dirda speaks of Richard Holmes’s stellar The Age of Wonder as a precursor to the The Philosophical’ Breakfast Club by Laura Snyder.
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Maureen Corrigan has some reservations about the latest by Chelsea Cain, an author whom I’ve not read. But I love what she says about The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers:
The problem with reviewing mysteries is that one can’t talk about who-(or what)-dun-it, yet sometimes the story’s ultimate value rests on that revelation. Take Dorothy Sayers’s 1934 classic, “The Nine Tailors.” If you’ve read it, you know what I’m talking about; if you haven’t read it, do so. Now. The atmosphere of the English fen country in the novel is haunting, and the character of Lord Peter Wimsey is, as always, blandly erudite. The ending, however, in which the murderer is unmasked, is so brilliant that it boosts Sayers’s creeper into the Golden Age of Mystery Hall of Fame.
I second Corrigan’s exhortation, but with a warning: it’s easy to get bogged down in the lengthy exegesis on campanology with which the book opens. One way to assist with this difficulty (besides skimming, the obvious one!) would be to listen to Ian Carmichael’s splendid reading. Carmichael portrayed Lord Peter Wimsey in five of the novels in that classic series. These are readily available on DVD and also highly recommended. Here’s a clip from The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club:
(There’s an interesting piece on the PBS site detailing the way in which these films, originally made for Masterpiece Theatre, provided the impetus for the creation of Mystery!)
In a recent Newsweek article entitled “Please Stop Writing!”, Susan Cheever bemoans the tendency of certain authors to continue producing novels in a series that has clearly run out of steam. She has her own examples to offer, but she also makes you think about your own favorite writers and their respective series. Are any of those that you read regularly starting to seem tired and/or stale and/or derivative?
Personally, I’d have to say I’m having the opposite experience. I am deeply impressed by certain contemporary writers who are maintaining an exceptionally high standard with every book they produce: Donna Leon, Alexander McCall Smith, Peter Turnbull, Archer Mayor, Robert Barnard, and Ruth Rendell, to name a few.
And speaking of exceptionally high standards, I’d like to put in a plug for International Anita Brookner Day. The immediate object of this fine event, co-hosted by Thomas at My Porch and Simon of Savidge Reads (a fellow WordPress blogger; Hi, Simon!), is to get folks to read at least one of Ms Brookner’s novels by July 16, which happens to be the author’s 83rd birthday. Tantalizingly, Thomas alerts us to “expect prizes!!”
Here’s the entry for Anita Brookner on the Contemporary Writers site. All her novels are listed, as well as her nonfiction works on art history. In an article posted in this space two years ago, I listed some of my personal favorites from her oeuvre.
I hereby beg your indulgence…
…as I emerge from a weekend of intense immersion in Baby Love:
Efforts to feed Etta mashed bananas met with only moderate success (see above). Fun was had by all parties anyway. Rolling over practice went better, with parents and grandmother cheering her on from the sidelines. (Video to follow, at some point.)
Okay. I’m done. Except for missing her powerfully, from the moment I left for the airport on Sunday.
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As a result of this delightful interlude, I have fallen behind where adding content to this blog is concerned. No, I didn’t stop reading – I never stop reading – but the experience took on a fragmentary nature. I need to get back on track, if only to keep myself grounded until I see my granddaughter again.
I have a confession to make: until Etta was born, I was often times impatient with people whose brains seemed to get mushy as soon as they became grandparents. But when I first took Etta Lin in my arms, I was astonished at the sudden uprush of feeling. I know now, as I should have known at the outset, that as long as you live, life will keep teaching you things. The lesson this time? It is difficult, if not impossible, to know in advance how you will feel about an event you’re experiencing for the first time.
Oddly enough, I find myself reflecting on Ebenezer Scrooge in The Christmas Carol. This powerful fable shows us that grace and enlightenment can come at any time in life. In Scrooge’s case, it arrived just barely in time. He became a sentimental lover of life in general, and of Tiny Tim in particular, and he didn’t care who knew it:
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
This is the edition that I own and recommend. Published by W.W. Norton & Co.
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Blog posts on the following are in the works:
In the meantime, I’d like to recommend several articles:
From The New Yorker of February 14: Middlemarch and Me: What George Eliot Teaches Us, by Rebecca Mead. I so enjoyed reading about George Eliot’s life and work in Phyllis Rose’s Parallel Lives. At the time, I was reminded of the riches I’ve encountered in her novels: Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Daniel Deronda – and of course, Middlemarch. Now Mead’s marvelous piece has evoked in me a desire to revisit Eliot’s masterpiece.
From the March issue of The Atlantic, a magazine whose coverage of books and the arts remains superb, I learned of the publication of this landmark work on the architecture of Dankmar Adler (1844-1900) and Louis Sullivan (1856-1924). 
I’ve become interested in the buildings of Chicago since my son Ben took up residence there in 1997. I have another reason to be interested in Louis Sullivan. He was a principal designer of the Harold C. Bradley House in Madison, Wisconsin. Built in 1909, ownership of this domicile passed to the Sigma Phi Society in 1915. While attending the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Ben was a member of that fraternity and enjoyed the privilege of living in that gracious abode, along with his fraternity brothers, for nearly all of his time there as an undergraduate. Devastated by a fire in 1972, the building was completely restored and 1976 became the first National Historical Landmark in Madison (a delightful city which I miss visiting).
The Bradley House in 1975
Benjamin Schwarz, author of this review, has this to say about Louis Sullivan:
Along with his protege and one-time chief draftsman, Frank Lloyd Wright, he is universally hailed as the greatest architect to emerge from Chicago, the city that has produced America’s greatest architecture.
Also in this issue is a brief but eloquent piece by Schwarz on The Hare with Amber Eyes, a book that continues to haunt me.
Finally, in “Those Things with Feathers,” writer Mark Bowden chronicles his experience trying to raise guinea fowl in accordance with advice gleaned online. How does it turn out? Here’s the article’s subtitle: “The author’s guinea fowl defy the internet and stage a comeback.” Read it. Really! And be sure to watch the accompanying video.
Gleanings from the Sunday papers
Here are a couple of reasons why I still love the Sunday papers. I mean the real, hard copy newspapers, the ones that rustle and crackle in your hands.
First, from the online magazine Slate, reprinted in the Washington Post:
In his thought-provoking “Death of a Salesman. Of Lots of The, Actually”, James Ledbetter explains how the loss of sales jobs is contributing to the so-called “hollowing out” of the middle class.
Poor Willy Loman, with his heavy load and sagging shoulders. Written in 1949, Death of a Salesman helped usher in a period of high earnestness and lack of irony that characterized much of American literature at mid century. It has never been one of my favorite works. But it is hard to look at Willy’s posture of utter defeat and not feel compassion – nor to recall Linda Loman’s wailing cry, echoing down the years: “Attention, attention must be paid to such a person!” – and not be affected.
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The first thing I usually do with my newspapers – Sunday or otherwise – is to consign the sports pages to the recycling pile. (That is, unless there’s news of a major horse race.) Every once in a great while, though, an article on baseball breaks through, as it did on Sunday in the New York Times. What really caught my eye on this occasion, though, was this picture: 
. It was John Updike in his youth. I’d know him anywhere.
I have happy memories of baseball fandom from my childhood. My team was the Yankees, but “Tribute to a Hero in Twilight” is about the Boston Red Sox. More specifically, it is about Ted Williams’s last time at bat in 1960, and the essay Updike subsequently wrote about it:
Only 10,455 fans turned up to say goodbye to Williams, who was 42, hobbled by aches and pains. Among them, sitting behind third base, was 28-year-old John Updike, who had actually scheduled an adulterous assignation that day. But when he reached the woman’s apartment, on Beacon Hill, he found that he had been stood up: no one was home. “So I went, as promised, to the game,” he wrote years later, “and my virtue was rewarded.”
Several days later, he wrote “Hub Fans Bid the Kid Adieu.” Appearing originally in The New Yorker, “Hub Fans” was widely reprinted and has since become a classic.
The piece begins wonderfully with Updike’s oft-quoted description of Fenway Park as “lyric little bandbox of a ballpark.” It only gets better as it goes along, building in intensity to the final, climactic moment, when Williams achieves his apotheosis at the very end of his Major League career:
Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs—hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn’t tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted “We want Ted” for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.
Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams is published by Library of America.
“Totally Hip Video Book reviewer!” – Ron Charles
While I’m in between posts, let me commend to you Ron Charles’s delightful video review of Mona Simpson’s My Hollywood:
Ron Charles has long been one of my favorite reviewers for the Washington Post Book World. This new format seems to suit him beautifully. I look forward to the next video – keep ‘em coming, Ron!
Newsweek’s book issue (August 2, 2010)
One is, of course, grateful to Newsweek for doing this. First, in his editorial, Jon Meacham writes about the pleasure he takes in the reading of crime fiction. A friend’s condescending dismissal of the genre caused him to reflect on why he enjoys it so much. He names some favorite authors – Rex Stout, Tana French, Denise Mina, and Lee Child among them – and even weighs in on the much-discussed question of the difference between mysteries and thrillers.
I particular like – and agree with – this:
The appeal of both genres for me is precisely the appeal of any other piece of fiction, from Jane Austen to Peter Taylor, or George Eliot to John Cheever. The narratives give us a glimpse, however fleeting, of what William Faulkner called the “old verities and truths of the heart…?love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.”
Later in the issue, there’s an annotated list of What You Need To Read Now. The categories are interesting: Rebels with a Cause; Economic Survival; Immigration; Man-made Disasters; Adultery; Food Wars; Taliban Territory; The Pope. Each category has four or five entries.
Whenever I see a list like this, I check first to see what I’ve already read. Here’s the breakdown:
In Rebels with a Cause: None. In Economic Survival: None. In Immigration: One: Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, a book I enjoyed but did not consider to be about immigration – at least, not primarily. In Man-made Disasters: None. In Adultery: Three: The Awakening by Kate Chopin, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The End of the Affair by Graham Greene. In Food Wars: One: Michael Pollan’s wonderful path breaking manifesto, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. As for the last two – Taliban Territory and The Pope: None, alas.
As a category representing my personal reading taste, adultery is the clear winner. In real life, it has been my experience that extramarital activity is a form of self-indulgence characterized by excuse-making and deception, guaranteed to cause pain for the individuals affected by it. But there’s no getting around the attendant penchant for high drama, both in life and in literature. After all, to the suggestions in this issue of Newsweek could be added Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary.
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At the conclusion of his piece, Jon Meacham suggests that we readers make further recommendations of crime fiction to his “hapless friend.” My first response to this was the following: Donna Leon, Donna Leon, and Donna Leon. But no – there are, of course others: Alexander McCall Smith, both the No.1 Ladies Detective novels and the Isabel Dalhousie series; Archer Mayor‘s wonderfully intelligent procedurals; Ross MacDonald, whose crafty plotting and eloquently spare prose style brought the American private eye tradition to its zenith; Karin Fossum, a Norwegian whose novels probe the universal pain and longing inherent in the human condition; Steven Saylor, whose stories of ancient Rome are both enlightening and great fun to read; and Ruth Rendell, with her sly, ironic, dead-on depiction of the vagaries of the heart and mind. Enfin – there are so many, many more!
I too know passionate readers who disdain crime fiction. They are of course entitled to their opinions. But crime fiction is where I encounter the most ingenious plotting, the most evocative creation of atmosphere, the most memorable characters, the best writing. It’s as simple – and as complex – as that.
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Newsweek has recently been purchased by Sidney Harman, a pioneer in high fidelity and hero to my husband the audiophile. This is also the moment that Jon Meacham has chosen for his departure from the magazine, where he has been managing editor since 1998. I have been enjoying his enlightened, beautifully written articles. I am sad to see him go and wish him the best of luck in his new endeavors.
Jon Meacham
As for Newsweek itself, I’ve had my issues with some of its issues over the years. I’ve been happier lately since the magazine has scaled back its rather intense focus on health, diet, and medicine ( or “health and nutrition – its prevention and cure,” as my husband gleefully refers to it). I’ve been a subscriber since my college days in the 1960s, and I plan to continue as such, for the foreseeable future.
In Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine: much ado about thrillers
In the Spring 2010 issue of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, the focus is on thrillers. To begin with, editor George Easter tackles the question: What, exactly, is a thriller? Some years ago, he and associate editor Larry Gandle came up with the following: in order to be classified as a thriller, a novel should be fast paced, contain lots of action, and possibly feature a deadline and/or a chase scene. There should be at least one character who is in serious, possibly mortal, danger.
Gandle and Easter were satisfied with the definition they’d come up with and proceeded to act as ad hoc “thriller police” when novels labeled as such failed to meet their criteria. Gradually, however, they realized that they were fighting a losing battle. Book after book was being called a thriller when it possessed few – sometimes none – of the elements they had specified. Why was this happening?
For one thing, thrillers are hot right now – witness the impressive success of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. So slapping that label on a book should help sales. Does it – even if Larsson is not the author? Don’t know – but this is certainly not the first instance of knee-jerk unimaginative piling on by publishers – nor will it be the last.
So – in attempting to uphold a standard of integrity and accuracy in matters literary – what’s a critic to do?
Easter wrestles this conundrum to the ground by breaking down the sprawling mass of material currently subsumed under the “thriller” rubric into a variety of subgenres. He does not offer definitions per se; rather, he gives several examples of each. Here are the subgenres; I’ll include one example of each:
Action thrillers: 
Historical thrillers: 
Police procedural thrllers: 
Private eye thrillers: 
Forensic/action thrillers: 
Political thrillers: 
Spy thrillers: 
Supernatural thrillers: 
Hit man thrillers: 
Crime thrillers: 
Analogous subgenres have, of course, had their place in mystery fiction for quite some time.
The title of Easter’s article is “The Golden Age of the Thriller is Now.” Considering the wealth of evidence presented in the magazine, it’s hard to disagree with this proclamation. In fact, this issue of Deadly Pleasures contained so many recommendations – so sweetly urged! – that I experienced a sort of crisis that could perhaps be termed, Compulsive Reader’s Nervous Breakdown (CRNB?). And wouldn’t you know it – there was more to come:
In “Memories of Thrillers Past,” Mike Ripley enthuses about his latest publishing assignment, which is to select outstanding British thrillers from years past and have them be part of a new imprint called “Top Notch Thrillers,” to be launched by Ostara Publishing. Ripley begins by voicing his incredulity that the novels of the great Alistair MacLean are currently out of print. Now I’ve never read a MacLean, but many of us who came of age in the sixties have vivid memories of a terrific World War Two action film based on his novel: The Guns of Navarone.
(Coincidentally, while I was working at the Central library several weeks ago, a patron came in asking for novels by MacLean. A search of the catalog revealed that the system owns exactly one title by this master of suspense: Santorini, written shortly before the author’s death in 1987.)
Like the other Deadly Pleasures scribes, Ripley has given plenty of thought to the question of what makes a successful thriller:
‘…plot, pace, character, setting (which could be a physical location or a historical period), humour (useful though not essential) and suspense (or tension or sudden violence). The cement to build these bricks into a readable structure coming from that indefinable thing called the author’s “voice.”
I consider that last “indefinable thing” to be absolutely crucial. It’s what is so often lacking in an otherwise passably good novel. It is, among other things, the consistent quality that keeps me returning to the work of Ruth Rendell and Donna Leon.
In the case of the books Ripley is selecting for the new imprint, there’s an additional consideration: he is drawing on the literature of the past, as opposed to that of the present day, which by necessity incorporates the latest in high tech gadgetry:
My mission, now that I had decided to accept it, was to find thrillers which touched all these bases [as enumerated in the quote above] and which were true to the context in which they were written. Yes they would be ‘dated’ but as long as they worked as thrillers that was not a consideration. To think otherwise would be to argue that no one should ever watch (or read) The Spy Who Came In from the Cold now that the Berlin Wall has come down.
(And really, when you think about it, has there ever been a better match of era and writer than the Cold War and John LeCarre? I’ve never read The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, but IMHO, the film is a work of genius. )
Clearly, Mike Ripley is reveling in this labor of love! Click here to see the current list of Top Notch Thrillers.
There’s much more of interest on the subject of thrillers in this issue of Deadly Pleasures. For now, I just want to make mention of two titles in particular.
I’m not sure why, but I decided to read The Silver Bear, George Easter’s exemplar of what he calls a “hit man thriller.” Suffice it to say that with this recommendation, Easter scored a direct hit. I had not previously known of Derek Haas. He is a screenwriter, and my guess is, that his professional savvy, along with his natural talent, have provided him with all the tools he needs to be a first rate writer in this genre. Silver Bear jangled my nerves and had me completely riveted
Interestingly, in an article entitled “Crime Jazz,” Ted Fitzgerald recommends The Valley of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Somehow this Sherlock Holmes novella is not much talked of. Here’s what Fitzgerald has to say about it:
It’s good, old-fashioned rip-roaring storytelling that also shows the timelessness, resiliency and eternal appeal of Holmes and Doyle. It also reminds us that the subjects of political corruption, terrorism and a faceless enemy that will cross oceans and waits decades to carry out its vengeance, the meat and drink of countless present-day thrillers, were just as frightening and relevant in 1914 as they are today.
The Valley of Fear has been re-issued by Hard Case Crime:
How about that cover? It’s an attention-getter, at any rate.
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I’ll be revisiting the subject of thrillers. For one thing, I have much to say about The Silver Bear, a novel that packs a wallop all out of proportion to its slender size. And then, there’s this: 
. I was so excited about this book that I ran and bought it. But after my dizzying immersion in Deadly Pleasures, I’m afraid to open it, lest it trigger another attack of CRNB! (see above.)
Dartmoor hill ponies
This photo appears in Beautiful Britain, a magazine to which I happily subscribe. Click on “The Great Moor”, under “Sample articles.” (And isn’t that viewer a felicitous blend of old media and new).
The ponies look like something out of a fairy story; they seem by their very existence to confer a blessing.
Several interesting articles about the current state of books and reading
In “The Vestigial Tale, “ Joel Achenbach explores the way in which the new technologies pose a danger to our powers of concentration.
In “Good Books Don’t Have To Be Hard,” Lev Grossman talks about our love of – and need for – a good story:
“The novel is getting entertaining again. Writers like Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Donna Tartt, Kelly Link, Audrey Niffenegger, Richard Price, Kate Atkinson, Neil Gaiman, and Susanna Clarke, to name just a few, are busily grafting the sophisticated, intensely aware literary language of Modernism onto the sturdy narrative roots of genre fiction: fantasy, science fiction, detective fiction, romance.
What can one say, except – Hurray!
Finally, here’s Hilary Mantel on historical fiction. It’s a subject about which she’s knowledgeable, having recently won the Man Booker Prize for Wolf Hall, her sprawling novel of the Tudor era. 
Her piece in The Guardian opens thus: “Hans Holbein appeared to me in a dream, instantly recognisable because of the unflattering hat, like a flat shower cap, that he wears in his self-portrait.”
I’ve just started Wolf Hall, and I am already pumped. Methinks this novel is going to be one wild, terrific ride!
