Stingy Kids

Batya Gur

I just came across this news: Israeli novelist Batya Gur died of cancer on Thursday, March 19. Gur's writing career began in 1988 (at the age of 39!) with the publication of Saturday Morning Murder, a novel which introduced the detective Michael Ohayon to the Israeli reading public. Gur was not the first writer of detective fiction in Hebrew but she is credited for the wide readership and high-literary status the genre would attain in the late 1980s. But, like many great writers of detective fiction, Gur also used her popular status to address contemporary Israeli issues, deftly integrating the conventions of detective fiction with social and political criticism. We are moving in a few days and all of my Israeli novels are in boxes, including Gur's Saturday Morning Murder (Retsach be-shabat ba-boker), so a more substantial post will have to wait. I will have more to write in the next week, but for now I would just like to acknowledge and remember Gur's legacy.

Links:

* "Ani Michael Ochayon ba-guf shel isha" [I am Michael Ohayon in a woman's body.] (via Ha-arets, in Hebrew)

* "Ha-makom she-bo anu tsodekim" (a review [also in Hebrew] of Gur's novel Even tachat even [Stone under stone] by Na'ama Carmi)

Criticism

Edward Said's 1971 review of George Steiner's Extraterritorial begins by observing that "if critics were to be turned into parlor games, George Steiner would be Monopoly."

"Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit it to imitate the sayers." Thus wrote Emerson.

Sarah Maguire: "This should come as no surprise: all revolutions in English poetry have occurred via translations, when poets have unequivocally embraced what is distant and unfamiliar." ("Translation")

"There's something fundamentally barren about a culture that expressly discourages play, not to mention 'experimentation,' in its literature and poetry." ("Flotsam vs. The Ulcer Diet" by Christopher Sorrentino)

Sound Your Poem in Silence

"I don't mourn the lone-ness of it for poetry. In fact, I couldn't do it any other way and I have the presumption to feel that others writing should retire unto themselves deeper than they do."—Lorine Niedecker to Cid Corman

Quoted in "Old Sunflower, You Bowed to No One: Poet Lorine Niedecker" by Jeffrey Beam (Oyster Boy Review 17)

Getting It On

Ever since David reviewed MJ Rose's The Halo Effect for the Virtual Book Tour, he has been receiving books-for-review from various publishers. At first, I was consumed with envy and more than once uttered, unjustly, "how is it that YOU get books for free when I am the one studying literature!" It isn't fair. David is as much a bibliophile as I am, and thanks to the fact that our tastes do differ, I have a plethora of New York City related books on my shelf, including two copies of The Power Broker. This week another book arrived, and now I have to admit that I feel no envy. These books are crap. Let's take a look:

1. The Bitch Posse by Martha O'Connor

What it's about: A group of female friends and the story of their bond, which was "so all-encompassing that some would call it dangerous" (or Foxfire). The front cover of this "anthem for friendships" declares, in text that rises and falls along the boobs of a young woman, "astonishing and truly remarkable..." And if you manage to extricate your eye from the distraction of the model's buxom, what follows is a strongly worded comparison to Donna Tartt and Alice Sebold. By the time you reach the front flap, if you are not arrested in your tracks by the model's thigh, it becomes very clear that this novel has been aggressively marketed to evoke these comparisons. Let me be more precise: it has been "produced" to reign in readers of Tartt and Sebold (both of whom are high-calibre writers). This book, and the others I skewer below, are like an Ashley Simpson single, the concoction of a savvy agent. I did try to read this but only made it as far as "grabs his ass" (pg.3). For its haunting exploration of "dangerous, female bonds," I recommend: The Daughters of Eve by Louis Duncan.

2. The Sex Doctors in the Basement by Molly Jong-Fast

What it's about: Molly Jong-Fast wishes her mother had been more famous. Seriously. "I wrote the book to help the children of the sort-of-famous. I wrote this to deal with my childhood. Perhaps the problem was not that I had a famous mother but that I didn't have a famous enough mother. Perhaps not being in the spotlight had ruined me from a young age." I hear you, MJF. When I was about a year old, my parents were strolling through a DC park when they came upon George Hamilton filming a movie! They asked him to pose for a photograph--and he did! I have a photograph of George Hamilton--touching my butt! That was the last--the only--time we touched. The memory of that proximity to celebrity, never again to be attained, has scarred me for life. I should write about it. Oh wait, I just did. Can someone give me $1000 for this post? Or throw me a party?

3. My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler

What it's about: Chelsea Handler loves to sleep with men..."lots of them..." and then tell people all about it. To be fair, Handler is a stand-up comedien and her one-night stands are good fodder for bits. So perhaps these tales would work better if I read them out loud. I try this but the stories ramble too much to work as snappy anecdotes and fall very short of being quality literary pieces. I also don't care for the cover art which features Handler posing in bed like she's selling me a CD and not a book. "Do you think that's why they sent it to me?" asks David.

Cover art as porn? "The Bitch Posse" certainly titillates in a way that the fading yellow of my Benjamin tomes never will. But in the end, what matters most is what lies between the...ahem...sheets.