The New Kings of Nonfiction

Since most of the books I buy these days are from secondhand stores, the one I'm reading now is a little old but still good. It's called "The New Kings of Nonfiction," and it was edited by This American Life host Ira Glass. When it was published in 2007, it was heralded as a collection of stories that capture "some of the best storytelling of this golden age of nonfiction."

It includes authors Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Pollan, the late David Foster Wallace and a number of other male writers. Surprisingly, one of my favorite female writers -- Susan Orlean -- is also in the mix. I wouldn't call Orlean a King but rather a Journalism Goddess. Her profiles in the New Yorker have become legendary, full of insights and scenes that make her subjects come alive.

The "New Kings" book includes Orlean's article "The American Man, Age Ten," which she wrote for Esquire Magazine. It's a profile of a boy named Colin Duffy.

A snippet: "Here are the particulars about Colin Duffy: He is ten years old, on the nose. He is four feet eight inches high, weighs seventy-five pounds, and appears to be mostly leg and shoulder blade....I have rarely seen him without a baseball cap. He owns several, but favors a University of Michigan Wolverines model, on account of its pleasing colors. The hat styles his hair into wild disarray. If you ever managed to get the hat off his head, you would see a boy with a nimbus of golden-brown hair, dented in the back..."

After I finish "New Kings" I want to re-read "The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup," Orlean's compilation of some of her favorite profiles. (Her essay on the taxidermy convention is the best!)

What are you reading this week?

(Illustration by Contemporary Collage and for sale, as a refrigerator magnet, on Etsy.)

Christopher Hitchens on how to make a decent cup of tea

Christopher Hitchens over the weekend wrote a story for Slate on the proper way to make tea.

"It is already virtually impossible in the United States, unless you undertake the job yourself, to get a cup or pot of tea that tastes remotely as it ought to," he complains. "It's quite common to be served a cup or a pot of water, well off the boil, with the tea bags lying on an adjacent cold plate... The drink itself is then best thrown away, though if swallowed, it will have about the same effect on morale as a reading of the memoirs of President James Earl Carter."

Hitchens relies (mostly) on George Orwell's tips for tea making.

They include:

*Always use Indian or Ceylonese—i.e., Sri Lankan—tea.
*Make tea only in small quantities.
*Avoid silverware pots.
*If you use a pot at all, make sure it is pre-warmed. (Hitchens adds: do the same thing even if you are only using a cup or a mug.)
*Stir the tea before letting it steep.
*MOST IMPORTANT: "Take the teapot to the kettle, and not the other way about. The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact."
*If you use milk, make sure it's the least creamy type. ("And do not put the milk in the cup first—family feuds have lasted generations over this—because you will almost certainly put in too much," Hitchens says.)
*A "decent cylindrical mug" is best.

Finally, Hitchens believes brown sugar or honey are "permissible and sometimes necessary," even though Orwell would probably disagree.


And there you have it.

(Photo by Le Portillon.)

Hitch

Hello my dears,

Have you been following journalist and critic Christopher Hitchens' courageous stories about living with stage four cancer?

Hitchens' illness was discovered when he collapsed at the beginning of a national tour earlier this year to promote his autobiography, "Hitch 22". Since then, he has written with humor, intelligence and unflinching honesty about life in what he calls "Tumortown" in a remarkable  series of columns for Vanity Fair.

How serious is his condition? Well, as he likes to point out, there are no stage five cancers.

Again and again during his illness, he has returned to the consolations of great literature. In a Guardian interview over the weekend, Hitchens says that when he conceives his life's work--all the journalism and debates and polemics--he thinks of it as a defense of civilization by which he means, first of all, literature.

(Photo, above, from Vanity Fair.)

Paris Review: Author Interviews

The Paris Review has long been known for its wonderful writer profiles. Now, thanks to the Internet, you can access all the pieces online. I've compiled a little selection below:


Isak Dinesen..........Truman Capote..........Arthur Miller

Graham Greene..........Dorothy Parker..........Ernest Hemingway

Jorge Luis Borges..........William Faulkner..........Evelyn Waugh

The author illustrations, by the way, were done by Spanish artist Fernando Vicente Retratos. More of his work here.

Amis and Fonseca

One of my favorite stories from the weekend papers: A Wall Street Journal Magazine profile of novelists Martin Amis and Isabel Fonseca. The two discuss the pleasures of reading, writing and their marriage.

"Being married to one of Britain's most celebrated authors could be a disappearing act for some women," writes author Ariel Leve. "But the American Fonseca, 49, is an impressive writer herself. Amis, 61, married both a muse and an equal, and they are mutually supportive...."

I love this quote from Amis on Fonseca: "I rely tremendously on her beauty. She looks very nice when she's asleep and she wakes with a smile. It's an extraordinary thing. It's very unfair, as all things to do with beauty are, but it's a fact. I rely on it for joie de vivre. It's proof of her equilibrium as well. Your happiness determines your demeanor in the world."

See the full story here.

And a list of Amis' books and Fonseca's.

(Photo above by Simon Upton for the WSJ.)

Happy Monday everyone!

The Impossible Cool of Patti Smith

It's awards season for the books industry, and today the National Book Foundation announced its twenty finalists for the National Book Awards. Among those included in the non-fiction category is Patti Smith's autobiography "Just Kids," covering her years as muse to photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.


Reviewer Tom Nissley sums up "Just Kids" so beautifully:

"Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe weren't always famous, but they always thought they would be. They found each other, adrift but determined, on the streets of New York City in the late '60s and made a pact to keep each other afloat until they found their voices--or the world was ready to hear them.

"Mapplethorpe was quicker to find his metier, with a Polaroid and then a Hasselblad, but Smith was the first to fame, transformed, to her friend's delight, from a poet into a rock star. "

What is it about Patti Smith that makes her so compelling, like a young Mick Jagger?

(The National Book Award winners will be announced on Nov 17 in NYC.)

Is Jonathan Franzen all that?

The Franzen frenzy started a month ago when TIME magazine put the author on its cover and labeled him the "Great American Novelist." I finally have a copy of his new book, Freedom. (My reading this weekend). I'm anxious to see if he's really all that.

Any thoughts?

(Illustration above by Joe Ciardiello for Barnes and Noble Review.)

Damn Dan Brown

The literary blogosphere continues to buzz with angst and dismay as thousands -- or maybe even millions -- of people learned the shocking news this week that they write like ...Dan Brown. The growing outrage -- sparked by a computerized prose analysis on a obscure website called "I Write Like" -- could be the biggest controversy involving Brown since the release of his insanely successful but widely reviled book, The Da Vinci Code. (BTW, Audrey Tautou was lovely as Sophie in the movie version.)

In a move that some hoped would calm the fears, the NYT's Paper Cuts blog weighed in on the controversy Thursday with a post titled "I Write Like...Yeah Right."

"I entered my last blog post and was told I write like Edgar Allan Poe," NYT blogger Jennifer Schuessler wrote. "Pretty neat. But then a colleague plugged in a paragraph from Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher” and was told it sounded like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle."

One reader commented: "Thank you for debunking that. It told me I write like Dan Brown,
and I almost killed myself."

Brown, meanwhile, has gone into seclusion after learning that he writes like Jane Austen.

PS: Only parts of this post are true. The rest is fiction. I would like to dedicate it to Jonas (I hope you've gotten that dreadful program to finally give you Hemingway.)

Also, I have no idea who did the cartoon -- now floating freely about the Internet. (Email if you know the source.)

I write like...Kurt Vonnegut??

My friend Carolyn Kellogg at the LA Times' fantastic Jacket Copy book blog had the most clever post today. She found a website -- called I Write Like -- where you can enter a few paragraphs of your prose to find out if you write like Hemingway, Chuck Palahniuk or even Bram Stoker. (There are a bunch of other authors ranging from Stephen King to J.K. Rawlings).

Take the five-second test and let me know here how it goes!

If you write like Jane Austen, you win a special prize -- a date with Colin Firth! (Joking.)

I was surprised to learn that I write like Kurt Vonnegut. I had no idea Mr. Vonnegut used so many exclamation points in his prose, but I applaud him!!

xo


(Above photo found at F--- Yeah, Kurt Vonnegut! on Tumblr.)