Saturday, February 12, 2011
Book Suggestion: Wicked by Gregory Maguire
Born with green skin and huge teeth, like a dragon, the free-spirited Elphaba grows up to be an anti-totalitarian agitator, an animal-rights activist, a nun, then a nurse who tends the dying?and, ultimately, the headstrong Wicked Witch of the West in the land of Oz. Maguire's strange and imaginative postmodernist fable uses L. Frank Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a springboard to create a tense realm inhabited by humans, talking animals (a rhino librarian, a goat physician), Munchkinlanders, dwarves and various tribes. The Wizard of Oz, emperor of this dystopian dictatorship, promotes Industrial Modern architecture and restricts animals' right to freedom of travel; his holy book is an ancient manuscript of magic that was clairvoyantly located by Madam Blavatsky 40 years earlier. Much of the narrative concerns Elphaba's troubled youth (she is raised by a giddy alcoholic mother and a hermitlike minister father who transmits to her his habits of loathing and self-hatred) and with her student years. Dorothy appears only near novel's end, as her house crash-lands on Elphaba's sister, the Wicked Witch of the East, in an accident that sets Elphaba on the trail of the girl from Kansas?as well as the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman and the Lion?and her fabulous new shoes. Maguire combines puckish humor and bracing pessimism in this fantastical meditation on good and evil, God and free will, which should, despite being far removed in spirit from the Baum books, captivate devotees of fantasy.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
4th Millennium book
The level of intrigue and intense fascination surrounding the fate of Stieg Larsson’s unfinished fourth and final Millennium novel has become a mystery worthy of Lisbeth Salander herself. But alas today’s flurry of reports about the imminent posthumous publication of a fourth and final Millennium novel were inaccurate and premature. “There is no fourth book from Stieg Larsson on the horizon,” said Paul Bogaards, Senior VP of Publicity, Promotion and Media Relations at Alfred A. Knopf. “Only the estate, controlled by his family (Joakim and Erland Larsson), can authorize publication of a fourth book, and they have no intention of doing so at the moment.”
The source of the brushfire of speculation (and hopeful blogging) appears to have originated with a leaked copy of Eva Gabrielsson’s upcoming memoir, Stieg and Me (due to be published this week in France and Scandinavia and on June 21 in the U.S.). The Guardian quotes Gabrielsson saying that she hopes to finish the fourth Millennium installment and feels entitled to do so because “Stieg and I often wrote together.”
Be that as it may, Gabrielsson is clearly engaging in a little wishful thinking of her own, given that she is not in a position to make any legally binding decisions concerning Larsson’s literary legacy. That right rests solely and solidly with the author’s father and brother, Erland and Joakim Larsson, who inherited full control over Stieg’s estate when he died in 2004. However Gabrielsson, continues to contest the Larssons’ jurisdiction over Stieg’s work, based on her thirty-two year relationship with the author. However, because they never officially married, Gabrielsson has no legal right to anything in Stieg Larsson’s estate — and that includes publishing a book with his name on it as author.
Still, the door has not been completely slammed shut on the prospect of that mythical fourth Millennium novel ever finding it’s way into print. It’s clear from the ambiguous language in Random House’s statement (i.e. “on the horizon” and “at the moment”) that the keepers of the Stieg flame have not ruled out coming to an agreement with Gabrielsson (who claims she possesses the laptop containing the unpublished manuscript). But, for the time being, that horizon is still too far off to see clearly.
The source of the brushfire of speculation (and hopeful blogging) appears to have originated with a leaked copy of Eva Gabrielsson’s upcoming memoir, Stieg and Me (due to be published this week in France and Scandinavia and on June 21 in the U.S.). The Guardian quotes Gabrielsson saying that she hopes to finish the fourth Millennium installment and feels entitled to do so because “Stieg and I often wrote together.”
Be that as it may, Gabrielsson is clearly engaging in a little wishful thinking of her own, given that she is not in a position to make any legally binding decisions concerning Larsson’s literary legacy. That right rests solely and solidly with the author’s father and brother, Erland and Joakim Larsson, who inherited full control over Stieg’s estate when he died in 2004. However Gabrielsson, continues to contest the Larssons’ jurisdiction over Stieg’s work, based on her thirty-two year relationship with the author. However, because they never officially married, Gabrielsson has no legal right to anything in Stieg Larsson’s estate — and that includes publishing a book with his name on it as author.
Still, the door has not been completely slammed shut on the prospect of that mythical fourth Millennium novel ever finding it’s way into print. It’s clear from the ambiguous language in Random House’s statement (i.e. “on the horizon” and “at the moment”) that the keepers of the Stieg flame have not ruled out coming to an agreement with Gabrielsson (who claims she possesses the laptop containing the unpublished manuscript). But, for the time being, that horizon is still too far off to see clearly.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
The Great Gatsby
A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Self-made,
self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his
country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise
of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future
that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no
matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And
one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace
becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.
It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion
for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when
Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished
officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries
the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby
devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to
the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of
money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous
self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his
country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise
of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future
that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no
matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And
one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace
becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.
It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion
for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when
Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished
officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries
the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby
devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to
the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of
money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous
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