LitLovers Blog

Tim Bissel is a writer and professor—a writing professor, no less!—who plays video games. In fact, he’s obsessed with them and—not only that—he considers them a budding art form. 

In his new book, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, Bissel says the games are “as gripping as any fiction I have come across”—and that Grand Theft Auto IV is  ”the most colossal creative achievement of the last 25 years.”  The interactive nature of the games is what excites him . . .

turning “narrative into an active experience,
something which film [and literature] is
unable to do in the same way.”

So it got me to thinking about the history of the novel and film. Both were once considered upstarts—and had to prove their worth against skeptics.

Right now, Bissel isn’t impressed with the “literary” skills of the videogame designers. But given time, won’t those skills—dialog and characterization—develop as they did in fiction and film?

Another thing—literary fiction is the only art form that allows us to slip the bond of our own skin and enter another’s.  When we identify with literary characters, we think as they do and  feel as they do…we BECOME those characters for the duration of the book! 

But we’re still passive participants. We’re only along for the ride.

Now think—what could it be like, say 50 years from now, to actually enter into a book or film’s action … to actively particpate … to affect its outcome?   How will that work?  I don’t know, but … I’m getting out my daughter’s old joypad to practice!

For Book Clubs
Have fun—consider what a book club might be like 50 years from now.  Will we all come with our little laptop video games?  Will we discuss what actions each took…and how we changed the direction of the plot?

Tags: Blogging & Musing by Molly Lundquist
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Jeeesh!  It’s been a long time since I posted anything on my poor blog.  Why so long?  Turns out, I’ve been reading…a lot.

Which brings up an intriguing comment by Jonathan Franzen (off all people!) in the Sunday New York Times Book Review (6/6/10). 

 

[H]aven’t we all secretly sort of come to an agreement…that novels belonged to the age of newspapers and are going the way of newspapers, only faster? 

As an old English professor friend of mine likes to say, novels are a curious moral case, in that we feel guilty about not reading more of them but also guilty about doing something as frivolous as reading them…

Okay, so it’s tongue-and-cheek.  Or not.  Still, I’m wondering…

1. Who’s the “we”—as in “we all secretly agreed”?  And why a ”secret” agreement?  (Nobody wants to talk about it?)
2. Does he really think the novel—printed and digital—is on its way out?  If so, is it being replaced with anything…like graphic novels…or the internet?
3. Are novels frivolous?
4. Has anyone told book clubs yet?
5. How are the two sentences in that quote related…are novels on the way out because they make us feel guilty (both reading…and not reading enough of them)?

Just asking. I don’t have answers…yet.

Tags: Blogging & Musing by Molly Lundquist
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If you love books on a certain theme…you’ll love Flashlight Worthy Book Recommendations, a new site that lists books thematically. So far the site has 370 different lists, in 50+ categories, with nearly 5,000 books.  Here’s a tiny sample:

Flashlight Worthy Lists 

Books About . . .
Families in Fiction and Memoir
Women of Another Era
Abraham Lincoln
Dystopia
Crime Fiction–About Women By Women
Love–That Your Club Probably Hasn’t Read Yet
African-Americans–Not Just for Black History Month
WASPS
Madness We Can All Relate to
With the Sea in Sight

So head on over to the website to find some great ideas and recommendations for your book club…or just for yourself.

Tags: Blogging & Musing by Molly Lundquist
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I just finished My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead (see our Reading Guide), a volume of 26 short love stories edited by Jeffrey Eugenides (author of Middlesex).  It’s been a long time since I sat down to read short stories, and I found it challenging.

As my friend Nan says, reading short stories is “like opening a jewel box.”  She’s right: stories are polished little gems…which is what makes them difficult. They’re written with economy—lacking the luxury of 100’s of pages for a more leisurely expansion of plot and character. Everything is compressed—precise—each word or idea contains significance, pointing to something beyond itself.  Stories are  packed with meaning.

They also tend to be dark, edgy, with more bite than longer fiction. Stories situate a character, an ordinary individual, in a moment of crisis—and within 2 to 20 pages, say, the author must resolve that crisis. Everything is intensified.

Finally, there’s the stop-and-go quality of a story collection, which as opposed to the long arc of a novel can be discomfiting. You get involved with the story and characters…only to have it end quickly.  Then on to the next story—working to come up to speed again.  It’s like establishing new friends, over and over, only to keep losing them.

But I found, reading through Eugenides volume, that the stories haunted me, out of all proportion to their length. And that’s the beauty of a short story.

For Book Clubs
Take a break from novels and try our LitCourses—each based on a single story.  The courses are short, fun, and packed with good information. You’ll find a study guide for each story—perfect to help with discussion. Take a look!

Tags: Blogging & Musing by Molly Lundquist
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If you’re a Malcolm Gladwell fan, then you’re in luck!  We have Readers Guides—with DISCUSSION QUESTIONS—for all 4 of Malcolm Gladwell’s books.  Read and discuss any of the books at your book club!

The Tipping Point    |    Blink    |    Outliers    |   What the Dog Saw   

Tags: Blogging & Musing by Molly Lundquist
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 A recent quip from the New York Times about book clubs caught my ire. It’ll probably catch yours, too. So here it is…

Gaggles of readers get together monthly to sip chardonnay and discuss the latest Oprah selection.*

Ouch. Don’t know about you, but that sounds a little…oh, I dunno… condescending? Not to get too upset about an analogy to unruly geese, but it’s kind of a potshot to all those who get together, out of a passion for literature, to talk (not honk) about something of value—books!

So…are mindless cocktail parties better? I’m Just asking…. Besides, I don’t like chardonnay; I like pinot grigio.

And what’s wrong with Oprah selections? —Breath, Eyes, Memory; Edgar Sawtelle; 3 Faulkner novels (Faulkner!); House of Sand & Fog;   We Were the Mulvaneys. That’s some pretty good reading.

To counter that unfortunate “gaggle” image (nothing against geese…understand?), I offer, again, two defenses of book clubs: one by moi and one by Joshua Henkin, author or Matrimony:

• Book Clubs—Smarter than Critics? 
  An April 2008 post on LitLovers Blog quoting Josh Henkin
• Saving the World—One Book Club at a Time
  My March 2009 guest post on the literary blog, Books on the Brain

Oh, heck…maybe I’m just over reacting. Honk. 

* Mokoto Rich. ”The Book Club with Just One Member.” New York Times, “Week in Review” section (1.24.10)

Tags: Blogging & Musing by Molly Lundquist
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A real challenge for any author is the remaking of a classic story. The new novel might set the older work in the modern era (Hamlet→ Edgar Sawtelle). Or it might use the older novel as a starting point—for a sequel, or a retelling of the story from a different perspective (Wizard of Oz→ Wicked).  Here’s what I’ve come up with so far…

Makeovers
Resetting a classic in the modern era. 

Anna Karenina ………  What Happened to Anna K by Irina Reyn
The Great Gatsby …..   Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
Hamlet ……………….. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
Howard’s End ……….  On Beauty by Zadie Smith
King Lear …………….   A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
Mrs. Dalloway ………   The Hours by Michael Cunningham
The Odyssey ………..   Ulysses by James Joyce
Pride & Prejudice ……  Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

Starting Points
Writing a sequel, ”prequel,” parody, or using a secondary character’s point of view.

A Christmas Carol ……  Mr. Timothy by Louis Bayard
Dr. Jekyll &Mr. Hyde ….   Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin        
Gone With the Wind …..  Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley
Gone  With the Wind ….. The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall
Great Expectations ……  Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
The Great Gatsby ……… The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian
The Great Gatsby………. Jack Maggs by Peter Carey
Jane Eyre ……………….. The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Ryhs
Huckleberry Finn ……….  Finn by Jon Clinch
The Illiad …………………The Human Stain by Philip Roth
King Arthur ……………..  The Mists of Avalon
Mansfield Park …………  Murder at Mansfield Park by Lynn Shepherd
Moby Dick ………………  Ahab’s Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund
Pride & Prejudice ……… Pemberley by Emma Tennant
Pride & Prejudice ……… Pride & Prejudice & Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith
Rebecca ………………… Mrs. DeWinter by Susan Hill
The Scarlet Letter ……..   Angel and Apostle by Deborah Noyes
A Tale of Two Cities …… A Far Better Rest by Susanne Alleyn
The Wizard of Oz ……….  Wicked by Geoffrey MacGuire
Wuthering Heights …….. Heathcliff: The Return to Wuthering Heights by Lin Haire 
                                               Sargeant

What have I missed?  Surely, there are more.

Tags: Blogging & Musing by Molly Lundquist
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Apparently, I’ve got a good face for radio. Two days ago, I was on the air again, this time on Martha Stewart’s Living Radio—Sirius Radio/XM, the satellite radio.

No, it wasn’t Martha, but two shock-jocks, Kim and Betsy, who banter their way through morning drive time.  They’re a hoot.  We talked about starting a book club, how to talk about a book, etc.—the usual book club stuff. Here’s the short version (6 min.):

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Tags: Blogging & Musing by Molly Lundquist
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I just came across this wonderful quote from Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin.

Literature can stop my heart and execute
me for a moment, allow me to become
someone else.*

This is truly fiction’s greatest gift—the chance to crawl inside another being, poke around his consciousness, feel what it’s like to “be” that individual. Often it means changing age, gender, race, or nationality. No other medium does this so completely.

Fun Book Club Exercise
Is there any one particular fictional character you most enjoyed “being”?  Or a book that carried you most completely into the mind of its primary character?

Tags: Blogging & Musing by Molly Lundquist
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This comment caught my eye, from a Publishers Weekly review of Bridget Asher’s The Pretend Wife. 

It’s more than a little disappointing, if not surprising, that Asher inserts an improbably happy ending ….

Ouch.  I’m not sure which word is more distressing in that sentence:  “disappointing” or “improbably.”  And here’s another comment on happy endings, this one from Josh Henkin, author of Matrimony:  

Nothing is more depressing than a happy ending that  feels tacked on, and there can be great comfort in literature that doesn’t admit to easy solutions, just as our lives don’t.  [See my post of 9/19/08].

Fortunately, Henkin isn’t discounting happy endings per se, only those that feel forced or “tacked on” (i.e., improbable). Still, there’s the suggestion that happy endings are “easy solutions.”

Some questions for Book Clubs . . .

1. What kind of books do we clubbers like to read?  Do we prefer ones with happy endings? 
2. What about the great works of literature…so many end on unhappy notes? Does that mean books with happy endings aren’t considered good literature?
3. Do all happy endings feel manipulative, or as Henkin says, ”tacked on”?  Can books end happily in a natural, unforced manner? 

Tags: Blogging & Musing by Molly Lundquist
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