The book: The Vet’s Daughter (NYRB Classics) by Barbara Comyns Pairing: A full English breakfast, hopefully not at the expense of someone else.
How I Learned To Stop Worrying About Mike Daisey
Last year, when I decided to train for a marathon, I was stymied by the prospect of being on my own for hours with nothing but my thoughts. Equally stressed by the option of recruiting an in-the-flesh running partner, I looked to podcasts and audiobooks to push me along as I covered the miles. This American Life was consistently and perfectly qualified for the job. I mean, you know what I’m talking about — the program has a dependable structure […]
Drinking Like A Kingsley Amis Character
The book: Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis Pairing suggestion: Guinness (8 pints); port, preferably stolen (half the bottle); aspirin. Awkward sexual misadventures not necessary or encouraged, but definitely appropriate.
The Old Programmer’s Habits: A Conversation With Ellen Ullman
Ellen Ullman worked as a programmer for over twenty years and began writing about her experiences in Silicon Valley for Salon and The New York Times just as the dot com bubble was getting too big for its own good. Her essays in Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its Discontents form a distinct and fascinating portrait of the beginning of the way we live and breathe technology now. While her first novel The Bug is about a programmer and a software engineer looking […]
Reviewed: “Vicky Swanky is a Beauty” by Diane Williams
Review by Jen Vafdis Vicky Swanky is a Beauty by Diane Williams McSweeney’s; 124 p. I’m about to invent a person who, while hypothetical, is not impossible: a person who has not read Diane Williams and may be put off reading Diane Williams by the following equivocations I’m about to make. This person is the kind of person who reads the following equivocations and thinks, This is not the book for me. A straw man, you say! Okay sure, but […]
On “teachable” moments and unreliable narrators
Posted by Jen Vafidis At the beginning of Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret, a teenage boy asks a teenage girl to go to the movies. Not wanting it to turn into a date, she makes him supremely uncomfortable, in that flirty way that destroys young people who are trying to be straight-forward. A few scenes later, the teenage girl is on the phone with another teenage girl and pithily relates this new development in her friendship with the boy. “What’s that about?” […]
Reviewed: Green Girl by Kate Zambreno
Reviewed by Jen Vafidis Green Girl by Kate Zambreno Emergency Press, 268 P. You know that Rolling Stones song, “Cool, Calm, Collected”? It’s one of many vaguely misogynistic songs in the Stones back catalog, and it features the following lyrics: In public the strain’s hard to bear / She exudes such a confident air / But behind she is not without care / She sweeps it right under her hair. That’s basically Green Girl if Kate Zambreno didn’t have the […]
Reviewed: Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines A Life by Ann Beattie
Reviewed by Jen Vafidis Mrs. Nixon By Ann Beattie Scribner, 304 p. Ann Beattie’s latest novel Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines A Life is not a biography, despite the helpful chronology of Patricia Nixon’s life in the back of the book. It’s not a novel either. There’s no plot beyond what is proposed in the subtitle. And it’s not a memoir; Beattie’s one encounter with Mrs. Nixon is entirely fictional. So what can we look forward to in the latest […]