New features and reviews

Hey, folks, I’ve got a new interview and a feature both available for your reading pleasure. Check out my interview with Michael Crummey, an extraordinary novelist out of Newfoundland, here on Full Stop, and my review of Helen DeWitt’s new novel Lightning Rods here on the KGB Bar Lit Journal. Please comment, recommend, or anything else that strikes your fancy.

OED Word of the Day

I love this one:

helluo librorum, n.
Pronunciation: Brit. /ˌhɛljʊəʊ lᵻˈbrɔːrəm/, U.S. /ˌhɛljuoʊ ləˈbrɔ(ə)rəm/
Etymology: < post-classical Latin helluo librorum (in some medieval MSS of Cicero) < classical Latin helluō helluo n. + librōrum, genitive plural of liber book (see library n.1).
In early editions of Cicero De Finibus 3. 7, it is said that Cato ‘quasi helluo librorum‥videatur’ (‘appeared like a glutton for books’); the modern reading, restored from MS evidence by Jan Gruter in his edition of 1618, is ‘quasi helluari libris‥videatur’ (‘appeared as if to devour books’).
Now rare.
An insatiable reader, a bookworm.
1635 S. Birckbek Protestants Evid. xii. 4 One of these brothers was called Comestor‥, as it were booke-eater, because he was such a Helluo librorum, a devourer of bookes.
1738 Relig. of Nature Delineated (ed. 6) Pref. p. ix, He was of Opinion too That a man might easily read too much: And he considered the Helluo Librorum and the True Scholar as two very different Characters.
1841 U.S. Democratic Rev. Sept. 299 We would not style him exactly a helluo librorum, but rather a sort of antiquarian epicure of letters.
1942 E. K. Chambers Sheaf of Stud. 153 He [sc. Coleridge] does not mention the Bodleian, but it would be odd if such a helluo librorum did not see it.

(from the Oxford English Dictionary, of course)

New book review up on The Rumpus

Hi all, The Rumpus was nice enough to publish my review of Hisham Matar’s fantastic new novel, ANATOMY OF A DISAPPEARANCE. You can read it here.

My review of David Bezmozgis on the Powells Review-a-Day!

I’m pretty thrilled, and I only found out by googling myself (embarrassing admission). You can read my full review of David Bezmozgis here.

Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs

I can’t believe I’ve waited this long to read Lorrie Moore.  Darkly comic, uncannily observant, uncomfortably honest, and a whiz at wordplay, Moore is the kind of writer who reminds me that contemporary fiction is alive. Her technique (now apparently the gold standard for creative writing majors) is to make a sort of general “surface” observation, and then to move swiftly through layers of associative meaning, arriving somewhere entirely unexpected. A little like the “tip of the iceberg,” except that Moore doesn’t stop at the tip; she drills down, way down, all the way to the frequently-bizarre, often gut-wrenching center. Here’s a representative passage from A Gate at the Stairs, which I read last week (this is Tassie, the first-person protagonist, narrating):

Her gaze made a slow, observing circle around my nose and mouth. “I’m Sarah Brink,” she said finally. I was not used to being looked at close up, not used to the thing I was looking at looking back. Certainly my own mother had never done such looking, and in general my face had the kind of smooth, round stupidity that did not prompt the world’s study. I always felt as hidden as the hull in a berry, as secret and fetal as the curled fortune in a cookie, and such hiddenness was not without its advantages, its egotisms, its grief-fed grandiosities.                                          (11)

Or, here’s something a little less serious, a little more playful and radiant:

Gardens began to emerge. Every third day there was a hot lemony sun, with the lawns starting to green from rain and melted snow. The fraternity boys started to wear shorts and Siberian violets blued the yards. Still, you could sometimes see, in a shady north corner, a small, black-flecked pile of snow so solid and condensed it could not melt. It was as if it had changed, biochemically, into a new substance, like the silica on Mars that was the tag end of some water or other.    (170)

As I hope these passages demonstrate, Moore totally succeeds at the sentence level. Her language has a kind of palpability–I find myself wanting to roll her sentences around in my mouth, savoring them like some delicious gourmet meal. And I devoured A Gate at the Stairs with the kind of feverishness that only happens occasionally, when you discover a writer whose entire oeuvre you’re ready to tackle righthisminute.  But the fact that Gate had some clearly observable flaws in plot and character development was disappointing. It’s so evident that she could have written a better novel, which I guess is the problem.

The post-September 11th angle had potential but seems to have been picked up and dropped at various points of the novel without much follow-through. The subplots–Tassie’s first love and heartbreak, her brother’s enlistment–seem like afterthoughts, tacked on to keep momentum but which, in all reality, detract from the quality of the work. Even so, the best part of Gate is Tassie’s character, one of recent literature’s most memorable, and her brash, canny, obsessively analytical observations will linger long after one forgets the annoyances of the plot.  I have a feeling that while A Gate at the Stairs may come to be seen as a watershed in Moore’s literary career (this was her first overtly political work, and I suspect there’s more to come), it will be superseded in importance by some of her much-lauded short story collections, and perhaps by a better-developed future novel. But if you haven’t read Lorrie Moore, get on it: you’ll consume her sentences one after the next like a sumptuous, multi-course meal.

My review in the summer issue of Rain Taxi

My review of David Bezmozgis’s THE FREE WORLD appears in the summer print issue of The Rain Taxi Review of Books.

Hurrah!

Order or pick up a copy today! (free at McNally Jackson bookstore in Soho). Rain Taxi’s reviews are some of the best out there.

OED is on a roll

This was the “word of the day” yesterday. I’m dying to use it.

mozz, v.

Pronunciation: Brit. /mɒz/, U.S. /mɑz/, Austral. /mɒz/

Forms: 19– moz, 19– mozz.

Etymology: < mozz n. Compare mozzle v.

Austral. slang.

  trans.To jinx; to deter, to hinder.

1941 S. J. Baker Pop. Dict. Austral. Slang 47Moz, to interrupt, to hinder.

1965 F. Hardy Yarns of Billy Borker xx. 107‘Don’t mozz a man,’ I tells him. ‘You’re well named, I’ll say that for you, Calamity.’

1974 J. Powers Last of Knucklemen 49Don’t let him mozz you, Monk.

(Thanks, oed.com!)

My new favorite five dollar word

I’m seeing this guy all over the place.

limn

verb \ˈlim\

Definition of LIMN

transitive verb

1 : to draw or paint on a surface

2 : to outline in clear sharp detail : delineate

3 : describe <the novel limns the frontier life of the settlers>

Examples of LIMN

1. <he limned the scene in the courtroom so perfectly I could practically see it>

Origin of LIMN

Middle English limnen to illuminate (a manuscript), probably back-formation from lymnour illuminator, alteration of lumenur, from Anglo-French aluminer, enluminer to illuminate, ultimately from Latin illuminare

First Known Use: 1592

(Thanks, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary)

Up on Full-Stop: My Review of Galore

Full-Stop is a new online literary journal that’s extremely well designed, curated, and written.

They’ve also been nice enough to publish my review, which you can read here.

Housekeeping

Just finished Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. It might be the most perfectly-titled novel I’ve ever read. Or close to it.

It’s a shame Robinson isn’t known more outside the MFA students/creative writing/lit majors circle. Her writing is the kind that knocks the wind out of you, but still leaves you aching for more.