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The Subject Steve — Sam Lipsyte
A few years ago, I wrote about cult novels, and, in trying to define them, I suggested that “a cult book is not (necessarily) a book about cults.” Sam Lipsyte’s first novel The Subject Steve is a...
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Candide — Voltaire
I liked pretty much all of the assigned reading in high school (okay, I hated every page of Tess of the D’Ubervilles). Some of the books I left behind, metaphorically at least (Lord of the Flies, The...
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(A Very Beautiful) Book Acquired, 9.27.2011
What a wonderful present: a 1930 Grosset & Dunlap edition Candide (read our review of Candide). Received it last week, but I’ve been to busy to photograph it. Has a nice slipcase (above), and the...
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Calvino/Voltaire/Klee/Candide
Italo Calvino on one of my favorite books, Voltaire’s Candide (these are the first few paragraphs of the essay “Candide, or Concerning Narrative Rapidity,” from Calvino’s indispensable collection Why...
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David Foster Wallace on INTERPRET-ME Novels
Certain novels not only cry out for what we call “critical interpretations” but actually try to help direct them . . . Books I tend to associate with this INTERPRET-ME phenomenon include stuff like...
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I did not know that Chris Ware did a cover for Candide
Tagged: Art, Books, Candide, Chris Ware, Voltaire
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Laughter is probably doomed to disappear.
Frontispiece to Mahendra Singh’s forthcoming novel American Candide; the illustration (as well as all the illustrations in the novel) is by Singh. Just enjoying the hell out of it so far. Tagged:...
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American Candide (Book acquired and consumed this past week, like early-mid...
So I ate this one up: Mahendra Singh’s American Candide is terribly funny, except when you stop and think about the satire and why the satire works, and you think, Aw hell, this is terribly sad. I...
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Reading/Have Read/Should Write About
I just spent the past hour reading from Tom Clark’s 1980 short story collection The Last Gas Station and Other Stories. Is this the only collection of short stories by Clark? I don’t know. Maybe I...
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In American Candide, Mahendra Singh reboots Voltaire’s classic satire
About halfway through Mahendra Singh’s American Candide, our omniscientish (yet beguiled) narrator slows down for a moment to offer an internal critique (and useful summary) of the novel thus far: If...
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Drowsed over Voltaire’s “Candide,” occasionally refreshing myself with a tune...
Saturday, April 8th.–After journalizing yesterday afternoon, I went out and sawed and split wood till teatime, then studied German (translating “Lenore”), with an occasional glance at a beautiful...
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