Biography
John Banville, the 20 Minute Guitar Solo and Truth in Fiction

It would be a shame if the predictable backlash against David Shields' exciting critique of contemporary literarature Reality Hunger (or against Ben Yagoda's related study Memoir: A History) actually discouraged any potential readers from checking out either book. The David Shields book has been stirring up a lot of strong words lately, and I'm finding the intensity of anger strange. Granted, as Laura Miller suggests in the Salon article above, some of Shields' bold statements are designed to be "controversial" (it sells books) -- however, they may still be worth something. It's galling that Jessa Crispin reacts to Shields book with defensive scorn, as if bloggers and critics who discuss the book were trying to tell her what to do. She says, "I don't know why people feel the need to make declarations about what literature should be all of a sudden."
Reality Hunger by David Shields

Reality Hunger is a book-length essay about literature and culture by David Shields that's getting a lot of attention for its provocative key argument: we are wrong to think of fiction as the most exalted form of literature, because as readers we mostly value writings that bring us reality and truth -- which are, by strict definition, beyond the scope of fiction. Shields presents today's literary community as blind and confused, trained to pine after the ideal of the perfect novel, the sublime work of art, when in fact we crave something more primal than artistic excellence when we read.
Just Kids by Patti Smith

Here's the first great book of the new decade. Just Kids by Patti Smith is a major work, an act of creative discovery, and a surprising new step in its author's riveting career.
Was there every any doubt that Patti Smith could write? She wrote before she sang, actually, publishing rock criticism in Crawdaddy, Creem and Rolling Stone and several poetry chapbooks before ever entering a recording studio. But it's rare for a musical artist to master the memoir format, and when I heard that Patti Smith's first book would focus on her early friendship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989, I was worried she'd phone in a Valentine.
Reviewing the Review: November 22 2009
Reviewing the Review: June 7 2009
Joey Gallo and the Jukebox Gangsters of Red Hook, Brooklyn

Interpretations of the Author: Works featuring Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Dickens, Michael McClure
Love As Always, Kurt Vonnegut As I Knew Him by Loree Rackstraw
Loree Rackstraw was a fiction student at the Iowa Writing Workshop in 1965 when she first heard of and met Kurt Vonnegut, a new teacher at the workshop who'd by then gained only slight fame for Cat's Cradle.Between the House and the Chicken Yard: Brad Gooch on Flannery O'Connor

The photo above is me, reading Brad Gooch's biography of Flannery O'Connor (appropriately titled Flannery), and my yawning dog. She's a tough critic. Anyway, I've been a fan of Flannery O'Connor since I first read her story "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" back when I was in high school, and as I got older and read more of her work, my appreciation of her grew. In fact, on my personal list of Date Book-Talk Gone Wrong is the following snippet:

