And it is a very long list (95 books in the novel category), but I’m happy to see The Painting and the City there.
[update]
And, it’s also on the long list for the Arthur C. Clark awards, amongst 40 other novels, including one of my favorites of the year, The Babylonian Trilogy.
Jon Armstrong, author of Grey and the forthcoming Yarn and Loom, is the leading and perhaps sole practitioner of the new genre of FashionPunk.
In Grey, which I just finished reading, the main character and much of society are true dedicated followers of fashion, building their lives around their anthemic magazines and music. Armstrong takes this concept and pushes it with vigor. Fashion is the lens through which the main character sees the world. Maintaining this fashion-centric viewpoint is one of the most admirable parts of this admirable book.
Yarn, which is, I believe, set before Grey and features a minor character from Grey, is up for pre-order at Night Shade’s website, and Night Shade is currently running an offer of half-off current books and pre-orders, So this would be an excellent time to pick up some great books.
Tuesday, March 9, 7 pm, at the Yellow Springs Library.
Reading from The Painting and the City, accompanied by Brady Burkett on electric guitar.
In order to publish Polyphony 7, Wheatland Press needs 225 paid pre-orders. The March 1 deadline has been extended to March 15. If there aren’t enough pre-orders, they can’t publish the anthology. This looks like a great collection of stories, and I would like a chance to read them.
Not a big fan of. But I miss Three Brother’s Bakery. It’s near where my parents lived in Houston. It’s what bakery means to me. I even dated one of the brother’s daughters when I was in college (one date, I think—if I was a smarter boychick I would have married into that family).
When my parents moved to Ohio a few years ago I now had very little to take me back to Houston besides the bakery (and it is a long way to go for an onion board or coconut danish, however excellent they may be). It never occurred to me to look for their web page. A bakery isn’t something you can enter virtually.
Well, someone I knew from elementary school through high school emailed me, and I friended her on Facebook. And discovered she was a fan (Facebook fan) of Three Brothers (yes, they have a Facebook fan page!). And now I’m a fan too.
And they have a website, and you can order from it.
Very happy to see The Painting and the City on Locus magazine’s 2009 Recommended Reading List. Nothing of mine has made the list since In Springdale Town in 2003.
I would have liked to see some other books on there, Marly Youman’s Val/Orson for novella, and Sebastíen Doubinsky’s The Babylonian Trilogy under one of the novel categories…is it fantasy…science fiction…? The list is put together by Locus staff and reviewers “with inputs from outside reviewers, other professionals, other lists, etc.” A work has to receive at least two nominations to make the list. Reviewers generally only have time to read the books that they are reviewing, so if Locus gives a book one review, and the staff and other reviewers don’t read a particular book (or some read it and don’t find it worth recommending), then it takes the outside input to provide the other recommendations. Paul Witcover recommended The Babylonian Trilogy on his blog (and presumably in the magazine as well), but there obviously wasn’t a second vote, which is a shame because it’s a book that deserves more attention.
Announcing that French publisher Zanzibar Editions has picked up two books, The Painting and the City and Psychological Methods To Sell Should Be Destroyed. Writer and editor Anne-Sylvie Homassel (stories in English in Strange Tales and Strange Tales II from Tartarus Press) has begun translation. P&C should be out this summer…
I read a good interview with Carol Emshwiller here, which reminded me of the interview I did for Fantastic Metropolis in 2002. I’m re-posting it. Since then she has published a collection I Live With You and novels Mr. Boots and The Secret City, and Luis Ortiz put together a book called Emshwiller: Infinity x Two: The Life & Art of Ed & Carol Emshwiller, published by Nonstop Press. PS will be publishing a double-sized collection (in the style of the old Ace doubles); half will be war stories and half other stories.
From Fantastic Metropolis:
Carol Emshwiller was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1921, and began publishing short fiction in 1955. Much of her early fiction appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and in Damon Knight’s Orbit anthologies. She won the World Fantasy award in 1991 for her collection, The Start of the End of it All. Other collections include collections Joy in Our Cause (1974) and Verging on the Pertinent (1989). Novels are Carmen Dog (1988), Ledoyt (1995), and Leaping Man Hill (1999). Small Beer press recently published her new novel, The Mount and a new collection, Report to the Men’s Club. Carol lives about half the year in New York City and half in Eastern California, between the Sierra and Inyo Mountains. She was married to the late Ed Emshwiller, science fiction illustrator, painter, and experimental film-maker.
RFW: The Mount is more explicitly science fiction than much of your work. It’s an alien invasion story, though you deal more with relationships than battles. Not at all like the way Hollywood portrays anything with aliens. I’m wondering how the novel took shape. For example, did you have the idea of these aliens using people as horses, and work out some of the historical details later, such as how the situation started, how the aliens got there, etc.?
CE: I had just taken a class in the psychology of prey animals vs. predators.
It was supposed to be about the psychology of horses, but it contrasted all prey with all kinds of predators—about how we are predators riding a prey. I think the first thing I wanted to do with The Mount was to reverse that—to put a prey animal riding a predator. And I thought how interesting it would be if the prey animal had all the acute senses that we don’t have. Then I started, right in the middle, with the first chapter which is in the point of view of one of the hoots. In the beginning I thought it was a short story, but I got so interested (in chapter 2) in Charley’s desire to be a good slave that it just went on. I fell in love with Little Master as much as I fell in love with Charley.
I actually wanted the reader to feel torn about what was best, being looked after or having the hardships of being “free.” I thought, just because I like camping out and hardships and getting along with less, doesn’t mean that everybody would like it or is suited to that life. I still don’t know for sure what I think about that. It’s such a cliché to say and so easy to say, “Of course freedom is best.” Maybe eating regularly and staying warm is just as good.
I never work out the plot or “historical” details except as I go along. I just jump right in. I got the story going and then figured out how the hoots got there, etc., once I was pretty far in and once the characters and scenes were pretty much set.
I’m pleased to find out that The Painting and the City is on the list Best Experimental Novels for 2009 at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography web site. And also pleased that The Babylonian Trilogy is on the list too.
I don’t think of my novel as experimental, but I’m glad to see someone notice it. He says: “One of my favorite genre authors out there right now, and it’s a shame that he’s not as well-known yet as many of his peers.”
I’m unfamiliar with most of the other authors but will have to look for them.
I have a couple of readings coming up, this Saturday and in March, both in Yellow Springs. The first is at Emporium Wines/Underdog Cafe, 4pm Sat. Jan. 9. I’ll be accompanied by Brady Burkett of Starfolk on electric guitar. We did a couple of these in October and plan to schedule more soon. I’ve worked out sections of chapters 1, 2, and 4 from The Painting and the City that work well, and are fun for me to read. I’ll have some books for sale, and Brady will have the first Starkfolk album on cd and vinyl, and the second on cd. I expect there’ll be some wine, too.
Laconic Writer 