Jeffrey Frank's Blog
July 8, 2014
ASK THE AUTHOR
When I do readings, I love to get questions about the Eisenhower-Nixon relationship--which usually make me think about another way to look back.
May 4, 2013
April 14, 2013
April 13, 2013
PETER (THE GREAT) DE VRIES
Derek and Jon De Vries, the sons of Peter De Vries--the great, semi-forgotten, American comic writer--are beginning a campaign to bring their father’s work to new readers. They’ve gotten an agent; and they’ve asked friends and fans to spread the news.
As consolation, he is still in print--just barely. The University of Chicago Press reissued two of his novels--one of them the heartbreaking “The Blood of the Lamb.”
For a quick De Vries refresher course, here’s a link to a Critic at Large essay I wrote nine years ago for The New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004...
The Blood of the Lamb
As consolation, he is still in print--just barely. The University of Chicago Press reissued two of his novels--one of them the heartbreaking “The Blood of the Lamb.”
For a quick De Vries refresher course, here’s a link to a Critic at Large essay I wrote nine years ago for The New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004...
The Blood of the Lamb
January 13, 2013
CATCHING UP
I've been too neglectful. I hope that anyone who sees this will read-or re-read--Evan S. Connell, who died recently. Start at least with "Mrs. Bridge," and then it's hard to resist the delayed sequel, "Mr. Bridge." His Custer book, "Son of the Morning Star," is no less than amazing.
CATCHING UP
I've been too neglectful. I hope that anyone who sees this will read-or re-reading--Evan S. Connell, who died recently. Start at least with "Mrs. Bridge," and then it's hard to resist the delayed sequel, "Mr. Bridge." His Custer book, "Son of the Morning Star," is no less than amazing.
June 14, 2012
GILBERT SORRENTINO
GILBERT SORRENTINO
The remarkable--and remarkably unread--American novelist/essayist/provocateur Gilbert Sorrentino died little more than six years ago, but he refuses to be forgotten. A good many of his books remain in print thanks to publishers like Coffee House Press and Dalkey Archive Press; perhaps more readers will give him a chance after reading “Gilbert Sorrentino and Mulligan Stew,” a collection of critical pieces published in Dalkey’s Review of Contemporary Fiction series. The emphasis is on “Mulligan Stew,” an explosion of a novel, but there are also terrific essays on other books by, among others, Jonathan Lethem, Marjorie Perloff, and Vijay Seshadri. I got the chance to write about my favorite Sorrentino, his lethal and funny “Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things,” which, forty years later, is probably still the last word on New York’s world of art and artists.
The remarkable--and remarkably unread--American novelist/essayist/provocateur Gilbert Sorrentino died little more than six years ago, but he refuses to be forgotten. A good many of his books remain in print thanks to publishers like Coffee House Press and Dalkey Archive Press; perhaps more readers will give him a chance after reading “Gilbert Sorrentino and Mulligan Stew,” a collection of critical pieces published in Dalkey’s Review of Contemporary Fiction series. The emphasis is on “Mulligan Stew,” an explosion of a novel, but there are also terrific essays on other books by, among others, Jonathan Lethem, Marjorie Perloff, and Vijay Seshadri. I got the chance to write about my favorite Sorrentino, his lethal and funny “Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things,” which, forty years later, is probably still the last word on New York’s world of art and artists.
June 7, 2012
Ray Bradbury
Twenty-three years ago, I interviewed Ray Bradbury for the Washington Post. News of his death made me go back and see what I’d written. It was, as I’d feared, embarrassing; one should beware of writing about the artists who hypnotized you when you were young.
Bradbury did that to me, although sitting face to face in a New York hotel room, he did not look like a hypnotist. “He is, if truth be told, a bit pudgy,” I wrote. “He wears tennis shorts, white socks and sneakers.” And then I sort of lost it, adding, “there is nothing about him that betrays a careful knowledge of post-atomic landscapes or golden-eyed Martians who may lie in wait for innocent Earthlings. Yet consider the evidence: Almost no one can imagine a time or place without the fiction of Ray Bradbury. It's as if he has always been with us, his books always fresh on the shelves.”
By “us” I meant a certain romantic audience, dreaming of the future. While a few writers, such as Christopher Isherwood and Angus Wilson, were early fans, he was otherwise deposited in the genre bin. “I don't exist,'' he said, although not unhappily. ''The New York Review has never acknowledged that I was born. I never had a review there. The New Yorker did one review, 35 years ago. . . They don't know where my handle is, they don't know how to pick me up. And I don't, either.” (The magazine did publish a Bradbury short story in 1947, and just last week published a lovely, short reminiscence.) He believed deeply in his genre—the idea, as he said that day, that science fiction remains ''the growing edge of all the ideas of mankind. It's the most important fiction. It deals with the changing of a dream into a fact, of a concept into a reality. It's the most important fiction that ever has been written because that's our whole history from the cave to here.''
I’ll always love “The Martian Chronicles” with its evocation of “Rocket summer,” set in 1999—the distant future!--when “The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke.'' And those books still on my shelf, including “Dark Carnival” and “Illustrated Man” and “Fahrenheit 451” and his much anthologized and imitated short stories, such as “The Small Assassin.”
He told me that he was off to Paris that night (he hated flying, but had learned to live with it), and I figured I’d never see him again; and I never did. But he did surprise me by sending me a postcard a few days later, thanking me for having euphemistically described him as “a bit pudgy.” It was the very least I could have done.
Bradbury did that to me, although sitting face to face in a New York hotel room, he did not look like a hypnotist. “He is, if truth be told, a bit pudgy,” I wrote. “He wears tennis shorts, white socks and sneakers.” And then I sort of lost it, adding, “there is nothing about him that betrays a careful knowledge of post-atomic landscapes or golden-eyed Martians who may lie in wait for innocent Earthlings. Yet consider the evidence: Almost no one can imagine a time or place without the fiction of Ray Bradbury. It's as if he has always been with us, his books always fresh on the shelves.”
By “us” I meant a certain romantic audience, dreaming of the future. While a few writers, such as Christopher Isherwood and Angus Wilson, were early fans, he was otherwise deposited in the genre bin. “I don't exist,'' he said, although not unhappily. ''The New York Review has never acknowledged that I was born. I never had a review there. The New Yorker did one review, 35 years ago. . . They don't know where my handle is, they don't know how to pick me up. And I don't, either.” (The magazine did publish a Bradbury short story in 1947, and just last week published a lovely, short reminiscence.) He believed deeply in his genre—the idea, as he said that day, that science fiction remains ''the growing edge of all the ideas of mankind. It's the most important fiction. It deals with the changing of a dream into a fact, of a concept into a reality. It's the most important fiction that ever has been written because that's our whole history from the cave to here.''
I’ll always love “The Martian Chronicles” with its evocation of “Rocket summer,” set in 1999—the distant future!--when “The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke.'' And those books still on my shelf, including “Dark Carnival” and “Illustrated Man” and “Fahrenheit 451” and his much anthologized and imitated short stories, such as “The Small Assassin.”
He told me that he was off to Paris that night (he hated flying, but had learned to live with it), and I figured I’d never see him again; and I never did. But he did surprise me by sending me a postcard a few days later, thanking me for having euphemistically described him as “a bit pudgy.” It was the very least I could have done.
