Mark Sarvas's Blog

I've just launched the latest issue of my newsletter, dealing with the specific problems of the second novel. You can find it at https://tinyletter.com/elegvar

After nearly ten years, my second novel, MEMENTO PARK, is about to come out, with blurbs from Salman Rushdie, Marisa Silver, Min Jin Lee and Joseph O'Neill, as well as starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. Please come by one of my appearances or pre-order the book from any of the usual places if you can't make it in person!

I'm thrilled that Memento Park has been included in Library Journal's list of "Award Worthy" writers and books for March 2018!

http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/201...Memento Park

At its height, The Elegant Variation had over 50,000 daily readers. It gave me the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of books I loved, like Rob Riemen's Nobility of Spirit, and it engendered many stimulating, international conversations between thoughtful, well-read readers and writers. After my daughter was born and my first book came out, I had to make some decisions about allocating my time, and TEV went fallow, though I've kept the page and its archives available. But I've missed the immersion in literary topics and the connections and discussions that the blog made possible.

The conversation seems to have moved on from blogs to Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and the rest. Blogs now feel very Web 1.0 But I've been attracted to and inspired by the intimacy and samizdat feel of the newsletter form, and thought I'd try a little experiment. I'm leaving the form open to revision (and feedback - please), but I envision an email digest (perhaps weekly, perhaps bi-weekly) for my friends, former students and perhaps interested strangers, of literary matters that interest or excite me. I've long said that successful blogs were, first and foremost, a record of their proprietor's enthusiasms and were driven by voice; and in TEV 2.0 (the newsletter edition), I'll continue to share my enthusiasms - what to read, books to buy, readings to attend - in my now-familiar (though slightly tempered with age and exhaustion) voice. Maybe it will catch on, maybe it won't. But to paraphrase Charles Foster Kane, I think it would be fun to run a newsletter. 

If you'd like to go ahead and sign up, the link is here.  The first issue is already on deck and waiting to go out, and includes Joseph O'Neill's THE DOG, Calvino, LA readings and "Life getting in the way" of writing time.

I cannot think of a more beneficial fellowship for a writer to apply for than the PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship.  It's a yearlong intensive for new writers who lack access that includes close mentoring, exposure to literary events, classes at the UCLA Writers Program and much, much more.  I have had students who have been Fellows, students who have gone on to become Fellows; I know the people who run the program and I cannot sing its praises highly enough.

The application period is now open and runs through August 11, so get busy and apply!

Two major events in the days ahead, both essential and not-to-be-missed.  First up, there's Donald Antrim and Karl Ove Knausgaard tomorrow night at the Hammer.  And next week there's Edward St. Aubyn at LAPL's ALOUD series.  

The summer is getting interesting around here ... Go, go, GO!

In all the years I have been reading Banville, he's only made one Los Angeles area appearance.  This week he makes his second, as part of the excellent Writers Bloc series.  He's in town - appropriately enough - to discuss his (or, rather, Benjamin Black's) new take on Marlowe:

In Black’s new book, The Black-Eyed Blonde, Philip Marlowe resurfaces so clearly, so visibly, that you can feel his alienation at the wealthy heiress’ mansion on the beach. You are dropped straight into old LA’s Barney’s Beanery, where Marlowe fishes for information about the blonde’s missing boyfriend. The story: a guy goes missing. The wealthy blonde girlfriend wants to find him. But of course that’s only the very first part of the tale. It’s in the complications, the nature of the character and the conflict that we realize that Benjamin Black’s great Dublin character, Quirke, is not unlike Raymond Chandler’s rumpled Los Angeles Marlowe. In Black’s most capable hands, our Marlowe lives and breathes as if Raymond Chandler himself willed him to life. Being a Dubliner, Black alludes to Dublin and to Ireland, lending authenticity to his re-creation. Philip Marlowe has finally met his dopelganger.

Hope to see you there!

I have not ranted in a good long while, so:

Herewith this date, any further essays on the following topics are banned, due to my colossal lack of interest:

Anything that mentions The Great American Novel.
The whole literary vs genre pissing contest (or anything that mentions Jennifer Weiner).
Too many male reviewers and/or novelists (or anything that mentions Jennifer Weiner).
The ressentiment of the Internet/The evils of Twitter.
The Internet has killed civility/print/attention spans.
Democratized Self Publishing vs. Gatekeeping Traditional Publishers.
The Ebook as a harbinger of End Days.
The Ebook as the savior of publishing and writers.
Why MFA programs suck.
Why MFA programs are awesome.

Please don't get me wrong.  I think that many, if not all, of these topics are of genuine importance. But I have already read your essay.  I read it last year.  I read it the year before.  I've been reading it for the last decade.  And it wasn't interesting or original then, either.  So, editors, if you're thinking of assigning any of these chestnuts, seriously rethink it.  And writers, if you really feel the need to wade in yet again, you sure as shit better bring something new to the discussion.  Because the Internet is starting to feel like Groundhog Day on steroids. 

"When we visit his parents, my daughter tries to learn to swin at the indoor pool.  I watch her serious, scrunched-up face, eyes closed, counting one stroke, two strokes. A few days later, she is up to fifty.  Then my husband arrives from Brooklyn and she insists we rush him straight from the airport to the pool.  But when we get there, she won't do it.  I am tight-lipped, resentful of all the fuss she has required to be made, the great anticlimax of it.  My husband falls asleep in a deck chair as we are deliberating.  He has been up all night, spraying poison.  His mother, bright-eyed, gentles her through the water.  'Once a swimmer, always a swimmer,' she says.

- Jenny Offil, Dept. of Speculation

(Yes, it's been a while, people.  Been busy writing novels and shit.  And I've promised myself in 2014 to try to use social media to share my enthusiams, and not to carp and complain.  This is the first novel in quite a while that I've felt compelled to bring to your attention.  Consider yourselves on notice.)

Hey all, there are still a few seats left in my upcoming Novel Revision Techniques class at the Writers Studio with the UCLA Extension Writers' Program.

For those who don't know about the Writers Studio, it's an amazing four-day intensive held every February. And my revision class is really the only class of its kind that I am aware of anywhere, one that takes a close, hands-on look at how to attack revising a novel. (There are lots of first novel classes out there but they only get you to the first draft.) It's a great combination of lecture and craft work, using the transformation of Trimalchio into The Great Gatsby as its focus. Last year's students loved the course, and I'm looking forward to teaching it again in a few weeks.

You can read a lot more here: http://writers.uclaextension.edu/programs-services/writers-studio/