The Art of Subtext by Charles Baxter

The newest Spotlight Series blog tour is on Graywolf Press. Graywolf has been around since 1974 and has become one of the largest and most interesting indie publishers in the country. Their catalog is wide-ranging and includes not only fiction and poetry, but a significant amount of cultural criticism and creative writing texts.

The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot by Charles Baxter is (as you might have been able to guess) part of Graywolf’s creative writing “The Art of...” series, which aims to provide small, erudite and useful texts on “a singular craft issue.” The book is aimed at creative writing students, but could be enjoyed by general readers, especially fans of the author’s Baxter spends the most time analyzing.

Baxter defines “subtext” as “the implied, the half-visible, and the unspoken” deeper truths that lie beneath the best fiction. The important stuff that characters, and narrators, only partially admit, but that is necessary for true emotional depth in fiction.

Saramago Links

The italicized quotes in this week's migraine diaries are from Saramago novels--they're not all from Blindness.

Saramago was a master at exploring a surreal event (the Iberian peninsula breaking off, a city going blind, death dying) and using it to reflect human nature. His allegorical stories could have easily veered into the shallow waters of bad fantasy writing, but they're grounded in actual human emotions and, no matter how weird they get, they still feel real.

Saramago, who died at the age of 87, was a tireless writer who published a new book every couple of years; his last novel, Cain, was published in Portugal last year and should be in English by the end of this year. His most recent book in English is The Notebook, a collection of his blog postings with special focus on the 2008 U.S. Presidential election.

For all of his mourners, there are many people who are not sad to see him go. An editorial in the Vatican newspaper refereed to him as a "populous extremist" and an "anti-religious ideologue."  Saramago's 1991 novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ was attacked by Catholics who felt it inappropriate to portray Jesus as a fallible human being. The Portuguese government refused to submit the novel for any international awards, and Saramago spent the rest of his life living in the Canary Islands. On Sunday, Portugal's conservative president did not attend the funeral of the only Portuguese author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, but 20,000 other mourners did. Saramago was also accused by the Anti-Defamation League of being anti-Semitic after some explosive comments he made after visiting Palestine.

This "Art of Fiction" interview he did with The Paris Review is required reading. He describes his writing process in great depth.

The Guardian obituary.


An article on his funeral and some of the controversy surrounding him.

The ADL press release on Saramago's comments and David Frum's editorial titled "Death of a Jew Hater."

Info on The Notebook and a review.

"Man Said to Be Author Is Found Dead in Hotel," Nightmare Alley by William Lindsey Gresham

I reviewed Nightmare Alley  as part of The Spotlight Series on NYRB Classics. The goal of The Spotlight Series is to draw attention to independent presses and raise the profile of their catalog. The full list of other reviews can be found here.

Nearly relentlessly pessimistic and with an overwhelmingly negative view of human nature, Nightmare Alley doesn't compromise, and Gresham's brilliant novel stands as a great testament to a writer's life cut tragically short. Thankfully, New York Review of Books Classics has just republished a restored edition of Gresham's only novel with a new introduction by Nick Tosches.

By all accounts Gresham was a seeker. In Tosches introduction we learn that Gresham repeatedly attached himself to different "cures" including psychoanalysis, Christianity, alcohol, Alcoholics Anonymous, Marxism, Buddhism and the occult. Gresham seems to have been constantly striving for a place he could feel whole. He never found it. Nightmare Alley seems to be his attempt to work through his pain, and the different vices and fake salvations he fell victim to. 

The novel opens in a traveling carnival where Stan Carlisle, a charming young man, handsome and blond, is trying to earn his keep doing cheap sleight of hand tricks and helping in other routines. But Stan is gripped by ambition, and he's not only learning how to control a crowd, but why they want to be controlled: "Think out things most people are afraid of and hit them right where they live....They're all afraid of ill health, of poverty, of boredom, of failure. Fear is the key to human nature. They're afraid."

Other Stuff (not mine): Lost Classics

I wasn't trying to unify this week's collection of links around any particular theme or idea. Or, at least I didn't think I was until I realized each entry involves work that has been lost in some way. Culture moves on quickly, and for every artist or creation we choose to venerate and enshrine into our collective culture, there are dozens of other major works by important artists  that fade into the dust. Maybe it's inevitable, not everything can be a classic obviously, and some work just doesn't stand the test of time. However, today's links examine a series of objects that should be re-evaluated.

• Hulu has full-length episodes of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." The teleplay for this episode, "An Out for Oscar," was written by the great David Goodis. Goodis is best known for writing the books that "Dark Passage" and "Shoot the Piano Player" were based on, and I think he was one of the great American novelists. Goodis wrote more than 15 novels and worked in TV and the movies for a few years, but it's rare to find full episodes of his shows, and this is definitely worth checking out. A spoiler-heavy review of "An Out for Oscar can be found on Mystery File. 

• Penguin Books is 75 years old, and this article lists the first ten books they published. Some familiar titles, but most of these have basically been forgotten. It's an interesting view into the beginning of one of the best publishers in the world, and a sort of sad look at how easily the major works of today are lost to the past  

• Later this week I will be participating in the Spotlight Series tour on New York Review of Books Classics. My blog will join a couple dozen other book blogs in posting reviews of a book from the NYRB catalog. It's a great series and I hope it draws attention to the great (and beautiful) NYRB series, which re-issues really important books from around the world. The tour started today and here's the list of blogs to check out. I think Hard Rain Calling by Don Carpenter sounds like a great read. . 

• And finally, there's a new biography of Jack London, Wolf,  by James Haley, reviewed in The Wall Street Journal. London is criminally overlooked and has been relegated to the "literature for boys" section of modern literature. Perhaps not as dismissed as Horatio Alger, more on him soon, but still not nearly as respected now as at the turn of the last century. Haley's book seems determined to remedy this, and while it appears to have some problems, it sounds like a riveting read that I can't wait to get my hands on.

The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry

The Manual of Detection wears its influences on its sleeve--or maybe on every inch of its black suit and fedora. There are labyrinthine archives, a confused man in an unrelentingly mysterious city and people who have a lot more of the answers than us or the main character. To call the book Kafkaesque or Borgesian would be painfully obvious, but it's also true. There's also strains of Saramago (especially All the Names), a bit of Dash Hammett and in the acknowledgments Berry gives a shout out to William Weaver--the main translator of Calvino and Eco . Berry combines the noir aesthetic and the confused loneliness of someone like Joseph K. into a mystery novel that's addictively mysterious and thoroughly satisfying.

Other Stuff (not mine)

Every blog has a collection of links to interesting articles and ephemera of the internet, and here's mine:

At least once, Dostoevsky met Dickens.(Brandywine Books)

Hispanics in Arizona are already getting hassled due to the new law...and this happened before the law was passed. (Crooks and Liars)

TriQuarterly (Northwestern University's famed literary journal) stopped publishing last year after over 40 years of existence. But! Now it's back online. Their first issue (version? post?) includes a review of the National Book Award finalist American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell. American Salvage is an amazing collection of strong short stories, and this review, even though it's more about the reviewers Kindle than the book itself, is worth a look. Here's the review and two excerpts.

PopMatters is digging really deep into Blood on the Tracks.

Jezebel breaks down the new insane abortion restrictions in Oklahoma. For example, it's now legal for doctors in Oklahoma to not tell you if your baby has birth defects.