http://stevenwbeattie.com Fri, 16 May 2008 14:21:44 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en "You have to remember, too, that in even the most sympathetic, apparently un-chauvinistic, un-macho male, there lurks something of the machista, and in all but the truly liberated woman there is some terrible atavistic admiration for this attitude." -- "The New Machismo," Christina McCall http://stevenwbeattie.com/2008/05/16/on-being-asked-yet-again-if-i-ever-read-women-writers/ Dan Green, commenting on Scott Espisito's assertion that the National Book Critics Circle's list of recommended reading is not particularly useful because it only recommends books that people are already reading: "The authors everyone is already reading" are inevitably what a group of newspaper book reviewers is going to consider it ... http://stevenwbeattie.com/2008/05/12/the-job-of-dispensing-praise/ Mystery / suspense author Brad Kelln, whose new novel, In the Tongues of the Dead, is due out this fall from ECW Press, has jumped on the Internet freebie bandwagon. For a limited time, he's giving away Black Inside, the third novel in his Michael Wenton trilogy (which also includes ... http://stevenwbeattie.com/2008/05/08/kelln-goes-all-cory-doctorow/ Apparently a mother in Lynnwood, Washington (natch) is upset that Urban Outfitters clothing stores are stocking what she claims to be sexually explicit books that are inappropriate for teenagers (who, of course, never have, think, or talk about sex, let alone download porn off the Internet). I know it's a cheap ... http://stevenwbeattie.com/2008/05/07/dept-of-unintentional-irony-pt-clxiii/ I've been thinking quite a lot about violence recently. A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine confessed to being a bit of a "blood junkie" when it comes to the movies, and I must confess a degree of sympathy for this affinity. Violence in art is clearly nothing new: ... http://stevenwbeattie.com/2008/05/06/a-bit-of-the-old-ultraviolence/ Heartfelt congratulations go out to novelist and TSR fave Claire Cameron, whose novel The Line Painter has been nominated for an Arthur Ellis Award by the Crime Writers of Canada. A full list of this year's nominees can be found here. http://stevenwbeattie.com/2008/05/02/cameron-nominated-for-arthur-ellis-award/ From the NYTBR's Paper Cuts blog: It’s not often in the literary world that what begins as farce ends in whipped cream. But that’s sort of what happened last night when Rick Moody nailed Dale Peck squarely in the face with a fully loaded pie plate at a fundraiser for the ... http://stevenwbeattie.com/2008/05/02/revenge-is-sweet/ Novelist, short-story writer, translator, and literary critic Stephen Henighan is the author of ten previous books. He is a regular columnist for Geist magazine, and his work has appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, The Walrus, the Globe and Mail, and the Montreal Gazette, among other publications. His new book ... http://stevenwbeattie.com/2008/04/28/tsr-author-interview-stephen-henighan/ Nathan Whitlock's first novel, A Week of This, involves a close-knit group of characters who reside in the small Ontario town of Dunbridge, a fictional stand-in for Pembroke. The characters are closely observed denizens of the lower-middle class and, although I won't review the book, for reasons I've already made ... http://stevenwbeattie.com/2008/04/24/fuck-books/ Stephen Henighan, from his 2002 essay collection, When Words Deny the World: The Stone Diaries is mediocre fiction but brilliant calculation. It plays to two mutually hostile constituencies, charming the "just folks" market with its tale of a nice, simple, rich woman, complete with family photographs and easy-to-read letters, recipes and ... http://stevenwbeattie.com/2008/04/20/on-technique-in-the-canadian-novel/