This Just In

seamonsters

Over at Salon, Andrew O’Hehir discusses the book Zeitoun and interviews its author, Dave Eggers. O’Hehir’s discussion of the book includes this line that I wish that I had written:

Like his 2006 novel “What Is the What,” which was based on the life of a Sudanese refugee, this is a work of testimony, and almost of ventriloquism.

Yes!

Over at the LA Times Jacket Copy Blog, Carolyn Kellogg has concluded Post Modern (PoMo) month. Do yourself a favor and check out the month’s worth of great posts. One of my favorites is the 61 Essential Post Modern Reads: An Annotated List which features this handy symbol key to show which PoMo traits each book brings to the table:

Some of my favorite books of all time are on this list. I would have added Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts, Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Rivka Galchen’s Atmospheric Disturbances, Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, two or three more Pynchon novels, and maybe Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America and Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Are the Jane Austen mashups post modern? What would you add to the list?

Update: Looking at the key again, I’d have to add Don Quixote to the list of “post modern” essentials. It has many of the traits, but it preceded “modern” texts by a century or two. So maybe “post-modern” can’t apply by definition. Still…