Self-Described Media Obscurity Gets Still More Ink

Despite my fervent hopes we might have heard the last of Paulo Coelho, but no such luck: NYT reporter Alan Riding is the latest witness to Coelho’s constant moaning: “I am not in the United States what I am in France or Spain or Germany…I have never broken the barrier of the press. In the United States, I am a great success, but I am not a celebrity.” Riding’s headline suggests that Coelho’s “writing in a global language,” to which one might well respond: yeah, that of the lowest common denominator.

As was the case with Eleven Minutes last year, I did actually open a copy of The Zahir and try to read it, but this is pretty godawful stuff, folks. I mean, I’d sooner finish John Twelve Hawks’ The Traveler than read even one more chapter of Coelho…and I’d seriously consider picking up Lauren Slater’s short story collection again, too.

31 August 2005 | interviews |

This Will Keep You Busy for a While

The Loggernaut reading series website features six interviews, including a conversation with Daniel Alarcón, whose short story “City of Clowns” includes “one of the most compelling instances in recent literature of a man performing cunnilingus on a woman who is wearing stilts,” at least according to his interviewer.

“In Lima I briefly dated a girl who owned a pair of stilts. I can’t really say much more about it, except to add that I write fiction and have an active imagination.”

The conversations with folks like David Means and Paula Fox are a bit less salacious, by comparison. But just as lengthy–heck, this crew is going to pose a serious West Coast challenge to Robert Birnbaum if they keep at it. Speaking of which, the interviewer so prolific he has to spread his work out on two different web sites chimed in last week with the transcript of a long talk with James Howard Kunstler.

30 August 2005 | interviews |