Results for “best fiction” 291 found
Why has opera singing declined?
Bryan Caplan has been lending me CDs from the splendid series Lebendige Vergangenheit (and here), so I’ve been hearing or rehearing the best opera singers from the past. I’m no cultural pessimist, but I share the common opinion that opera singing has declined since, say, 1935. Why might this be?
1. Opera is less culturally central, and so the best voices do something else, or they are more likely to be narrow technicians rather than inspired musical creators and interpreters.
2. The best voices grow up watching TV, rather than reading Romain Rolland and Thomas Mann. The Zeitgeist makes them dull.
3. The average voice is much better, there is simply less individuality in approach and thus lower peaks. This sort of culturally mysterious process also seems to be governing fiction.
4. The best voices came from Germany and Italy and Austria, and World War II destroyed the musical and vocal training networks of those countries.
5. Conservatories and agents choke off musical individuality in the interests of technique and conformity.
6. Opera is now more heavily subsidized and more organizationally bureaucratic. The programs, while still excellent, are biased against individualistic, crowd-pleasing singers and biased toward singers who don’t make many identifiable mistakes. It’s a bit like the advent of peer review in economics.
Your thoughts?
Books favored by British bookstore employees
Here goes, via Kevin Drum. It has some obvious losers on it, but it’s a good place to start if you are looking to read contemporary fiction.
What are the French good at?
“The French government has always been very good at making things where government support is critical,” like trains, nuclear power plants and airplanes, Mr. [Joel] Mokyr says. “But the French are not terribly good at creating Googles or Microsofts, where private action is central.”
The French engineering company, Alstom, after all, is the world market leader in high-speed trains. But a well-informed person would be hard-pressed to name a leading French information technology company. Indeed, many of France’s best computer brains work in Silicon Valley. These Franco-geeks, who number in the thousands, even have two associations, SiliconFrench and DBF.
“The French business system is constraining for individuals while supportive of scientists and engineers working on large, rigid systems that actually benefit from top-down decisions and slow change,” says Jean-Louis Gassée, a former Apple executive who helped organize DBF and is a partner at Allegis Capital in Palo Alto, Calif.
Here is more. Looking toward culture, the French are relatively strong in cinema and contemporary classical music, but weak in painting and rock and roll. Contemporary fiction you could argue either way, though I incline toward the negative. I am not sure if these patterns fit into the broader thesis above, though perhaps health care would.
My favorite things Venice
1. Painting. This is, of course, a bit ridiculous. Three is gobs and gobs and gobs, but I have to opt for late Titian as the peak of painting, ever, by anyone. Except for Velazquez. Here is one image, here is another. Moving past the Renaissance, Tiepolo remains underrated; visit Wurzburg for one of Europe’s best artistic thrills. Rosalbe Carriera portraits are underrated.
2. Work of fiction, set in: Death in Venice, Thomas Mann, is the obvious pick, here is a long list of fiction set in Venice. There is Calvino’s Invisible Cities, and Henry James, The Aspern Papers, I’ll give the nod to the latter, unless we can count bits of Proust.
3. Movie, set in: Scroll down for a list. I love the best parts of From Russia with Love, and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (really), but the clear winner is Orson Welles’s Othello.
4. Play, set in: Duh.
5. Techno group, named after: Venetian Snares, juicy stuff, high information content. Not for the faint hearted.
6. Music: Monteverdi will get his own post, Vivaldi bores me, Gabrieli is OK. Luigi Nono comes next, I like the Pollini recording of his work for piano and tape. There is Bruno Maderna as well.
7. Theatre: Carlo Goldoni, I once saw The Stag Hunt and loved it.
8. Writer: Casanova is fun to browse, more conceptual than you might think.
9. Librettist: Lorenzo da Ponte, who wrote Don Giovanni for Mozart.
The bottom line: Making this list was more interesting than I had expected. I have never felt "near" to Venice, but perhaps this trip — for a UNESCO conference — will change that.
What I’ve been reading
1. Ice, by Vladimir Sorokin. A totally lurid, highly sexed, contemporary Russian, pre-apocalyptic mix of science fiction and horror. I finished it.
2. The Once and Future King, T.H. White. Oddly absent from Law and Literature syllabi, I’m teaching this in my next class. This is many people’s favorite book. It’s written in a simple manner, but it cumulates in an oddly beautiful way.
3. What economists should learn from sociology, not to mention Arnold Kling on me, and Brad DeLong on Milton Friedman.
4. How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It, by Patricia Love and Steven Stosny. The claim: talking about relationship problems is an inherently shameful activity for the man and thus it will fail; the couple should just read this book and do what is best.
5. Econoblog with Ed Glaeser and Daron Acemoglu, on democracy and economic growth. If Greg Mankiw can debate Jacqueline Passey, Ed can cite Borat as evidence in a dialog with a world-class economist.
6. Invading Mexico: America’s Continental Dream and the Mexican War, 1846-1848 by Joseph Wheelan. If you wish to embarrass your friends (and yourself), ask them whether they would in retrospect support the U.S. conquest of territory from Mexico.
How to read Thomas Pynchon
Bookslut will tell you "not," but you would be missing something special. Most generally, revel in the language, the fun, and the set pieces. Don’t look for deeper meanings, in my view there ain’t none, and for the better. My specific tips:
1. V: Published when Pynchon was 24. Read it once, straight through, without trying to make sense of it. Then read it again. Companion to V. is a useful supplement.
2. The Crying of Lot 49. Short, fun, and somewhat scrutable. It is a common introduction to Pynchon, although Pynchon himself dismisses its importance.
3. Gravity’s Rainbow: The masterpiece. It doesn’t matter if you don’t finish it, the story falls apart in any case. Even reading the first fifty pages yields a high return.
4. Vineland: This short novel came after a 17-year hiatus. It has its defenders, but I find it unreadable and unpleasant.
5. Mason & Dixon: I love the 18th century, so you might think I could get into this one. Pam Regis tells me it has to be read aloud.
6. Against the Day: The new 1200-page monstrosity. How to read it? Lean it against your sofa, and wait until your wife starts complaining about it, thereby prompting you to pick it up and get it out of the way…
The bottom line: Pynchon is about the highest-IQ author out there, a mixed blessing. Start with Gravity’s Rainbow, or V, and hope for the best.
#15 in a series of 50.
Dr. Neruda’s Cure for Evil
I’ve loved Rafael Yglesias’s book Dr. Neruda’s Cure for Evil for about ten years, but only Friday, when browsing in the library, did it occur to (silly) me it was also The Best Novel By A Father of A Major Blogger.
The story, told by literary flashback, turns around a doctor who encourages his patients to relive their childhood traumas but goes one step or more too far. One review: "Entertaining, thought-provoking, shocking, enlightening, puzzling, this fascinating work
tackles many issues such as incest, insanity, the nature of love, the drive for power,
religious, business and political creeds, therapeutic ethics — and, of course, what (or who)
is evil."
Somehow, unjustly, the book never captured the "For Smart People Who Are Looking for Conceptual Yet Fun Fiction Along the Lines of Byatt, Eco, and Calvino" slot that grabs so many readers. It seems largely forgotten.
By the way, here is the son’s post on government contracting. Here is yet another generation up.
The Essential Norman Mailer
It is easy to hate his self-important puffery, but Norman Mailer remains one of America’s best writers. His books include:
1. The Naked and the Dead – Outdated, but still full of powerful writing, and lacking many of the later objectionable mannerisms.
2. Advertisements for Myself – A collection of journalism, a mixed bag, but the peaks are high.
3. Armies of the Night – About the 1968 Chicago Convention, I’ve never read it but it gets consistent raves.
4. Of a Fire on the Moon – The story of America’s space program, and one of the best non-fiction books period. As a writer, one of the books I most envy.
5. The Executioner’s Song – The story of Gary Gilmore, the first half is incredible — a candidate for "The Great American Novel" — although the second half meanders.
5. Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery – I usually hate historical fiction but this is gripping.
6. Harlot’s Ghost – His best book, 1168 pages of panache and joy. One of the most underrated and underread of the important American novels.
The thing is, he has many other books too. His new The Castle in the Forest, a psychological autobiography of the young Hitler, is better than his bad books but it does not compare to the books on this list.
My Law and Literature reading list
Bible, Book of Exodus
William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
Ambler, Eric, A Coffin for Dimitrios
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
Saramago, Jose, Blindness
Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast
J.M. Coetzee, The Life and Times of Michael K
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Kafka, Franz, Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories, translation by Neugroschel
Verissimo, Luis Fernando, Borges and the Eternal Orangutans
Year’s Best SF9, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
White, T.H. The Once and Future King
Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy, Perennial Library edition
Glaspell’s Trifles, on the web
Moby Dick, excerpts, on the web, the parts of the common law of whaling
Javier Cercas, Soldiers of Salamis
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Depending on time we will view some movies, start by buying Double Indemnity.
The reading list is much changed. There are fewer classics, more genre fiction, and more Latin fiction. On the plane back from Miami I reread Eric Ambler’s Coffin for Dimitrios; few people know this novel but it is one of the best spy/detective stories, period.
My favorite things Brazil
1. Painter: Candido Portinari is the obvious choice, try this one, or here, but he is not well-represented on-line. Jose Antonio da Silva, the naive painter, is a personal favorite; here is one image, here are two more.
2. Movie: Black Orpheus, if seen on a big screen, is splendid from beginning to end. Imagine Rio with empty, unpopulated hills. More recently, I am fond of Central Station, and regard City of God as just a bit overrated.
3. Music: This topic needs a post all its own, and you will get one soon enough.
4. Novel: Brazil (or is it the translators?) is oddly weak in this category. I’ll nominate Jorge Amado’s Dona Flor, or Machado de Assis, his still underrated Epitaph of a Small Winner. Here are more authors, but I await your guidance. By the way, I think Paulo Coelho’s Eleven Minutes is a good read but I haven’t been able to finish any of the others by him.
5. Natural wonder: Iguassu is one of the best natural sights in the world. Imagine a big waterfall 17 km long, and with coatimundis, amazing butterflies, and churrascaria nearby.
6. Non-fiction books about: I love Nancy Scheper-Hughes’s transcendent Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. My runner-up pick would be Alex Shoumanoff, Capital of Hope, about Brasilia. The classic works of Gilbert Freyre are good background on the country, as is Brazil: Once and Future Country.
7. Sculptor: Avant-garde Helio Oiticica is all the rage these days. They put two of his works out at MOMA, a big Tropicalia show in the Bronx, plus a big solo show is coming to Houston, I hope to see it there. The on-line images destroy the angles and the content of the boxes, maybe try this one, but best to see it live.
8. Favorite food: The small towns near Curitiba, in the south, have the world’s best beef plus amazing pasta.
The bottom line: Might Brazil be the best place, period? To visit, that is.
Snow Crashed
Somedays I feel like I have woken up in a Neal Stephenson novel. The following is not science fiction:
The poster child for profitable Second Life businesses is Ailin Graef–better known by her avatar’s name, Anshe Chung–and
Anshe Chung Studios, the business she
runs with her husband, Guntram Graef.Originally, the two ran the company from Germany, but at the beginning of
this year, they set up shop in Wuhan, a large city in China, and are now
employing more than 30 people full-time at, she says, better than local average
wages.Last month, Ailin Graef issued a press release announcing that the company’s
total holdings, comprised mainly of virtual land in Second Life, were
worth more than a million real-life dollars. For those who aren’t familiar with
the complex economies of virtual worlds, such a claim may seem incomprehensible.But for anyone who has spent significant time in Second Life, the
number seems all too possible, given Chung’s dominance of the land market there.On Monday, Graef visited Second Life for a
discussion about her business, how best to set up businesses in Second
Life and the nature of competition there.Unfortunately, as the interview was commencing, the event was attacked by a
"griefer," someone intent on disrupting the proceedings. The griefer managed to
assault the CNET theater for 15 minutes with–well, there’s no way to say this
delicately–animated flying penises.It’s not clear why the griefer attacked, but Anshe Chung is controversial to
some Second Life residents for reasons such as inflexibility on land
pricing, the signs she has placed in many areas of the virtual world that are
visible to anyone flying overhead, and her ability to get many residents to sell
their land to her.
How to read fast
I am unfamiliar with speed reading techniques, so I cannot evaluate them.
The best way to read quickly is to read lots. And lots. And to have started a long time ago. Then maybe you know what is coming in the current book. Reading quickly is often, in a margin-relevant way, close to not reading much at all.
Note that when you add up the time costs of reading lots, quick readers don’t consume information as efficiently as you might think. They’ve chosen a path with high upfront costs and low marginal costs. "It took me 44 years to read this book" is not a bad answer to many questions about reading speed.
Another way to read quickly is to cut bait on the losers. I start ten or so books for every one I finish. I don’t mind disliking a book, and I never regret having picked it up and started it. I am ruthless in my discards.
Fairfax and Arlington counties have wonderful public library systems, and I go about five times a week to one branch or another. Usually I scan the New Books shelf and look at nothing else. I can go shopping at the best store in the world, almost any day, for free.
I am both interested and compulsive. How can I let that book go unread or at least unsampled? I can’t.
Virtually every Tuesday I visit the New Books table at Borders. Tuesday is when most new books arrive. Who knows what might be there? How can I let that New Books table go unvisited? I can’t. About half the time I buy something, but I always walk away happy.
Here is another reading tip: do less of other activities.
Blogging hasn’t hurt my writing, it has helped by non-fiction reading, but I read fewer novels. That is the biggest intellectual opportunity cost of MR, though for the last month I’ve made a concerted effort to read more fiction. But it is not like the old days when I would set aside two months to work through The Inferno, Aeneid, and the like, with multiple secondary sources and multiple translations at hand. I no longer have the time or the mood, and I miss this.
Here are two earlier posts on time management.
Addendum: Jane Galt comments. And here is Daniel Akst.
My favorite things New Jersey
1. Music: There is Count Basie, Lauryn Hill (download "I Just Want You Around"), Paul Robeson, and Deborah Harry’s best songs; my favorite is the reggae-inspired "The Tide is High." Paul Simon was born in New Jersey, and of course there is sax player Wayne Shorter. Even at age 44, I’m still not into Frank Sinatra. Bruce Springsteen I now find mostly unlistenable (monotonous rhythm sections), but parts of Born to Run still send a thrill through my heart.
2. Author: Philip Roth is the obvious pick, but I prefer Norman Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost, a neglected masterpiece, and the first half of his Executioner’s Song. Stephen Crane is from the state, but somehow he doesn’t count in my eyes as a New Jerseyan. Mencken had the bottom line on James Fenimore Cooper.
3. TV show: Duh. I still don’t get the appeal of The Wire; for obvious biographical reasons, I’d rather watch white New Jerseyans kill each other than black Baltimoreans.
4. Poet: William Carlos Williams, here is a quickie poem.
5. Comic: Jason Alexander, by far the funniest guy on that show. Bud Abbott is another pick. James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano) can be funny when they let him.
6. Director: Steven Spielberg, AI is about how morally superficial people can be; Sugarland Express and Close Encounters (director’s cut) are other favorites of many. There is also Brian de Palma, his best film is the Hitchcockean Dressed to Kill.
7. Non-fiction writer. John McPhee has raised the bar for all of us.
8. Painter: Jacob Lawrence, especially the early works. There is also George Inness, who painted Montclair, and Ben Shahn, here is my favorite of his.
9. Sculptor: George Segal I am not so fond of, but otherwise I draw a blank.
10. Economist: Milton Friedman.
11. Movie, set in: Here is a list, plus there is Clerks and other Kevin Smith creations, not to mention Big (Tom Hanks) and Buckeroo Bonzai. I opt for Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. What else am I missing?
12. Mom: Mine.
The bottom line: Too obvious to state.
The second bottom line: Population density is a wonderful thing.
What I’ve been reading
1. Michael Crichton, Next. Yes it is "writing-by-numbers," yes it is better than his recent work, but no, it is not nearly as good as Jurassic Park, Sphere (my favorite), Congo, or for that matter his book on Jasper Johns. Some critics like it. The start is OK but it falls apart as it proceeds. By the way, here is my previous post on human-chimp hybrids.
2. Robert Bolaño, Distant Star. A minor masterpiece. He is another of those first-tier Latin writers, along with Asturias and Rulfo, who for mysterious reasons no one in the United States seems to read.
3. Richard Powers, The Echo Maker. A deserving winner of a National Book Award, plus I am interested in the neurology theme. I find many of Power’s earlier books too intellectualized, but this one held my attention throughout. By the way, I also tried the non-fiction National Book winner, the book about the Dust Bowl years, but it didn’t hold my interest.
4. The Poor Always Pay Back: The Grameen II Story, by Asif Dowla and Dipal Barua. A very good look at the micro-credit movement.
Addendum: The NYT picks its ten best books of the year.
What I’ve been reading
1. Dave Eggers, What is the What. Despite its preciousness, I quite liked A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Sadly this quasi-fictional tale of a Sudanese refugee reveals that most contemporary writers are lightweights, pure and simple.
2. Gore Vidal, Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir. I loved Palimpset, volume 1, but this follow-up is junk. Julian is his best book, but overall he has more misses than hits.
3. Othello. I’ll teach this in my spring Law and Literature class. I read Shakespeare as despising the Moor for turning his back on his natural Muslim allies and fighting them in Cyprus. In a strange way Othello deserves some of the bad treatment he receives — why should anyone trust him?
4. The new Stephen Dubner book…I am not reading it yet, but I don’t want to be slow with the news. Discover the other Dubner.
5. Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic. This is from the guy who brought us Everything Bad is Good for You, except it turns out that cholera isn’t good for you, it is bad for you. A brisk and readable story of public health issues in Victorian London.
6. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold [Crónica de una muerte anunciada]. I regard One Hundred Years of Solitude as a good but overrated book; this slim volume may well be his most exciting fiction and it is clearly the most humorous. I’m also fond on his non-fiction book about the kidnapping and volume one of his memoirs, plus of course the short stories; that is what he will be known for.