May 2010
32 posts
4 tags
deborah schupack, sylvan street
“‘Work hard, fly right, good will out,’ Sally said. ‘That’s my suggestion for the day.’” Perhaps you, or someone you know, has taken a creative-writing class, or a screenwriting class, or perhaps you have seen a number of contemporary movies. If this is the case, you will be familiar with the moral dilemma / writing prompt that begins with the discovery...
6 tags
larsson continued
“When it comes down to it, this story is not primarily about spies and secret government agencies; it’s about violence against women, and the men who enable it.” Blomkvist says this, to his sister the lawyer, at the start of the denouement. The problem is not so much Larsson’s inability to leave any implication unexplained or any subtext covert. It’s the fact that, no...
3 tags
larsson continued
“‘I’ve brought some bagels,’ he said, holding up a bag. ‘And some espresso. Since you own a Jura Impressa X7, you should at least learn how to use it.’”
We also learn that Blomkvist uses a MacBook and an Ericsson T10. We’re often told explicitly what characters are wearing, and for a long stretch in the book all the women wear a variation of black...
4 tags
larsson continued
“‘It all sounds a bit … I don’t know. Improbable?’
‘I know. It’s the stuff of a spy novel.’”
Multiple characters have exchanges very similar to this throughout the book. As with the ritual recitation of the plot, I expect this is a sign of trouble.
3 tags
larsson continued
“We can ask why the source might want this information to get out. Let me explain why I gave orders that everything to do with Salander has to cross my desk. I have special knowledge of the subject that no one else at SMP has. The legal department has been informed that I possess this knowledge but cannot discuss it with them. Millennium is going to publish a story that I am contractually...
7 tags
“There is one particular piece from What I Talk About that has stayed with me in...”
– Kevin Hartnett, in The Millions, on Haruki Murakami
3 tags
stieg larsson, the girl who kicked the hornet's...
“‘I think you’re right,” Erlander said to Blomkvist as they walked back to the farmhouse. ‘An analysis of the blood will probably establish that Salander was shot and buried here, and I’m beginning to expect that we’ll find her fingerprints on the cigarette case. Somehow she managed to survive and dig herself out and —’
‘And somehow get...
3 tags
"Gabrielsson considers herself a shrewd... →
Charles McGrath, “The Afterlife of Stieg Larsson,” NYTMagazine
3 tags
child continued
“Secret Service is a civilian organization. Paramilitary at best. Nearly as bad as regular citizens.”
I don’t think it’s really reading too much into this to point out that there’s a strange tension between Child’s very lone-wolf hero — who starts the book by buying new clothes to suit a change in climate, and prides himself on being so untraceable and...
3 tags
child continued
“At that exact moment less than a hundred and thirty miles away in a warehouse behind Baltimore’s Inner Harbor cash was finally exchanged for two weapons and matching ammunition. A lot of cash. Good weapons. Special ammunition. The planning for the second attempt had started with an objective analysis of the first attempt’s failure. As realistic professionals they were...
3 tags
lee child, without fail
“So maybe she’ll want to date you, too. Civilized can be an overrated virtue. And collecting the complete set is always fun for a girl.”
Says the main character’s female partner, in relation to his deceased brother’s ex-girlfriend. There’s not, like, a fuck-yeah-airport-fiction tumblr, is there?
Jove 04.03
3 tags
“This couldn’t be happening to him, not to him and Klara, not to his mind,...”
– Julie Orringer, The Invisible Bridge | Knopf 05.04.10
3 tags
orringer continued
“Novak looked up at him from beneath his graying brows; the last trace of anger had gone from his eyes. ‘In the end, only one thing,’ he said. ‘Some by fire, some by water. Some by the sword, some by wild beasts. Some by hunger, some by thirst. You know how the prayer goes, Andras.’”
And because this is an old-fashioned novel, here we’ve got the...
4 tags
orringer continued
“As the men read and laughed over the paper, Andras began to feel as if he had awakened from a long, drugged sleep. He was surprised he’d been so weak, so willing to allow his mind to be overtaken by miserable thoughts and then hollowed to nothingness. Now he was drawing every day. They were absurd little sketches, to be sure, but they oxygenated him, made the effort of breathing seem...
4 tags
julie orringer, the invisible bridge
“She shook her head and put her cheek into her hand. ‘I was frightened, I suppose. I saw what it might be like to have a life with you. For the first time that seemed possible. But there were all the terrible things I hadn’t told you. You didn’t know I had shot and killed a man, or that I was a fugitive from justice. You didn’t know I had been raped. You didn’t...
4 tags
"There are many things I liked about noir. But in... →
Errol Morris, addressing Berkeley’s Journalism School commencement.
4 tags
ambler continued
“Yet there it was. The talented, ambitious, pretentious Mr. Carey, with his smug, smiling family, his Brooks Brothers suits, and his Princeton and Harvard degrees, liked playing detectives, liked looking for nonexistent German soldiers, liked having dealings with dreary people like Frau Gesser, disagreeable people like Colonel Chrysantos, and undesirables like Phengaros. And why? For the...
4 tags
“You don’t know what it means to be alone,” she... →
Emily St. John Mandel, in her story for Five Chapters this week, “Claire in Africa.” And they have a James Hynes story next week, too.
3 tags
eric ambler, the schirmer inheritance
“She picked up her bag, turned around, and positioned herself facing the door. Then she began to walk straight for it. She missed the table by a hairsbreadth. She did not sway. She did not teeter. It was a miraculous piece of self-control. George saw her go out of the restaurant, change direction towards the concierge’s desk, pick up her room key, and disappear up the stairs. To a...
3 tags
"A lot of people seem to feel that way about... →
AO Scott, “Gen X has a Midlife Crisis.” I may be judging from the lack of resonance I felt with Milo Burke in The Ask, and I may just be speaking from a different world than Scott perceives (outside New York; working nine-to-five and not knowing anyone who doesn’t have to do the same). This is my demographic, but Scott’s not describing my world. But at a certain point, it...
3 tags
chung continued
And the daughter responding:
“‘You make it sound noble. Like this, this kind of thing’ — she turns to the Kenyan girl — ‘is, like, redeeming or something. Like some kind of higher state, when really it’s just horrific. My friends and I, we talk about this, about why we dislike America. Your George Bush especially. It’s these stupid ennobling ideas,...
4 tags
chung continued
“I don’t know, to tell you the truth. But it does move me. I always thought of her as brave. Because she’s posing. She knows something has just been taken away from her — or I think she does — and she’s sitting there, looking at us, composing herself for people to see, and she’s saying something by just being seen. And I always kind of imagined the woman...
3 tags
sonya chung, long for this world
“Careful-careful. she scans to find her box and inserts the key slowly, deliberately, turns it to the right and, in a single firm, smooth motion, pulls the little door open. She removes the stack of envelopes and closes the box, swift and hard. Removes the key. These actions calm her, focus her energies. One must focus on the tiny actions that make up the events of one’s life. She has...
4 tags
mandel continued
“Do you love her?’‘The girl? I don’t know. A little. Yes. Okay, the thing is, I miss her, but not as much as I miss my cat.”
It’s funny, and kind of delightful, how much Jim the cat matters: he even drapes himself over a couple of important beats in the plot, in a way that’s recognizable to someone with pets. Because, really, like eating or visiting a...
4 tags
mandel continued
“She was quiet for a while. ‘Your grandfather was an official in the Church of Latter-Day Saints. He was a well-respected man, one of those pillar-of-the-community types, but he was terrifically cruel in his personal life. I ran away at sixteen. Was he moral? He thought so. He operated a soup kitchen and a shelter for the homeless and probably saved lives. There are probably people...
5 tags
emily st. john mandel, the singer's gun
“And it struck him instantly as the most obvious, possibly even the most important question you could ever ask anyone — How were you formed? What forged you? — but no one had ever asked him that before, and for a second he found himself flailing in the dark. It was corrupt. It was beautiful. My parents were the best parents anyone could hope for, and they were also dealers in...
4 tags
kirkwood continued
“Why does any woman? Because we can. It’s our elective choice these days. It seems a damn shame not to. We should make the most of what we have, you know? My poor mom lived her whole life despairing of her nose. She had great tits. Gorgeous tits. But she hated her nose. Back then, there was nothing she could do about it. Not without scandal.”
Cut Away is, ostensibly, about a...
5 tags
The middle ground is a trap. A novel must be truly... →
Eric B. Martin, on American Subversive and the trouble with the realist novel now. It’s interesting that Martin makes this point about American Subversive because, for all the traditional realism he describes in the narrative, the book is as much about boredom and the attention-deficit culture as about radicalism, and that the book to Martin’s reading does not adequately stake out its...
3 tags
kirkwood continued
“She’s wearing that same coral jacket as last week, already a little worse for wear. Nothing a good dry cleaner couldn’t fix. But it hasn’t been, and she is still wearing it. I remember all the times when I’ve had to make a choice between how I’d like to be seen or how I’d like to see myself, and the things I needed just to make it through the week.”...
3 tags
catherine kirkwood, cut away
“She’s going to think I’m an old fart, but so what?—I say: ‘You seem like a good kid.’ She does. ‘You’re smart, good-looking. And I think you know it, too.’
‘Good kid is different from good-looking.’ Her glare is fragile. She hasn’t been on her own for long. ‘How I look has nothing to do with me.’”
The last...
4 tags
goodwillie continued
“‘The Pucci dresses. The skinny jeans. See?’ She rubbed her thighs. ‘I’d go to dinner parties and pick at them under the table, like the denim was the problem. And above the table all the talk was about work: fashion and real estate, publishing and PR. I felt like I had to keep my job a secret lest I bore people. And so I gradually built up this animosity toward...
3 tags
goodwillie continued
“They were relics of an era long past, preserved like rare animal bones and just as brittle. Even then, as Simon made introductions — my mother had hugged me and set off to find an extra chair — it seemed as if I were meeting the same person six different times, a person who’d retreated from some larger life to gain a voice in a smaller one, traded in the big ideas for a...
