These are the best books Bat Terrier read this year. (Disclosure: no books by friends on this list.)
The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, Alex Ross
Click here for rules for writing fiction, according to Elmore Leonard, Margaret Atwood, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Neil Gaiman, and others.
Jonathon Lethem interviews Patti Smith, who talks about human strength, William Blake, Roberto Bolano, and, of course, writing Just Kids. Link here. Worthy.
Nietzsche said: “God is dead. We have killed him.” Melville tells us what to about it. Link here.
‘Tis the season for the various and sundry lists of the year’s Best Books to begin appearing.
Here are lists from Dwight Garner, Michiko Kakutani and Janet Maslin.
Takeaways:
– It’s been a rich year for memoir/biography: “big” memoirs by Roland Barthes, Christopher Hitchens, Keith Richards, Patti Smith; new biographies of Henry Aaron, Cleopatra, Frank Sinatra, Simon Wiesenthal.
– The New York Times continues its maddening practice of hardly noticing contemporary poetry at all, ever. But Kay Ryan‘s Selected did manage a mention somehow.
If you run across any other Best Books lists, please post a link in the comments.
PS /
Last night, Patti Smith won the National Book Award, for her memoir of bohemian life in New York, Just Kids.
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A long time ago, in another world, the 1970s, Bat Terrier heard Patti Smith sing Lou Reed‘s Pale Blue Eyes and decided she was a goddess. Then came Smith’s first record, Horses, and it was obvious she was a rocker and a poet, too. She said the most amazing things–”those who have suffered understand suffering and thereby extend their hands,” “Jesus died for some somebody’s sins, but not mine.” Bat Terrier has loved her ever since. Her voice is the sound of a heart breaking with compassion for the world. And she’s funny (and wise):
And a true rock goddess:
Congratulations, Patti!
