Printer’s Row / Mark Sarvas
Don’t know of you’ve noticed, but the annual Printer’s Row Book Fair takes place this weekend in Chicago, and there’s an unusually fine lineup of writers appearing. I’ve added the most notable ones to my events list at right, but check out the the full events schedule for complete info.
Two events I’m planning to make today: at 2 p.m at the Grace Place Sanctuary, 2nd floor (events map here) there is a panel of international writers including Uwem Akpan, Nam Le, and Rabih Alameddine, hosted by the Trib’s Mary Schmich. At 3pm, novelist and friend-of-GRJ Mark Sarvas participates in a panel with Dana Vachon, author of Mergers & Acquisitions over in the River Room at University Center. The panel is moderated by Jessica Reaves.
If you haven’t read it, Sarvas’s first novel, called Harry, Revised, is a spendidly funny but also serious and moving portrait of a man left adrift by his wife’s recent death. His decision to finally become the hero of his own life, as David Copperfield would say, has comical consequences for everyone around him, but ultimately reflects the way all of us try to come to terms with the distance between our hopes for ourselves and that very particular and seemingly random person we end up being without necessarily choosing to be. Sigh. And then laugh.
June 16th, 2008 00:03
You are really stretching it, praising this book, which is transparently a concoction of hackneyed narrative situations, soap opera talk, and sophomoric existential reflections. “Harry” isn’t ever established, much less “revised”.
June 20th, 2008 00:28
I always consider that to insult a book carries a heavier obligation than to praise it. So, examples please. But first, make sure you want to have this conversation.:)
June 20th, 2008 01:17
I am not insulting the book, just comparing it with others of the same type; it is just totally recognizable as a pseudo-literary production. Examples are on every page, so to cite any one would imply that there was merit in the rest.
Why you think praising something involves less obligation than criticizing it is beyond me. Is your praise just flippant? Or calculated?
My criticism is really directed at YOU, and amounts to a question as to whether you can be sincere in promoting such a mediocre work. Harry, Revised is from my point of view not worth discussing at all.
June 21st, 2008 05:57
>I am not insulting the book, just comparing it with others
>of the same type; it is just totally recognizable as a
>pseudo-literary production.
Quite unsatisfactory. You generalize about “other novels of the same type” without specifying the type or citing other examples. This is regrettable since you seem to mistake the type of novel “Harry” is: it’s not a literary novel, it’s a comic novel that plays with literary themes and conventions.
>Examples are on every page, so to cite any
>one would imply that there was merit in the rest.
Nice try.:)
>Why you think praising something involves
>less obligation than criticizing it is beyond me.
If it feels fine to you to criticize something without providing reasons, I probably can’t convince you otherwise. But I’m surprised you feel that way.
>Is your praise just flippant? Or calculated?
Are those opposites? I feel like Estragon talking to Vladimir.
>My criticism is really directed at YOU, and
>amounts to a question as to whether you can
>be sincere in promoting such a mediocre work.
What you’re missing is that it’s not a mediocre work – it’s a very funny, very thoughtful, very well written comic novel. In fact it’s far better written than most literary novels.
>Harry, Revised is from my point of view not
>worth discussing at all.
But I didn’t ask you to discuss it, you volunteered!
What you usefully remind me, though, is that I really should write a longer appreciation of the book.
Sad but true: most books are bad and most people can’t write. It’s painful, in many cases, to personally know people who write, because you have to either say untrue things about their books or just avoid the subject, or them, until you can both pretend it’s all forgotten. As I’ve mentioned often enough on this blog, I know Mark and was a bit fearful to read this book – not because I had reason to believe he wouldn’t write a good book, but because good books are just so unlikely. So really it was like a gift to read “Harry,” which as I say is quite well written by my standards.
About which: My standards should be pretty evident after the six years I’ve spent blogging about books. And even though I write about Dante and Beckett, for example, I hope I’m never guilty of believing that there’s only one kind of book worth reading, or let my taste for classics, or literature in translation, prevent me from appreciating good contemporary fiction of any kind – even if it comes from unlikely places like one’s own friends.:)
June 21st, 2008 13:04
Quoting people back and then trying to take them apart is bad manners. Common as it is. Your Beckett reference is ridiculous.
I found Harry, Revised to be totally unfunny and clumsy, and very adolescent. I only read fifty pages of it though, expecting it to get better–but was eventually sickened by the prurience and claustrophobia of the narrator. Putting it down was like moving over from a guy who smells on the subway.
I can understand your trying to support a friend of yours, but you are, as I said, stretching it with your categorical praise for such an uneven work with such typical themes. For all know, Harry, Revised could become a bestseller, and a TV series; that wouldn’t make it “very funny, very thoughtful”. Just more of the same. You want a comparison: how about “Love Story” by Eric Segal, a runaway bestseller that was total trash.
Again, I don’t have a quarrel with Mark Sarvas at all; he is transparent. Clearly he is aiming to be a popular novelist, and will do what it takes to get there, even posing as an upwardly mobile literary blogger. It is seeing thoughtless endorsements that gets to me.
June 21st, 2008 17:03
Now it turns out you haven’t read the book! Good lord.
June 21st, 2008 19:50
Fifty pages is plenty enough. End of discussion.