The John Updike Society Links my Last Two Pieces on Updike and DFW!!!

I'm so pleased to have had my most recent piece on John Updike and David Foster Wallace--not to mention my previous piece on these two authors--linked by The John Updike Society, which operates for the purpose of awakening and sustaining reader interest in the literature and life of John Updike, promoting literature written by Updike, and fostering and encouraging critical responses to Updike’s literary works.

Updike and Wallace are two writers whose lives and works become only more relevant to me as time goes by. They and their characters deal with equally compelling takes on consumerist culture, Updike's in love with what such a system grants us, Wallace's painfully aware of the underbelly of such a system. Big thanks to Cigale Literary Magazine and Word Riot for publishing these pieces. I loved writing both.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.







Buy Badge.

New Piece on DFW on Updike!!!

I have a new piece up at Word Riot about how wrong David Foster Wallace was about John Updike. 

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which will premiere in Tempe in early 2013.

Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $5.

Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.

Infinite Jest

As I dropped in my last blog, I just started Infinite Jest.

Why am I starting Infinite Jest when my favorite contemporary author, Jonathan Franzen, just released his first novel in nine years?

Lots of reasons.

For one, I managed to miss entirely this book on its release in early 1996. I was kind of busy at the time.


Back then, I don't think I would've had the grace to accept that this guy had so clearly trumped me, and everyone else. He was being crowned king of something I liked to delude myself into thinking I could be king of one day, and the best my character could muster for Infinite Jest on its publication was to ignore it, to focus on my band, to grumble, "Well, once I really get going..."

That was over 14 years ago, and if I've managed anything in that time, I hope I've managed to respect--even herald--a contemporary's work when he or she does something great.

The irony of the above statement is that Infinite Jest's author, David Foster Wallace, recently took his own life after a lifelong battle with depression. Having missed the moment, I'd like to pay his memory the respect of giving his magnum opus a shot. We aren't greeted by great works of fiction of this scale very often, and I'd like to experience how great it really is.

Alas, I am a slow reader, and I will surely be reading other books as I work my way through it. I don't expect to finish Infinite Jest in 2010, but you never know.

I'm on page 50 right now, and loving it. The effort expended to notch up the writing of each of these scenes, each of these characters, each of these sentences, is pretty amazing. Now I'm curious if Wallace can sustain that kind of writerly attention throughout the novel. He might have been possessed enough to do it.

As someone who's just about finished writing a novel that's not even half the length of Infinite Jest, I can appreciate the effort.

So, think of me plugging away at Infinite Jest, and probably enjoying it, and probably letting you know how good it is at some point.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Try Ghost Notes, the award-winning novel, in print form for just $5.




Try Ghost Notes the Audio Book as an unabridged digital download.



Or try Ghost Notes the Ebook.