New this week, The Rumpus presents a smattering of Book Club related news, including highlights of past, present, and future books in our queue.
-You may have already caught Daniel Handler’s excellent review of John Brandon’s Citrus County (bloggers are linking to it left and right). Now, check out the follow-up on Paper Cuts: Stray Questions for: John Brandon, a short interview with Brandon that touches on his regional ties to the South and his affinity for Percival Everett.
-It’s been a big week for Doug Dorst, who penned The Rumpus’s July Book Club pick, The Surf Guru. The Wall Street Journal’s culture blog Speakeasy interviewed Dorst, noting that he has “been compared to T.C. Boyle, Denis Johnson and a Northern Californian version of Haruki Murakami.” “Do you intentionally invoke certain writers in your work?” Speakeasy’s Matt Scheiner asks Dorst. Find out the answer, and how The Surf Guru isn’t really about surfing, by reading the full interview.
The Texas literati can’t stop talking about Dorst, who lived in Austin for a time and remembers it fondly. The Texas Monthly will have a review The Surf Guru, which it calls “freewheeling fiction collection,” in their August issue; a preview, here. The Austin Chronicle-er Kimberly Jones gets worked up about The Surf Guru’s “disturbing themes and violence,” and a placid Dorst chimes in: “And then there’s the bottle-throwing in ‘Vikings, which is actually the one I’m most disturbed by, just because to me it’s the most possibly real.” More of their back-and-forth, plus Jones’ take on the book, here. And Joe Gross of The Statesman characterizes Dorst as “an emotional, stylistic polymath” whose “sharp collection reflects it nicely.”
-Seattle’s SunBreak online magazine sees the most light in Dorst’s book “when his characters are balancing on the knife edge of losing their shit entirely or breaking through to a new life.” AP writer Dan Scheraga deems The Surf Guru “a mixed bag,” noting that “Dorst seems to be at his best when depicting losers.” While Scheraga wasn’t convinced by Dorst’s unconventional story structures, he was entranced by some of the tales, which read “like a couple of tropical fever dreams.”Agree or disagree with the reviews on Dorst? Join in on The Rumpus Book Club discussions to voice your opinion of the collection.
–Richard Yates author Tao Lin has started a series of new publicity contests on his blog, wherein entrants compete for hundreds of dollars by writing or Gmail chatting about Lin’s new book, filming an interview or panel discussion revolving around Richard Yates, or filming a person “saying Richard Yates in a manner that causes 3+ people to turn their bodies, to some degree, to look at [aforementioned person].” For tips on winning and more details on how to enter, read Richard Yates and then visit Lin’s blog.
-Want to get to know Lan Samantha Chang, author of our September book pick, All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost? You can start by watching a speech she gave at the University of Southern California this past spring. Get ready for her upcoming novel by delving into her past works, which include Inheritance and Hunger: A Novella and Stories, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Prize.
