Teju Cole's novel "Every Day is for the Thief"

I’ve just finished reading Teju Cole’s novel Every Day is for the Thief, which was originally published in Nigeria in 2007 but has been republished by Random House in the wake of his second novel Open City’s tremendous success. Cole, born in the US and raised in Nigeria, writes in this short autobiographical work of returning on visits to Lagos and Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city. Over the course of the book, Cole’s flaneur-like wanderings touch upon: the state of jazz record and book shops, public transportation, internet scamming, reencountering a first love, power failures, malaria, crime and corruption, religion, and the attempt to read the cultural signs of a country he is both geographically and temporally separated from, but nonetheless closely identifies with. Interspersed throughout the novel are photographs taken by the author. I missed Cole’s visit to New Zealand a couple of years back, but read Open City around that time, which I’m keen to reread. Cole is an active presence on Twitter also and has been offering energetic, aphoristic dispatches on the World Cup lately. For more you can check out Cole’s website and a recent interview from the Guardian.

Nicholson Baker's "Traveling Sprinkler"

I've just finished reading (and skimming) NIcholson Baker's most recent novel "Traveling Sprinkler". Baker is an amazing, if at times frustrating, prose stylist and bleeds immensely complicated prose from the tired body of everyday existence. This has been the nature of many of his books, which tend, however eclectic in their topical pursuits, to involve detailed monologues, innovative wordplay, and enthralling gamesmanship. I picked up his latest as I am keenly interested in Baker's writing, if I only read it sporadically, rather than addictively. In addition this book is a sequel to a fascinating comic novel called "The Anthologist" which gained considerable critical attention a couple of years ago. In that book, a narrator named Paul Chowder (not unlike Baker himself) is a middle-aged writer who spends much time ruminating upon how poetry works, its history, and how to compile a poetry anthology. Chowder is clearly a lot more bungling and less renowned than the author, but it's probably owing to the fact that Baker empathizes so closely with Chowder as an alter-ego that the book really resonates so strongly. However "Traveling Sprinkler" is less focused, and as with most "sequels" pales a bit if compared to "The Anthologist." But maybe i'm a bit taken with Mr. Chowder whose chosen mundane pursuits include: composing (bad) pop music and taking up cigars (both) at a relatively advanced age, worrying over US foreign policy and writing crap lyrics about it, caring from a distance for his ex-partner, and wondering when to speak up at Quaker meeting. Chowder is often boring and silly, self-centered yet kind, yet eminently human. A modest and potentially highly enjoyable book if you are up for a meandering monologue rather than a plot filled feast. You can watch a brief interview of Baker from the Los Angeles Review of Books here.

Sam Lipsyte is killing me...

Better rephrase that, I am not exactly "being killed" by an American writer, but I'm reading his newest collection of short stories (a lucky thirteen) entitled The Fun Parts (yes, likely it's ironic, dig?) and I find myself nearly doubled over with semi-embarrassed mirth. That is, the stories feature incredibly well-wrought prose and awkward, horrifying yet hilarious situations: a sarcastic male doula (or, "doulo"), a deranged dungeon and dragons game, a troubled poet working in early childcare, men reminiscing about their teenage shotputting days, a Jewish dance teacher in recovery who spends time with a Holocaust denier: maybe not tempting as premises, but they unfold into weirdly unexpected but very human, and richly strange encounters and moments. Lipsyte's 2010 novel The Ask was an inspired comedic take on the plight of the over-educated, under-employed folk of recent years, but he is dark, man, dark! Same goes for his excellent first collection of stories Venus Drive. The author himself is pretty successful these days, teaching in a prestigious university in New York and gaining more and more critical acclaim, but don't let that stop you, he's very much worth checking out. You can read an interview with Lipsyte in Bookforum here and I've posted a pretty superficial but short clip of Lipsyte on a Brooklyn chat show below. Many lengthier interviews posted around the interwebs as well such as Michael Silverblatt's fine radio one on his KCRW program Bookworm.