Author Archives: fictionadvocate

by | June 12, 2013 · 9:00 am

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN - LIONEL SHRIVER

FA review tag

There are books, and then there are BOOKS. BOOKS are not simply paper and ink; they are ideas, challenges, meditations, revolutions, and prayers. We Need to Talk About Kevin is a BOOK.

I realize I am a little late to the game in reading Lionel Shriver’s haunting masterpiece, but I felt I ought to read a classic Shriver novel before diving into her latest, Big Brother. Lucky for me, BOOKS also don’t have expiration dates. If anything, We Need to Talk About Kevin is more relevant today than when it was originally published in 2003. So buckle up, because a lot can be said about this one.

On the surface, We Need to Talk About Kevin is a series of letters written by a middle-aged woman, Eva, to her estranged husband, Franklin, after their son, Kevin, has been incarcerated for murdering select students and a teacher at his high school. But this book is far more than a compelling true crime read. It operates on deeper, more painful levels by asking: Who is at fault? Continue reading →

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Filed under Big Brother, Lionel Shriver, Mackenzie Brady, We Need to Talk About Kevin

by | May 2, 2013 · 7:00 am

Back to the Dark Chamber

Bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty, and Waiting for the Barbarians

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Today it’s been exactly two years since Osama Bin Laden was killed. The date has, unsurprisingly, gotten me thinking about Zero Dark Thirty again. The film was released on DVD last month. Presumably it’s now crowding Best Buy shelves and the “shopping carts” of countless Amazon accounts, promising the chance to relive the moment of supreme discomfort that occurred when we were all in the theater this winter, crunching popcorn happily through the previews, only to be suddenly confronted with the screams of 9/11 audio that open the film. As you know, the moral queasiness of Zero Dark only intensifies from there, the torture scenes in particular drawing much critical attention (“Did they, or did they not suggest that ‘enhanced interrogation’ directly led to the killing of Bin Laden?” etc.). By this point, the depiction of these acts has been debated and counter-debated and counter-counter-debated. However, for anyone who—like me—still can’t stop thinking about it, I have a recommendation.

No novel better wrestles with the ramifications of torture—and its “usefulness” to national security—than Waiting for the Barbarians by South African Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee. Set in an imaginary desert colony named simply “the frontier,” Waiting for the Barbarians follows a local official as he deals with the Third Bureau, an agency tasked with protecting a vast nation called “the Empire.” The book makes it clear early on that its story functions as an allegory for the nature of imperialism. As the plot unfolds, the Third Bureau begins to suspect that “the barbarians” (a.k.a. natives of the frontier) are plotting to destroy the Empire. Throughout the novel the Third Bureau aims to crush an imminent barbarian attack, which it suspects may happen at any moment. But the Bureau has no evidence, except for the torture-induced confessions of a few barbarians.

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Filed under Hooray Fiction!, J. M. Coetzee, Kathryn Bigelow, Osama Bin Laden, Waiting for the Barbarians, Zero Dark Thirty

by | April 5, 2013 · 2:02 pm

#ParksandJest

Last night was a bit frantic around here, as the new episode of Parks and Recreation (“Partridge”) made plenty of references to Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

It all started with a hint from Parks and Recreation showrunner (and huge IJ fan) Michael Schur.

Michael Moats, our Senior Wallace Correspondent, quickly accepted the challenge.

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Filed under Bradford Evans, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, Infinite Jest Liveblog, Michael Schur, Parks and Recreation

by | April 3, 2013 · 1:32 pm

4 Years, 4 Books, 4 Free

UPDATE: The giveaway is over, but our publications are still here.

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Fiction Advocate is turning 4 years old!

Celebrate with us by downloading all 4 of our e-books.

They’re free until the end of April.

So please tell your friends to crash this party and take our stuff.

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TRHCIn the award-winning, critically acclaimed essay “The Real Holden Caulfield,” Michael Moats offers the definitive history of one of literature’s most beloved characters.

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BrothelThe debut novel from New York City playwright J. Boyett, Brothel is an erotic farce about three college girls and the diabolically charismatic friend who convinces them to open a whorehouse.

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PostShawn Andrew Mitchell’s masterful, rambling essay on the masterful, rambling essays of Geoff Dyer comes with colorful GIFs and clickable footnotes and all sorts of futuristic whizbangs.

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RRHANCIn real life Robert Repino’s first novel is soon to be published by a major NYC press. But in this book he gets slandered by a dear friend in a series of 117 outlandish lies.

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Filed under Geoff Dyer, Holden Caulfield, Hooray Fiction!, J. Boyett, J. D. Salinger, Robert Repino, Shawn Andrew Mitchell

by | March 8, 2013 · 10:00 am

The Hair Lit Mixtape

Hair Lit

You want to read stories that rock. Stories that slap glitter on their face before leaping off a Marshall stack in an agonized pose that appears to be the result of electrocution. That’s what Hair Lit is for. A new collection of stories inspired by the best glam metal of the 1980s, it reads like a VH1 tribute to a teenager who attended every ill-advised concert if the decade. The Mötley Crüe of contributors includes Fiction Advocate favorites Lindsay Hunter and Shawn Andrew Mitchell, along with Roxane Gay, Chip Cheek, Steve Himmer, and a bunch of people who absolutely shred.

Below we’ve compiled a mixtape of our favorite lyrics from Hair Lit. And we’ve paired them with music videos of the ballads that inspired them. When you finish strutting, lip-synching, and waving your lighter in the air, get your copy of Hair Lit from Orange Alert Press. Continue reading →

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Filed under Ben Tanzer, Bon Jovi, Chip Cheek, Hair Lit, KISS, Lindsay Hunter, Lita Ford, Nick Ostdick, Orange Alert Press, Roxane Gay, Shawn Andrew Mitchell, Steel Dragon, Steve Himmer, Twisted Sister

by | February 22, 2013 · 12:15 pm

Faked

Fakes

FA review tag

How funny would it be if literary figures had nicknames like street thugs? Pretty funny, it turns out. We’d be discussing “Boom-Boom-In-Da-Room Harold Bloom” and “my Once-A-Week-O Freak-O Critique-O Michiko Kakutani.” Those are from a short story by J. Robert Lennon. Taking the form of the authors’ notes at the back of a short story collection, it features a list of “shout-outs” to my “homies” by a writer who apparently killed some people in real life. His list goes on.

Tommy “Tomcat” Lynchin’ Pynchon; Write-Till-She-Moan Toni More-and-Morrison; Abracadabra-Gift-a-Gab Gabriel García Park-It-In-The-Fiction-Market Márquez; Donny Fill-O, Chill-O, Careful-Not-Ta-Spill-O DeLillo; and finally, the Chairman of the Boards, the Original Globe-Trotter, Sir Mike-It, Spike-It, As-You-Like-It, Mistah Bling-Bling-Play’s-the-Thing, the Killa of Fear, William Shake-Bake-and-Take-A-Bow Shakespeare. Word.

It’s one of the best gags in the book, and it could sum up Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, “Found” Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts. Editors David Shields and Matthew Vollmer define a “fraudulent artifact” as

a text purporting to be a particular form of writing—a journal entry, a note, a yearbook letter, an e-mail, a transcript of a speech, a grocery list, a musical score, a screenplay—which also tells a story, stirs thought and emotion, inspires inquiry, initiates action, and/or calls into question that which is—or has purported to be—real.

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Filed under David Shields, Fakes, Hooray Fiction!, Matthew Vollmer

by | February 19, 2013 · 10:00 am

Sherlock’s Homes

STR

Sherlock Holmes has one of the most famous addresses in literary history: 221B Baker Street, London.

A new CBS show called Elementary has re-imagined the houndstooth-loving detective as a present-day denizen of New York City. Funny thing about New York City, though. It doesn’t have a Baker Street. Anywhere. (There’s a Baker Place in Staten Island, but it’s a single block that dead ends. And it’s in Staten Island.) So the new Sherlock Holmes doesn’t live at 221B Baker Street. Instead he lives at a non-famous, non-literary address in Brooklyn.

What a waste! There are plenty of perfectly good 221 Baker Streets  in the United States where Sherlock Holmes would feel comfortable.

Here are the top 10 properties that Sherlock and his real estate agent should inspect before his next move. (Thanks, Google Maps.) Continue reading →

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Filed under Hooray Fiction!

by | February 14, 2013 · 1:57 pm

Joy Bombs

Tenth of December - George Saunders

FA review tag

“Consistently popular, highly regarded authors tend to become more myth than writer. George Saunders is that type.”[1] “It’s almost hard to fathom how a writer this good could get better. But he has. A lot better, even.”[2] “In Tenth of December, [...] readers will encounter an abduction, a rape, a chemically induced suicide, the suppressed rage of a milquetoast or two, a veteran’s post-­traumatic impulse to burn down his mother’s house — all of it buffeted by gusts of such merriment and tender regard and daffy good cheer that you realize only in retrospect how dark these morality tales really are.”[3]

“As usual with Saunders, the first thing you notice is the language, the exhilarating explosion of slang, neologisms, fake product names.”[4] “These stories feature a kind of nattering glibness, especially from authority figures who want to crush your soul while maintaining the thinnest pretense of being your friend.”[5] “But in his new book, his defiant quirkiness is tempered with a dark sobriety and a sense that the world we live in is often more surreal and savage than any satire could be.”[6] “Saunders’s fictions often present powerless characters trapped in a sort of chirpy, totalitarian Disneyland;”[7] “a kind of Dark Ages middle America defined by Darwinian class striving [...] and the substitution of bureaucracy for ethics.”[8] “Part of what makes these stories so painful, and so funny, is the way that Saunders melds together the fear of total economic failure with the fear of just not being good enough, of social annihilation.”[9] Continue reading →

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Filed under George Saunders, Tenth of December