Tobias Wolff, Sylvia Plath, Vendela Vida, and yes, John Gardner

So, it’s been awhile: I’m still reading Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath, but that’s because I lost it for about two weeks. It lay lonely and abandoned in the car. But anywho, during the past month or so I’ve read a couple of fantastic short books while continuing to trudge through The Sunlight Dialogues by John Gardner.

The first and perhaps most enjoyable was Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida (editor of The Believer), a stark tale of searching for ones identity and past in the arctic wastes of Lapland. It’s in paperback at the moment, so take a look if you like writing that has a keen since of rhythm and doesn’t pull its punches.

I also read The Night in Question, a story collection by Tobias Wolff. I had previously read his novel, Old School back in the spring and thought it was one of the best I’ve read in a long time, and I felt the same way about his stories. He has a very intimate connection between language and story that many literary authors fail to grasp.

Which leads me today’s purchases: the current issue of Poets & Writers; a marked down hardback copy of Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland (whom, though at times absurdly quirky, is one of my favorite novelists – he also has an essay in the current issue of Granta), and In the Garden of the North American Martyrs by Tobias Wolff, another story collection. So that’s what’s on the plate currently.

One of my goals this year has been to work on reading some classics of American fiction during the past century; so far I’ve gotten through some of J.D. Salinger, some of Plath (poetry, but oh well), still working on Gardner. I hope to read some Kerouac as well as Raymond Carver at some point, but I’m not in too big a hurry. I’ve got Seperate Flights by Andre Dubus waiting in the wings at some point, as well as debut novels by Mischa Berlinski and Olga Grushin.