Dexter Palmer interview (one of our p-list brothers)

[grladams at teleport.com]

Please excuse any duplicate posting Friday | March 5, 2010 | Volume 2 |
Issue 1130 Shelf Awareness:

Book Brahmin: Dexter Palmer 
 Dexter Palmer's first novel, The Dream of Perpetual Motion, was published
on March 2 by St. Martin's Press. He holds a Ph.D. in English Literature
from Princeton University and lives in Princeton, N.J. 

On your nightstand now: 

The Bascombe Novels, an omnibus collection by Richard Ford. Sitting beneath
that is The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. Over the past couple of years
I've also been slowly working my way through the King James Bible, with the
assistance of The Oxford Bible Commentary: I'm up to Isaiah and have
stalled out for the moment, but the books are still on my metaphorical
nightstand, so I claim credit for them.

Favorite book when you were a child: 

Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio. My local library had a copy that featured
illustrations that had somehow managed to escape the influence of the
Disney version--they were genuinely frightening, like all the best
children's literature.

Your top five authors: 

This list changes from day to day, but on this particular day, in no
particular order (other than alphabetical), I'd say:

Isaac Asimov. I haven't read an Asimov novel in a long time, but there was
about a year of my childhood when Asimov was the only novelist I read for
pleasure, book after book after book. Over a yard of my shelves is made up
of old Asimov paperbacks.

Joan Didion. Especially her nonfiction. I'm happy to read her writing on
whatever subject she chooses.

William Gaddis. Gaddis is a writer's writer--he loves formal
experimentation, and accessibility isn't the first thing on his mind--but
that's not a bad thing.

Douglas Hofstadter. Gödel, Escher, Bach and Le Ton beau de Marot are great
examples of how to handle interdisciplinary thinking without giving short
shrift to either the arts or the sciences.

Steven Millhauser. Great prose, evocative settings, and a strange sense of
humor. Edwin Mullhouse is my favorite book of his.

Book you've faked reading: 

Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, multiple times in college and grad school. I'll
get to it eventually. (Maybe.)
 
Book you're an evangelist for: 

Joseph and his Brothers by Thomas Mann, translated by John E. Woods. A
retelling of the Joseph story in Genesis blown up to life size, it has all
the sprawling esoteric showiness of a postmodern encyclopedic novel like
Infinite Jest, coupled with the meticulous discipline and structural
control of a modernist work like Ulysses.
 
Book you've bought for the cover: 

Two, actually: Desperation by Stephen King and The Regulators by King's
literary alter ego, Richard Bachman. The hardcover editions had beautiful
covers by Mark Ryden that formed a larger single image when placed side by
side and thematically reflected the content of the two books.
 
Book that changed your life: 

Gravity's Rainbow, a copy of which I found remaindered in a Waldenbooks in
a Florida shopping mall when I was a teenager. I bought it only because it
was cheap and had a cool title; years later I ended up writing one of my
dissertation chapters on Pynchon.
 
Favorite line from a book: 

Almost any line of dialogue from Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep or any
other Chandler novel for that matter. ("Tall, aren't you?" "I didn't mean
to be.")
 
Book you most want to read again for the first time: 

The Monk by Matthew Lewis. If I re-read it I won't be nearly as shocked as
I was the first time, since I'll actually be expecting--well, you know.
 
Share This
Deeper Understanding
Robert Gray: The Hare & the Tortoise vs. the Cyborgs
What if the hare and the tortoise, having resolved Aesop's Relative Speed
Conundrum centuries ago, had to join forces to battle an army of evil
cyborgs that were consuming our time, literally and figuratively? 

Did someone say literary mash-up? Wait, I'd better text my agent!

Here's a question I hope will start a new book trade conversation here:
When considering your relationship with electronic devices, social media
and other online tools, are you a hare (up to speed but still losing the
race), a tortoise (in the race, but taking it one step--and one device--at
a time) or a fully armed cyborg (earbuds plugged in, laptop engaged,
iPhone/Blackberry at hand)?

In recent months, I've noticed several articles on the Slow Media Movement
and thought it worth discussing, especially in an industry like ours where
many of us move seamlessly (more or less) from desktops to laptops to
smartphones throughout the day and often well into the night. And where the
now thoroughly virtual line between personal and professional life appears
to have dissolved.

Last November, APR's Marketplace program featured a segment that defined
the Slow Media trend this way: "Kinda like slow food, but without the food.
Slowies write letters, and, you know, talk to each other, offline. They
like to do one thing at a time."

Jenny Rausch, one of the Slowies interviewed, has a blog called "Slow
Media: A compendium of artifacts and discourses regarding digital
disenchantment and the possibilities for a less-mediated life." This week
she wrote in response to a recent New York Times article about the
increased time pressures and workloads placed on many contemporary workers.

"Would your life be better if you only worked 40 hours a week?" Rausch
asked. "If your work didn't follow you home, and wherever you go? If you
enjoyed time spent with friends and family without distraction? If you got
extra compensation for extra work, or reclaimed those surplus hours for
moonlighting at another (paid) job?"


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