El draft de la NFL

ANTES DE TOMAR EL CAMINO DE PALM DESERT A INDIO PARA EL SEGUNDO DIA DEL COACHELLA FEST PUDE VER LAS PRIMERAS SELECCIONES DEL DRAFT DE LA NFL, QUE COMO SIEMPRE CONTO CON UNA COBERTURA TELEVISIVA IMPRESIONANTE. MI EQUIPO FAVORITO, LOS BRONCOS, TUVIERON UNA SELECCION RARA: UN LINIERO DEFENSIVO. DE CUALQUIER FORMA, NO ESTUVO MAL EN UN A;O DONDE LA DEFENSIVA SE VE CON MUCHOS HUECOS, SOBRE TODO TRAS LA SALIDA DE AL WILSON DEL EQUIPO DEBIDO A UNA LESION QUE AL PARECER LO RETIRARA DEL FUTBOL.

Coachella 2,

ME ALEJE HOY (SABADO) DEL ESCENARIO PRINCIPAL DE COACHELLA PARA VER A THE CRIBS, THE FRATELLIS, RICKY ERICKSON, HOT CHIP, LCD SOUNDSYSTEM, THE RAPTURE Y THE DECEMBERISTS. EN EL PRINCIPAL SOLO VI A ARCADE FIRE Y A TRAVIS.

ARCADE FIRE SIENTO QUE FUE EL GRUPO MAS IMPACTANTE DEL DIA, ENTRE LAS QUE VI, PERO THE DECEMBERISTS DIERON UNA PRESENTACION ESTUPENDA QUE ME HIZO PASAR MOMENTOS MUY DIVERTIDOS -QUERIA VER A KINGS OF LEON, PERO AL FINAL ME DECIDI POR THE DECEMBERITS, QUE TOCABAN A LA MISMA HORA. THE RAPTURE Y LCD SOUNDSYSTEM HICIERON DEL MOHAVE TENT UNA AUTENTICA PISTA DE BAILE. ME LLAMO LA ATENCION QUE CON THE RAPTURE NO HUBIERA TANTA GENTE COMO CON LCD SOUNDSYSTEM, PERO QUIEZA LA GENTE QUERIA VER A TIESTO O A CORNELIOUS. ME HUBIESE GUSTADO VER CORNELIOUS, PERO NO HUBO TIEMPO... LO MISMO ME PASO CON LOS NEW PORNOGRAPHERS DE LOS QUE SOLO VI UN PAR DE CANCIONES.

Coachella 1

ESTABA COMO UNA AUTENTICA SARDINA FRENTE AL ESCENARIO. LA MAREA DE MOVIA DE UN LADO PARA OTRO, SOLO ESCUCHABA OH SHIT U OH MY GOD. DE PRONTO, UN INDIVIDUO DE SEGURIDAD EMPEZO A LANZAR BOTELLAS DE AGUA A LA MUCHEDUMBRE Y YO TENIA LAS MANOS INMOVILIZADAS. VI UNA BOTELLA VIAJANDO HACIA MI CARA Y SOLO PUDE CERRAR LOS OJOS Y VOLTEAR HACIA OTRO LADO. POR FORTUNA, EL PROYECTIL NO ME TOCO. A LOS POCOS MINUTOS, UN TIPO ME PIDIO QUE NADARA SOBRE LA GENTE, COMO YA HABIAN HECHO ALGUNOS, PERO DESISTI. EL CALOR ERA PRACTICAMENTE INSOPORTABLE Y TEMI UN ESTALLIDO DE VICERAS. POR FORTUNA, NO OCURRIO. AUNQUE A ESTAS HORAS, ESTOY MOLIDO.

ESTUVE FRENTE AL ESCENARIO PARA VER A LOS ARCTIC MONKEYS, JESUS AND MARY CHAIN E INTERPOL DURANTE EL PRIMER DIA DEL COACHELLA FEST. LOS TRES GRUPOS ME SORPRENDIERON PORQUE SUS ACTUACIONES ESTUVIERON POR ARRIBA DE LO ESPERADO Y LA GENTE SE LES ENTREGO.

TAMBIEN VI UN PEDAZO DE SONIC YOUTH, LOS PICKUPS A DJ SHADOW, ESTE ULTIMO FUE EL MAS FLOJO, DEBIDO A PROBLEMAS TECNICOS Y A QUE SU ACTUACION FUE MUY BREVE.

ADEMAS DE DISFRUTAR DE LOS GRUPOS YSALIR MOLIDO, TAMBIEN ME OCURRIO QUE LOS TIPOS QUE REVISAN LOS IDS PARA CHECAR QUE LOS MENORES DE EDAD NO COMPREN CERVEZA, ME ACUSARON DE TENER UNA LICENCIA DE MANEJO FALSA. DIJERON QUE NO ERA YO, EL COLMO. BUENO TODO PARA QUE UNA HEINEKEN COSTARA 7 DLS. ES MAS LAS PEPSIS TAMBIEN CUESTAN ESO.

Primeras impresiones del nuevo disco de Smashing Pumpkins

Esto es lo que la Filter-mag dice de Zeitgeist:

Release Date: 07/07/07

Tracklisting:

Doomsday Clock [3:41]
7 Shades Of Black [3:15]
Orchid [3:58]
That's The Way [3:44] <- KEY TRACK
Tarantula [3:47]
Starz [3:41]
United States [9:50]
Never Lost [4:13] <- KEY TRACK
Bring The Light [3:35]
Come On (Let's Go) [3:15]
For God And Country [4:51]
Pomp And Circumstance [4:18]
Background:

Produced by Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin, with Roy Thomas Baker and Terry Date working separately on various tracks.
Billed as a "reunion", though only Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin are present.
It's the first Smashing Pumpkins album since 2000's Machina suite. In the interm Corgan has done one Zwan album and one solo album.
First Impressions:

Tracks #1 thru #7 are all aggresive, up-tempo guitar rock except for #4, "That's The Way", which is our guess for 1st single as it's the most "pop" track with a catchy verse and chorus.
"Never Lost" is one of the only ballad-y tracks. Like many of the Pumpkins' classics, it is low-key, but still driven by its composition and melodies. Plus there are strings.
The last two tracks are the only ones which are keyboard driven, with "Pomp And Circumstance" sporting timpani drums, choir-like vocals and squelching guitar.
Corgan's signature guitar tone is still as rich and forceful as it ever was.
As we have seen with the new lineup, Corgan's voice is what (supposedly) defines the Smashing Pumpkins as a band. But, much like in Zwan, here it seems that his natural angst is somewhat artificial and his screaming seems mellow in comparison the Pumpkins of the past.
Prediction:

With the recent commercial success of new bands like Silversun Pickups, it's uncertain whether or not the those outside the core SP fanbase will feel the need to reacquaint themselves with Smashing Pumpkins.

>Crítica e ironía en Powell´s

Best of Young American Trust Fund Kids: Granta has just published the actual issue with its list of the best young American novelists, thus triggering severe bouts of depression to the many unpublished writers in their thirties who must contend with the fact that they can never actually make the list now, no matter when they get published or how well they sell.

Also, the Los Angeles Times takes the opportunity to examine the novelists who made the list, only to discover that many aren't white or write about matters outside the U.S., and wonder: "Are stories of transnational identity where the literary action is these days?"

Salon critic Laura Miller thinks there's a very basic reason why American writers are looking outside this country for inspiration:

"Writing about immigrants saves you from having to write about mass culture....American novels have an extremely ambivalent relationship to mass culture and have a very difficult time coming to terms with it....Because it's supposed to be the opposite of all the things that people want from literature. People would just rather avoid it," and writing about ethnicity or migration allows them to.

Then again, maybe Granta editor Ian Jack has it figured out:

"American novels," said Jack, "have become a bit like American films used to be. The question of money, of how do I keep myself alive, those questions were never addressed in American films because everybody was supposed to be jolly happy all the time and living well; their troubles were not financial."

And the reason may come from the increasing class insularity of the literary life.

"To go through this process of creative writing schools, now, to become a budding novelist, more and more means you need a certain amount of ancestral wealth. I hate to sound like a Marxist, but economics does govern a lot of life, especially cultural life."

I don't know what the hell Jack is talking about. In America, there are no poor. The rich share everything they acquire. CEOs who receive multi-million-dollar bonuses donate them to the lowest-level employees who are paid a barely livable minimum wage and receive no health benefits.

Meanwhile, children who are born into wealth readily share their fortunes with those who are less privileged, thus ensuring that everyone in this country has the exact same opportunity to achieve his/her dreams.

'The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts'

By MILAN KUNDERA
Reviewed by RUSSELL BANKS


Not surprisingly, then, reading “The Curtain” is like spending a long desultory afternoon into the evening sitting over coffee and cigarettes in a pleasant cafe listening to Milan Kundera hold forth on history, literature, music, politics, large countries versus small, East versus West, the lyric versus the novelistic, Paris versus Prague and so on into the night. One has the impression that Kundera, at least on the page, is a fabulous talker and not an especially good listener. But he is 78 now, and he has lived through the military occupation and liberation of his country twice and has endured more than three decades of exile; he has written at least three of the most admired novels of our time, “The Joke,” “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting” and “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” plus another half-dozen books of fiction. Kundera’s opinions, reflections, memories and desires are well worth listening to.

Besides, he is one of the most erudite novelists on the planet. Not since Henry James, perhaps, has a fiction writer examined the process of writing with such insight, authority and range of reference and allusion.

The novel alone,” he says, “could reveal the immense, mysterious power of the pointless,” in opposition to the “pre-interpretation” of reality. The novel, in Kundera’s view, is not a genre; it’s a way of busting through the myriad lies regarding human nature and our collective and individual fates, lies that serve the purposes of bureaucracy and greed and the joyless quest for power. The “pre-interpretation” of reality is the curtain referred to by the book’s title, “a magic curtain, woven of legends ... already made-up, masked, reinterpreted. ... It is by tearing through the curtain of pre-interpretation that Cervantes set the new art going; his destructive act echoes and extends to every novel worthy of the name; it is the identifying sign of the art of the novel.” (The italics are Kundera’s. He is in fact rather fond of italics, giving to his words a sureness they might otherwise lack.)

He speaks approvingly but only in passing of Faulkner and Hemingway, and not at all of Twain, who surely ought to reside among his Pleiades, or the Melville who wrote “The Confidence-Man,” or any other of the many American writers working in the grand tradition of what he calls “the privileged sphere of analysis, lucidity, irony.” One could make a long list of Americans qualified to reside there: Hawthorne, James, Sinclair Lewis, Nathanael West, on to near-contemporaries like Donald Barthelme, Joseph Heller and Robert Coover, who surely were influenced by Kundera’s Middle European stars, Kafka, Musil, Broch, but who chose to drawl it out in American English, mixing syncopation and burlesque with “analysis, lucidity, irony.” If I have any quarrel with Kundera’s description of the history of the novel it’s that he’s not inclusive enough. He does not discuss a single female novelist, even in passing. It’s as if no Western woman has ever tried writing a serious novel in 400 years. And, in his appreciation of non-European novelists like Fuentes, García Márquez and Chamoiseau, he colonizes them, as if culturally they gazed longingly toward their European mother- and fatherlands instead of their homelands. But then, he’s not writing literary criticism; he’s writing the secret history of the novels of Milan Kundera and teaching us how to read them.

The Fornicator

By CHARLES TAYLOR
Walter Mosley's protagonist decides to put sex at the
center of his existence.


Mosley's ''sexistential'' new novel, ''Killing Johnny Fry,'' it's unclear whether his hero, Cordell Carmel, is meant to be a lover or a big-game hunter. One of his conquests is described as bellowing ''like some large woodlands creature in ecstasy over the wild'' and flopping ''like a mackerel on the deck of a fishing boat.'' Manly and active to a fault, the descriptions Mosley favors for both Cordell's physical equipment and his talent with it might have been plucked from ''The Boys' Big Book of Phallic Metaphors.'' Cordell compares himself to ''a bullet'' entering ''the well-oiled chamber of a gun'' and ''a giant cruise ship coming into a port that was way too small.'' All that's missing is for Cordell to drop his drawers and have one of his partners inquire, ''Is that the Chattanooga Choo-Choo?''

''Killing Johnny Fry'' is a frankly pornographic novel, and I mean that as a compliment. It would be unfair to what Mosley is attempting here -- to put sex at the center of Cordell's existence and to turn the reader on in the process -- to describe the sex scenes with that wan word ''erotica,'' a word almost always used to demonstrate that the user is above those coarse enough to be aroused by mere pornography. And judged solely by its intentions to appeal to what prosecutors in obscenity cases used to call the prurient interest, the novel is a success. Good porn is tough to write and when talented writers decide it shouldn't be left to the hacks, the result can be something as joyous as Nicholson Baker's ''Vox'' and ''The Fermata.'' Or even something as voluptuously smutty as the porn-for-cash Alexander Trocchi turned out for Maurice Girodias's Olympia Press.

The story Mosley is telling here begins when Cordell, a translator, walks into his girlfriend Joelle's apartment and -- without her being aware of his presence -- finds her blissfully submitting to anal sex with an acquaintance of his named Johnny Fry. Fry is, to use a phrase Susan Faludi once quoted to describe a porn star, a life-support system for a penis. He is also the tormentor who sets Cordell on his sexual adventure. Cordell is hounded by the sight of Fry having sex with Joelle; by Fry's being better endowed than he is; and, just as generations of white men have been obsessed with white women having sex with black men, by the sight of Joelle with a white man. Deciding that everything about his life has been too safe, Cordell sets out not just to sleep with the women who cross his path, but to treat sex with them and with Joelle as a chance to strut his power and prowess. Impulsively, he also quits his job and decides to act as an agent for one of his new conquests, a young photographer whose specialty is genocide and starvation in Sudan. He also decides to murder Johnny Fry.

Any artist who tries to deal with sex graphically is almost inevitably accused of narrowing his or her outlook. And I can't imagine that ''Killing Johnny Fry'' won't provoke some of the disgust that has greeted far better novels that strip sex of its niceties (Philip Roth's ''Dying Animal'' comes to mind) and make the link between lust and feelings of power. Those are not attractive qualities, they are often male and Mosley shouldn't be condemned for trying to stay true to them. It should also be said that in ''Killing Johnny Fry,'' more than in many books that tackle this subject, the male protagonist here often submits to his partners, overwhelmed by sex as much as empowered by it.

The problem with this novel isn't that it's graphic or that Mosley uses the standard set-ups of pornography -- the horny neighbor, the girl picked up on the street. The problem is that it's silly. That there is an embarrassed (and embarrassing) quality to ''Killing Johnny Fry'' is no surprise. The violence that erupts in Mosley's Easy Rawlins detective novels often feels worked up, as if overblown descriptions of physical punishment were what the genre called for. (That white women are often the she-devils luring black men to their doom suggests Mosley takes some pulp fantasies too seriously.) There is something in Mosley that pulls back from the carnal madness Cordell gives himself over to, that presents it as the beginning of a journey toward redemption. Which makes Mosley something like a guy who's decided to hand out copies of ''The Watchtower'' at an orgy. The novel that ''Killing Johnny Fry'' most recalls is Norman Mailer's great and appalling ''American Dream,'' in which Mailer's protagonist, Rojack, confronts existential dread by indulging in murder and sex and the most insane macho daredevilry. But Mailer was inside that subject, feverishly so -- and because he so freely risked ridiculousness the book never felt ridiculous. Mailer wrote to make us feel that the fires of hell were a whisker away. Mosley stands by with the extinguisher.


Charles Taylor is a columnist for The Star-Ledger of Newark.

Estrenos en TV

El domingo que recién concluyó me permitió ver el inicio de las nuevas temporadas de las series de televisión Roma, The Wire y 24. La primera de ellas permitió el reencuentro con Voreno y Pullo, gladiadores romanos, justo después del asesinato de Julio César. La intensidad del programa y su glamour en cuanto a la hechura y la referencias históricas y políticas en su primer capítulo fueron impresionantes. The Wire, que no fue tan promocionada por HBO a pesar de su importancia, reintrodujo a sus protagonistas en puestos muy alejados a los roles que desempeñaban antes. Stringer Bell, Avon Barksdale y el Griego, delincuentes a los que enfrentaron anteriormente ya no están en la jugada y hay nuevos rivales. Los agntes speciales están disperos y no hay nada que los una, lo que sí hubo en el primer capítulo fue la ironía hacia las instituciones gubernamentales de Estados Unidos, en general, y hacia las de Baltimore, en lo particular. Por lo que hace a 24 continúa con su patriotismo , pero pone a debate las prácticas en contra a los derechos civiles que puede llevar a cabo la Casa Blanca. Jack Bauer vuelve muy dañado, luego de estar preso en China, pero está lito para 24 horas en las que luchara porque la Unión Americana no se derrumbe por culpa de los terroristas y de burócratas sin oficio.

Muere Kurt Vonnegut*


Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle" and "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in New York. He was 84 and had homes in New York and in Sagaponack on Long Island. His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and '70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States. Like Mark Twain, Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?





Tomado de International Herald Tribune

Todo o nada

En el New York Times leí la reseña de Natalie Moore (Going Down Gambling)sobre la novela de The Art of Losing, escrita y logró que se me antojara mucho ese libro:

In Keith Dixon’s novel “The Art of Losing,” the narrator, Michael Jacobs, starts out as a small-time loser. He’s a documentary filmmaker in New York City whose films, although praised by some critics, have all failed commercially. He is beginning to suspect that his work is not improving either, that perhaps he is losing his artistic touch. Jacobs is also chronically short of money. As he notes ruefully about being broke, “some damn fool somewhere got the idea that this enriched the artist’s soul, all the denial, but from where I stood it seemed to wither a lot more than it nourished.” He forgoes heat and television at home. He lies to friends about having eaten to avoid the embarrassment of not being able to pay his share of the check.

Chabon ha vuelto

Jenny Davidson en su blog Light Reading se convirtió en la primera persona a la que escucho o leeo que cuenta haber leído ya la más reciente novela de Michael Chabon The Yiddish Policemen's Union y esto es lo que dice de ella:

Michael Chabon's quite enchanting new novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which my alternate self obtained from alternate-universe Amazon in 2006 but which arrived in my real-life mailbox not long ago & which made this weekend's flying-visit-to-Cambridge-on-Amtrak trip pass by in a FLASH. Seriously, a FLASH. It's one of those novels that when you come to the last page it just pains you to put it down, I want to read it again RIGHT NOW! It opens in a long lovely leisurely sequence (alternate-universe present-day Alaskan Jewish homeland, with Jewish resettlement imminent) that's a bit reminiscent of parts of Jonathan Lethem's Gun With Occasional Music--intelligent neo-noir--very enjoyable, too, with some nicely done alternate-historyish details and good character development--but for me the thing really snapped into high gear with the visit to the boundary maven Zimbalist. Chabon does this thing here that's so subtle it took me at least a hundred pages to notice it (also since I was reading so greedily), a switching-into-a-past-tense thing that is so cunning and so effective that I really must look back through and figure out exactly how he does it so that I can try it myself! The main narrative's written in a very attractive and unobtrusive present-tense voice, so that these inset chapters/stories (usually prompted by the detective's visit to someone who then unfolds this knowledge-in-the-form-of-narrative chunk of stuff that has its own legend-like magical coherence) are at once disorienting & deeply intensifying of the whole experience of the world of the book. There's a certain family resemblance to Kavalier & Klay, but the novel's just redolent of all sorts of other powerful & evocative things also, not least my intensely and particularly most favorite Chaim Potok novel The Chosen, a novel I read obsessively and repeatedly as a teenager & that I continue to read every few years as an adult (& that gained strange new traction on my imagination when I realized that my friend & former neighbor David Weiss Halivni, author among other things of a remarkable memoir called The Book and the Sword: A Life of Learning in the Shadow of Destruction, was a model for Reuven Malter's father in that book). I am curious to see how reviewers and readers will respond to this novel's political arguments (both implicit and explicit) about Jewish statehood--I imagine the book will be provoking in that regard to all sorts of readers--but I found it altogether enthralling, not least because Chabon's so good on this topic of what boys lose as they become men & the terrible pathos and embarrassment of virtually all aspects of adult male life! Very good stuff indeed, highly recommended...

Los Soprano

Norman Mailer dijo alguna vez que la serie de TV "The Sopranos" era en la actualidad lo máscercano a la gran novela americana. Esa gran novela americana llega a su fin y en Estados Unidos ya arrancó lo que será su última temporada.

Sunday’s premiere marks the start of the show’s valedictory tour, a chance for the actors and the series’s creator, David Chase, to show off one last time and for viewers to pay their respects to the family that changed television, mostly for the better. It’s not that “The Sopranos” was the only good thing on television, though plenty of fans would say so. But Mr. Chase’s take on New Jersey mobsters was certainly groundbreaking — in opposing directions.

The series lowered the bar on permissible violence, sex and profanity at the same time that it elevated viewers’ taste, cultivating an appetite for complexity, wit and cinematic stylishness on a serial drama in which psychological themes flickered and built and faded and reappeared. The best episodes had equal amounts of high and low appeal, an alchemy of artistry and gutter-level blood and gore, all of it leavened with humor.

Tomado de This Thing of Ours, It’s Over de Alessandra Stanley en el NYT

Franzen sobre el sufrimiento y el arte

I'm uncomfortable with the idea that suffering creates material for art, or that conflict and trouble are what the novelist thrives on. I think it's more accurate to say that the attempt to be a living, productive artist is often what creates the trouble and the conflict. I had an immense conflict of loyalties, for example, regarding my marriage. I felt explicitly that if I would just stop being a writer, I could make the marriage work. And it wasn't just my marriage. My mother had my father on her hands. Ever more trouble out there. And I would go back home to the Midwest for four days, and then I wouldn't go again for six, eight months. I had to preserve my emotional equilibrium in order to do my work. I felt terribly guilty about that, because in a sense, why not take three months and go and really help out? But I couldn't, I would have gone crazy. We would've been irritating each other the whole time. But—and this is my point—the fact of who I am is what would have created the irritation. And who I am is a man who writes novels.

Tomado de Bomb Magazine

Los libros del próximo verano

Charlotte Abbott de Publishers Weekly hace referencia de los libros que más prometen, no sólo para lo lectores sino para los vendedores, de cara al proximo verano. Los que llamron la atención fueron los siguientes:

Topping everyone's list is Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union(HarperCollins, May). "Chabon kicks ass," declares Donaghy, backlist czar at Powell's. "He does for speculative fiction and the detective novel what he did for comic geeks with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. You don't have to have a New York Jewish pedigree to appreciate this book." But Amazon.com fiction editor Parsons cautions: "While extremely satisfying, it might prove not as accessible to readers as Kavalier and Clay."


Don DeLillo, back with Falling Man (Simon & Schuster, June), is a close second to Chabon. "Even the idea of Don DeLillo writing about 9/11 is electrifying," says Amazon fiction editor Parsons. This relatively short book—which follows the intimate lives of several people after the Twin Towers turn to smoke and ash—is getting "solid inhouse reads" at Amazon.

Speaking of national (in)security, there's also Richard Flanagan's fourth novel, The Unknown Terrorist (Grove, May), about a woman who spends a night with a stranger and becomes a suspect in an attempted terrorist attack. "We had a lot of staff members who loved Gould's Book of Fish, so we're all really looking forward to seeing what Flanagan can do with a grittier, more realistic story," says Halley, buyer at Book People.

Booker-winner Ian McEwan's short novel set in early 1960s England, On Chesil Beach (Doubleday, June), also looks at lovers whose unexpressed misunderstandings and resentments shape their lives. "Reviews will drive a lot of customers to this one, but McEwan fans on staff should give the book legs," says Halley. (McEwan is also the subject of the first film developed by Powells.com, to be screened online and at events in 40-plus indie bookstores in June, as the author will not be touring.)

Lisa See, author of the 2005 book club favorite Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, brings another twist to the marriage theme in Peony in Love (Random, June 26). Set in 17th-century China, it's the story of three women sequentially married to the same man, and their obsession with an opera that causes death by lovesickness. "It has a supernatural element that's going to take it a long way," said B&N fiction buyer Sessalee Hensley.

William Gibson, the SF master is back with Spook Country (Putnam, Aug.), a novel about a Russian-speaking Cuban, a journalist, a junkie and a "producer." "Contemporary settings seem to suit Gibson's darker nature, and the audience that made Pattern Recognition a bestseller should snap this one up," says Halley.

Fans of well-written psychological thrillers may enjoy In the Woods by Tana French (Viking, May). Set in a suburban Dublin neighborhood in 1984, it features a detective investigating a murder in a wooded area where, as a child, he was the lone survivor in an unsolved murder case. "Our rep, Jon Mooney, loved the story, the atmosphere and the writing," says Halley. "He did a really good job of making it sound unputdownable."

Pop culture lovers many also find Austin Grossman's Soon I Will Become Invincible (Pantheon, June) a smart and amusing debut—not least because of the gorgeous Chip Kidd cover. "It's a sort of literary version of The Incredibles. For me, it moves into the spot occupied by World War Z last summer," says Parsons.

Chuck Palahniuk's Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey (Doubleday, June) offers a morbid tale that won't disappoint the author's cultish fans.

Günter Grass's Peeling the Onion (Harcourt, June 25) is the Nobel Prize–winning German author's memoir of his boyhood and young adulthood, in which he reveals that he was drafted into the Waffen-SS.

Perdido en Chicago

Con cierta tristeza observé la foto de un coyote perdido en las calles de Chicago. El animal asustó a mucha gente y el personal de control animal de la ciudad tardó en llegar. Tristeza porque el coyote sólo tenía hambre y miedo, mientras la gente sólo le respondió también con miedo e incomprensión. Hay pocas opciones en ese tipo de encuentros.

Bulldog 15

Anoche platicaba con la sobrina de mi novia, quien estaba decepcionada porque no podría ir al Bulldog a ver a Zoé debido a que tiene 14 años de edad. Recordé que cuando ese lugar empezó a funcionar tampoco me dejaban entrar porque no podía demostrar tener más de 18 años. Lo único que pude decirle es que no se procupara que cuando tuviera 18 a lo mejor lo que no tenía era dinero para pagar su entrada y me reí ya que ese es el devenir de los adolescentes de clase media: no te dejan entrar por falta de años y cuando los tienes, seguramente no tendrás para la entrada y tus padres no querrán darte dinero para ir a un lugar donde te pueds emborrachar, salir a altas horas de la madrugada para conducir en estado inconveniente o tomar un taxi pirata). De cualquier forma me llama la atención que el Bulldog Cafe continúe como un icono entre jovencitos que ni siquiera han traspasado sus puertas o los han lanzado por alguna de ellas. A mí me acarrea muchos recuerdos y aunque por largos periodos no lo he visitado, ahí sigue. He visto en su escenario desde Café Tacuba o Molotov hasta Porter, el viernes pasado y sigue abarrotándose como anoche con Zoé. El Bulldog ya está viejo, pero quizá un día sea más vital que yo, gracias al recicle de sus visitantes. Así es la vida.