I was told there'd be obscurity

In a recent issue of The Week, Dzyd Sloane picks her six favorite books—sending me to Google with her selection of Miroslav Krleza's On the Edge of Reason, published by New Directions. I like this: "Imagine Larry David but not funny and involving war and exile."

(Here's my list, from June.)

Two thoughts upon reading 'The Week'

In this week's The Week, David Maraniss picks DeLillo's Underworld as one of his six favorite books. He writes: "My favorite opening chapter in modern fiction, a riot of baseball, Jackie Gleason, J. Edgar Hoover, Frank Sinatra, andy Pafko, the most famous home run in history, and some of the best writing ever. The rest of the book cannot match it, but I don't care, I keep reading this chapter over and over for inspiration.

#1
I remember reading "Pafko at the Wall" in proof form, before it appeared as the very first Harper's Folio. It felt like a home run. And to start a huge, career-capping work like Underworld with such a chapter is like saying, I'm out to hit a home run!

#2
What if: DeLillo had ended with the "Pafko at the Wall" chapter? Everything that came before would then be a solid base hit...and then he'd hit a grand slam...

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Blast from the past: Here's what I picked for The Week...

Son of Table-Talk of P.G. for June 8, 2008

I. New Believer is out! Not the music issue (which will appear next month) — but a "must-have" all the same...Zadie Smith...Blake Bailey on John Cheever and Frederick Exley...Dzyd Linden on B.S. Johnson...Paul Feig Sedaratives...interviews with Gus Van Sant and newly minted Blvr. Book Award winner Tom "Remainder" McCarthy...and much more!

II. Anyone know anything about Meatpaper?

III. I talk about six of my favorite books over at The Week—I hadn't realized two-thirds of them were out of print...

IV. A Korean review of Personal Days!

V. I'll be reading in New York and Boston (well—Newtonville!) later this week. More here soon.