Advance copies of our September issue arrived the other day, which means it’s probably about time that I say something about July/August, soon to disappear from shelves. The 2008 edition of our annual Summer Reading Issue is centred around the idea of escape. We have, among many others, Don Gillmor on his brother’s final, tragic escape; Wendy Dennis on fleeing Toronto for Austin, Texas; and Stephen Henighan giving Mozambique its best treatment since Bob Dylan’s Desire. (more…)

Featuring: Haruki Murakami, Arthur Conan Doyle, Junot Diaz, Stephen King, and John Reibetanz.

1. Running Man In their summer fiction issue a few weeks ago, the New Yorker published an essay by Haruki Murakami about his simultaneous birth as a novelist and long-distance runner. Like most Murakami, it was really good, but sort of hard to say why. It’s actually an excerpt from his forthcoming memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, which Bond Street will publish at the end of this month. What to say that doesn’t break the review embargo? I’ll note that if you enjoyed the essay, you’ll enjoy the book, and you’ll finish it with the same sense of perplexed pleasure with which you ended the excerpt. Murakami’s work is, stylistically at least, deceptively simple, and I always leave his novels a little uncertain of what’s transpired, but very sure that I’ve enjoyed its transpiring. Since the book is non-fiction, what happens within it is a bit clearer than in, say, South of the Border, West of the Sun (seriously—was she like a ghost or something?), but the prose still has its mysteries. For instance, how did it manage to entrance me enough to finish a book about long-distance running, a subject in which I have no interest? The title, of course, is borrowed from Raymond Carver, and Tess Gallagher is thanked within for permission. Not thanked, however, is Horace Silver, though he should be—Murakami’s cover borrows and adapts the running man from Silver’s semi-excellent 1972 Blue Note LP In Pursuit of the 27th Man (part of which is pictured above). (more…)

I tip my hat to one of our web wizards for sending me news that Marvel comics plans to make a graphic novel out of Stephen King’s The Stand. Now this comes as a report on something King said last week on NPR, so one can’t be entirely sure that it’s true (Marvel has not yet commented). But as far as things people said on NPR last week go, this statement—“Marvel is going to do The Stand as a graphic novel”—seems pretty unequivocal.

The Stand is, by many standards, a major book. Sure, it has its issues, in particular a final third where King strives so hard to make everything seem important that the finer dramas and insights that he has spun out thus far become ridiculous. But on the whole, and in particular in the terrifying detail and nuance of its post-apocalyptic vision (as well as the fabulous depth of some of his characters, especially the more preposterous of them), it’s hard to deny that it’s anything short of kickass. (Reviewing King’s latest, Duma Key, in the Los Angeles Times in January, Richard Rayner noted that “no other popular novelist, perhaps no other contemporary novelist period, can take recognizable, ordinary people and put them through the wringer with such cackling panache while always keeping sight of their humanity. King’s characters are always fixed in the nitty-gritty of the day-to-day, wearing silly sneakers or scarfing down luncheon meat out of the fridge, and that’s a huge part of his gift and success.” I think that’s exactly right and would like to associate myself with the argument.) (more…)