Conspiracy Theory: The Plot Against Plot
Lev Grossman maintains that the reading public’s desire for plot accounts for the rising popularity of young adult novels among adult readers who have tired of difficult, and, by implication, plotless novels that are supposed to be “good for you.” Perhaps not coincidentally, Grossman himself is the author of what is classified in some corners as young adult fiction; his latest, The Magicians, sounds like a “grown-up” take on Harry Potter. I’m looking forward to reading it, but not because I have been denied plot and have to resort to the young adult fiction aisles to avoid more difficult work that might give me a headache.
Grossman argues that the general reading public is reacting against the “plotless” works of Modernism that presumably have come to dominate our reading selections. The problem with this is that many of the works cited as “plotless” Modernist, such as The Great Gatsby, weren’t all that popular at the time of their publication. Indeed, it wasn’t until after World War II when the academy declared these works as part of the literary canon, coupled with the post-war rise in college attendance, that people came to hear of them. …
I tend to go through my “to be read pile” looking for themes as an approach to wend my way through and choose what I want
to attack next. These two are about the realities of war and the casualties of those who manage to survive. The first, Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke is a novel about the Vietnam war fiasco; the other is non-fiction, The Forever War 
Regarding two earlier posts:
So, here’s the bad news/goods news. First the bad news. A little while ago, 
This
intriguing is 
Okay, I’ll admit that in a past indiscretion I went to an adult store (this was in the days before the Internet, when it was the only place you could get such things) and bought an anatomically correct blow up doll. But, it wasn’t for me. Honestly. It was a joke gift for a bachelor party. Nonetheless, I want to take this opportunity to apologize to my congregation, my constituents and my family for behavior that was actually perfectly innocent, though I realize it could be construed by some as some kind of perverted behavior by those who haven’t as yet been caught in their own perverted behavior.
Courtesy of The New York Times comes this report of 
It’s nothing new to hear that yet another print publication has gone the way of the dinosaurs. Still, for those of us who retain affection for inked dead trees, it’s always a cheerless day to learn of yet another comet strike.
One good thing about the recession is I have more time to catch up on my reading. And I don’t have to worry about spending money on books during tough times as I already own a ridiculous number of volumes that I never had the time to get around to. One of almost recent vintage is Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow. It’s a clever premise: a parallel effort to the Manhattan Project is to develop a race of super lizards to level Japanese cities and end World War II. The irony here is that the whole Godzilla mythos of badly made, badly acted 1950s Japanese movies was a metaphorical projection of the atomc bombings. The plot, such as it is , concerns an American horror monster actor who is recruited to provide a realistic demonstration of the lizard’s destructiveness to force the Japanese surrender without having to deploy the monsters (what many critics of the U.S. atomic bombings argue might have sufficed instead of targeting cities). Morrow is one of my favorite authors, though this is a minor work; even at novella length, the premise is stretched a bit thin, and maybe would have worked better at a shorter length in pruning some plotting that doesn’t really advance the theme. Still, worth checking out.