Salon Com Readers Guide To Contemporary Authors: Amazon.ca: Laura Miller, Adam Begley: Books

Book Description

Release Date: Aug 3 2000

Since it began in 1995, Salon.com has been showered with awards and praise. Now, its 150,000 devoted readers can devour The Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors--an all-original, A-to-Z guide to 225 of the most fascinating writers of our time, penned by an international cast of talented young critics and reviewers. Here are profiles, reviews, and bibliographies of the authors that matter most now--from Margaret Atwood to Tobias Wolff, Paul Auster to Alice Walker. Also included are essays and recommended reading lists by some of the authors themselves, such as Dorothy Allison on the books that shaped her, A. S. Byatt on her five favorite historical novels, Rick Moody on postmodern fiction, Robert Stone on the greatest war novels, and Ian McEwan on the best fiction about work.

Peppered throughout with marvelously witty illustrations, The Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors will be a must-have for anyone who is looking for cocktail party conversation starters, a good read, or advice on what to read next.

Salon.com has won most major Web awards, including:
Webby Award for "Best Online Magazine" (1997, 1998, 1999)
"Best of Multimedia" --Entertainment Weekly (1998)
"Top of the Net" --Yahoo Internet Life (1997, 1998)
"Best of the Web" --Business Week (1997)
"Best Website" --Entertainment Weekly (1997)
"Best Online Magazine of the Year" --Advertising Age (1997)
"Web Site of the Year" --Time magazine (1996)

#outer_postBodyPS { display: none; } #psGradient { display: none; } #psPlaceHolder { display: none; } #psExpand { display: none; } Since it began in 1995, Salon.com has been showered with awards and praise. Now, its 150,000 devoted readers can devour The Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors--an all-original, A-to-Z guide to 225 of the most fascinating writers of our time, penned by an international cast of talented young critics and reviewers. Here are profiles, reviews, and bibliographies of the authors that matter most now--from Margaret Atwood to Tobias Wolff, Paul Auster to Alice Walker. Also included are essays and recommended reading lists by some of the authors themselves, such as Dorothy Allison on the books that shaped her, A. S. Byatt on her five favorite historical novels, Rick Moody on postmodern fiction, Robert Stone on the greatest war novels, and Ian McEwan on the best fiction about work.

Peppered throughout with marvelously witty illustrations, The Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors will be a must-have for anyone who is looking for cocktail party conversation starters, a good read, or advice on what to read next.

Salon.com has won most major Web awards, including:
Webby Award for "Best Online Magazine" (1997, 1998, 1999)
"Best of Multimedia" --Entertainment Weekly (1998)
"Top of the Net" --Yahoo Internet Life (1997, 1998)
"Best of the Web" --Business Week (1997)
"Best Website" --Entertainment Weekly (1997)
"Best Online Magazine of the Year" --Advertising Age (1997)
"Web Site of the Year" --Time magazine (1996)

Product Details

Paperback: 512 pages
Publisher: Penguin Paperbacks (Aug 3 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 014028088X
ISBN-13: 978-0140280883
Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 18.8 x 3.1 cm
Shipping Weight: 885 g

Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #787,486 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

From Amazon

Selling itself as a handbook for readers who consume books "for pleasure," The Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors hopes to fill a perceived gap on the reference shelf. Its editor, Laura Miller, declares in the preface: "We didn't imagine an audience of researchers or scholars or critics or prize committees or members of the publishing industry, even if some of those people still do occasionally read a book with the hopes of enjoying it." The chief irony of this claim is that this Baedeker originated at Salon.com--a den of insiders, merciless critics, and juicy gossip. And there's plenty here that the "pure" reader wouldn't need to know: the dirt on big advances, whose career went into a tailspin, what the reviewers said. If Miller's aim was to escape the careerists of the publishing world, she has nevertheless assembled a book they'll eat like catnip.

And a highly original book it is, too. Like Salon.com itself, it collapses the distance between highbrow and lowbrow. Stephen King and Mario Puzo coexist with Lydia Davis and Donald Antrim; as a result, the game quickly becomes one of who is not included and who is. To Miller's credit, the answers continually surprise (though several omissions are regrettable). Loosely limiting authors to those who have some "contemporary" presence, entries attempt to place these writers in their time, to argue for their importance and influence. The entries themselves often suffer from bad writing; here's a metaphor that should be blocked: "If you could grab hold of one of O'Brien's images and wrestle it up from the page, you'd find long roots sunk deep into the earth. There's blood coursing through her exquisite prose, balancing its seeming delicacy with solidity and weight." Or, my favorite moment of exasperating silliness: "Are you sure you hate Bret Easton Ellis as much as you hate yourself?" A more limited pool of reviewers would have diminished a feeling of unevenness that undermines the book's authoritative posture. The best writing comes from Miller herself, who has emerged as the Pauline Kael of the book scene. Her prose is effortlessly provocative.

Often an entry about a writer's work will be followed by an essay by that author. These added essays and digressions are wonderfully varied and idiosyncratic: David Gates on "Breaking Up with the Beats," Dorothy Allison on why "Every Novel Is a Lesbian Novel," and though Calvin Trillin isn't assessed, he is allowed to write about "Books That Made Me Laugh." Combined with the guide's primary information, these additions allow the reader a glimpse into the chatter of famous authors--an imaginary tea party free of mercenaries and showoffs, of course, where pure-hearted readers hold forth about the joy of books and everybody has a turn. --Ellen Williams

From Booklist

Can't decide what to suggest for your book club's next selection? Now that Oprah has made fiction cool, it seems only fitting that Salon, the hip electronic magazine, would come to the aid of the reading-group crowd. This guide to contemporary authors of literary fiction ("whose major works were published since 1960") falls somewhere between cutesy book chat and a shorthand version of Masterplots. Each entry, from Edward Abbey through Stephen Wright, contains a listing of the author's works, a one-or two-page overview of the oeuvre, and a few read-alike suggestions. Sprinkled throughout the text are sidebar lists and essays by well-known writers (Erica Jong's favorite "smart and sexy" novels). Inevitably, the quality of the entries varies dramatically--from book-report bland to genuinely insightful. But that's the fun of this kind of book: browsing at top speed, dismissing as you go, and then being brought up short by a nugget like Jonatham Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn [BKL Jl 99]) on Bernard Malamud. If your commitment to lit crit extends only as long as it takes to drink a latte, this is the book for you. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Be Prepared to be Astonished Jun 6 2004

By Adam

Format:Paperback

Laura Miller is one of the most witty and exciting writer's around (see Miller's weekly column(s) in the NY Times and Salon.com), with a gift for the written word that will leave you in awe. Here Miller edits and indeed contributes, along with an impressive array of critics and reviewers, to this reader's guide.

This opinionated book will "inform, captivate, delight, and stir debate". Most of all it is fascinating and will leave you browsing for hours on end, and will encourage heated discussion among your friends.

Writer's like Salman Rushdie, Raymond Carver, Carl Hiaasen, Kazuo Ishiguro, John Irving, PD James, Ian McEwan, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, Barbara Kingsolver, Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, Anne Tyler, Peter Carey, Jonathan Franzen, Bret Easton Ellis, Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Michael Chabon, JM Coetzee, Ken Kesey, Charles Bukowski, Saul Bellow, Pat Barker, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Amy Tan among many others are all in here. The joy of this book is that an essay is given about the author and his or her works and in addition, there is also a recommended reading list if you want to pursue any other work, as well as essays on literary topics that can be provocative but fun nonetheless.

I recommend this if you aren't sure what to read next, or have an interest in all things literary. It's a big book of about 450 pages and it's well worth the price. Be prepared to be astonished at the elegance of the writing here.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Fun and Opinionated April 11 2004

By richlandwoman

Format:Paperback

One of the most enjoyable reference works I know of. Some of its opinions are quite strongly stated -- "Without Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal, American literature in the second half of the twentieth century would not exist; without everyone else in this book it would" -- but, for me, this was a plus.

And unlike at least one other reviewer, I didn't find the book "politically correct" or anti-straightwhitemale. (Although its longest -- and probably worst -- piece is titled "Every Novel Is a Lesbian Novel.")

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5.0 out of 5 stars Informative and delightful to read May 27 2003

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Despite its 455 pages, this book is a fairly quick read. It is a book about contemporary literature, although not at all boring as book reviews sometimes tend to be. Reading this book is fun, in part, I think, because it is written for readers, not for other critics. The reviewers do not err on the safe side always, which make it so much more interesting.

The book is ordered alphabetically, and contains information not only about the books, but also some information about the authors. In order to be user-friendly, the "best" book by each author is marked by an asterisk. I admire this because naturally, everyone will not agree which is the best book, but as the subtitle says: this is "an opinionated, irreverant look at the most fascinating writers of our time". This is just one of the cool features of the book: another one is a section after each author called "see also", where the reader gets recommendations according to the system if you like this author, you might want to try these.

There are a few general essays on such topics as science fiction, often written by one of the included authors. I would have liked more of those. There are also lists of book suggestions with interesting titles (sometimes more interesting than the recommended books sound), and those can be browsed like a good magazine. I would have liked more of those, too.

This is not a book which will expand your knowledge of literary theories, but people who have studied literature are likely to enjoy this book anyway. I am one of those:) It does not assume that the reader has studied literature and knows lots of terms, concept and are aware of the current discussions; instead, this is a tribute to literature as phenomenon. And a phenomenon that can and sometimes should be experienced intuitively.

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