Literary March Madness - Round 2, Part 1

The bottom half of the ticket tonight is Mikhail Bulgakov, the Russian author of The Master and Margarita versus Willa Cather, the Nebraskan author of A Lost Lady and My Antonia. Russians went 4-0 in our first round (counting Nabokov), and I am curious about how they will fare as they advance and face stiffer competition. Bulgakov v. Cather is a particularly interesting match because unlike, say, Rowling v. Pullman, it is quite the case of apples versus oranges. Do you favor surrealist Soviet political satire or a piece of psychological realism about life on the American prairie? (And remember this should we end up with a Dostoyevsky v. James final!)

In other news, #1 James Joyce has managed to escape #16 Louise Erdrich in Round 1, along with #8 Art Spiegelman defeating #9 C.S. Lewis (the Maus defeating the Lion?) #4 Lewis Carroll crushing #13 Nick Hornby, and #12 Neil Gaiman (The Sandman) upsetting #5 Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage). (If there's one sure thing in March Madness, it's that a 5 will lose to a 12, n'est-ce pas?)

Austen v. Bronte

Bulgakov v. Cather

Hawthorne v. Mansfield

Bronte v. Pratchett

Literary March Madness Updated Bracket

Here is an updated bracket for our Literary March Madness as we prepare to move into Round Two, which I'm planning on posting tomorrow. Now that we've shuffled off a few of our less worthy authors (sorry, Derek Walcott...) we're starting to be presented with some truly intriguing match-ups. First off, of course, will be #1 Jane Austen versus #8 Emily Bronte. My first thought is that this pits the creators of two of the most iconic - and parodied - male protagonists in the history of English literature against one another. I'm speaking, of course, of Heathcliff and Colin Firth Mr. Darcy. In many ways, Bronte's Heathcliff is a romantic reaction against the straight-laced Darcy. Emily's sister, Charlotte, famously wrote of Austen: "Miss Austen being, as you say, without "sentiment", without poetry, maybe is sensible (more real than true), but she cannot be great." Burn! We don't want no sensible heroes in our moors - give me something true! Indeed, there are many glaring contrasts between Darcy and Heathcliff, but here's the one I want you to keep in mind: Heathcliff is an orphan. Darcy has an annual income of £10,000. OMG! WWMD? (...think about it...)

Of course, these are just two of many of the great characters that we'll be asking you to judge over the next week or so. We've got Hester Prynne from The Scarlet Letter and Jane Eyre of Jane Eyre, Pierre Bezukhov (War and Peace) taking on Atticus Finch (To Kill A Mockingbird) in an "honor-off", Behemoth the demonic cat, and, of course, everyone's favorite pedophile, Humbert Humbert!


Talk about The Madness!
Literary March Madness(2)

Literary March Madness, Round 1 - Part 8

This is it! The final foursome of the first round, the last step before we really get into the meat of things in Round 2! And, in my opinion, we've saved some of a best matches for last. First up is #2 Henry James (The Golden Bowl) versus #15 Sherman Alexie (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven). Personally, these are two of my favorite authors, and it's tough for me to see one of them be eliminated in the first round. However, I think that the question that you ought to ask yourself when voting is this: Is America being pulled eastwards towards England and the continent, or to the west, into the amnesiac Pacific Ocean?

You don't get quite the same challenges of national identity in Stendahl (The Red and the Black) versus Heller (Catch-22) or Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury) versus Hesse (Steppenwolf). But what about Orwell versus Salinger?

James v. Alexie

Faulkner v. Hesse

Stendahl v. Heller

Orwell v. Salinger

Peace, Love, Baseball, Otters. The good things in life.

Well, Spring has sprung here in central Illinois, Christ has risen, and baseball season is upon us once again. On Sunday, our French roommate's Polish girlfriend hosted a lovely Easter brunch at our house, and we were all able to partake in a delicious smorgasborg of various sausage and egg based dishes, along with excellent whole wheat pierogis to boot. (I don't know if I've ever told you this before, but I friggin' love pierogis; any kind of dumplings actually; potstickers, gyoza, samosas. I have this belief that stuffing ground meat and vegetables - or potatoes, whatever - into a breadlike pocket is the fundamental sign of human culture. Indeed, I would go as far as to say that dumplings may be the missing ingredient to world peace.)

Right now I am sitting in our living room watching the San Francisco Giants play the Houston Astros. Not that I have any interest or investment in this game. But I do feel like there's something soothing and reassuring about having a baseball game on in the background while you're doing other things around the house. All-in-all, the game is not ideal for the medium of television, but at least it doesn't demand your attention the same way that basketball or football does. I think some people believe that that's why baseball is a maddeningly boring game, kinda like how I feel about golf and any press coverage of Tiger Woods, but I guess it's all just in how you approach das Spiel-an-sich.

Also, the nice thing about baseball right now is that the White Sox are undefeated, and that the Cubs are winless.



Also also:



Also also also:

Is this the greatest love story ever told?

Two otters die within an hour of each other 15 years together

Literary March Madness Round 1 - Part 7

Here we go on to the last of our four regions... This quartet is highlighted by perhaps the most anticipated of all of our first round matches - and by anticipated I mean that three different people have mentioned it to me - that between #5 Franz Kafka (The Metamorphosis) and #12 Tony Kushner (Angels in America). There is a certain, ahem, poetic justice in this match-up; both authors are excellent satirists, concerned with the role of the individual in a certain society, and how the individual can retain his humanity in an inhuman world. I might give the edge to Kushner, though, because he's the only one of the two with an honorary degree from Bard College.

I am also very curious about the outcome of #8 Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God) and #9 Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five). Two novels about how humans deal with total disaster, whether it be a hurricane wiping out the Black communities of Florida or the USAF blowing the shit out of Dresden. And for all of you who're hesitating about casting your vote for Goethe, but don't know who Giuseppi di Lampedusa is, here's a quote from Wikipedia about his novel The Leopard:

The novel was criticised around the time of its first publication by some literary critics for its straightforward "old fashioned" realism, a type of Stendhalian or Tolstoyan realism that particularly irritated neo-realists such as Elio Vittorini and Alberto Moravia. However, the novel was very popular among so-called common readers, as well as with prestigious foreign intellectuals such as Louis Aragon and E. M. Forster. In 1963 Il Gattopardo was made into a film, directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Finally, three more polls have closed, and, in three blow-outs, we have three more writers advance to Round Two: #11 Terry Pratchett, #1 Leonid Tolstoy, and #9 Harper Lee. Can't wait for that Lee versus Tolstoy match!

Thank you again for voting. Please tell your friends, and, if you're new to this blog, be sure to scroll down, as there are more matches to vote on below.

Melville v. Carver

Hurston v. Vonnegut

Goethe v. Lampedusa

Kafka v. Kushner

K

Literary March Madness: Round 1 - Part 6

This next quartet of match-ups is heavy with English modernists: Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh. It also has most of our Young Adult authors. Maybe it's a bit unfair, but we've got J.K. Rowling up against Philip Pullman in the first round. Who will be the champion of contemporary English fantasy lit? (If it's based on box-office receipts, then I guess there's no competition...) Of course, the winner of that match will get to face either Charles Dickens or Stella Gibbons, the author of Cold Comfort Farm in Round Two. So put on your best cockney accents and get voting!

In other news, we've got a few more Round One winners to announce: #2 Nathaniel Hawthorne and #3 Charlotte Bronte advance. Mansfield and Burgess ended in a tie. In an executive decision, Robyn and I decided that the win goes to Mansfield. A bit of the ultra-violence is all well and good and all, but it doesn't quite compare to subtle commentaries on early 20th Century class structure!

Woolf v. Forster

Waugh v. Baum

Dickens v. Gibbons

Rowling v. Pullman

April Is Fertility Poetry Month!

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.