Have you heard the Word…for Word? Oxford University Press is proud to partner with the Bryant Park Reading Room in support of the Word for Word Book Club. The series kicks off today, with six more Clubs scheduled throughout the summer. Be sure to stop by the Reading Room early for a FREE* copy of the book club selections.
The Bryant Park Blog posed to following questions to resident OUP Law Editor and acclaimed novelist Matthew Gallaway, author of The Metropolis Case, who will lead today’s Word for Word Book Club, along with Seth Colter Walls. This first discussion of the season will focus on The Pale King, the posthumously published novel by David Foster Wallace.
You can meet Matthew Gallaway today, May 24th, at 12:30pm in beautiful Bryant Park. The outdoor Reading Room is just off 42nd St, between 5th and 6th Avenues in New York City. In the event of rain, discussions will relocate to the The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, 20 West 44th Street (between 5th & 6th Avenues).
Where do you do your best writing? In airports.
Did you have an “a-ha!” moment that made you want to be a writer? When I read Against The Grain, by JK Huysmans.
Which author do you wish had been your 7th grade English teacher? Oscar Wilde.
What is your secret talent? I’m very good at growing ferns.
What is your favorite book? In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust.
Who reads your first draft? My partner Stephen.
Do you read your books after they’ve been published? No.
What book are you currently reading? All Aunt Hagar’s Children, by Edward P. Jones
What word or punctuation mark are you most guilty of overusing? The em-dash.
If you weren’t a writer, what would you be? A gardener.
For more information on Matthew and his new book, check out this episode of The Oxford Comment podcast.
*Yes, by “free” we mean free. Actually, truly, really free. Register to reserve your complimentary copy, or take your chances and get there early; books are available on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Word for Word Book Club
Tuesdays , 12:30pm – 1:45pm
May 24, June 14, June 28, July 12, July 26, August 9, August 23
Reading Room
How do you write a smash first novel? Author (and OUP Law Editor) Matthew Gallaway comes to Oxford book club to discuss his book The Metropolis Case. Topics include: Pittsburgh, advice for writers…and what’s up with the incest scene?
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You can also look back at past episodes on the archive page.
Featured in this Episode:
Matthew Gallaway, author of The Metropolis Case and this tumblr (featuring some of the best personification we’ve seen in ages!)
“So well written — there’s hardly a lazy sentence here — and filled with such memorable lead and supporting players that it quickly absorbs you into its worlds.” -The New York Times on The Metropolis Case
and
Book club members Michelle Lipinski, Grace Labatt, Michelle Rafferty and Justyna Zajac.
To accompany this podcast, we also present the following excerpt from the The Metropolis Case:
Through Its Street Names, the City Is a Mystic Cosmos
NEW YORK CITY, 1960. Anna Prus stepped out of her apartment building onto Seventy-fourth Street, where she paused to glance back at Central Park, which looked opaque and grainy like an old newsreel. It had been snowing for days, but a sallow, expectant glow emanating from the crenellated perimeter of the park told her the storm was nearing an end. While she did not relish the idea of negotiating a trip downtown, the transformation of the city into a tundra, with squalls of powder and amorphous mounds where there had once been cars, mailboxes, and shrubs, struck her as the perfect accompaniment to the magic, improbable turn the day had taken, now that she was about to make her Isolde debut at the Metropolitan Opera.
Though Anna was not an unknown, she had to this point in her career been relegated to smaller houses and (except for some minor roles) hired by the Met as an alternate to the type of leading soprano she had always wanted to be. But as sometimes happened with singers her age—Anna was forty—her voice, after six years at the conservatory and over fifteen more of training, auditioning, and performing, had at last blossomed, giving her reason to believe that she had found her calling in the Wagnerian repertory. Which is not to say her future had been unfurled like a red carpet; if anything, her reputation as a dependable but hardly breathtaking talent still preceded her, and for this current production, she had been brought in only to “cover” the Isolde and so had expected—as she had always done in the past—to spend her nights in the wings, anxiously hoping and not hoping (because she was not one to wish ill health or
