Thursday, January 27, 2011

What is Andrew Ervin reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Andrew Ervin, author of Extraordinary Renditions.

His entry begins:
Everything I read—and I mean everything—affects what I think and what I write, so I try to be careful about the books I pick up. I’m writing a novel now about a professor who gets fired for plagiarism and goes to live on the remote Scottish island where Orwell wrote Nineteen-Eighty Four. For inspiration, I’ve recently started Joseph McElroy’s Women and Men, which I planned to bring with me overseas for the holidays, but I chickened out simply because this 1192-page hard cover was too heavy to drag on a transatlantic cattle car. I’m 169 pages in...[read on]
Among the praise for Extraordinary Renditions:
“The variety of viewpoints and the author’s evident intimacy with an ancient foreign capital are promising, and Ervin makes it plain that he is taking on weighty themes: history, empire, race, the power of art.”
--New York Times Book Review

“It’s funny, alarming, evocative, and, very often with its internal description, defies its apparent historical setting. It echoes political texts while presenting political folly (and youthful folly).”
--Ed Champion, who has listed Extraordinary Renditions among “The 13 Most Underrated Books of 2010” at The Millions

“There is a lyrical muscularity in Ervin’s writing that, at times, leaves the reader breathless. Extraordinary Renditions is tightly plotted and brilliantly composed. A very good book and, one hopes, a taste of things to come.”
--January Magazine

“[Ervin] has crafted a thoughtful reflection on art and creativity, on pasts and futures, and I am greatly anticipating reading much more of his work in the years ahead.”
--Pete Anderson
Visit Andrew Ervin's website.

Writers Read: Andrew Ervin.

--Marshal Zeringue