Parade of Devastating Beauty

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/20/must-read-novels-the-devil-all-the-time-lola-california-the-borrower-reviewed.html

Must-Read Novels
Great new novels: hippie California

A Parade of Cures: The Devastating Beauty of Lola, California


‘Lola, California’ By Edie Meidav. 448 pages. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Edie Meidav's Lola, California is titled after the name two girls, Lana and Rose, give themselves. They stole their name from the identity-bending hit by The Kinks (Lana is Lola One, Rose Lola Two). The Lolas shared a thick, impenetrable friendship, and Meidav captures exactly the sweetness of girlhood co-dependency (think Heavenly Creatures, but healthier).

This gorgeous, audacious novel goes far beyond a story of two girls, though. Lana and Rose grew up in Berkeley, California in the 1980s, and the book is as much about that town and the millennial Northern California zeitgeist as any character. Meidav is harrowingly precise in her descriptions of the place, where the eucalyptus “smelled like both cat pee and colonialism” and the men “focused on outwitting actuarial odds by their faithfulness to California protocols: ease, cheekbones, the low glycemic index of their diet, fire trail hikes, cardiovascular gestures, wealth, Tuscan vegetables, phytonutrients, heart-benefiting, and cancer-fighting volunteerism, the kind who into their fifties remain manboys, pursuing life-risking activities without ever wiping off that constant smile. If misfortune happens to such men, a hemorrhaging bank account or loss of an actual limb, such men call it process or a learning experience, ready to die before admitting failure, failure bad as a hairweave, a condition practically requiring surrender of the state’s driving license.”

Yes, that sentence is long. Meidav’s prose is writerly: exact yet maximalist, prodigiously lyrical. Together with the novel’s jump-cut structure and length, Meidav asks her readers to slow down. The opposite of a page turner in the best way, the novel prompts us to linger, re-read, flip back, and figure the damned thing out.

But don’t worry: Lola, California is no modernist convolution. Meidav offers more than pretty sentences. This book has plot in spades . . . (to read more, go to the link above)

At the days tick down towards Mahler’s execution, Vic terminally ill, and everyone faces more choice: stay or go? . . . Lola, California is a startling novel, as prodigiously smart as it is technically proficient. Her characters may be narcissistic zeligs, but Meidav is an American original.

—Anne Trubek, author of A Skeptic's Guide To Writers' Houses


THE DAILY BEAST
Anne Trubek is the author of A Skeptic's Guide To Writers' Houses.

the evolutionary factor that will all make us into hydroencephalites?

Tweet

Favoring quick thumbs and immunity to electromagnetic frequencies . . .

Readings

What is it about collaboration that is such a joy? Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing Brielle Korn (of the band Fortune Baby), dancer Amii Legendre (of her own multivalent choreographic productions), and Kevin Salem (once of Dumptruck, now also in music with/for himself) perform as part of a reading in Woodstock, last Hudson Vally reading until, perhaps, the same line-up comes out September 10th for a reading on Poet's Walk as part of some visionary Scenic Hudson enterprise.
I remember years ago seeing Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, play accordion in relation to some reading in San Francisco and I got it: ah, the reading as a kind of cabinet of curiosities, presenting delights for the senses, rather than a kind of staid Author-Audience relation with that hyphen forever calcified.
So to those of you who have come or will come, thank you for helping me erode that hyphen.
Sending you good thoughts from the traveling part of the "book tour". I must put quotation marks around that. I must. (Cf. the movie Already Famous for what I consider a real tour.)
To your happy day,
Edie




PS For you who may be in Seattle, or know others who might be, Wednesday night at 7 pm I'm reading/conversing at Elliott Bay in Seattle at 7 pm. (206) 624-6600, 1521 Tenth Avenue
Seattle WA 98122; for personalized copies: orders@elliottbaybook.com

PPS Last summer dates: 7/23 in Mendocino's The Gallery w/Beth Lisick; 7/28 in Berkeley's Mrs. Dalloway's with party feeling; 7/30 in Gualala's 4-Eyed Frog with coastal feeling; 8/4 in San Francisco's Book Passage with Oscar Villalon's interlocution; 8/5 in Montclair, CA with the brilliant Carolyn Cooke. Come run some intervention.

Excerpt #2, gogo dancing, up at Sundance Channel (Em and Lo)

Thanks, Em and Lo!

http://www.sundancechannel.com/sunfiltered/2011/07/new-summer-reading-lola/

Recent speech acts

http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/07/10/071011-arts-books-lola-california-1-3/

Dear ones,


Thank you to Oblong Books in Rhinebeck for such a pleasurable launch of the book, and thanks to all who came out or were there in spirit. If writing is a solitary task, these moments of conversation help remind me of the purpose and meaning behind the idea of trying to write and reach another.

Meanwhile, thank you as well to another thoughtful reveiwer: http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/07/10/071011-arts-books-lola-california-1-3/

Sending good thoughts,

Edie

Here's the link to the free music, constantly updated, for you

Excerpt from Lola now up at Electric Literature

Hi all,

In honor of the Lola book's birthday, Electric Literature is featuring some excerpts:

http://electricliterature.com/blog/2011/07/05/excerpt-lola-california-by-edie-meidav/

I'm watching the baby float toward its bulrushes.

And for you who have written to say how much you already like the new songs by Kevin Salem which are part of the Lola "score", a sort of musical conversation with the book, please know more -- really beautiful ones -- are coming down the pipeline. For the free download of the early songs, go to www.kevinsalem.com/Lola.html.

Meanwhile, an Authority has just implored me to ask people to write firecracker-starred reviews at your neighborhood online bookseller. This, too, apparently, is important.

Thank you for your support. I promise you get a more newsworthy post soon!

Yours in logos,
Edie

Tomorrow and beyond

Dear friends,

Please note that the music for LOLA is now available -- free download -- at www.kevinsalem.com/Lola.html.

Also, may I be so bold as to ask you, if you were considering buying LOLA anyway, to go to your local bookstore or Amazon tomorrow? Apparently a certain mass movement in the beginning makes a difference.

Please don't do this if you're planning on coming to a reading where I'll get to see you in person! Only if you're not.

To your future,

Edie

Interview with Nina Shengold on LOLA,CALIFORNIA (and SWAMPLANDIA to boot!)

Nina is one of the last of a disappearing breed? Insightful, intelligent, creative in her own right.

Interview is at:
http://www.chronogram.com/issue/2011/7/Books/Sunshine-States