Beautiful Children, a novel about Las Vegas

I read a line in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine that resonated with me deeply:

I found myself wondering, in fact, why there have been so few Las Vegas novels and why the best of them until now, John O’Brien’s “Leaving Las Vegas,” was so narrow and depressed.

The writer is talking about Charles Bock’s debut novel Beautiful Children, which came out this week. It’s a novel set in non-touristy Las Vegas, where I spent the last two years. And the article mentions David Foster Wallace and William Vollmann as two of Bock’s influences! I’m about to finish David Egger’s fantastic What is the What, so I’ll go buy this today – expect a report when I finish.

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Submitted by crazymonk on Sun, 01/27/2008 - 12:00am.

Comments (2)

Bock is going to be a guest on a new online literary program, if you want to check him out:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/books/30mena.html

Elissa | Tue, 01/29/2008 - 6:57pm

Bock is at Random House. Daniel Menaker -- former head of Random House and founder of the show Bock will be on -- is married to deputy editor of the NY Times Magazine and co-wrote a book with Charles McGrath, the man who wrote the magazine story (advertisement) for Bock.

Menaker-McGrath-NYTimesMagazine Editor--Bock

This is such a fraud. It's a giant pr campaign for a Random House book. Former Head of Random House married to the NY Times and who gets the magazine story (before his book is even reviewed) -- a Random House author -- charles bock.

This is a story about how a product gets packaged and launched and it's all about connections and insiders.

What a shock.

peteknocke | Tue, 01/29/2008 - 10:21pm