A very subtle and funny writer - one I've become obsessed with over the past year - in a decidedly Muriel Spark mood. Imagine The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie with less sex, violence, and fascism, but every bit as much humour and absurdity. Fitzgerald even borrows Spark's flash-forward technique of suddenly, almost as an aside, letting us know where a character will end up a few decades after the main story is over.

At last: something new. (Coming: July 2023.)

Nothing Beside Remains

Life is currently offline.

Annus a little less horribilis

Congratulations On Everything got named a Book of the Year.

Intensities in 3 Cities

For a few days every year, I get to act like a capital-A Author. Those days are upon us.

On Tuesday, October 25, I will be reading and talking in Ottawa.

On Wednesday, October 26, I'll be talking in Toronto.

On Thursday, October 27, I'll be reading and talking in Hamilton.   NOPE




And then on Friday, October 28 I'll be... I don't know, probably watching Toy Story 2 for the thousandth time with a two-year-old.

Open Book

For the month of July, I am the writer in virtual residence at Open Book: Toronto.

So far, I've written about Donald Trump, plagiarism, work in literature, Alice Munro, my brilliant wife, waitresses being asked to dispose of vomit, and much more.

Read all the nonsense here.

Congratulations On Everything reviewed in The Globe & Mail

"These are believable creations. They speak and fail and contradict themselves with the regular inelegance of real people. The day-to-day pleasures and pains of the service industry are also rendered with fine-tuned realism, an ear for the strange within the mundane. Whitlock is a very smooth, competent stylist, in an understated way. There’s no flash or bang here: His characters propel the action, calling attention to narrative style only with metaphor and image – which are always arresting, always right."

The whole thing here.

Service Industry Hell

Dear Former Bartenders, Waiters, and Cooks:

I am in need of funny, ridiculous, and/or disturbing true service industry stories for a thing I am doing next month for Open Book. Tales of bad bosses, "eccentric" customers, hellish shifts, exploding kegs, etc. What are some moments you'll never forget, no matter how hard you try?

They need to be short - 100 to 200 words, max. Just the gist. Unless you say otherwise, they'll be anonymous. Send as many as you like.

Please email them to [my first and last name, all one word] AT gmail dot com.

"All Those Sexy Things"

I got interviewed by Canadian Notes & Queries:

Congratulations On Everything felt like a very different book while I was writing it, and I think it is, though now that I look at it as a finished thing, I can see a lot of similarities – people in bad relationships, people who mistake passivity for integrity, people who pursue dreams they are maybe not suited to achieve. All those sexy things.

 

"Superstition" is the way at the launch of Congratulations On Everything, May 3.

The band kills it. As does guest singer Alex Lukashevky. I try to keep up on drums.

May 3, 2016 - the night it all happens, or some of it

Swear to God...

... I have things to post here, and will do so soon.

In the meantime, have I mentioned I make most of my bad jokes on Twitter now?

@nathanwhitlock

Philip Larkin, the loveable, hateful old bastard

My review of Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love by James Booth in the Toronto Star.

"[Larkin] has few rivals when it comes to conjuring joyful or heart-crushing beauty out of utterly commonplace situations and none in the realm of transforming disappointment into something both hilarious and transcendent."

Read the whole thing here.

The Kids in the Hall's Bruce McCulloch writes a book about being happy, ostensibly

"This country specializes in the knowing chuckle. We prefer jokes that act as gently dissolving humour lozenges, slowly releasing homespun wisdom. (See: Stuart McLean, The Royal Canadian Air Farce, Red Green, Corner Gas, Russell Peters.)

In that respect, the Kids in the Hall are something special."

More of this kind of thing in my review of Let’s Start a Riot, the new memoir-cum-monologue by Bruce McCulloch in the Toronto Star.

Elena Ferrante is my (current) jam

My piece in the Globe and Mail on mysterious Italian novelist Elena Ferrante.

How about you? What are you up to? How have you been?


Sorry to hear!

More books I read for money: featuring David Letterman, Bruce McCall, Gary Shteyngart, the guy who co-wrote "Babe: Pig in the City," and more!

Omnibus blog posts are the best/only kind of blog posts. And so:

Review of This Land Was Made for You and Me by Bruce McCall and David Letterman.

Review of Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart (to which Mr. Shteyngart replied with some Twitter shouting).

Review of Today I Am A Boy by Kim Fu.

Review of The Full Ridiculous by Mark Lamprell. (Who co-wrote Babe: Pig in the City! Which I love! This book not so much!)


Bonus content: getting drunk on CanLit! Watching UFC with poets!

Books I've Been Paid To Read Lately

Life is still elsewhere, but here are some recent reviews:

Of Chris Hadfield's A Guide to Life on Earth.

Of Bill Bryson's One Summer.

Of Eric Schlosser's terrifying Command and Control.

Of The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan.

Of Scatter, Adapt and Remember by Annalee Newitz.

Of Time Reborn by Lee Smolin.


As Daffy Duck might say if he reviewed books, it's not nearly a living.

David Rakoff's Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish

My review of David Rakoff's posthumous novel in The National Post.

Fetherling's footnotes

The best group of footnotes in George Fetherling's The Writing Life: Journals 1975 - 2005 (on p. 88):

17 Sarah Sheard (b. 1953), novelist, author of Almost Japanese
18 Douglas Gibson (b. 1943), McClelland & Stewart publisher
19 Lee Harvey Oswald (1939 - 1963), alleged assassin of John F. Kennedy

The Fun Parts by Sam Lipsyte

My review of Sam Lipsyte's latest in The Toronto Star:

There is a very good reason to read a book about unlikeable losers. Books like that can be very, very funny. And Lipsyte is a very funny writer. The one thing he is constantly doing — even when he maybe shouldn’t, at least not so much — is being funny.