The review starts, “If this novel did not boast the name of Alice Walker, who won acclaim some two decades ago with ‘The Color Purple,’ it’s hard to imagine how it could have been published,” and gets very close to Dale Peck territory. Someone give Michiko a hug. Or maybe attending a cuddle party will calm her down. (via Maud)

Yesterday, I picked up John Barth’s Ten Nights and a Night and began reading it. And I couldn’t stop laughing my ass off over the subtext. Not only are the book’s assorted inner voices reluctant to use the word “postmodern,” but they try to settle on the politically correct term of “post-invocation.” All this while recognizing that pre-9/11 tomfoolery (i.e., Autumnal Tales written before) may be more of a premium now than before.

If ever a case could be made for the return of postmodern subtext, Barth, one of its beloved grandfathers, is it. While other authors have tried to wrestle with how consciousness has changed since “Black Tuesday,” Barth gets at the dilemma quicker than anyone:

Their quandary (Graybard’s and Wysiwig’s) is that for him to re-render now, in these so radically altered circumstances, Author’s eleven mostly Autumnal and impossibly innocent stories, strikes him as bizarre, to put it mildly indeed — as if Nine Eleven O One hadn’t changed the neighborhood (including connotations of the number eleven), if not forever, at least for what remains of Teller’s lifetime. And yet not to go on with the stories, so to speak, would be in effect to give the mass-murderous fanatics what they’re after: a world in which what they’ve done already and might do next dominates our every thought and deed.

While there’s little doubt that these words were written closer to what Barth styles TEOTWAW(A)KI — The End of the World As We (Americans) Knew It, it still suggests that American fiction is playing it safe. The situation is compounded by how previous creative efforts have now forever had their meaning altered since that moment. To demonstrate this, Barth includes his famous “Help!” chart early on, a musical notation which displays an audio track split into Left, Right and Center, with assorted helps and variations of distress. Looking at the chart, I couldn’t stop thinking about how this could be interpreted to represent the cries of the victims, or the cries of civil liberties being stripped away, or the general sense of helplessness a lot of Americans feel about the actions of Our Current Government. Certainly the chart was funny, but it was more disturbing this time around.

It’s also worth noting that the chart originally appeared in a 1969 issue of Esquire, and I wondered how much the poltiically charged events of that time influenced its making.

What’s further amazing to me is that The Floating Opera is now nearly fifty years old. Yet this new collection of stories, with the uncompromising tying thread of “Greybard” and WYSIWYG, demonstrates that Barth, now close to eighty, is as much of a giddy deviant as he was in 1956, perhaps more important than we ever expected.

(Further note: If you’re new to Barth, I recommend Dave Edelman’s John Barth Information Center, which lives up to its name and is a grand diversion for any literary person with a dreary day job.)

It’s silly enough that this blog has a possessive before it’s name. But you’d never catch me claiming authorship for something this anachronistic. REiD Mihalko’s Cuddle Party is Susie Bright cross-pollinated with the Quirkyalone movement. In other words, it’s self-defeating nomenclature, a downright oxymoron, from the get-go. For one thing, there’s the problem of the modifier. Cuddling is nice, sure. But “cuddle” implies 8-year-old girls getting intimate with an oversized stuffed giraffe. It is not, shall we say, a place to bust out the bottle of Cuervo, start dancing like it’s 1999, and blast Technotronic’s “Pump Up the Jam.” So why party? Perhaps “cuddle gathering” or “feel-up frolic” or “casual groping” would have been more apposite.

Who the hell is REiD Mihalko? Apparently a bi-coastal Sex and Romance Coach who was (I’m not making this up) given the gift by his mother “of seeing and treating woman [sic] as sacred.” In other words, he’s one of those unemployed, guitar-playing guys you meet at a coffeehouse who claim that they’re as sensitive and gooey as a jelly donut, but have the closet desire to feel you up.

At least that’s the impression I’ll draw.

I’m all for cuddling. But this whole thing sounds like it’s one step removed from bukkake. I mean, what’s the difference between being groped by some stranger on a subway and allowing some dude you don’t know to grope you, with the queasy bonus of some guy moderating who doesn’t know how to use capital letters?

(via Gawker)

The 2004 Lyttle Lytton winners have been announced. The goal? To write the worst opening line in 25 words or less. The winner: “This is the story of your mom’s life.” (via MeFi)