Concerning these little AudBlogs you may or may not be listening to — I want to assure the small audience here that I am not a drone, that I stutter on a regular basis, that just this week I forgot in conversation the first name of a good friend’s great love from 1997, that I was flogged by said friend over the strains of some Yardbirds track, and that I often do not know where in hell these anti-lucidities are going. Spalding Gray remains missing and these audio things, uttered on a cell phone near odd palazzos, adjacent to coiffed, besuitted, beautiful and not so beautiful people who remain hopeless perplexed by any talk outside brokering a deal, only serves as cheap surrogate and handy experiment until Mr. Gray’s hopeful return to crazed modern life. This has been a disclaimer.
Year / 2004
AudBlog #3 — Lunch Hour Musings on Protection
American Suckers
Close to the centenary, all is not well in Dali world. Robert Deschames, author of a Dali biography, has been fighting the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation for some time. He claims that Dali gave him the commercial rights to his work during their friendship. The Foundation says no. The battle has waged in court for some time. Attorneys have profited. Deschames’ attorney claims that his client is ruined. This wouldn’t be the first time that money got in the way of one of Dali’s friendships, but it does mark the first time that it’s happened beyond the pale.
Putin is pissed. A history book suggested that he was a dictator running a police state. The great irony is that he’s now ordered a review of all history books.
Proving once again that Viagra conquers all, Julio Iglesias (that would be Dr. Julio, father of the Julio we know) has fathered a child at 87. This beats out Saul Bellow, who became a dad again at 84, and whose illegitimate grandson has recently taken over Playboy. Bellow responded, “That bastard! Does he know how much work it took?”
Here are several reasons why I will probably never read David Denby’s American Sucker:
1. He finds spiritual redemption in 8 Mile.
2. The Washington Post: “This warmed-over Horatio Alger rhetoric is very hard to stomach coming from a man cushioned in a handsomely paid magazine job, trying to stake himself to a stock market windfall in order to keep control of a $1.4 million apartment financed largely by his own family inheritance — someone who spent not one but two tours of duty at an Ivy League university, subsidized the second time via the good graces of a book contract. Bleary-eyed community college night classes, indeed.”
3. The Boston Globe channels John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Great Crash, noting, “When those same [economic] leaders are led off in handcuffs, it is a pretty good sign the boom has turned into a bust.” Denby, of course, stayed in after the NASDAQ dropped in March 2000.
4. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: “At times, Denby’s obsessions become tiring – if he had a deeper navel, he would have written a longer book.”
The Twin East Coast Monthly
For all of The Atlantic‘s candor, it still doesn’t explain why the current double issue would include not one, but two takes on high-profile translations (the former a swell introspective look on Don Quixote, the latter another smug collection of Christopher Hitchens intonations), while saving the remaining lengthy slot for Dr. Laura’s new book. While influential polemicists certainly do warrant a serious look, we can’t help but wonder if The Atlantic is preaching to the converted or contemplate why The Atlantic would dwell upon a polemicist that has, it would seem to us, had her day. Despite the long, long, long (did we mention long?), blustery essays on Iraq, one involving hawkish apologia, both of which hurt our heads to varying degrees, we believe The Atlantic‘s readers are not likely to find solace in a hateful crank. Nor do we believe that hi/lo dichotomies are necessarily the order of the day. The current object, it would seem to us, is guided more by mitosis. To the point where it has us now using that dreaded first person plural, which use we reserve only when drunk, half-awake, or otherwise devoid of our ten senses.
And Here I Was Remembering My Top Ramen Days
There are hard sacrifices to becoming a novelist. For Elizabeth Robinson, they were even harder. “She was down to cutting out the luxury of household mineral water,” reports the Chicago Tribune. (via Moorish Girl)