• Ian McEwan mourns Saul Bellow. In particular, he describes how placing a quote from Herzog before a novel makes it sound more important than it really is.
• If the Atlantic won’t publish fiction, an author can always aim for Cosmo. That’s precisely what author Mary Castillo did for her novel Hot Tamara. Of course, the excerpt in question is a “hot and heavy love scene.” But it was either that or a questionnaire determining how effectively you satisfy your man.
• Phillip Seymour Hoffman will play Truman Capote in a biopic. That’s fine casting. Unfortunately, in another Capote-related film, Every Word is True, Sandra Bullock will play Harper Lee. To add insult to injury, the producers plan to change the title of Lee’s novel. It will now be known as To Kill the Girl Next Door Type.
• Elizabeth George fanboys are incensed with the latest novel. In George’s latest, a central character in the Lynley series has been killed off, spawning resentment, multiple sessions of therapy, devious fan fiction, and a firm convinction to seek more mediocre best-selling novelists.
• And Stuart Dybek has made this year’s ALA Notable Books list for I Sailed With Magellan. He hopes to make next year’s list by titling his novel-in-progress I Painted With Picasso, even though it has nothing to do with the famed artist.

Look, I perceive Jeb Bush as a threat to the public. But the last thing I’d do is shoot the man. The Florida Senate has passed a bill (SB 436, aka the “Castle Doctrine” bill) that permits residents to shoot people who they suspect are attackers in their homes, vehicles, or in public places. (And I’m thinking here that arenas and pay-per-view broadcasts aren’t too far behind.) The bill provides “immunity from criminal prosecution or civil action using deadly force; authorizing a law enforcement agency to investigate the use of deadly force but prohibiting the agency from arresting the person unless the agency determines that probable cause exists showing that the force the person used was unlawful.”

So if you’re in Florida, and you decide to shoot someone, and you claim that the other person was using deadly force, not only are you granted immunity but you’ll now have ample time to make a run for the state border while the police are deciding whether probable cause exists.

But it gets better. Because the bill’s language actually encourages people not to retreat “if the person is in a place where he or she has a right to be.”

Of course, with any bill, there’s an escape clause. Use of force is not available if a person, withdraws from physical contact with the assailant and indicates clearly to the assailant that he or she desires to withdraw and terminate the use of force, but the assaiilant continues or resumes the use of force.”

The big question here is how a person can convey his desire not to be shot within that seminal split-second of adrenaline. I’m sure we can count on a gun-totinng Florida resident hopped up on emotional instinct to put down the .45 with a cool head and invite the other person in for a cup of tea.

If this is the natural progression of legislation, then we’re only a few years away from Death Race 2000/Robert Sheckley-style reality television.

As if Bellow’s passing wasn’t bad enough, Frank Conroy has died.

In a feat worthy of the great Gerard Jones, Galleycat points to an Observer article which reveals the masthead behind the machine:

Editorial Director and Books Editor: Henry Finder
Books Deputy Editor: Leo Carey
Poetry Editor: Alice Quinn
Fiction Editor: Deborah Treisman
Fiction Deputy Editor: Cressida Leyshon
Fiction Associate Editor: Carin Besser
Goings on About Town and Web Editor: Ben Greenman

Saul Bellow has died. Bellow was considered one of the great American living writers. And his passing, much to my surprise, left me with a sizable lump in my chest.

I first read Bellow in my early twenties. While his playfulness (the legacy of which can now be found in nearly every Dave Eggers story) of his interminable paragraphs sometimes annoyed me, I was still taken with the way Bellow still managed to cut to the fine point of human observation in unexpected ways. Take, for example, this passage from Humboldt’s Gift:

The strain was largely at the top. In the crow’s-nest from which the moern autonomous person keeps watch. But of course Cantabile was right. I was vain, and I hadn’t the age of renunciation. Whatever that is. It wasn’t entirely vanity, though. Lack of exercise made me ill. I used to hope that there would be less energy available to my neuroses as I grew older. Tolstoi thought that people got into trouble because they ate steak and drank vodka and coffee and smoked cigars. Overcharged with calories and stimulants and doing no useful labor they fell into carnality and other sins. At this point I always remembered that Hitler had been a vegetarian, so that it wasn’t necessarily the meat that was to blame. Heart-energy, more likely, or a wicked soul, maybe even karma — paynig for the evil of a past life in this one. According to Steiner, whom I was now reading heavily, the spirit learns from resistance — the material body resists and opposes it. In the process the body wears out. But I had not gotten good value for my deterioration. Seeing me with my young daughters, silly people sometimes asked if these were my grandchildren. Me! Was it possible! And I saw that I was getting that look of a badly stuffed trophy or mounted specimen that I always associated with age, and was horrified.

When I first read that paragraph (which is still flagged years later by a Post-It note), I was struck by the number of levels it operated on. Here’s a man contemplating his debilitation (largely a hypochondria used to mask the inevitability of aging) but is resorting to almost every reference and detail at his disposal to evade the issue. He’s blaming himself for not exercising enough, and then seriously grasps for straws in resorting to the questionable health principles of other men.

Finally, Bellow pinpoints the extent of his self-delusion, which involves not coming to terms with the idea of grandchildren, but finally conceding a defeat that not even he can comprehend or accept.

The way that Bellow hit upon the burdens of regret here moved me. And for that, I’ll toss down a cold one for Saul tonight, placing Augie March, Herzog and Humboldt’s Gift to the bottom of my bookpile for re-reading.

(via Dan Wickett)

[UPDATE: Mark has a nice collection of links.]