It’s too nice outside and we have several things to finish up. Until tomorrow’s Brownie Watch, I leave you with this astounding video of a very limber man dancing.
Also, Chekhov’s Mistress has an interesting post up about important books we continue reading despite their difficulty, the Rake can now be found in The Rocky Mountain News, and Alicia Gifford has won the Million Writers Award for “Toggling the Switch.”
We really aren’t in the habit of linking to The Believer, but this China Mieville interview was too good to pass up: “I had a conversation with someone about this the other day, and I said, ‘Yeah, I’d love to write the Bas Lag encyclopedia.’ And they said, ‘That’s really bad though, because you’re a socialist. You shouldn’t be writing these books that are just a kind of naked, cynical attempt to cash in on the sad obsessions of the geeks.’ And I said, ‘No, no, no, you don’t understand at all! I can’t imagine anything I’d love to do more than write an encyclopedia of my imaginary world, with the possible exception of writing the bestiary.’ I’m in this fucking business for the monsters. The monsters are the main thing that I love about the fantastic. And unfortunately, you can’t really sell books of monsters to publishers. They insist on stories linking them.”
There’s a lot of April Fool’s tomfoolery going around. But we’re kind of partial to this pisstake. Don’t miss “The New Youth Craze.”
From Language Hat comes a fun list of questions:
You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Either James Joyce’s Ulysses (because I’d be forced to remember all those beautiful passages that spill out of my memory like too much Two Buck Chuck poured into my glass) or James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, because you need a little lust and murder to filter down to the next generation.
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Speaking of Cain, I’ve always had a strange desire to be double-crossed by Phylis Nirdlinger. I had a crush on Vanity Fair‘s Becky Sharp and wondered as a boy if Nancy Drew ever put out.
The last book you bought is?
Just the other day: My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk and A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipul. (I know, I know. Catching up for porous deficiencies.)
What are you currently reading?
The Art of Eating by MFK Fisher, Great Apes by Will Self, Saturday by Ian McEwan.
Five books you would take to a deserted island:
Today:
1. The Recognitions by William Gaddis
2. Don Quixote by Cervantes
3. A Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
4. The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin
5. A Rememberance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
Many of these have been selected for pragmatic reasons.
Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
We’re not running a relay race, are we?
Pope John Paul II, long reported to be suffering from ill health, began early training for the Roman Catholic Triathlon this morning. The Pope had long tired of the endless window waves and hoped to demonstrate to the world that, like other elderly leaders before him, he could swim across the Yangtze River in record time.
“Reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated,” said the Pope. “I’m feeling better than ever and I don’t know what these reporters are talking about.”
The Pope’s acolytes proved just as astonished as anyone else. The Fountain of Youth, discovered last night in the back of a Starbuck’s, was moved to the Vatican, where the Pope drank agua fresca and began displaying an unexpected vigor. The Pope reportedly “planned to live forever, or die trying.”
When asked what his Catholic constitutency would do now that the Pope’s health was secure for at least another 100 years, the Pope suggested that they either read the Bible again or take up cross-stitching.