Sylvester Stallone is returning to the role of Rocky Balboa for Rocky VI. In this installment, Rocky will apparently confront John Rambo, leaving both men to wonder why their collective swagger is infinitely unappealing to the moviegoing public.
Year / 2005
Roundup
- Soft Skull now has a blog, demonstrating to the world that Dan Wickett may have some competition from Richard Nash in the We Never Sleep Department.
- If there was any doubt that Lev Grossman was a chickenhead, his status as Chickenhead of the Decade may be confirmed. Judy Blume? Jonathan Franzen? Tolkein [sic]? C.S. Lewis? All authors in their own right, but hardly the names one would expect to see on any serious list concerned with singling out literature. Then again, given Time‘s roots as a magazine devoted to lackluster summaries of news and culture for mass consumption, the list makes sense. Bawk bawk indeed.
- A seven year old has won a book contract. This kid better have life experience or we’ll have someone steal his lunch money.
- Chinese author Ba Jin has died. He was 100.
- Creative Artists Agency has pledged that it will go after “100 percent market share.” A CAA spokesman also contended that it had settled on an operations method predicated on “100 percent hubris.”
- Chekhov: Not a prude and possibly a womanizer.
- Is a major production of Dickens’ Bleak House the reason for the BBC license fee increase?
- Boston Globe on Sara Faith Alterman: “Getting ”15 Minutes’ published was surprisingly simple. She sent her text to multiple literary agents. One quickly picked her up, and ”My 15 Minutes’ was sold to Avon Trade, a division of Harper Collins.” Simple maybe if you’re a flouncy 25 year old whose author photo will sell the book alone. But try telling that “surprisingly simple” story to some talented yet eczema-ridden 55 year old novelist with bad teeth.
- A spirited defense of Pinter’s politics.
- “Phil, I don’t know what to write about this week.” “Well, Bob, what author do you like?” “Philip Roth’s really doing it for me right now.” “Well, then why not take a road trip and write about it. No penetrating insights. Just rambling text.” “You mean it? I mean, you’ll actually buy a column from me without a point?” “Bob, you wouldn’t be on staff if you weren’t pointless. Now let’s go knock back some shots. Drinks are on me.”
- Vikram Seth hates being late.
- Apparently, Jonathan Safran Foer bridges the gap between the hipsters and the philanthropists. There must be some mistake.
[UPDATE: Litkicks has some interesting memories of Lev Grossman: “He was a nice guy, undoubtedly smart, literary and perceptive….But I also found Lev Grossman bland in conversation, and decidedly uncontroversial….Nothing about Lev Grossman shouted out ‘I will be Time’s book critic in five years’.”]
Laura Miller Watch
Inarguably, Laura Miller is the most ridiculous book reviewer be found in print today. More pompous than Harold Bloom, more mystifying than even Harriet Klausner, more passive-aggressive than Dale Peck, and more general than even Janet Maslin. As an ongoing service to our readers, we institute the Laura Miller Watch, in a better effort to understand how this humorless “critic” works.
SOURCE: On Beauty by Zadie Smith (Salon, October 1, 2005)
SENTENCE: “Academic cultural critics — who get a few taps on the snout in Zadie Smith’s new novel — often say that works of art can only be fully understood in their historical context.”
ANALYSIS: Besides being a criminally dull lede, this sentence points out the obvious. Besides, academic cultural critics do indeed play lacrosse and attend costume parties from time to time. The question here is whether Miller gets out much.
SENTENCE: “It’s the kind of book that reminds you of why you read novels to begin with.”
ANALYSIS: Miller can’t even be bothered with a batty metaphor, such as “It’s the kind of book that reminds you that literature does retain the power to soil one’s pants” or “It’s the kind of pleasure that will have you eschewing sex, ice cream and go-go boots until you get to the end; hence, setting a dangerous precedent in the spare time department.” Has Miller learned nothing from cinematic one-sheets?
SENTENCE: “Howard is more or less the novel’s central character, so it’s an extraordinary and significant aspect of “On Beauty” that Smith has given him ideas she doesn’t endorse.”
ANALYSIS: More or less? Some shadow of a doubt? And Miller’s strange notion that authors “rarely endorse” ideas they oppose suggests a highly literal-minded person. Sometimes, a cigar is more than a cigar.
SENTENCE: “Although this is a comic novel and, at least in part, satirical, it’s unlike any other satire I’ve read in that it’s completely free of contempt.”
ANALYSIS: John P. Marquand? Jonathan Ames? Any satirist with a Jonathan permutation for that matter?
SENTENCE: “The ideological battles between Howard and Monty (who in the course of the novel comes to work at Howard’s university) may sound, in this polemical age, like the meat of the matter, but they’re only a foil.”
ANALYSIS: These ideological battles. They’re people, yes? It’s only a foil. And if Miller wants to resort to cliches, she may as well use “heart” instead of “meat.” One of the disadvantages of being your own editor is that you’re allowed to make such jejune mistakes. (Any blogger knows this.)
SENTENCE: “All of the above are greater or lesser examples in a catalog of human folly, but none are depicted without compassion and a certain measure of delight in their vibrant particularity and underlying universality.”
ANALYSIS: Cluttered clauses. Incoherence. More nouns to keep track of than names at a cocktail party. Who’s the copy editor over there? Is there a copy editor over there?
The Bat Segundo Show #9
Author: Laura Joplin
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Fresh from an unexpected vacation, feeling unloved.
Subjects Discussed: Remembering Janis Joplin years later, unexpected letters from Janis, Laura Joplin’s bio vs. Myra Friedman’s bio, growing up in the Joplin household, Janis’ literary interests, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Dick Cavett, clarifying the heroin overdose, the qualifications of biography writing, Janis cinematic biopics, Seth Morgan, whether today’s world needs a Janis figure, the use of “Mercedes Benz” in a Benz commercial.
[NOTE: The majority of this interview was conducted as a coffee grinder whirred in the background. The barista operating the grinder, despite seeing our microphones and our distinguished interview subject, would not turn it off and was inflexible to charisma. He would not even accept a substantial bribe. (Some baristas, it seems, are inexorable.) We have done our best to preserve the audio and have eliminated most of it. But the audio, as a result, is slightly distorted.]
Listen: Play in new window | Download
Jesus, Does the San Fernando Valley Really Bring Us Down THAT Much?
For those who recently took me to task for attacking Somerville, MA, it appears that I was indeed wrong. Massachusetts is the smartest state in the union. My own state, California, is 43rd on the list. In other words, we’re the seventh dumbest state in the union. Dumber than Oklahoma, Texas, and Tennessee. Far dumber than Ohio and South Carolina.
Of course, we also have a hell of a lot more people (33,871,648 of them in fact). So we you consider the law of means, it’s quite likely that, numerically speaking, we may have a larger cadre of smartypants to draw from. And we still have the world’s fifth largest economy and very nice weather. And where would you be without all the vapid movies coming from Hollywood? Resorting to low-budget Canadian films, no doubt. And as dumb as we are, we didn’t vote for Bush in the last two presidential elections.
If there’s any bright side to this, pun fully intended, this should put an end to the whole red-states-they-dumb, blue-states-we’re-enlightened argument. Intelligence, it seems, is entirely relative. Now pardon me while I try to white-out this grammatical mistake on my monitor.