Some people have emailed me about the Tanenhaus Brownie Watch, wondering if, in the absence of lengthy posts, I think there’s been any improvement. The following graphic should answer any and all questions.
Month / March 2006
Roundup
- Rules for Writing Neo-Victorian Novels.
- Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog
- Golden Rule Jones, who is, as we established not so long ago is not a Peter Cetera fan, has finally weaned himself off Blogspot and grabbed himself a bona-fide domain. Do check it out.
John Barlow is now blogging, and he’s tired of the Jonathan Ames testicle contretemps.- Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sienna Miller. No, it’s not another piece of Ron Howard treacle, but the lineup for Neil Gaiman’s Stardust.
- The Vancouver Sun and the Contra Costa Times report yesterday’s news today! Graphic novels are a literary phenomenon! It’s the evolution of a literary genre! Who knew?
- Carl Shuker has won the New Zealand Prize in Modern Letters. That’s $65,000. But it remains to be seen whether Shuker will collect his award in cash or in Buzz Bars. He looks like an intense fellow. My vote is on the Buzz Bars.
- In Japan, twelve writers will be profiled in a liquor warehouse. The program is carefully calculated to get literary enthusiasts inebriated with free drinks, have them sign a contract when not of sound mind, and to put them to work bottling bottles of schnapps in sweltering conditions as indentured servants. Some businesses are calling this new and innovative form of labor an “export reading zone.”
- I’m shocked that I’m quicker to the draw than my colleague down south, but John Banville will be headlining at the Between the Lines Festival.
- Alice Greenway is a literary bomb ready to explode. Other Orange Prize longlisters, concerned with Greenway’s eleventh-hour transformation into a piece of artillery, are turning themselves into B-52 bombers, Panzer tanks, and, in Zadie Smith’s case, a neutron bomb, in an effort to draw more attention to their work.
- Another interview with Alan Moore.
- Who knew that romance novels are apparently only for dumb women? Thank you, Judith McNaught, for “never underestimat[ing] women’s intelligence” and for likewise assuming that any woman who doesn’t read your books, looking for some innocuous escapism, is apparently the XX chromosome’s answer to Forrest Gump.
- This isn’t a good sign for Sci Fiction’s future. Scifi.com is to be restructured on podcasts, with video being played a prominent role.
- iPorn! Inevitable. (via Reverse Cowgirl)
- Fascinating article on how cheap consumer goods have affected UK culture. Cory Doctorow has more.
- The future of conversation. (via Book Ninja)
Another Anthony Burgess Interview
Don Swaim, a man who has interviewed a considerable number of authors, managed to talk with Burgess in 1985. It appears the entire recording, including Burgess sitting down in his chair and reciting a bit of French just before meeting up with Swaim, is available online.
A sample.
Q: You infuriated a good deal of people with your 99 novels list.
A: (calmly) Yes, that was the intention.
(There are also interviews with Isaac Asimov, Jimmy Breslin, Wlliam Burroughs, Dorris Lessing, Donald Westlake and Sloan Wilson.
It Doesn’t Help that “Daniela” is Tall, Blonde & German — Not That We’re Making Assumptions or Anything
New York Times: “‘I believe in multiculturalism,’ she said. ‘I would probably choose somebody with a darker skin color so I don’t have to slather sunblock on my kid all the time. I want it to be a healthy mix. You know how mixed dogs are always the nicest and the friendliest and the healthiest? If you get a clear race, they have all the problems. Mutts are always the friendly ones, the intelligent ones, the ones who don’t bark and have a good character. I want a mutt.’ Her African-American friends questioned this strategy, suggesting that her child’s life would be harder if he or she was perceived as nonwhite, but Daniela said: ‘If that’s what I believe, I have to go by that. And it might help the world also if more people are doing it that way.'”
V for Vendetta
Despite the ridiculous presence of Dell flat-screen monitors and JVC home entertainment centers and the discomfiting fact that every living room in the future, even the fugitive apartments with cinder block bookshelves, looks like a page out of an IKEA catalog, the film adaptation of V for Vendetta is literate and gleefully subversive. Granted, it is not Alan Moore’s comic, as the color schemes alone will reveal. But it is a reimagining and an updating of the narrative. (One can still see the poster for White Heat still in the back of V’s lair.) And it more than atones for previous lackluster Alan Moore adaptations. The film takes about 30 minutes to get its groove and John Hurt’s video presence grows tedious. But this is a film that, unlike the last two Matrix films, is taut and, at times, quite visceral. The two dependable Stephens (Rea and Fry) in the supporting cast are also of great benefit. Joe Bob says check it out.