Month / March 2006

by Edward Champion

Yeah, Man, But It’s a Dry Heat!

Bill Paxton went nuts when The View host Joy Behar asked fellow Big Love actor Chloe Sevigny about the infamous Brown Bunny BJ. An “insider” objects: “‘The View’ is a a show that is broadcast to housewives all over Middle America. [Oral sex] isn’t the kind of thing you talk about.”

If we’ve learned anything from covering the book beat, it’s that Middle America sure as hell needs to know about oral sex. Now more than ever. In fact, while we’re at it, why don’t we see Mike Ditka asking football players about cunnilingus? Just to level the playing field and all.

As for the reports of Paxton “exploding off-camera,” let us be the first to say that somebody at the New York Daily News has a sense of humor.

by Edward Champion

Attention Washington DCers

Tayari Jones is having a party on March 20 at Busboys and Poets. And aside from the fact that I can personally vouch that Tayari is both a good novelist and an exceptionally amicable person, the solipsists here, no doubt thinking “What’s in it for me?” might wish to know that there will be canapés and stuff.

But I’ll up the ante. If you’re a Washington, DC local and you email me a photo of yourself with Tayari AT Busboys and Poets, then, when BookExpo comes along in May (along with the expected cocktail shenanigans), find me and I will personally buy or abscond with (if they’re free) two drinks: one for me, one for you. And we will have ourselves a crazed chat for at least twenty minutes. Granted, it’s quite likely that I’d talk with you anyway. Among literary geeks, I’m a sociable sort. Fueled with enough liquor, I’d talk with just about anybody. Including the beverage in my hand or the sad man who plays the piano. But since incentive is the name of the game…

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • Another day, another Robert Birnbaum interview. This time: Uzodinma Iweala.
  • Concerning the Jonathan Ames testicle controversy, it seems that the testicle is ahead of the shadow by a ratio of 5 to 1. Whether this will have any long-term impact on future perceptions of Jonathan Ames books remains to be seen, but there’s a rumor floating around that Augusten Burroughs has been considering “an accidental photo” for his next book. Just remember that Jonathan Ames was the first one there.
  • It seems that only John Freeman is allowed to talk with David Foster Wallace. That’s two articles in seven days. What deal did he cook up with Bonnie Nadell? Or is John Freeman part of the DFW inner circle of “approved” people? (Former Freeman link via Scott)
  • The history of mustard.
  • Believe it or not, Ivan Turgenev’s one and only play, A Month in the Country, is playing in North Carolina. Free Gutenberg text here. Background info here.
  • It started with a harmless exchange of information, but Maud and I have been trying to figure out why the Graham Greene-Anthony Burgess relationship was so strange. I sent Maud an interview with the two authors that I had read in Burgess’ But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen?. Jasper Milvain dug up more, pointing out that Greene disowned the interview, claiming that “Burgess put words into my mouth which I had to look up in the dictionary.” The two authors fell out, apparently by 1990, when Burgess published his second autobiographical volume, You’ve Had Your Time. And while I don’t entirely trust Wikipedia, the Anthony Burgess entry notes, “In 1957 Graham Greene asked him to bring some Chinese silk shirts back with him on furlough from Kuala Lumpur. As soon as Burgess handed over the shirts, Greene pulled out a knife and severed the cuffs, into which opium pellets had been sewn.” Now if that latter tidbit can be corroborated, then it’s just possible that the Burgess-Greene relationship might be one of the strangest in literary history. As soon as I get an opportunity to hit the library, I’m going to follow up on all this. Did Burgess and Greene love to hate each other? Or did they hate to love each other? Or was it a little bit of both? Perhaps some bona-fide authorities might have some answers to all this.

[UPDATE: Jasper has an update on the Greene-Burgess contretemps, with some citations. And in the comments to this post, Jenny Davidson offers some materal from the forthcoming Biswell biography, which apparently deals with Graham Greene at great length.]

by Edward Champion

Fantasy: A Genre Tailor-Made for Political Fiction?

Henry Farrell on China Miéville: “For Miéville, fantasy shouldn’t merely justify what is, in the service of a self-defeating escapism or consolation; to the extent that it does, it’s merely remaking our political world, not Remaking it. Instead, fantasy should become a way of arguing about our social condition, of re-presenting our dilemmas, and creating a space for the imagination in which we can identify new possibilities of action. Fantasy can have a kind of political force that the ‘realistic’ novel can’t, precisely because it doesn’t take the real for granted.”