MSNBC: “The head of the Nepal Mountaineering Association urged the government on Saturday to take action against a sherpa who reportedly stripped off on top of Mount Everest.”
Month / May 2006
Public Transportation — The Great Facilitator of Diplomacy
Perhaps it’s a sign of urban living that I’ve seen altercations as strange as this one on MUNI. Of course, nobody has, to my knowledge, claimed to have his penis attached to anyone’s mother. (via MeFi)
Barker’s Beauties
Where Are They Now? More interestingly, why is it that so much crazy shit goes on behind the scenes at The Price is Right? Just how stable is Bob Barker?
[RELATED: Could this be true? Bob Barker lists Winston Churchill and Dizzy Dean as his personal heroes? If this is indeed true, all signs point to wacky. Also, this guy believes that The Price is Right will galvanize the economy — this while correctly singling out “the disembodied, stentorian tones of announcer Rod Roddy.” But perhaps this clip (or this) might explain the show’s enduring appeal.]
The Bat Segundo Show #41
Authors: Carrie A.A. Frye and Yannick Murphy
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Missing, last seen packing himself into a suitcase at Dulles.
Subjects Discussed: To Kill a Mockingbird, Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, Here They Come as autobiography, bending spoons with your mind, sleepless nights of inspiration, the similarities between surrealism and realism, hot dog vendors, points of reference as a coping mechanism, writing a New York-based novel in California, the A&P as a reflection of socioeconomic values, working with Eli Horowitz.
RIP Alex Toth
Food Issue, My Ass
A Scanner Dully?
Early reviews are coming in on Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly and they’re not promising.
The Book Standard: “Visually, this Scanner is no phantasmagoria, unlikely to inspire comparison to great animated head-trips of the ’60s past. The film’s muted pallet of pastels, while immensely suited to bath soaps, is less dynamic as a filmic eye-grabber.”
Eric Synder: “I think some people will be tricked by the unusual visual style into thinking the film is more interesting than it is. I say look beyond that at what’s actually happening and you’ll realize that without the rotoscoping, the movie would be completely undistinguished, competent but only mildly entertaining.”
Tim Ryan: “…if ‘A Scanner Darkly\ doesn’t match ‘Waking Life”s wonderfully fluid meditation on the nature of existence, it’s still a remarkable visual experience and an involving drama…”
Calvin and Hobbes
To the Moleskine People
I have no idea what I did to earn your good graces, but..
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for the package.
Baum’s Away
At Gonzaga University, to celebrate L. Frank Baum’s 150th birthday, an exhibit entitled “Oz and Beyond” is on display in the library rare books room.
The Video Game Industry: Innovation is an Afterthought
Slate: “What happened to these pioneers? Garriott never produced another breakthrough like Ultima; he now works for online multiplayer giant NCsoft. Meier has spent most of the last decade updating his previous hits at a company owned by Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive. Id Software has clung to its independence but produced nothing further in the way of milestone games. Perhaps the lone indie superstar to retain his auteur status is Will Wright, who now has his own ‘studio’ within Electronic Arts. Wright takes years to cook up his always-innovative games. In 2000, he released The Sims, which transported players into the first of many ‘digital dollhouses’ and became the best-selling computer game of all time. Wright’s next game, Spore, aims to simulate the evolution of life from microorganism to space-faring civilization. It will probably be the only innovative title EA releases next year.”
Dover Town Library: Hot to Trot
It is a fundamental truth that librarians are among the sexiest people on the planet. But the Dover Town Library staff have me contemplating all manner of sexual fantasies*: you see, they’ve abolished overdue fees.
* — In one, I am tied up to the microfiche machine, forget the safe word, and am forced to endure discomfort that goes outside of the accepted terms. I am then released under the assumption that I will be a “good patron.” Then I’m asked to conduct academic research while being partially blindfolded and handcuffed to the stacks, all this while performing cunnilingus on another librarian and having random Dewey decimal numbers shouted back to me. I should note that this is the safest of the eight fantasies which popped into my head while reading this story. The other seven cannot be reported publicly.
New Yorker 2.0?
This morning, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the New Yorker is going digital. In a podcast, editor David Remnick reveals that the New Yorker plans on “dramatically upgrading” its Web presence by the end of the year, planning to add more video, more audio and more “reader interaction.” I’m not certain if such an approach suits the New Yorker particularly well, but it’s certainly interesting to see the New Yorker follow Harper’s in trying to court more online readers to the magazine. It’s an intriguing gamble and, should print advertising continue to dwindle, perhaps a telltale sign that we may very well be on the verge of seeing a substantial chunk of newspapers and magazines moving almost exclusively to the Web within the next ten years. After all, if a guy like Remnick is acknowledging the print vs. digital chasm and taking major steps to correct it, then there must be something serious tainting the Manhattan air.
LBC Podcast Alert
Do check out the LBC site today for a podcast featuring Carrie A.A. Frye and Yannick Murphy. I should have things squared away by mid-morning.
Who Are the Fact Checkers at Poets & Writers?
Poets and Writers: “Despite one interruption by a young man who asked why he didn’t get a thank-you for once sending Tanenhaus cookies….” (Emphasis added; thanks Sarah!)
Kind of Like Al Gore Himself During the Past Six Years
From a review of An Inconvenient Truth: “Fundamentally, this is a film about communication– the failure to communicate in the past, and the mission to truly communicate before it’s far too late.”
CointelPryor
Or Maybe Joan’s Just Waiting for the Creepy Journalist to Go Away
New York Times: “Ms. Didion, tiny, quiet and quick-speaking, keeps her hands mostly in her lap. One gets the feeling that the room is impressing itself on her.”
You’re Spending £7 Million on a Sex Park And You Mean to Tell Me That There’s NO MONEY Left Over for the Rides?
BBC: “A £7m sex theme park, which has no rides, is to open in London’s West End later this year. Visitors to Amora – The Academy of Sex and Relationships at the Trocadero in Piccadilly, will pass through seven zones including Pleasure and Orgasm.”
The Moral of the Story: Lose the Guillotine, Lose the Audience
Guardian: ” They sat in their seats and hooted and whistled and shouted and slow-clapped. It felt as though the audience was providing the ending that Sofia Coppola was too decorous to show, bringing down the guillotine on a rather silly, spoilt little film. Marie Antoinette is a poodle-brained period fancy. Part curtsy, part style spread, it tells the tale of a beautiful queen and the lovely parties she attends. If ever a movie deserved to be thrown to the mob, it is this one.” (via Romancing the Tome)
New Literary Pejoratives
The time has come for the literary world to move well beyond the terms “chick lit” and “lad lit” and add more literary pejoratives to the lexicon. After all, if we can’t find a way to take the piss out of every book turned out by the publishers, how can the literary world be counted upon to sustain its vitriol? Crouch-Peck altercations in restaurants simply aren’t cutting it these days. The book review sections continue to play it safe. The time has come to step up the enmity with a brand new set of ad hominen terminology!
What follows is a running list of terms with which to flood your blogs, your essays, your literary cocktail party banter and your term papers with. Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.
- Brit Lit: Any novel published by the Granta 20 authors. Should be used as a pejorative particularly when the author is very friendly (e.g., Sarah Waters and David Mitchell).
- Clit Lit: Any steamy but ultimately banal memoir relying upon explicit description of sexual conquests to boost sales. (Example: Toni Bentley’s The Surrender.)
- Corp Lit: A bland memoir ostensibly penned by a former CEO, but actually ghost-written by someone else, often masquerading as a self-help book or a source of empowerment. (See Jack Welch’s oeuvre.)
- Geezer Lit: Any novel that is published to placate a Very Important Author along the lines of Mailer, Updike or Roth. Ideally, the book features an affluent protagonist over 50 who is (a) going through a midlife crisis, (b) having an extramarital affair, or (c) living in a spacious New England home.
- Thick Lit: Novels that are ridiculously long and are announced by publishers as “a major literary event.” (See Paul Anderson’s Hunger’s Brides and Suzanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.) Also applies to more credible long-winded novelists along the lines of David Foster Wallace and William T. Vollmann.
- Trick Lit: Novels that frame or recontextualize their stories through a common tale or mythology because the novelist can’t come up with anything particularly original on his own. (See Gregory Maguire.)
- Wonk Lit: Any memoir or political volume published by a former politician. Often, wonk lit titles are desperate ploys to restore credibility and/or standing with a public who has rapidly forgotten of the ex-politician in question. (Examples: Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Gary Hart’s Restoration of the Republic.)
Vanity Press Equals Vanity Proposal?
Cameron Kelly has proposed to his girlfriend by self-publishing a book, 50 Reasons Why You Should Marry Me and 51 Reasons Why I Should Marry You. A sample PDF reveals some cornball reasons and some dud gags, all accompanied by photos. Take for example “Reason No. 26,” which features Mr. Kelly wearing a really bad wig and sunglasses, accompanied by the caption: “I cut my hair.” Indeed.
I’m positive that this means something to both Kelly and his fiancee. (She said yes.) For the record, I hope to self-publish a book by the end of the year entitled 329 Reasons Why 90% of Blogs and Vanity Press Titles Are About As Exciting As Your Relative’s Interminable Vacation Slideshow. (via Critical Mass)
The Twenty Worst Agents
The SFWA has posted the twenty worst agents in the business. Miss Snark corroborates. (via Lee Goldberg)
The Mikes Will Stay On When the Energy Runs Out
“The Book of Revelation” Film Adaptation
Maud Newton points to this site, which contains a trailer and information on the film adaptation of The Book of Revelation. Thankfully, the movie is being made in Australia, as opposed to Hollywood money, which will preclude the likely NC-17 rating it will be saddled with once it hits the States.
A War on Contemporary Bildungsromans?
The Chronicle of Higher Education offers an overview of “lad lit,” noting, “Virtually every writer of guy lit is an almost-thirtysomething graduate of an elite college or university.” This is indeed the case, but I have to ask whether this makes any of the novels presented here (Kyle Baker’s Love Monkey, Benjamin Kunkel’s Indecision, Sam Lipsyte’s Home Land) distinctly “lad lit.” Aren’t these actually Bildungsromans? Like its taxonomic cousin “chick lit,” many of these titles deal with common themes involving eking out an existence or forming an identity. With chick lit, we see women who are growing out of singledom, debating how to balance a career and snag a man. With lad lit, the novels feature thirtysomething slackers who refuse to grow up, often relying upon the crutch of pop culture to stave off the inevitable growth process.
And that’s the key distinction here among the lad lit and chick lit titles: an individual developing and trying to find a place in society. Kyle Smith’s Tom Farrell is 32 and remarks in the early pages that he is living a lifestyle no less different from the one that he occupied as a teenager, still eating his cereal out of a Star Wars bowl. We have Benjamin Kunkel’s Dwight Wilmerding (a surname perhaps not coincidentally connoting “Bildungsroman”) resorting to checking his e-mail rather than figuring out what to do with his life. Lipsyte’s Lewis Miner can’t even take care of himself, marveling at his sallow-colored teeth in the mirror and harassing various people from his high school. These are all men who live child-like existences and who have deferred the process of growing up for a later time. And the central question of these three novels is whether or not these protagonists will actually grow up. While the emphasis here is contemporary, how different is this really from the book-length formations of Tom Jones or Tristram Shandy?
Now some of these titles may be more popular than literary, nevertheless, they do deal with themes of formation. Ergo, thematically at least, I suspect we may have an interesting assault upon contemporary Bildungsromans.
It’s also important to note that Bildungsromans are not exclusively male and that the work of Jennifer Weiner and Curtis Sittenfeld is no less different. Take, for example, the parallels that one can draw with Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, a lengthy poem in which a young woman must overcome folkways and expectations in the Victorian period. There is this moment in which Aurora watches another couple in the Sixth Book:
A woman sauntered slow, in front,
Munching an apple,–she left off amazed
As if I had snatched it: that’s not she, at least.
A man walked arm-linked with a lady veiled,
Both heads dropped closer than the need of talk:
They started; he forgot her with his face
And she, herself,–and clung to him as if
My look were fatal.
How different is this really from a chick lit protagonist trash-talking a beautiful couple living a perceived ideal just beyond her reach? Or the prep school tyranny experienced by Sittenfeld’s Lee Fiora? Or Weiner’s Rose Feller plagued by her sister’s seemingly adept way of stringing along men while she remains alone? Interestingly, like Weiner’s work, the prose here relies on observations which reflect the protgaonist’s anxieties and hesitations.
Beyond the stigma against popular tales which feature happy endings (or perhaps it’s those decidedly unmasculine pink covers; thankfully, I live in San Francisco and this is not much of a problem while reading on the subway), I’m wondering if the pejorative labels often attached to chick lit and lad lit might represent a reluctance in our literary culture to contemplate the delayed impulse that many twentysomethings have in forming careers, in getting married, and in growing up.
The recent Times contemporary fiction list, with its paucity of authors under 40, has generated much discussion about who might be “the voice of our generation.” I think this question is moot. There are plenty of authors attempting to chronicle exactly what twentysomethings and thirtysomethings are going through these days. The problem is that their work suffers an instant crib death when received by the literary community. Jonathan Safran Foer is turned into a punching bag. Benjamin Kunkel is drowned in the hype. Curtis Sittenfeld declares war on any book even remotely resembling chick lit. While it is perfectly acceptable for Updike and Roth to turn out endless books about middle-aged men entering into adulterous affairs or having midlife crises, it is apparently unacceptable for younger writers to write about younger protagonists trying to figure out their lives. By this token, why aren’t Updike and Roth torn new ones for “geezer lit?”
Perhaps the time has come to stop attaching dismissive labels to these books and consider how contemporary authors are attempting to bring back issues of formation in a literary climate which declares sincerity a strumpet and novels involving younger people mere baubles.
Gray Lady Staff Distinctions
A.O. Scott is listed on the Times bio page as a grad-school dropout. Do you think the Times needs to hire new biography writers? You know, to sort of accentuate the positive?
(via Cinetrix)
Maybe It’s Wise to Maintain a Bachelor Desktop Model
Girlfriend 6.0 vs. Wife 1.0: “Wife 1.0 installs itself such that it is always launched at system initialization, where it can monitor all other system activity. He’s finding that some applications such as PokerNight 10.3, BeerBash 2.5, and PubNight 7.0 are no longer able to run in the system at all, crashing the system when selected (even though they always worked fine before). During installation, Wife 1.0 provides no option as to the installation of undesired Plug-Ins such as MotherInLaw 55.8 and BrotherInLaw Beta release. Also, system performance seems to diminish with each passing day.”
Newspaper Death Watch?
B to B Online: “With declining circulation, a relatively flat ad market and sluggish stock prices, some analysts say the writing is on the wall for newspaper companies. In an increasingly digital age, newspapers must decide what content is better suited for online than print. Marketers say the trend is accelerating. The ongoing shifts of print content to online ‘is the tip of the iceberg,’ said Stephen Carlson, associate media director at StarLink Worldwide, whose clients include the American Medical Association and Caterpillar Inc. He added that TV listings, entertainment listings, sports statistics and weather reports might be in line to be eliminated from newspapers.”
Could book review sections be next?
Or Maybe Roth Just Needed to Be Called to the Bench This Round
Nicholas Spice on Everyman: “Everyman has none of this propulsive linguistic exuberance [identified in previous books]. Its energy is of a quite different kind. It is a funerary portrait, a short account of a man’s life cast in the bias of a preoccupation with bodily decay. The story is told in retrospect, the mood is valedictory and morose. Most stories we read or listen to are told in the past tense, but we forget this and experience them as though they were happening now; wondering what happens next is what keeps our attention. In Everyman nothing happens next, not just because the protagonist is buried in the opening scene, but because what we learn of his life comes to us mainly through what he remembers.”