Publishers Weekly reports that Al Roker, about as literary a man as Keanu Reeves, revealed the Quills nominees on NBC’s Weekend Today show. Aside from the troubling notion that nobody in the Today office has bothered to read any of these titles (least of all Roker), I’m wondering just what point this particular awards ceremony serves. The winners are “feted at a gala event on October 10.” But with voting open to anyone, this is nothing less than the People’s Choice Awards of literature — a waste of everybody’s time, a way to give Joan Didion yet another award, and a method to ensure that books are business as usual. You may as well throw Doctorow and Mitchell into an open pit and have them punch each other for the title.
Month / August 2006
Roundup — The Truth Version
- Harry Crews gets the Gray Lady treatment, motherfuckahs! The man is back in action after an eight year absence with An American Family. I am now convinced that the only way to save the NYTBR is to put Crews in a room with Sammy Boy with the latter skittering away like a soused titmouse. (via Maud)
- GOB checks out Edinburgh. So does that Rory fellow. All the excitement gets me in a theatrical tizzy, determined at some future point to provide another strange homegrown Fringe entertainment.
- Foer in Brazil. Hardly the meat and greet you expected.
- From a Susan Sontag commencement speech: “Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.”
- And speaking of which, let’s get all this Bill Hicks revival bidness out of the way right now. Without a doubt, the man was great. But he’s been dead now for twelve years and I haven’t seen a single standup comic dare to speak the truth to the people. This whole sanctimonious business of “What would Bill Hicks do?” has reached a point where I want to throttle the sycophantic joke slingers who play it safe, who underestimate their audience’s intelligence, and who risk this fear of offending. If these comics do put upon an offensive stance, like Lisa Lampanelli or Bobby Slayton, it’s on the personal insult level, as opposed to comedy that reflects the cruel absurdities and the pernicious sociological factors around us. And don’t give me Margaret Cho or Chris Rock, both “brash” comic talents who, nevertheless, play it safe and who, as a result, stand forever in the long shadow of Bruce, early Carlin, Pryor and Hicks. Have we really reached the point where standup comedy can no longer present us with fresh insight? Have we really reached a point where we must look more than a decade backwards to find some fucking shred of truth hurled into the crowd?
- RIP Madman Moskowitz.
- The Epoch Times talks with Gao Zhisheng days before his arrest. More on Gao’s efforts to fight oppression here.
- Elizabeth Gaskell’s Manchester home is crumbling away and efforts are being made to save it.
- There’s an interesting marketing campaign for Orwell’s 1984 referred to as “literary littering.”
Iain Banks: Posterboy Slacker?
Iain Banks missed a deadline and it was all because of Sid Meier: “It’s all because I became a serial addict of the computer game ‘Civilisation’ [sic]. I played it for three months and then realised I hadn’t done any work. In the end, I had to delete all the saved files and smash the CD. It is very unprofessional of me. I had to ask for an extension for the first time, which made me feel just like I was a student again.”
Hopefully, someone who cares will keep Will Wright’s games out of his hands. I had to smash my Sims CDs about three years ago to get things done.
Forgotten
James Sallis offers some love for unknown writers, including the great Robert Sheckley (“Sheckley was our Voltaire”), Horace McCoy, and Edgar Pangborn.
This Week in Alarmist Cultural Revisioning
BBC: “Children’s TV channel Boomerang are to edit scenes from Tom and Jerry cartoons where characters are shown smoking. The move follows an investigation by media watchdog Ofcom into a viewer’s complaint that the vintage animations were not appropriate for young viewers.”