Month / August 2006

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • Arab Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz has died. He was 94. Laila promises to have more.
  • Levi Asher serves up five comic books you may not have heard about. Unless, of course, you have heard about them — in which case, I’m sure Levi would like you to hear about them again. The hope here is that somewhere along the line, a person who least expects it hears you hearing about them. Unless, of course, you have no ears — in which case, I’ll provide the cornball humor.
  • Jan Underwood wrote a novel in 72 hours, among many other participants in the International 3-Day Novel Contest, which makes NaNoWriMo look like a leisurely walk on the beach. Of course, if someone gets me hooked on Benzedrine, locks me in an attic and throws away the key, I guarantee that I’ll write an incoherent mess with lots of gratuitous sex scenes with a talking gopher named Orville in two days and call it a novel too.
  • Frank Kermode wants the study of English literature to be tough again. And by tough, I think you know what Kermode means. Starving grad students simply aren’t enough. Kermode has proposed throwing them into a arena with the “Gamesters of Triskelion” music playing while they cite obscure bits of poetry. If they get one line of Milton wrong, then we cut off their finger. If they get two lines of Milton wrong, then we cut off their sibling’s finger. And if they cling to “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” (such an obvious choice!), then we throw them into the incinerator. Kermode’s views may not be particularly popular with the academic crowd right now, but he insists that there is no better way to form young minds. And if a few grad students have to die, it’s the sad cost of proper education.
  • Helen Brown observes that many authors have a tendency to return to the same characters and reveals that Michel Faber is returning to Crimson Petal territory with a slim volume called The Apple. (via the Literary Saloon)
  • Dave Munger asks “Who uses the phone book anymore?” I have to agree. Everybody knows the escort services are listed in the back pages of an alt-weekly.
by Edward Champion

Milwaukee — A Drunken Port In a Storm

Milwaukee has been named “America’s Drunken City” — by no less an eminence than Forbes. San Francisco isn’t on the list. Neither is Los Angeles nor New York. Which suggests that, outside of Boston, Providencem and Pitt, the antipodean ends of the nation simply don’t have what it takes to get soused. Or the Forbes money men (or the employees of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) were too busy with their mergers and acquisitions to hit the pubs.

The announcement caused the Milwaukee Visitors and Convention Bureau to issue the following statement: “We’ve gone from Brew City to new city.” Well, that may be happening, but until they take the “Mil” out of Milwaukee, I’m unconvinced.

(via Dave White)