Happy seventh birthday, Ghost in the Machine.

Editor & Publisher: “After a typically contrarian column today (behind the Times’ paid wall) — in which he said that voters in last week’s election want ‘gridlock,’ not action, in the next Congress — Tierney suddenly announced: ‘Whatever they do the next two years, I won’t be here to kick them around. This is my last column on the Op-Ed page. I’ve enjoyed the past couple of years in Washington, but one election cycle is enough. I’m returning full time to the subject and the city closest to my heart: science and New York. I’ll be writing a column and a blog for the Science Times section.'”

Boy, between him and Jonah Goldberg, conservatives sure seem to be imploding these days. Wonder why that could be?

Eric Rosenfield feels the hate for NaNoWriMo, Max responds.

Reading Matters’ Kim Bofo serves up this preposterous post, about as absurd a stew as John Freeman’s tsk-tsking of bloggers back in June. Bofo’s apparent beef brisket is that litblogs should report whether or not a book under discussion has been received for free from a publisher. First off, Bofo assumes that, in every case where a litblogger receives an ARC or a finished copy, there is an automatic quid pro quo between publisher and litblogger. This is a preposterous contextomy, seeing as how any sane person is aware that it is impossible for any journalist, whether print or online, who receives fifteen to twenty books a week to review each and every one of them. The litblogger is under no duty to review anything, just as the publicist is under no duty to send free books.

Bofo further inveighs against “the industry’s deliberate manipulation of bloggers to promote books that might otherwise not receive the same level of attention from the mainstream media, and the apparent willingness of many book bloggers to be used in such a manner.”

I haven’t seen a conspiracy this nutty since Oliver Stone. This assumes that all litbloggers are incapable of free will and that they are all incapable of separating the wheat from the chaff. This assumes that they will lavish praise on anything they write about, like the dreaded Harriet Klausners or Nick Hornbys of the universe. It is a position that recalls the smug generalizations within Ortega y Gassett’s elitist tract, The Revolt of the Masses, where only a few select soldiers (which would presumably include that stalwart steed Bofo) are capable of ethics and the moronic masses cannot distinguish between shameful shilling and proper criticism. Well, I happen to think more highly of litbloggers and those who read litblogs than Ms. Bofo.

I didn’t receive the Simon & Schuster email that Bofo did, perhaps because the folks at Simon & Schuster know very well that I would have been adamantly against it. (And who pray tell were the blogs who, according to Bofo, “seemed to be banging on about this book?” In presenting her case, Bofo fails to cite a single example of a litblog transforming overnight into a marketing tool for Simon & Schuster. Further, is it not possible that some of the blogs who raved about Setterfield did so of their own independent accord? Perhaps they did not receive the email. Or must we impute, by Sofo’s paralogia, that all litbloggers are mere tools?)

Bofo, like Freeman, is a journalist as well as a blogger. (Or at least she is a “trained journalist.” A Google search doesn’t reveal a single print byline.) Journalistic ethics are a essential thing for anyone, blogger or book reviewer, to practice. And I should note, with strenuous emphasis, that it is egregious for anyone to accept money (or the promise of such) from a publisher to review a book. But in Bofo and Freeman’s cases, their collective anal retentiveness crosses over into the absurd, no different from the nutjobs who hole up in bunkers waiting for the apocalypse.

[UPDATE: More thoughts on the subject from Matthew Tiffany, Ron Hogan and Michael Orthofer. There’s also some fireworks in the MetaxuCafe thread. And Darby Dixon reveals the sordid truth.]

I’ve had Ken Kalfus’s A Disorder Peculiar to the Country at the top of my TBR pile for a week (alas, I’m chained to reading other tomes right now), but this highly entertaining interview threatens to wreak havoc with my reading regimen.

This morning, the New York Sun reports that Dalkey’s planned move to Rochester has dissolved. The story was also picked up by Publishers Weekly, who reports that Chad Post is uncertain whether it will seek an arrangement with another institution. The arrangement Dalkey has with Illinois State is up on December 31, which gives Dalkey a month and a half to find new digs (or possibly extend the situation with Illinois State). I’ve sent an email to Chad Post with a list of questions to see if I can get any specifics on what went down.

[UPDATE: Jennifer Howard sends along this article, which has some quotes from Chad and John O’Brien.]

It’s fantastic that former Sun-Times book editor Henry Kisor has taken up blogging. But in a transparent effort to attract my attention, to upstage the careful online presence that I’ve built up over the years, he’s named his blog “The Reluctant Blogger.”

You can fire a gun all you want, Harry, but I am O.G. I was THE FIRST litblogger named Reluctant.

Plus, I can fire a pistol standing up!

Alan Moore’s famous creation made an appearance in Washington. Hilarious results ensued. “We see things like this. We don’t know they’re not weapons.” (via MeFi)

In New York’s feisty literary dens, there are plenty of people who will go one step further than you. This is because they are essentially talentless and, rather criminally, aren’t working at a gas station somewhere. Unable to understand their lack of talent, they have decided to get angry instead. One can look no further than Keith “Sweat” Fury, head of the new journal, n+2. Not only does Fury hate anyone and everyone who loves literature, but he even hates himself.

Putting out a one-page literary broadsheet once every ten years (the first issue of n+2 has yet to appear, but Fury said that it would come once he had “come back from San Francisco with Dave Eggers’ skull sucking my cock on the jet ride home”), n+2 has become one of the most talked about literary magazines in recent memory, assuming, of course, that your memory extends to how you got that girl home with you last night from the bar whose name you can now not remember. (Along with Fury, Benjamin Cuntless, author of the bestselling I’m More Manly Than You, is a founding editor.)

We caught up with Fury when he was busy berating a barista who had failed to recognize his literary genius but who was, nevertheless, working a twelve-hour shift.

Return of the Reluctant: Did you really have to do that?

Keith Fury: Absolutely. The hate is everywhere until the world recognizes that Benjamin and I are the sexiest, most literary motherfuckers on the planet. We will not stop until we are walking out of the King Cole Bar ready to talk Musil, inflate our hubris and, if we feel like it, snort a few lines of coke off of Marisha Pessl’s chest.

Return of the Reluctant: But how is this really literary? You sound more like Joe Eszterhas circa 1985.

Keith Fury: What we do, Reluctant Boy, is indisputably literary, because we declare it so. For we are, after all, n+2, which is one more than those other interlopers named Keith and Benjamin. In fact, I’ll bet those pussies wouldn’t even last thirty seconds in an arm wrestling match with us. Can those motherfuckers offer epigrams in Russian? No. In fact, I’m so certain they’re a bunch of poseurs that I’m willing to stake my penis on it. If Ben Kunkel and Keith Gessen can outdo us in Russian epigrams, then I will gladly castrate myself. You need to be angry, Reluctant Boy. You also need to boast and always have the sense that you are right.

Return of the Reluctant: But I’m…uh…not angry and don’t feel the need to boast.

Keith Fury: This is not a civics lesson, you spineless son of a bitch. You litblogger! I am angry. I am angry at you. I will have your left arm for breakfast and your scrotum for a midnight snack. Don’t diss the Sweat. Don’t diss n+2.

Return of the Reluctant: When can we expect the first issue of n+2?

Keith Fury: Whenever we damn well feel like it. It’s the most intellectual cohesive issue we’ve ever done. You’ll read it when we’re ready. We may have it out in January. Or February. Or maybe May 2010. See, that’s the way it works here at n+2. I unzip my pants, you suck me off.

Return of the Reluctant: You’re a preposterous man.