• I would like to join my fellow bloggers in denouncing the provincial specifics of book review editors. This is, after all, a more pressing issue than the number of column inches available and the quality of coverage. I demand that all book review editors live in the same town, 365 days a year! No vacations! No retreats! Not even BEA! This is the only way that we can be absolutely sure of a book review editor’s integrity! To step foot outside of Chicago or Atlanta for even a week is to commit a journalistic disgrace that can never be forgiven. Of course, there are other things to denounce here. It’s almost as bad as being a Chicago blogger writing a blog post from Washington, DC. But we forgive bloggers because they are all based in Terre Haute.
• Paris Hilton’s prison diaries. (via Bookninja)
• Rub-a-dub-dub. Books in a tub.
• Jennifer Weiner on Cormac’s Oprah appearance.
• It’s a beautiful statue in the neighborhood. (via Jeff)
• A radio interview with Sherman Alexie.
• It appears that Patricia Cornwall is attempting to stop anyone from spreading rumors and accusations about her on the Internet.
• So go figure. Ian McEwan takes questions from readers and then proceeds to openly insult them: “Publishers seem to be very keyed up to embrace the Internet, but I don’t have much time for the kind of site where readers do all the reviewing. Reviewing takes expertise, wisdom and judgment. I am not much fond of the notion that anyone’s view is as good as anyone else’s.” Okay, Ian, we get that you’re an elitist. If that’s the case, why subject yourself to the rabble of Time readers? Ain’t that a big hypocritical? Or do you truly feel that such sad interlocutory specimens as “When you are writing a book, do you expect it to influence your readers in a certain way?” are somehow better because they came from a magazine reader (as opposed to someone from the Internet, who may very well have offered the “expertise, wisdom and judgment” you call for)?
• Annalee Newitz on the problems with Wikipedia: “Besides, who is to say what is ‘notable’ or not? Lutheran ministers? Bisexual Marxists? Hopefully, both. For me, the Utopianism of Wikipedia comes from its status as a truly Democratic people’s encyclopedia—nothing is too minor to be in it. Everything should noteworthy, as long as it is true and primary sources are listed. If we take this position, we avoid the pitfalls of 19th-century chroniclers, who kept little information about women and people of color in archives because of course those groups were hardly ‘notable.’ Yet now historians and curious people bang their heads against walls because so much history was lost via those ‘deletions.'”
• Apparently, it’s big news to Marc Ramirez that African-Americans are interested in culture. Wow, who knew?
• What goes into a great translation? (via Orthofer)

My review of Richard Bachman’s Blaze appears in today’s Los Angeles Times.

Thank you, Gillian Reagan, for revealing the horrible truth! Writing is tough work. There is more pain angst per square inch in Brooklyn than in any other place in the world. This is not because writers suffer any more than anyone else. It is because writers, by and large, have tremendous chips on their shoulders and bitch about inconsequential things more than anybody else.

I, Edward Champion, am a writer. And I am here to tell you how miserable my life is. I have not secured a deal with any publishing house as of yet, but I have been writing the Great American Novel for 67 years now. Never mind that I am younger than that number. That’s the number I’m sticking with. It’s the number that a man in the streets told me to stick with when I gave him a ten dollar bill. I’ll let all the grad students sort it out when my novel is, at long last, unveiled to the public.

As it so happens, I was one of the original writers to be featured in the article. Gillian Reagan and I talked for twenty minutes, in person with her photographer. I told her that I would pose, looking as if I had just got out of bed and holding a mug of coffee with a hand vacillating between manly and dainty, my right eye slightly more closed than my left eye (I offered to get in a bar brawl for the sake of photographic journalism), with handwritten pages of my novel on the table. The novel is now in its 132nd draft. All of this could be done at a Hungarian bakery. Gillian, with her trusted photographic colleague Elena Seibert, took one look at my pate and told me that she needed a writer who had floppy black hair. I had no hair. I had decided to shave it all for BEA: my failed attempt to be a bald ass-kicking motherfucker. Gillian then offered me a lollipop, which I accepted, and then kicked me without warning in the crotch. She said to me, “Who loves ya, baby? Nobody!” I pleaded with Gillian to get a quote in her piece. I groveled. I offered free-form cunnilingus. At the very least she could get an “Ouch!” with me in a minor paragraph for this remarkably long piece. But it was not to be. Nathan Englander had more hair than I did. And he always looked as if he had just arisen from bed. Plus, he was better at free-form cunnilingus.

I made a last minute plea, pointing out that I could wear a wig.

“We need natural hair. Nathan Englander hair,” said Elena, who threatened to kick me in the crotch again. Because, you know, Gillian normally did that sort of thing and she wanted to see how it felt.

But I was rebuffed by the Observer crew. So I am reduced to confessing the horrible life I lead on these pages.

To wit:

I’ve been working on the aforementioned novel for over 67 years.

I have never won $5.4 million, but I could live in a trailer at any time for the remainder of my life.

I just barely paid my Am-Ex bill, but I have never sex blogged. Perhaps I should try this and write a novel so that I will have some reason to give Am-Ex if I cannot pay my bill.

My diet consists of water and occasional saltine crackers. I do this because I will be emotionally crippled if I have to eat one square meal over the course of a week or if I Super Size anything.

I wake up feeling pain. I go to bed feeling pain. Every time I laugh or feel happy, I feel pain. Pain is necessary to writing in the same way that a seat is unnecessary on a bicycle. You can, indeed you must, sit where the seat should be and feel blunt metal tubing up your posterior. This is what writing is all about. Laziness. Ennui. Remorse. Stupidity.

I have lost track of all my friends. I can’t remember any of their first names anymore. I call each and every one of them “Bob,” including the sexy women. They still give me dirty looks.

I look down and see that I am wearing three shoes. How did this happen? I just woke up. I haven’t left the apartment in years. How did I get two shoes on my left foot? Did someone put these on when I was asleep?

And then there’s the self-loathing. I hate myself more than anyone — even John Freeman — hates me. So there.

I plan to barricade myself in a Lower East Side apartment with Rachel Sklar so that we will both finish our novels. Perhaps she will ask me to perform free-form cunnilingus. There, we will guzzle Diet Coke together and immerse ourselves in Jewry.

If you have at least one job, you should probably have two more.

I didn’t realize that I had money for ham sandwiches and Oreos. Perhaps ham sandwiches and Oreos will make me happier than paying the rent.

I’m going to cry. And then I’m going to cry again.

Thank you, Gillian Reagan. My crotch is sore from your swift and unnecessary kicks. But I will still pose and put on a wig, if you need me to. Perhaps it will make me less morose. Perhaps I will finish my novel and then feel morose again as I write another one.