Month / July 2007

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • I must concur with Brian Raftery. It is absolutely criminal that The Bees’ fantastic third album, Octopus, which may very well be one of the best albums of the year, has received as much attention in the States as an obnoxious experimental film from an obscure Danish filmmaker playing on a mere three screens. The Bees have shifted away from Free the Bees‘s highly energetic homage to 1960s soul, slipping one decade further into 1970s summer radio to find a striking maturity that combines a more nuanced quirkiness, emotional sincerity, and the dependable enthusiasm of veteran music lovers who know when to steal hooks and when to improve upon them. From the bluesy opener “Who Cares What the Question Is?” to the tight ballad “Listening Man,” the drumming (alternating between Michael Clevett and singer Paul Butler; like a dependable garage band unafraid to tailor its sound, the band members swap instrumental roles quite a bit on the album) is reminiscent of Mitch Mitchell — never using more fills than it needs to and keeping things basic. Paul Butler has shifted away from crooning like Jim Morrison and John Lennon, to fall into the custom of Englishmen shamelessly impersonating R&B singers. If the radio stations were less in the pockets of corpulent music companies and if they actually gave two damns about music, then I truly believe that this would be the summer album to be heard at kickback siestas. Don’t believe me? Well, check out these tunes. Alas, the band only appears to have made a dent on its native soil. Which also means no U.S. tour dates. The Bees deserve better treatment.
  • Howard Junker: “The worst thing a writer can do is to launch an internal editor during the writing process. Nothing could be more stifling.” Oh, I don’t know about that. Without discounting the need for an editor, I should point out to Mr. Junker that T.C. Boyle is a prolific novelist of some considerable talent and Boyle writes all of his novels in a “continuous first draft,” constantly tinkering to get the words right. I don’t believe there’s any uniform manner to writing a novel, except to get to the end of the damn thing. What matters most is not how one gets there, but what the finished product entails. [UPDATE: Here’s the video for “Listening Man.” Alternate link to The Bees videos: here.]
  • I’m convinced that the Boston Herald could have come up with a less obvious headline for this story. (via Jeff)
  • Dubious, straw-grasping lede of the week: “When Bob Dylan sang, ‘To live outside the law you must be honest,’ he probably wasn’t thinking of seventeenth-century pirate captains.”
  • Hack interviewer meets hack novelist.
  • CAAF + About Last Night! Tangerine Teachout?
  • Peter Craven offers a more interesting angle to the “novel is dead” argument than others. He believes that the only way to save literature is to film it. While I am more optimistic than Mr. Craven about literature’s ability to persevere, there is some validity to his argument. The idea here doesn’t involve looking the other way like a coward and flailing one’s hands up in the air without any clear-cut solutions upon hearing people talking about The Sopranos. Why not have more anthology series on television that use short stories or novellas as their source material? In fact, this was precisely the case for the anthology series from the 1950s Consider some of the writers who got their material adapted on Playhouse 90: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Horton Foote, John P. Marquand, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway. Or consider this list of writers from Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stanley Ellin, Roald Dahl, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Cornell Woolrich, A.A. Milne (!), and John Cheever. (Alas, I must bemoan the disproportionate lack of women here, but the point stands.) Even as television was getting its start, the producers knew that quality material could be found by employing literary people and the television writing gigs enabled these writers to continue their craft in the printed word. Whether any of this had any direct correlation to these writers’ print sales is difficult to say. But when I see a David Chase or a David Simon trying to bring a more literary approach to television, I see possibilities for convergence and a support system for writers. I see someone trying to up the game of narrative in all mediums. And it’s all considerably more constructive than the kind of “novel is dead” bullshit I’d expect from some guy with a THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH placard strapped to his corpus, ringing a bell at Times Square. (via Orthofer)
  • James Wood on Falling Man.
  • Happy birthday, Mr. VanderMeer!
  • So here’s the big question. In the wake of the D.C. Madam phone list, will Steely Dan pen a new song called “Rikki Do Lose That Number?”
  • Peter Davison as King Arthur in Spamalot! Brilliant casting!
by Edward Champion

Tao Lin’s Intern Army is Out of Control!

I am unsure why a correspondent (who I shall not name in the interests of retaining her privacy) has deemed me responsible for what Tao Lin’s Intern Army (recently trademarked) does in promoting Tao’s books. I am neither employed by Melville House, nor do I represent Tao Lin in any capacity. But at the risk of participating in a potentially fabricated and guileful publicity masterstroke from Tao’s Intern Army, a correspondent (does she work for the New York City Transit Authority?) has written to me to complain about a sticker currently affixed to the top surface of a turnstile at the 14th Street — Union Square station. She has even helpfully sent me a copy of Section 1050.5 of the Rules governing public safety, demonstrating quite clearly that the mysterious individual who had the temerity to place the sticker on the turnstile (nay, THE HUBRIS AND THE EFFRONTERY to sully the Great City of New York in such an insolent manner!) has clearly broken the law.

Well, this may indeed be the case. But surely such a sticker-specific blasphemy is not exactly going to, as this correspondent puts it, “alienate book customers and readers in the city.”

Then again, I’m new here. So for all I know, all New York book customers and readers are highly sensitive to incongruous stickers, particularly those illegally placed on a subway seat or a newspaper kiosk. Perhaps, such a sight causes the book customer to see sudden flashes of light, hear the voice of Elijah Wood instructing them to exact justice, and thereby enter the clean and noble McNally Robinson with a semiautomatic to retaliate for a CLEAR WRONG against the City of New York.

You tell me.

The onus, of course, falls upon the Tao Lin Intern Army. I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen Fritz Lang’s M more times than I should. And if such unwarranted blasphemies continue, I will gather together a vigilante mob, hunt Tao Lin down, and interrogate Tao Lin in German, uploading the resultant black-and-white video onto YouTube, whereby the Great Democracy of New York can make their final judgment.

[UPDATE: It appears that this correspondent also left a comment on Tao’s blog.]

by Edward Champion

And Besides, Can You Really Trust a Grump Who Believes that Kate Atkinson Isn’t Very Good?

Alex Good: “But overall I have a hard time believing that the internet constitutes any kind of an alternative to mainstream book reviewing. Indeed they may be even more corrupt, compromised, and commercialized, more of a personality-driven ‘performance art,’ more of a hysterical scream for attention, than what we see in print.”

Actually, if you want to discuss what constitutes “a hysterical scream for attention,” Good’s inept essay is about as hysterical — for both author and reader alike — as foolish screams come. I particularly like Good’s faux footnotes, which suggest some explicit examples to prove his flaccid argument, only to offer more hysteria — and sometimes fabricated hysteria taken out of context — from other sources!