Month / September 2007

by Edward Champion

Six Years Later

It is just a day. Why don’t they understand this? Yes, it’s a Tuesday. The same third day of the week it was when it happened. But this doesn’t mean that it will happen again. And it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t live, goddammit. It doesn’t mean that we should deny our collective essence, our great possibilities, our joie de vivre, our healthy skepticism, our intolerance for bullshit. Six years, neighbors! How much longer do you need? Why do you silently cling to something that was terrible but that is sufficiently enough in the past? Why do you use this day to skirt human accomplishment? To do something kind, to do something amazing, to give someone a beneficial kick in the ass.

I’m new to this sullen ritual. I wasn’t here when it happened. Now, I suppose, I am a New Yorker. Or maybe not. Perhaps one becomes a New Yorker after a year’s residency. I haven’t yet received the glittery certificate in the mail. I don’t know. The only city that I ever sufficiently attached myself to was San Francisco. That was a hard town to leave. But what does place really mean in the end? I was in Hamburg, Germany when the planes hit the towers.

That young lady who knocked over a cup of coffee on our table twice in five minutes. Naturally clumsy? I don’t think so. She’s doing her damnedest to divagate her wiry body into her seat. Did she not apologize or acknowledge us this morning because today was The Day? I’ve found that New Yorkers thank me more than San Franciscans (perhaps because holding the doors open for strangers and the like might be something of an exotic etiquette around here). When even a minor solecism in etiquette goes down, there is often nobody more vocal than a New Yorker.

But not today. Silence. As if expecting the inevitable.

Today, in New York, we all subscribe to John Donne’s maxim, subsisting in frightened bubbles. New Yorkers are reluctant to talk. They are on guard. In case it happens again. In case the collective empathy that they keep inside must come out, because the city and those that live in it must heal, must persevere.

But I am not afraid. Because I know damn well that there aren’t any guarantees in life. Not afraid of the increased police presence in my neighborhood. Not afraid of any bastard, within or without, trying to strike us down. And I will stand defiantly against this fear, remaining as vigilant and as vocal as I can about my country’s countless indiscretions and remaining as happy as I can about life.

As to my fellow neighbors, well, I don’t know. Perhaps tomorrow the spirit of New York will return.

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • And it appears that the Tron followup is not dead. Joseph Kosinski is in “final negotiations” to develop and direct “the next chapter,” which will involve Flynn asking a group of nihilist hackers not to pee on his rug and a manual typewriter that reveals Flynn’s complicity in a Chuck E. Cheese venture called “Star Man’s” that never quite got off the ground.
  • You see, that’s the problem with trying to sum up the history of the American short story in a blog post. Invariably, you leave a lot of things out, while others fill in the details more succinctly.
  • USA Today runs the obligatory 9/11 fiction article. I don’t buy the claim that there are only 30 novels about 9/11. I’ve read far more “9/11 novels” in the past six years. Then again, I suppose it depends on what one explicitly styles a “9/11 novel.” Is not a novel some reflection of our times? And, as such, are not all novels dealing with contemporary issues “9/11 novels” to some degree?
  • So is Inspector Rebus finished? Or is he? Ian Rankin has announced his book for 2016: Inspector Rebus and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
  • Look, I don’t like Britney Spears any more than the next guy. But I must confess that I’m stunned by all the attacks on her figure. Is the media now in the habit of attacking any major female entertainment figure who does not fit the “Auschwitz diet” archetype? And why aren’t more people asking this question?
  • Lee Rourke on Tom McCarthy’s second novel.
  • Is it too unreasonable to ask for a temporary moratorium on how hard it is to get attention as a first novelist?
  • Pinky unearths a sizable chunk of Pittsburgh literary events in the next few months.
  • Prison chaplains are now removing religious books and materials from prison libraries. The idea here — known as the Standardized Chapel Library Project — was inspired from a 2004 report by the Department of Justice, in which it was suggested that religious books should be banned because prisons could then become a recruiting center for militant Islamic groups. I’m not a religious man, but I do honor the First Amendment. If the effort here is to curtail terrorism (which, incidentally, is not always Islamic), banning books of any sort doesn’t mean that you’re going to stop people, inside or outside, from being recruited, corrupted, or otherwise influenced into doing bad things. If anything, might not restricting books demonstrate to any potential terrorist just how inflexible the United States is on this subject?
  • Sure, Knopf turned down a number of authors. But one must likewise ask how many important fiction writers the NYTBR has ignored under Tanenhaus’s tenure.
  • It looks like a Harvey Milk biopic is happening. Directed by Gus Van Sant. Sean Penn as Milk, Matt Damon as Dan White. We’ll see.
  • The time has come to institute a Booker reading challenge: read 110 books in four months.
  • A sensible idea. There are far too many children’s books authored by celebrities.
  • 100 years after limericks swept across Britain.
by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

In Defense of One-Sentence Book Reviews

A book review should be composed of one sentence; ideally, only a handful of words.

That’s my response to all they hysteria now in the air concerning the death of the book review. These critics have nobody but themselves to blame for failing to get that most people would rather open up their book review sections and see “Great read!” or “Dude, cool!” or “Boooooooooooooooooring!” (In fact, I would recommend that newspaper web sites simply link to an audio clip of Homer Simpson saying “Boooooooooooooooooring!” and not even feature the sentence in print.) Lazybastard81, whose wonderful LiveJournal I Can Never Finish a Book, Motherfucker! I enjoy daily, makes the same point: “Why should I think? Why should I finish a book? I’ve got a new episode of Grey’s Anatomy on my TiVo!”

couchpotato.jpgDon’t think I’m undermining the book reviewers and critics who work long and hard to write 800 word reviews or even, if they are lucky, 1,200 word or 2,000 word reviews. I’m sure they mean well, just as Don Quixote meant well, even when they use ponderous sentences and put me to sleep. In fact, nearly all book review sections put me to sleep. Then again, I’ve been told by close friends that I’m a cultural narcoleptic.

Even though I’ve contributed only a handful of reviews (some of them, I’m afraid, longer than one sentence) for the PennySaver, I feel that I’m expert enough to demand a new revolution.

I’m a busy guy. I have a full-time career working for a deeply unpleasant man, and am well on the way to purging myself of the few joys I have left in life. I am miserable and underpaid because I spend sixty hours a week looking at corporate boilerplate. And I foresee an immediate future in which I might file for bankruptcy.

So give me one sentence reviews or give me death — preferably the latter.

Michael O’Dullard is a Level II Accountant who works without any hope of upward mobility. His reviews have appeared in the PennySaver and he is also a copywriter for many one-sentence coupons that can be found in the middle of the Sunday newspaper.