Month / September 2007

by Edward Champion

Blogging is Hardly Stalingrad, But the Point is Taken

Jessica Coen: “Eventually, the constant criticism (coming at me and from me), combined with the isolation of working alone from home, began to take its toll. I’ve never been a particularly chipper girl, but my psyche darkened considerably, and the change was obvious. My language got harsher; my tone, less playful. I felt permanently on the defensive and, as a result, fell into a bizarre combat mentality. My headquarters: my tiny apartment, from which I would emerge only to secure provisions from my neighborhood deli.”

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • A new Bookforum is out, and there’s some considerable thought to feast on: David Ulin on Kerouac, Jenny D on Proust and brain science, James Gibbons on Denis Johnson, too much to list. Really, you can get lost here.
  • Alex Ross on Pavarotti. Speaking for my uncouth self, the Three Tenors certainly did considerable damage towards any developing appreciation I might have of opera. Several kind and intelligent people — and certainly James Cain’s great interest in the subject didn’t hurt — have attempted to get me hooked on opera over the years, and I have tried to remain open-minded about this antipathy. I have responded ecstatically to Bizet’s Carmen (which I have never tired of listening, a performance of which I was once greatly delighted by in San Francisco), Rossini (which I used in many of the films I made as a student), and Mozart’s more playful operas (I’m more of a Magic Flute kind of guy than a Marriage of Figaro kind of guy). So on some of the basics, I’m doing quite all right. Opera has, as Ross very keenly observes in considering the Three Tenors’ reception, always worked for me in the form of theater, and I responded rather poorly to the “big man hitting high notes with a smile.” Understand that I have no problem dealing with more abstract and recital approaches to art. But the kind of ego often celebrated in lieu of the human spirit has caused opera to often rub me the wrong way. So I openly confess that I am a cultural thug on this point. While Pavarotti was certainly a great singer in his early years, I didn’t particularly care for the way his grandstanding got in the way of his talent. (And apparently Bryan Appleyard is on the lookout for an interview he conducted with Pavarotti. Let us hope he finds it.) (via James Tata)
  • James Rother: “The problem with most asseverations seeking to sever poetry from prose is that they are so finely granulated that they preclude the posing of certain basic ontogenetic questions without whose input the problem of just what (rather than where) poetry proceeds from, or how its operating system accommodates itself to the passing phenomenological scene as something parsable rather than a mere eidolon which meaning courts with little but flirtation on its mind dissolves into a plethora of survey-course evasions.” Indeed. Does anybody know what the fuck he’s talking about? I ask in all seriousness. I may be a long-winded bastard sometimes, but this takes the cake. (via Sharp Sand)
  • The Man Booker shortlist has been announced.
  • Is Gwen Stacy a whore?
  • If you want to write like Carl Hiaasen, the trick is to move to Florida.
  • Junot Diaz seems to think that he sucks at dialogue.
  • If you’re tracking magazines about to die, some guy named The Reaper seems to think that Tango, Hollywood Life, Radar, TV Guide, Sound & Vision, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance and Portfolio are close to the death knell.
  • Jeff VanderMeer on LongPen: “Upon reflection, this Frankenstein invention from Margaret Atwood strikes me as a kind of lunacy, the deranged dream of a person who just doesn’t have the fortitude for the litanies of the book tour: long, cramped plane flights, endless hotels, too much crap food, not enough sleep. It sounds, in fact, like a Bad SF idea, the kind of gimmick that might satisfy the techno-geek in some but that would hardly nourish more tactile readers. After all, if people just wanted the signature, they wouldn’t need the author’s presence at all, just the signed copy. Or they could write in for a personalized signature.”
  • By the way, sorry for the intermittent server over the past few days. I’ve talked with my hosting provider. It was fixed. And now it’s acting up again. So hopefully this will be cleared up soon.
by Edward Champion

Walter Kirn Mourns

Meghan,

Because it’s hard for me to summon any more “critical distance” towards The Guinness Book of World Records, now celebrating its fifty-third anniversary, than I can toward the beard of bees I wish were stinging my angular face or the smell of my skin burning that I missed out on because I was too chicken to enter a tattoo parlor so that I might rival the world’s most tattooed man, Lucky Diamond Rich, I can’t imagine what it must have been like to read the book for the first time as a desperate, alert grown-up who now understands that he will never be as tall as Robert Wadlow and who understands, after holing up with many reference books over the years, that this is the only one that matters. I suppose there’s still some hope, should I live long and should some kind Chippendale’s owner employ me in my autumn years, to beat out 66-year-old Bernie Barker as the world’s oldest male stripper.

What I’m saying, I guess, is that I’ll never be as corpulent as those twin motorcyclists. All I can do is describe how Guinness affects me neurologically, intellectually, spiritually, sexually, violently, adverbially — every year a new edition comes out. By this, I don’t mean each time I reread it, for there are often new records to study and new humilities to endure. As I’ve said, I’ll never make Guinness. I know my limitations. The Guinness people are ambitious enough to make me feel far from special. Remember the time I told you about my efforts to stuff my mouth with more kazoos than anybody else? I sent in my dutiful application, but Guinness sent me a rejection letter that I now have framed on my wall. They said, “Kazoos are out. They aren’t that special. Physical dismemberment is in.” Long have I stared at the three-paragraph letter behind the glass. Long have I cried. Long have I laughed. Long have I talked about this letter with my therapist.

Where others can content themselves with having the most powerful lungs or the most fingers and toes out of all living people, I, Walter Kirn, have no physical embodiments or talents that will cut the Guinness mustard. All I can do is drink Guinness. And even then, there’s simply no connection between Guinness the records organization and Guinness the stout maker.

First, I mourn.

I mourn for the whole doomed enterprise and for the ideas, which never seem to date and always seem to sell. I’m convinced Guinness will carry on with its world records volumes through the end of my physical life, and I will mourn again, and I will try to convince someone to inscribe WALTER KIRN: MOST KAZOOS IN MOUTH on my tombstone. Perhaps I can sidestep the Guinness denial by filming myself with kazoos and uploading it to YouTube. That’s the way to make it these days, isn’t it?

I mourn the idea that there isn’t even a United States-only version of Guinness where I might be able to squeeze myself in. Where the Guinness people won’t send me a letter and they will realize that there is some merits in kazoo mouth-stuffing.

I mourn that this matters to me more than Kerouac.

Forgive me, Meghan. It’s been a difficult year and a long time since I put a kazoo in my mouth.

Maybe we might be able to get a Slate Book Club email volley out of this. Some extra cash for me to buy more kazoos. What do you think?

Yours,

Walter Kirn