Month / September 2007

by Edward Champion

Take Care with the Noun Phrases You Type Into the Ether

Siva Vaidhyanathan: “Google’s not required to ensure that the search engine that would guide people to these books actually delivers good results. Google is not required to make sure that the scanning process actually gets every page of every book and makes it all clear. There are no requirements that Google use metadata effectively or the metadata certainly already attached to books. There’s no guarantee that Google will offer people the best possible results for their queries. And most importantly, Google does not do anything to protect user confidentiality and in the world of book searching this is a really important factor. It is an essential part of librarianship. It is an essential part of the ethics and policies of libraries. Users should not feel that their use of any sort of research material might someday come to light and be misinterpreted as some sort of nefarious activity. We should feel comfortable in our information seeking habits. And I’m afraid that Google corralling so many of our information seeking habits puts us all at risk.” (via Ron Silliman)

by Edward Champion

To Italicize Comic Strips Or Not to Italicize Comic Strips

Good Man Park asks, “Does one italicize comic strip names?”

I say, yes! A comic strip is a set of works over the course of many years, is it not? Therefore, if one is permitted to emphasize a television series, one should likewise be permitted to do the same with a comic strip or a comic book. Ergo, you would refer to the September 12, 2007 installment of For Better or For Worse, and not the September 12, 2007 installment of “For Better or Worse,” which is a bit like referring to the episode “Mirror, Mirror” of “Star Trek” (redundant, yes?) or “The Flying Machine” in Ray Bradbury’s “S is for Space” (likewise, odd to the eye!).

Nevertheless, I really had no idea that this was such a controversial issue. Or perhaps Mr. Park, as is sometimes his wont, is getting me unduly excited about something pedantic. I’d like to know if there have been any vociferous arguments with the copy desk on this subject. If there are any stylistic gurus who have ample justification for ghettoizing a comic strip to quotes and denying a strip’s rightful place into a grammatical terrain that, for crying out loud, is used in relation to Jackass and WWE’s SummerSlam, I’d be curious to hear from them.

(And, no, this assault on exclamation points will not do! It will not do at all!)

by Edward Champion

France Finally Learns That You Can Find Many Literary People Asking You to Super-Size Your Royale with Cheese Meal

The Times: “France’s cultural heritage is in peril because students are shunning literature in favour of more practical courses that they believe will help them to secure well-paid jobs, the Education Minister said….’We need literary people, pupils who can master speech and reason,’ he said. ‘They are always in demand.'”

by Edward Champion

Is This VHS vs. Betamax All Over Again?

The Independent: “Online bookseller Amazon has plans to unveil a wireless electronic book reader, a kind of literary iPod, which already has UK publishers scrambling to digitise their entire range of titles. The device, which sources claim could be launched as early as next month, would follow the recent US launch of the Sony eBook Reader, a machine the size of a hardback that stores digital copies of up to 80 books and lasts 7,500 pages on a single charge.”

So when’s JVC going to jump into the fray?

by Edward Champion

An Author’s Hubris Can Be Yours for the Low, Low Price of $1 Million!

Hari Kunzru: “Literary critics will never grow up. Luckily for me, these days, people seem to be more interested in talking about my work than about money.”

Gee, that’s odd. Adam Mars-Jones, Daniel Mendelsohn, David Kipen — to name just three critics — didn’t mention the advance at all in their reviews, although all expressed some quibbles about The Impressionist. Nithya Khrishnaswamy promised not to talk about the advance and only about the work. Could it be that the work in question isn’t nearly as spectacular as Kunzru believes it to be? Maybe it’s the author here suffering from a Peter Pan complex.

by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

An Open Note to Tipsters

I didn’t get this nonsense in my email (although this doesn’t necessarily mean that I didn’t get it, if you know what I mean). Out of general principle, I refuse to publicize this piece of news. I am not your puppet. I am not your tool. I am not your dancing little monkey. What Orthofer said.

If you send me a tip, I’ll be damned if I’m going to subscribe to your unilateral way of conducting journalism. (Can I keep confidential information? You bet. But that isn’t necessarily going to stop me from confirming something with another source.) I’ll report (or not) in the manner that I find appropriate. And if that means taking two hours or two months or two years to investigate or think about something (what, you didn’t actually think that I had stopped investigating subjects broached on these pages from years ago, did you?), so be it. If this isn’t the way that the New York Times does business, then it certainly isn’t the way that I conduct business.

This is what I suggest: a united stand. If you received the information, don’t report it. Let them know that bullshit embargoes are not the way to build a positive and lasting relationship.

by Edward Champion

Comic Book Icons to Appear on “The Simpsons”

I’ve just learned from Eric Reynolds that Daniel Clowes, Art Spiegelman, and Alan Moore will appear on the October 7 episode of The Simpsons. Sayeth Reynolds:

The plot concerns Comic Book Guy, who gets some competition in Springfield from a new store, “Coolsville Comics & Toys,” run by “hipster” Milo, voiced by Jack Black.

No word yet on whether either of these folks will appear with a bag on his head.

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.

by Edward Champion

BSS #138: Rupert Thomson II, Part Two

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[This is the second of a two-part conversation.]

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Sketchily repentant about past prevarications.

Author: Rupert Thomson

Subjects Discussed: Transitory bridges, noir symbols, being called “David Lynch in print,” bland roadside motels, on Death being labeled as a “crime thriller,” writing novels with seemingly preposterous premises, James Hyne’s description of “the tension between distancing and empathy,” reading 47 novels for a prize, Martin Amis’s fiction vs. nonfiction, writing without judgment, car accidents, visceral motivation, Thomson’s nightmares, morphing from an intuitive animal, relying upon The Five Gates of Hell for a forthcoming memoir, manifestations of imagination, Death of a Murderer‘s theatrical qualities, first-person vs. third-person, the richer prose and poetry of The Book of Revelation, individuals vs. social constructs, the convalescence theme within Thomson’s work, subconscious motifs throughout Thomson’s work, the Orwell Estuary, on unexpectedly slipping in future book titles into books, Richard Yates’s book titles, Billy’s parents and family structure, prostitutes in the gray area, moral redemption, and Thomson’s favorite sentence in The Book of Revelation.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: This was reviewed in the New York Times by mystery columnist Marilyn Stasio.

Thomson: Yeah. Famous one, is she? I mean, apparently. Yeah.

Correspondent: I have my issues with her, but nonetheless. But when she actually — when they decided to review this book — yours — the first part of the sentence was “Although not in any conventional way a genre novel…”

Thomson: I.e., shouldn’t be in this column at all. (laughs)

Correspondent: Exactly. So the question is: Is there a certain danger, I guess, in dwelling upon a subject like Myra Hindley, because people are going to go ahead and label it? “Oh, well, this must be a true crime!”

Thomson: I just hadn’t imagined they were going to do that. I really hadn’t. And sometimes in the past, I could understand why. They’ve tried it all the way along with me at certain points. I mean, with The Insult, for instance, they tried to sell that as a thriller in the UK. Anyone who wants a thriller is going to be kind of disappointed by The Insult, because it doesn’t deliver in the kind of obvious ways that thriller writers do. In fact, right from page one of that book, you’re going off in a completely different direction to the one you’d normally go in the thriller. And the thriller — having a guy shot in a car park, practically in line one of the novel — normally, you’d then find out what that crime was about, you know. And of course, this goes completely the other way. And equally, with Soft, that was put in crime sections sometimes. I mean, I didn’t really understand. It’s like if you put Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang in the crime section. Because that’s got crime in it. I mean, Ned Kelly was a criminal. So there’s no more reason for a book about Myra Hindley to be put in the crime section than there is for one about Ned Kelly.

by Edward Champion

BSS #137: Rupert Thomson II, Part One

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[This is the first of a two-part interview.]

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Trying to be careful about British accents.

Author: Rupert Thomson

Subjects Discussed: Billy Tyler as one of “society’s dustmen,” Mira Hindley, bridges and Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” readers reading Thomson’s novels too fast, flashbacks, pitch-perfect similes, a momentary interlude for lunch, movie sound effects, getting used to being on the page, active behavior, metal bins, Thomson as a “morally outstanding” individual, filming in mortuaries, chance providing what a novelist needs, Percival and Arthurian namesakes, Old World patriarchal figures, the fixed quality of character names, protection from critical assessments, hopping around in genre, Billy Tyler’s homoerotic issues, gender, The Beatles’s “And Your Bird Can Sing,” Faulkner, Django Reinhardt’s large hands, characters who are extreme versions of the everyday, the possible ambiguity contained within Thomson’s endings, stones and millstones, snooker, being a police officer, truncated names and ellipses, MacGuffins, whether it is pigeons or chickens that come home to roost, and bland hotels.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Thomson: As a novelist, you know there are — I wonder how many, I sometimes wonder how many decisions there are that you make in writing a novel. I mean, I guess it probably goes into the millions. But then I think about all the decisions you don’t make, where you simply trust what your intuition has given you, because, in the case of Newman — for instance, you just mentioned Peter Newman — I didn’t think twice about that name. Newman’s a fairly ordinary name. And I wanted just an ordinary, fairly solid — and, in fact, Susie, I chose that name because Susie, because Billy Tyler marries a girl called Susie Newman, and I sort of wanted to her have a sexy-sounding name. A name that tripped off the tongue. And then I liked the fact that she had become Sue Tyler. You know, she had become dull. As a result of having married.

by Edward Champion

BSS #136: Antoine Wilson

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Finding creative ways of using Photoshop.

Author: Antoine Wilson

Subjects Discussed: Tonal beacons within The Interloper, Martin Amis, stifling the Nabokovian influence, frisbees and sex, conformist thinking, allusions to Sisyphus, technical writing, emotional candor, psychological experiments, generic establishments, reflection vs. invention, thong underwear, Roman mythology and Southern California, the relationship between Don Quixote and Knight Rider, technological being, Photoshop, Owen and Luke Wilson, prioritizing events, writing fictitious letters vs. writing narrative, how The Interloper made the rounds and ended up at The Other Press, and paperback originals and satirical novels.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Wilson: Maybe some of the more classical allusions came from the fact that I was reading Don Quixote while I was writing the book.

Correspondent: Oh, okay.

Wilson: And also had only recently realized that Knight Rider was a recapitulation of all those knight errant stories. So I was sort of interested in that kind of thing and…

Correspondent: But, wait, Knight Rider, you say?

Wilson: Yeah, the TV show.

Correspondent: Yeah. The relationship between Knight Rider and Don Quixote.

Wilson: Yeah. Knight Rider, Michael Knight, is a knight errant.

Correspondent: Yes.

Wilson: He roams the countryside looking to perform acts of chivalry for various people on his trusty steed, KITT, and then he’s got his patron, Devon, and then his woman is totally desexualized — well, she’s sexy, but she’s not sort of in a sexual relationship with him. The other woman on the show.

Correspondent: Bonnie was Dulcinea? Jesus.

by Edward Champion

BSS #135: Gabe Kaplan

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Not suffering scoundrels riding on past television achievements.

Author: Gabe Kaplan

Subjects Discussed: Why those duped by email wanted to be included in Gabe Kaplan’s book, celebrity stature, celebrity auctions, Scientology and John Travolta, television ratings, Dick Clark Productions, sixty-year-old celebrities fighting each other, Sioux City, Iowa and parades, the art of composing email, X-rated rap songs, Letters from a Nut, career-planning, Gabe Kaplan merchandising tie-ins, how Radar was duped by fake Stalinist history, Wilt Chamberlain, the ethics of duping people, Jerry Falwell’s refusal to be included in the book, why so many standup comics end up being cast in positions of authority, and television high-school teachers.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Kaplan: They picked me and I was, I think, the first person who they did a sitcom about, basically, their standup comedy. I would talk about being in a school with the Sweathog type of guys, and growing up in that kind of New York City school system where they always put you in the class with people who were as brought as you were. And this was my act. So we just translated it into a sitcom where the only fictitious character is Kotter. Everybody else was based on someone I had went to school with.

by Edward Champion

BSS #134: Marianne Wiggins

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Responding to the recent allegations concerning Bat Segundo and Vanessa Hudgens.

Author: Marianne Wiggins

Subjects Discussed: Fictive alter egos, Philip Roth’s The Counterlife, James Frey, Kurt Vonnegut, Hemingway’s screenplays, Edward Curtis, ephemera, patriarchy, W.G. Sebald, 20th century photographers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, truth vs. legend, “book time” vs. real time, photo manipulation, the similarities between Photoshop and Soviet propaganda, Abu Ghraib, novels as news source, literary antecedents, Absalom! Absalom!, disclaimers, dialogue, long em-dashes, the difficulties of writing novels in London, California geology, the exhaustion of writing measured prose, Las Vegas and Hunter S. Thompson, and bathtub symbols.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Wiggins: One interviewer said to me that he thought I wrote in the equivalent of jazz improvisation. And fortunately, given the luxuriant elasticity of the English language and our grammar, you can make all these elliptical riffs. You can put a dash in a parentheses and keep a whole thought going seamlessly, if — I mean, I hope the reader doesn’t get lost midway through the sentences and say, What? (laughs) Where is this going and what is this about? But my mind moves in that, with that rapidity. So it’s almost a musician’s notation more than a grammarian’s.

by Edward Champion

Abs Are Not Great: How Working Out Poisons Everything?

Huffington Post: “That brings the reader to the second page, where Hitchens is photographed both smoking in the shower as he soaps up and smoking while he shaves. Only towards the end of page two does Hitchens begin writing. By page three of four he gets shipped to a Four Seasons in Santa Barbara where he is massaged with hot stones and given facials, all while drifting in and out of a slumber. More pictures of Hitchens smoking at the gym and drinking scotch during a body wrap.”

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