Callie Miller, editor staff writer of the LAist and proprietor of the litblog Counterbalance is looking for a few good minds to discuss Marisha Pessl’s novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, next week for a forthcoming roundtable discussion. Drop Callie a line if you’ve read the book and you’re interested in talking Pessl.
Year / 2007
Lionel Shriver, Serendipitous Expert
Independent: “The trouble is, her new book is the last thing anyone seems to want to discuss with Lionel Shriver right now. We meet within a week of the Virginia Tech shootings, and Shriver has unwillingly been thrust into the role of an expert. Four years ago, she published We Need To Talk About Kevin, a bold and shocking novel with one of the most chilling endings since Don’t Look Now. It was a very early example of what she now, guiltily, calls the ‘campus shooting’ genre. Which means that, since Virginia Tech, her phone has not stopped ringing.”
Again with the Basements!
Variety: “That blogger at TMZ.com, which is owned by Warners’ own AOL, doesn’t fit the common stereotype of a lonely geek in sweats hunkered in a dark basement staring into a glowing computer screen. In fact, he was a trade reporter who was competing with his ex-colleagues at Variety for scoops. His advantage: as a blogger, he could post his items faster online.”
There are several questions that must be asked:
1. Is there anything wrong with basements?
2. Why is it that bloggers are associated with basements? Which blogger set the precedent? Have any bloggers been found dead in a basement?
3. Was the first basement-observed blogger based in Terre Haute?
4. Are they any journalists in New York now working in basements?
5. Is the preferred blogger basement a daylight basement, a walk-up basement, or a look-out basement? If we are to carry out a stereotype, I think it’s important to be specific about it.
6. Are there any known cases in which a blogger working in a basement has been bitten by a rat or a spider or a creepy crawly? Asbestos?
7. Are most of the basements owned by Warner?
8. Why would one wear sweats or pajamas in a basement?
9. Is the basement really that ideal of a spot for a desktop or laptop computer?
Save the Blogs! Rally Report
The above picture was taken from our Save the Blogs! rally, held yesterday morning at the Terre Haute Hampton Inn. Alas, nobody showed up. Not even the organizers. And this was after we offered everybody free pizza and beer and paid a few people to show up. Alas, it’s hard to find good help these days.
But WE WILL NOT REST until the litblogs are saved! Where else can you find such nonsensical nomens as “herringbone plot structure?” Where else can you find over-the-top diatribes and, above all, THIRD-HAND LITERARY NEWS about today’s contemporary literature?
You may not have attended yesterday’s rally. But the bloggers may very will be coming to your basement very soon!
We now plan to picket the Terre Haute Hampton Inn in the forthcoming months. For one thing, the Terre Haute Hampton Inn does not have a basement, therefore making it a hostile edifice for our blogging purposes. We have also learned from a litblogger, who heard from another blogger, who in turn heard from a man claiming to be Richard Ford’s accountant, that Richard Ford stayed at this very hotel!
So look out, Hampton Inn! You’ve messed with the litbloggers! And some of us forgot to shave!
(Cross-posted at From a Basement in Terra Haute. See, we bloggers deliberately misspell cities! Take that, mainstream media!)
Roundup
- Both Carrie and Callie share their thoughts on Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Callie will be conducting a roundtable next week to discuss the novel.
- There are two novelists named on Time‘s influential people list: Nora Roberts and David Mitchell. The latter certainly has had titular influence upon me.
- Audible is slowly getting out of the red.
- Mohsin Hamid reports that of course, he’s biased.
- Nicholas Lehman on the advent of broadcast television and the James Baughman book that documents it.
- Bill Bryson is now fighting litter. Whether a book on the subject is forthcoming is anyone’s guess.
- Egyptian journalists and bloggers are fighting oppression. (via Laila)
- Sarah reviews the new Nathan Englander book in the Philly Inquirer.
- Spidey 3 is getting somewhat mixed reviews.
- Comic Mix reminds folks that tomorrow is Free Comic Day.