Year / 2007

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • A treasure trove of Quiet, Please.
  • Jennifer Weiner on the most recent Oprah book pick.
  • George Saunders on Colbert.
  • Now see here! Ian McEwan insists that On Chesil Beach is a novel, because the text has been cleverly spread out across the course of 200 pages. LEAVE IAN ALONE! He can’t help the way in which his “novel” (Novel, ha! Boy, it took me about a few hours to read that!) has been marketed by his publishers. Instead of bitching and moaning, why not write your own “novel” of 40,000 words and then see how you feel? In fact, I plan to ensure that another novel I’m working on, On Brighton Beach, which is only a mere 2,000 words, will be nominated for a fiction prize somewhere. Novel, schmovel — when you get right down to it, everything’s flexible in the end.
  • Gilbert Hernandez is the John Lennon of comics? So does this mean that R. Crumb is the Phil Spector of comics? And stretch, and stretch, and bang that profile out in time. And pad, and pad, the deadline’s hard. So do it! (via The Beat
  • There’s a strict new Chicago law that has banned the door-to-door distribution of flyers and circulars, but it may have a harmful effect on free newspapers. Sure, this will mean less free menus for dodgy Chinese restaurants jammed underneath your door. (Personally, I use these for origami.) But be careful what you wish for. There’s a downside to everything.
  • When the revolution comes, I hope they remember that smug reactionary assholes like John Aravosis were against non-discrimination before they were for it. Listen, Aravosis, are you aware of Brandon Teena (conspicuously unmentioned in your piece)? Nobody questions why the T was attached to LGBT because we’re talking about a collective group that has been marginalized, ridiculed, assaulted, and stereotyped for many decades and anybody who is even remotely humanist understands that this is all about making a united front to put an end to discrimination. Thus, having as many people of differing sexual persuasions uniting together is a way to finally address the disparity between straight heterosexual relationships and the LGBT community. That you would want to tear this community apart by asking such an imbecile question or that you would propose that some within the LGBT community are more entitled to non-discrimination than others is a sure sign that you aren’t part of the solution. The LGBT community behind ENDA has displayed more courage and gravitas than most of the weak-kneed Democrats who insist upon compromising here or “alienating” there or remaining fearful that the “religious right” will kill something. Well, fuck the religious right. And fuck you, Mr. Aravosis. Please resurface when your big fat head isn’t so thoroughly lodged up your own asshole and you aren’t such a coward about human progress.
by Edward Champion

Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

Nine Inch Nails: “Hello everyone. I’ve waited a LONG time to be able to make the following announcement: as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate. Look for some announcements in the near future regarding 2008. Exciting times, indeed.”

With Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead now operating without record contracts, perhaps the music industry might want to reconsider precisely how it conducts business. The artists and the listeners are not the enemies. The industry’s continued litigation towards online music listeners, the industry’s sustained avarice towards artists locked into unfair contracts, and the industry’s failure to embrace inevitability collectively suggest that we may very well be witnessing a remarkable revolution that may will leave knock the remaining wind out of record companies. These are indeed exciting times. And one can only ponder whether we will see comparable effects in film and television. Is it too idealistic to suggest that the means of production may very well be returning to the workers?

by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

Questions for Sam Tanenhaus

  • Since Faust was a tragic play, an opera, and a film, how can Schlesinger “paint” his defection as Faustian? Sure, Goethe was an occasional painter, but even he had his doubts.
  • Also, as neologisms go, “irono-babe” is about as inviting as Infobahn. (And why the hyphen? The first step in coining any noun is to present it without a grammatical eyesore.)
  • How can Schlesinger be an omnivore “and a carnivore?” An omnivore eats both plants and animals. Since this little contradictory morsel was inserted via a hyphenated clause, could it be that the copy desk doesn’t know the difference between a herbivore, a carnivore, and an omnivore?
  • What business does an unsubstantiated rumor about Philip Roth’s sex life have in a review of Exit Ghost? I cannot help but wonder if Clive James was asked to spice things up with an indiscretion.
  • If a dead man “has been close to all” four men throughout Graham Swift’s Last Orders, must we conclude that these four men have been lingering close to the dead man’s ashes throughout the novel? Or is proper past tense not part of NYTBR house style?
  • Likewise: “In telling her story in a nighttime whisper, Paula reveals facets of herself and her experience the reader might otherwise never glean.” Conjunction junction, what’s your function?
  • If one buys a book online, one buys it from one’s home computer, not necessarily from Britain.
  • If a shape is a visual form, how does it snap back? Aren’t shapes silent? Also, if time “warps at the edges and then stops altogether,” is time a temporal or a visual noun here? Make up your mind.
  • Also: “Together, this seemingly ordinary couple became the poles of Hampl’s existence, opposing magnetic forces that held their conflicted daughter firmly between them.” Aside from the messy syntax here, this sentence could be easily read the wrong way. If Hampl’s parents are opposing magnetic forces, would they not repel their daughter?
  • “Her previous memoirs portray a woman watching the world go by without her, an outsider gazing in.” Wait a minute. I thought she was gazing outside. Danielle Trussoni appears to be directionally challenged.
  • Conflict of interest much, Sammy baby?
  • “The essays are more chewy — what one imagines Milan Kundera might sound like before his first cup of coffee.” Nice try, Ms. Harrison, but why not evoke a chewy snack instead of coffee?
  • You “want” this and you “want” that, Mr. Taylor. Good Christ, you sound like a spoiled teenager who demands a Porsche on his sixteenth birthday. Criticism isn’t about wanting. It’s about interpreting and understanding.