The Slow Death of a City Block: “A hundred years ago, fifty, even 30 years ago, the city was full of life, the streets vibrant and bustling, the neighborhoods full of people and activity. But today you can walk around many of the streets in the old city and they’re empty. Nobody’s there. Four decades of urban decay have left the city of St. Louis, Missouri with some of America’s most devastated urban landscapes.”
Vincent Bugliosi is having a hard time trying to book interviews for his book. Well, if Bugliosi comes to New York and Vanguard goes to the trouble of sending me a copy of the book to read, Bugliosi is welcome on The Bat Segundo Show.
Of course, despite the purported “aggressive Internet campaign,” I haven’t received a single email or phone call on the book. Perhaps the problem here is that the publisher and the publicist on this book don’t seem to understand that this isn’t so much a question of mainstream and alternative. Or could it be that they assumed they would get on all the “big” shows and that they failed to contact the “small” ones? Did they put all their eggs in one basket? Was it hubris or ignorance on their part? Bugliosi’s inability to get on the air reflects the current journalistic shift from legitimate intellectual inquiry to frivolous celebrity gossip. In other words, this isn’t 1974 anymore. Unless, of course, you go online.
I’m firmly convinced that if Bugliosi wrote a book called The Prosecution of Paris Hilton for Carnality, he would have no problem getting on The Daily Show. (Conversely, a book with that title would have a difficult time getting on The Bat Segundo Show.)
Matt Staggs telephoned me this afternoon with extremely sad news. Science fiction legend Thomas M. Disch was found dead on July 4th. He committed suicide. I am especially stunned, because I interviewed the man only a few weeks ago for The Bat Segundo Show. And as soon as I get my emotions collected here, I’m going to work on mastering this hour-length conversation and get it up as soon as I can. I will have much more to say about this visit very soon.
But in the meantime, you can read Ellen Datlow’s remembrance here. To hell with genre. The literary world lost one of its most acerbic voices. And it’s a damn shame that so many of the snobs didn’t appreciate Disch because he “merely wrote science fiction.”
[UPDATE: You can now listen to the interview here. Disch lived in an apartment with scant decor. There were books and a few paintings. But that was pretty much it. He told me that his other home in the country had been overrun with mildew. And he had nowhere else to go, no place to live other than this apartment. In the end, Disch lived entirely for his art and paid the terrible price for daring to stick to his guns.
I have been informed that this was the last face-to-face interview that Disch conducted. Because of these circumstances, this was the hardest podcast I’ve ever had to put together. But I felt compelled to get it up as quickly as I could. It took a few minutes for the two of us to get into a groove, but he did seem to enjoy the conversation, smiling and laughing, lighting up and cracking many sardonic jokes. The discussion touched upon death and literary posterity. It seemed evident from Disch’s book that these were important themes for him. But because of the unexpected prescience of Disch’s answers, this podcast is now very painful for me to listen to. Listening to his answers in hindsight, part of me wonders if he had already made his decision.
When the conversation was over, Disch asked me many questions about what I did, the people I interviewed, and asked if he could get a tape of the podcast. I wondered if these inquiries arose because of his loneliness. I told him that I would certainly send him a copy of the podcast when it was finished, but I never got the chance. He also asked if our conversation would appear in print. I told him that I would do my best, but that I was at the behest of editors and shrinking newspaper space. I pitched a few editors on a profile piece, but these efforts fell on deaf ears. I remain extremely saddened that Disch, who merely wanted to be appreciated as a poet and who hoped that he could hold onto his apartment on Union Square West, felt that suicide was the only answer. Perhaps he was a lonely man still trying to come to terms with the death of his partner. Perhaps he had declared himself a deity so that the world would finally notice his literary contributions. I don’t know if I’m really in the position to judge. But I do hope that this conversation can, in some sense, allow others to appreciate his very special talent.]
[UPDATE 2: A number of remembrances can be found at Enter the Octopus.]
[UPDATE 3: Thoughts from William Gibson, Jeff VanderMeer, Quenchzine, Scott Edelman, Bruce Lewis, Tom Moody, Locus, Cory Doctorow, Wet Machine, Scott Woods, Stephen Frug, Mark Kelly, Suzanne Fischer, Dotan Dimet, Daily Kos, and Marc Laidlaw. As of Monday morning, there isn’t one obituary or notice in a single American newspaper, with many litblogs egregiously silent. Think Disch will get even a mention from Paper Cuts? Yeah, right.]
[UPDATE 4: I’ve been informed that there will be a memorial service for Disch in September.]
[UPDATE 5: Barista reports that Disch was fighting to stay in his home and that the landlord had won an appeal on the basis that the apartment was rented out to Disch’s partner, not Disch. Terrible. More here.]
[UPDATE 6: Here’s another of his last interviews. (Forget the Dr. Blogstein interview. It is outrageously idiotic, uninformed, and disrespectful. In fact, Dr. Blogstein is now sending really tacky emails to people trying to promote this garbage. As such, I have removed the link.)]
[UPDATE 7: Threads at Crooked Timber and Metafilter.]
[UPDATE 8: I’ve written a Disch tribute for New York Magazine.]
[UPDATE 9: Some tributes have rolled in from newspapers and magazines: Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and The Advocate. But there remains nothing from the New York Times.]
[UPDATE 10: Official obits from The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.]
[UPDATE 11: A lengthy post at The Tomorrow Museum and an official obit overseas at the Telegraph. On the homefront, there remain no acknowledgments from the Observer, the Sun (You call yourself a books editor, David Wallace-Wells? All that space!), the Post, or the Daily News.]
[UPDATE 12: The Guardian now has an obit and a letter from Michael Carlson. And His Vorpal Sword has a devastating and well-researched post on the factors that the late Disch and other freelancers face.]
Photo credit: Flickr
To give you a sense of the wonderful laziness that a three-day holiday weekend affords, I should point out that, speaking personally, yesterday’s greatest achievement was making dozens of chocolate chip cookies. Other than that, there was some reading, a considerable amount of slacking off, and many hours in which nearly nothing was accomplished.
I confess this with the hope of informing all that it is perfectly okay to be a bit lazy right now. It seems that workaholics and many freelancing pals are experiencing some difficulties understanding that we are, indeed, in the throes of a holiday weekend. And the only reason I’m serving up blog posts is largely to deposit stray bits of information that pop up while I am essentially doing nothing.
For example, I have spent a portion of the morning contemplating the unusual architectural design of some of the Best Products stores. Best was a chain that died off in 1997. Sadly, there appears to be no visual record of the strange diagonal corner at the Arden Fair outlet in Sacramento. This corner was demolished a good decade ago, with the building revamped to a more boring rectilinear design that befits the mundane exigencies of suburban architectural requirements. But if you were lucky enough to experience this structural quirk, the corner slid out when the store was open and folded neatly into the building’s recess when the store was closed. When the corner was pulled out, the slope was particular ideal if, like me, you were a clumsy teenager with a borrowed skateboard. And it appears that the Houston Best building was even stranger, offering one of the wackiest superstore apices I think I’ve ever seen. So do good things sometimes come with chain stores? Or have we become so committed to relentless homogeneity that we can’t even allow for a flourish or three within the boxy buildings that come with gentrification? And is gentrification remotely justifiable if these monolithic entities divert from the building boilerplate a bit? I was pleased as punch to learn that 600 Starbucks outlets were biting the dust in the forthcoming months. With rare exceptions, I only enter a Starbucks if I have to pee. But would I be more forgiving of Starbucks if, say, they served up a building that was even a tad incongruous? Not bloody likely, given that they’ve attempted to abscond with our language with their ineffable terms for small, medium, and large.
This segue should reveal that it is very difficult for some active minds to accept the notion of a holiday. I had a wonderfully disturbing dream last night that gave me a vital component to a narrative I am working on. But if you are afraid of relaxing, consider the Archimedes principle. Your mind will likely be set off by something anyway. So there’s no crime in stepping away from the computer. You have one day left before the crazed week begins again. Enjoy it while it lasts!