If you’re coming here from the New York Times article, welcome. This website is a dedication to the life of Edward Champion (1974-1998), who was unexpectedly beheaded by a samurai while giving a motivation speech in Chico, California. Champion was one of the most brilliant writers this nation ever had. His grocery lists were wittier than Oscar Wilde. He once wrote a note telling his friends to meet him at the pub that was exhaustively picked over by grad students. John Updike has said of the man, “Edward Champion: too many thoghts, not enough time, nipples as ripe as water chestnuts.”
And yet Champion’s work is often overlooked by the likes of J.T. Leroy, who is, strangely enough, still living.
So I set up this blog to pay tribute to Champion’s legacy. To me, Champion represents both the summit and the nadir of American letters. Some of the posts here are exhumed from Champion’s notebooks. Others are reinventions of ideas he had.
We hope that you’ll stick around for our continuing tribute.
Magic Hours by Tom Bissell: This marvelous collection of essays chronicles everything from film shoots to novelists rescued from oblivion. (The essay on the Underground Literary Alliance, with its portrait of raucous factions, unexpectedly reveals how soft today's literary world has become.) But if you peer between the cracks of these smart pieces, you may very well see how cultural lives are formed from the most unexpected life choices. And as we follow Bissell's development as a writer over the years, that goes for Bissell as well. (
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway: Harkaway's latest novel greatly improves on his previous book, The Gone-Away World, which I'm already on record as praising. Angelmaker adopts genre elements without ever feeling like a genre book, and it leads me to believe that Harkaway is well on his way to a narrative grace close to China Miéville's. Yet inexplicably this very fun book, which includes an eightysomething badass named Edie Banister, a mysterious mechanical object that may destroy the world, farcical scenarios involving lawyers and the police, and some unexpectedly moving moments about fatherhood, doesn't appear to be getting much attention in American newspapers. Nothing from the snobs at The New York Times Book Review, nothing from The Washington Post. And since I can't get Harkaway on Bat Segundo, I hope this Jump Up and Down mention gets you hopping as well.
The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel: Unless you're really pressed for time, forget Jonah Lehrer. If you want to understand creativity and its relationship to neuroscience, then the bowtie-wearing Nobel laureate is your man. In addition to being a physically beautiful book (you will drool over many of the paintings), there are helpful overviews on optical illusions, science, biographical backgrounds, and many vital figures from the Vienna Secession. Kandel's enthusiasm (and his call for greater unity between the humanities and science) is contagious.
Thanks for the inro, I was lost for awile but that really cleared things up . . .