Author / Edward Champion

Posts by Edward Champion

Edward Champion is the Managing Editor of Reluctant Habits.
by Edward Champion

Norman Mailer: The Most Overrated Writer of the 20th Century

We all knew this was coming: the approbations, the lionizations, the veritable bullshit that Norman Mailer was a gift to the world. All this largely perpetuated by a man advertising for himself. Literally. Not just the book. Mailer was so insecure, so arrogant, so unwilling to listen, that he took out advertisements in newspapers that panned his work.

Well, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to dissent. I’ve been asked multiple times today about what I feel about Mailer kicking the bucket and I have quietly nodded my head to allow those who cared for him to have their quiet moments of consideration. But I never really cared for the man’s writing. There was an interview opportunity for The Castle in the Forest that I didn’t pursue a few years ago. Could have made happen if I really wanted to. But I didn’t, not only because the novel was the most trite and preposterous nonsense I had read in three years, but the idea of talking to Mailer was like being trapped in a closet with an insufferable narcissist.

What did Mailer give us? What was his chief contribution to letters? Mailer as King of the Universe. Mailer as knowing egomaniac. Mailer as hyper-masculine creature of the day and night. Mailer who never listened to anybody but himself. Mailer who, if he considered your work, did it because he wanted you to know he was Mailer and that you were not Mailer. Mailer the sexist pig who got his ass whooped by Germaine Greer.

Well, fuck Norman Mailer. Someone needs to do an HST-style obit for the man. I am not the person to do this, in large part because I don’t have the time. But if I read one more bullshit item about how Mailer was the King of the Universe, then I’m going to require a shotgun or something.

(This writeup, however, is a good start.)

UPDATE: More on Mailer’s “genius,” from the comments in the above link:

Later, Mr. Mailer wrote a piece for a magazine where I worked as an editor, for which he was paid $50,000 (a shocking amount, then and now). The literary lion had trouble delivering and had to be given a conference room at the magazine (Esquire) and an “assistant” to help him meet his deadline. The piece was a routine interview. The final result was such a horrific mish-mash that, once again, I couldn’t finish it without much determined skimming. All in all, he seemed to have no special talent for either long-form works or routine culture pieces. So what was his talent anyway? Self-promotion, I guess.

by Edward Champion

Ellen DeGeneres, Scab

The Hollywood Reporter: “DeGeneres skipped filming on Monday in support of her writers but returned to work Tuesday despite the strike, though she said she missed and supported her scribes.”

Apparently, Ms. DeGeneres does not know the meaning of a strike, which involves not working until you come to a resolution. Showing “support” for writers one day, only to work the next, is not striking. I don’t care how many tears Ellen DeGeneres wishes to shed over this or dogs. These are the actions of a self-serving bimbo without integrity. Her pathetic statement can be found here.

DeGeneres, incidentally, is a WGA member. Whether the WGA will initiate proceedings to remove her from the guild or consider her a special case remains to be seen. But if the WGA lets this fly and opts for the latter, then I’ll have little faith in the WGA’s powers of representation.

[UPDATE: Nikki Finke has obtained two letters from AFTRA thanking DeGeneres for her support. She’s also cited WGA’s Minimum Basic Agreement, which excludes material written by a presenter for a comedy-variety program broadcast. Maybe so, but it’s a pretty shitty thing to carry forth with “support” for writers one minute and the filming of a television program the next. You don’t see Leno, Letterman, or Stewart carrying on these days.]

by Edward Champion

The Entirely Unsuitable Guide to Book Blogs

Being something of an involved party on the subject, I’ve finally had a chance to read Rebecca Gillieron and Catheryn Kilgarriff’s The Bookaholics’ Guide to Book Blogs. I’m wondering why such a poorly researched and slipshod book was permitted to come out. (My answer might have something to do with Gillieron and Kilgarriff being the publishers of Marion Boyars, the press that generated this book.) Certainly, litblogs and their ilk deserve this kind of treatment, perhaps not in book form. But Gillieron and Kilgarriff are not the ones to do it.

They identify the motivation behind book blogs as enthusiasm, but that’s as obvious as saying that your motivation for driving into a gas station is to fill up. They choose not to investigate why this enthusiasm exists, much less consider the possibility that enthusiasm only goes so far. They also fail to consider that there are often moments in which blogging is not guided by enthusiasm, that many of us take hiatuses when we cannot offer content that is lively or purposeful, that we sometimes blog when we shouldn’t. Speaking in all candor for myself, many of the posts here arose from a remarkably dull job I once held in a law firm in which it was necessary for me to pretend to be someone who I was not. So I proceeded to amp up a part of me into a twisted persona named “Dr. Mabuse,” who still shows up on these pages out of habit, in an effort to stay sane, giddy, and alive. (I am now far more myself since I went full-time freelance: poorer but happier.) Thus, there is much more here than being one of the “individuals who have no grist or motive other than a love of books and a desire to share their finds with others.”

Why fame or ego should even be a consideration in blogging is a mystery I likewise cannot fathom. I certainly didn’t set into this business for any glory. Bookbloggers simply are. Some of us cannot help but follow the natural rhythm of what we enjoy doing. There isn’t a simpler answer. I’ve achieved a modest notoriety for this site — and even this may be overstating my trifling impact — that I’m often perplexed by. Since moving to New York, I’ve had total strangers come up to me in the street and say, “I’ve just listened to your Jonathan Safran Foer podcast,” which they then point to on their iPods. I’ve received a pair of underwear from a secret admirer in the mail. I’ve been called an egotistical asshole, a hero, a Buddhist (at least twelve times!), a “troubled young man,” and many other things, both pleasant and minatory. I remain baffled that so many people purport to know me based on my words, when they haven’t even had a conversation with me longer than five minutes. Is it egotistical for me to dwell upon this? Well, I suppose so. But I am merely trying to point out that blogging and writing are just what I do and that deriving some great import about who I am misses the point of what this site is about.

There are too many factual errors and oversights in this book for me to take this book seriously. It was certainly news to me to learn that Ron Hogan and Sarah Weinman were married. It is exceedingly frustrating to see Colleen’s quote once again misattributed to me, when it was rectified here and clarified in a correction in the Los Angeles Times. It is quite disgraceful to see someone like Maud Newton get little more than a few sentences.

Simple fact-checking along these lines could have been easily resolved by sending a few emails or making a few phone calls or carefully reading these sites. But Gillieron and Kilgarriff appear incapable of even the most basic journalism. So I have to wonder if their book, containing numerous prevarications and other mistruths, is really worthy of serious consideration. Since every conversation about blogs inevitably ends up back at the same three talking points, was a book along these lines really necessary?