Washington Post: “That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect the insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security.”
Author / Edward Champion
Roundup
- As I write these words, I’m up early waiting for the Nobel literature announcement. I’m fully expecting the choice to be somewhat anticlimactic and not an American. But I could be wrong. We’ll find out soon enough.
- Tom Christensen offers a list of books most valuable in relation to publishing and writing. Notably absent from the list is the Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude. You think I’m joking, but writing’s a pretty damn lonely business sometimes. (via Messr. Junker)
- More New Yorker tidbits from Emily Gordon.
- Norman Mailer is interviewed about God, which is to say that he suffers delusions of Mailer. (via The Valve)
- John Freeman has a surprisingly decent report on the Frankfurt Book Fair.
- “This is just a lifelike, likable book populated by three-dimensional characters who make themselves very much at home on the page.” Oh dear. This is the kind of sentence one expects from a Madison Avenue slogan writer, not a literary critic or even a book reviewer. The time has come to make some choices. I’ve had enough of Janet Maslin. I cannot continue to read her nonsense in good faith. I do this because there are too many good things in life to enjoy and, frankly, Maslin’s deterioration as a critic (she was a perfectly fine film critic) is too much for me to bear. Do yourself a favor and give up Maslin too. Your blood pressure will lower in minutes.
- Some excerpts from Kurt Cobain interviews. Who knew that Cobain was such a fan of Queen’s News of the World?
- Richard Grayson is running for Congress in Arizona.
- Linda Richards uncovers a lost silent version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
New Fiction
I’m concentrating most of my fiction energies on the novel, but Garth Hallberg somehow thought I was an apposite fellow to write a story set around this photo. You can find the result here, along with short shorts from other contributors.
Why I Will Never Endorse Ron Paul
Sponsored by Ron Paul: HR 300: “Prohibits the Supreme Court and each federal court from adjudicating any claim or relying on judicial decisions involving: (1) state or local laws, regulations, or policies concerning the free exercise or establishment of religion; (2) the right of privacy, including issues of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; or (3) the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation where based upon equal protection of the laws.”
If you think I’m being a bit paranoid about how these three points — curtailing the natural trajectory of the judicial branch and its ability to corral past judicial decisions with present ones — will be liberally perceived by the Republicans, why not hear Ron Paul explain the bill in his own words? “I am also the prime sponsor of HR 300, which would negate the effect of Roe v Wade by removing the ability of federal courts to interfere with state legislation to protect life. This is a practical, direct approach to ending federal court tyranny which threatens our constitutional republic and has caused the deaths of 45 million of the unborn.”
The man even had the temerity to call his bill the “We the People Act.”
Stripping the courts of their right to overturn previous decisions or rule on lower court or state decisions with such an overbroad definition is contrary to what the United States of America is about. I am appalled. No true patriot would consider this court right to be a “tyranny.”
Coming Soon to Bat Segundo
Correspondent: It seems very extraordinary that it was only three drafts to get this. I mean, because the prose itself, it has this really illusory speed to it, in the sense that one reads it, thinking, “Oh, well, this is a rather brisk read.” And then you introduce the detail, like the weird guy at the bar. Where did he come from? I don’t remember him being referenced earlier. And yet this often happens, in terms of [the protagonist’s[ perception. So in terms of playing with readers’ perceptions, was this very much in place early on?
McCarthy: It fell into place really early on. I mean, as soon as the guy’s voice came, and it came early, because he’s not an intellectual or an artist. He’s just a very average — he’s a Joe Schmoe. He’s some bloke. He doesn’t even have a name. He’s kind of an everyman. As soon as his voice was there, it just picked up its own rhythm and then the set of modulating repetitions and the phrases that come back, they just suggested themselves. It’s like pinball. Once you go into multiple mode, they kind of stay up there for a bit, you know what I mean? And it just seemed to happen with this book.
Correspondent: So the momentum in this book, in writing it, came from these repetitive phrases. These incantations?
McCarthy: Yeah, exactly, there’s a sort of incantatory logic to it. A neurotic repetitiveness. And once that gets going, it kind of auto-repeats. It goes into auto-pilot mode of self-repetition. Like the classical model of neurosis in Freud or whatever. You can see that playing out rhetorically in the writing, in the text of this book, I think.
Correspondent: I actually wanted to ask you about the time period in this book. You make a few clues that it might be the late ’90’s. You have the rising telecommunications stock.
McCarthy: Yeah.
Correspondent: You have the Propellerheads song from 1999 or somewhere along those lines. You have the airport security being particularly lax. And I’m wondering why the late ’90’s time frame seemed to be the best to set this particular narrative.
McCarthy: It’s pretty much when I wrote it. I wrote it from 2000 to 2001. In fact, I finished it just about a month before September the 11th. So it’s kind of ironic. This book has been interpreted as an allegory of September the 11th or reviewed as foreign policy. The hero starts out the victim or some sort of calamity and he ends up the perpetrator of other calamities, which is kind of what the U.S. has done.
Correspondent: Yeah.
McCarthy: But it’s entirely accidental. I mean, it was all written before that. But no, you’re right. It did come out of that. I imagine that it’s set sometime during 1999, 2000, as the stock market bubble was going up and then spectacularly bursting at the end of the book.
Correspondent: Well, you even have the notion of this company, which is Time Control UK. I wanted to ask you about this. I mean, did this come about from the notion of — all you had to do in that time period was essentially write out a five-page prospectus and anyone would give you money? Or were there actually specific companies that you based Time Control UK on?
McCarthy: Oh yeah! These concierge companies were just emerging in the UK, who would more or less do anything for you. They live your life vicariously, or they stretch your life for you. Which I just find kind of fascinating. I mean, it’s quite kind of metaphysical really, you know, you outsource your godliness. You outsource your autonomy, even though obviously you’re paying them. And the stock market, I just found it really fascinating. This bubble and these companies that were just making paper millionaires out of people that had virtually no premise. Like eSolutions. I mean, what on earth is that? I read this article about the South Sea bubble of the 17th century — or was it the 18th century? — where stocks were going so high that people would throw their money at anything and there was a company called A Very Good Idea Yet No One to Know What It Is.
Correspondent: (laughs)
McCarthy: And, of course, its shares sold out in a day. And, of course, it went bankrupt six months later. But in this book, the movements of capital are very much tied in with the movements of everything else. So this idea of speculation, which has an astronomical meaning as well. Contemplation of the heavens. And my hero spends a lot of time just looking at constellations of dust suspended in a stairwell. And they’re either going up or down. And the shares are doing the same thing.
(A two-part interview with Tom McCarthy, the author of Remainder, is coming soon to The Bat Segundo Show.)