Author / Edward Champion

Posts by Edward Champion

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

Responding to Tod Goldberg

Tod Goldberg has so outdone himself with this very funny post that I feel compelled to respond to him on a point-by-point basis:

1. Whenever I see young children, I do my best to keep my “fucks” to a minimum. I am a polite person. But because I say “fuck” with a cheerful frequency in many social settings, this effort at restraint often backfires. A parent then looks to me, as if putting the face to a photograph she has seen on the Megan’s Law database (never mind that I have no tattoos and don’t look particularly creepy when I have remembered to shave), when I am only treating the kid as an adult and I am only trying to be friendly.

The way I figure it, on any given day, a child bears a considerable brunt harsh linguistical terminology. Indeed, if the environment I experienced two decades ago is comparable to the present, a child’s schoolyard pals are likely to say things far cruder and decidedly more pernicious than anything I could possibly posit in my early thirties. I wish these parents would understand that I reserve my true invective for the true assholes of the world. More often than not, they generally aren’t six years old, even if they may act that way. (To this day, I cannot muster up much in the way of anger towards a character like Richie Rich, despite the great likelihood that he will grow up to be an insufferable asshole. Bless the good folks at Harvey Comics for not going that postpubescent distance.)

Mr. Goldberg’s observations, then, don’t even begin to scratch the surface of a hypocritical double standard that nobody wants to talk about. Are kids really as innocent as their parents claim them to be? Will they really be permanently scarred if they hear about serial killers or overhear the word “fuck?” Are they not more resilient?

(The other thing I don’t get, while we’re on the subject, is how this “don’t swear” dictum is likewise associated with old people, as if old people have never done drugs, fucked in unusual positions, or otherwise experienced active or accidental debauchery — or, for that matter, are presently incapable of misbehaving. This assumption presumes that old people are somehow lesser, which is certainly not the case at all. If anything, with more years on their belt, old people have probably committed countless acts that would cause mere straplings to blush. Ergo, hail the old people! Hail the children! Hail all chronological representatives of the human race!)

2. It isn’t wrong to be obsessed with a song at all. The world today produces more covers of any given tune than it generally needs, presumably because there’s a paucity of vanguards operating at the musical forefront. (Justin Timberlake’s Futuresex/Loveshow? I don’t think so. I find the idea of Justin Timberlake as a sex symbol repellent and ethically objectionable — in part, because this semiotic juxtaposition spawns a terrifying image of Timberlake indolently grunting over a twenty-two-year-old who never bothered to try it any other way but missionary. I have come close to vomiting upon seeing that clean-cut, take-no-chances, white-suited assclown’s image on the subway, caught frozen as he attempts to dance, his spindly wrist barely able to clutch the mike. He cannot dance. Perhaps it’s because he is trying to do too many things. It’s bad enough that he cannot dance during the course of a performance. But the still image in question — if you have seen it — demonstrates that even caught during his best moment, posed to promote some Timberlake ideal, he is a clear incompetent.)

But I have digressed. I usually do.

Okay, cover songs. Every once in a while, there is a good one like Kate Bush’s version of “Rocket Man” or Scissor Sisters’ “Comfortably Numb.” And it is certainly better than Timberlake. So long as Mr. Goldberg isn’t searching around for clips of Justin Timberlake on YouTube, I think the world will be safe for democracy.

3. I don’t think there have been many suicides that ended up clean and grief-free for a suicidalist’s friends and family. In fact, because suicide is such a selfish and shitty thing to do to other people, it doesn’t interest me in the slightest. I’ve always figured that if you were curious enough about life, you could carry on living quite well. I think the happiest people are often those who are the most curious, those willing to find joy and laughter in everything, those who are determined to keep on going in spite of the world’s many faults because the human race does something pretty stellar every once in a while. Or at least this is the sort of “happiest person” I like hanging around. Of course, I bring my own judgments to the table, like any curious savage, although they are always subject to change. One man’s “happy” is another person’s “insufferable,” as the old saying goes.

If Mr. Goldberg is going through something right now, I apologize if I am coming across like some flippant asshole. I don’t intend to. I’m simply trying to understand his question myself, and I don’t think I have an answer.

4. Even if a writer can live up to tough assessments, he will unceasingly believe at some point that he is misunderstood, only to be whacked in the head by a benevolent colleague, persuaded to snap out of it, and proceed to produce.

5. We all want to believe that the Raiders have some kind of chance. This is one of the purposes that the Raiders serve. And if they started winning, then they really wouldn’t be so much fun to root for. They are, as I have written elsewhere, a glorious team of thugs. The players who go onto the field, and commit all manner of needlessly violent plays which then elicit many penalties. And it’s the same each year. Their reliance upon veteran quarterbacks (Rich Gannon and now Daunte Culpepper) is quite wild. They rely upon guys who simultaneously advance yards and throw intereceptions (as Gannon did five times in the 2003 super Bowl), often in the same four downs.

In other words, this is not a team to rely upon. But they are great fun to watch and to hope for.

There were several other points here that Mr. Goldberg addressed, but I fear this may be too long a post. Perhaps what’s necessary here is to have all blog responses to blog responses start with Tod Goldberg.

by Edward Champion

All Roads Lead to Writing

John Baker coaxes Jenny Davidson to chart her writing process. And I find it very interesting. Because there are many things there that I can’t fathom (for me, the premise announces itself in the writing) and many things that I can (write something every day). But so long as all roads lead to creating work, I think it’s fantastic and that it doesn’t really matter what road takes you there. Perhaps personal temperament — and not some horrible seminar that tells a starry-eyed hopeful the absolute way to write — is the thing that determines how one goes about this discipline.

by Edward Champion

Not Tony Blair by a Long Shot

Despite the fact that Robert Harris’s The Ghost involves a former British prime minister attempting to justify a war in the Middle East, Harris insists that his character Adam Lang is not — repeat, NOT — Tony Blair. Despite a ghost named John Smith (it’s a common enough name; lay off Harris!) appearing to haunt Adam Lang’s residence, Harris insists that this is not Tony Blair. Despite Adam Lang being routinely referred to as “smooth and creamy little bitch” by the President of the United States — also fictitious and also NOT George Bush — Harris insists that this is not Tony Blair.

And despite the presence of a British author named Bobby “Big Shot” Harrison in a manuscript I have been working on for the past three years, with Harrison routinely cribbing experience from past friendships in order to write “novels” while remaining deftly afraid of the more stringent libel laws in the United Kingdom, Harrison is not — repeat, NOT — Robert Harris.

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • I profoundly disagree with Levi’s condemnation of Luc Sante’s excellent overview of the many versions of On the Road that are now available. Levi does have a point about the NYTBR‘s regular employment of reductive-minded bozos who wouldn’t know a literary visceral charge even if they were hooked in series with a tome and a Tesla coil. But he’s wrong in declaring Luc Sante the wrong guy for the job. Unlike Adam Gopnik’s PKD takedown in the New Yorker (or, for that matter, much of the NYTBR‘s dismissive posturing against genre and other types of books that are perhaps “not literary enough”), Sante, with this piece, actually offers something that one doesn’t often find in a weekly book review section, particularly one as airless as Tanenhaus’s lead balloon: namely, a comparative analysis of multiple texts, an effort to understand how Kerouac — both the writer and the legend — came to be, and the circumstances which caused this book to be written. In other words, even if, as Levi suggests, Sante had only a modest passion for Kerouac going into the piece, unlike Gopnik, he went out of his way to understand its mechanics and its place. I hope we’ll see more pieces like this from the otherwise flaccid NYTBR, if only because it could really use some flaxseed right about now.
  • And in other literary woos to weekly book reviews, the LATBR has successfully courted Lionel Shriver to its pages. Shriver examines Amy Bloom’s Away, tying that novel in with Philippe Vasset.
  • This week, at the Litblog Co-Op, the folks are discussing Matthew Sharpe’s fantastic novel, Jamestown. There will also be a podcast interview unveiled on Friday, as well as two additional podcasts: (1) the fourth and final podcast in our Authors Named Kate series and (2) a lengthy interview with a man who is funnier than you might think involving coats, blankets, Belgian magnates, cigarettes, and an interesting association posited by Ed Park (and answered!). The latter podcast also involves this author and Our Young, Roving Correspondent getting kicked out of a hotel bar midway through the interview. Stay tuned.
  • C. Max Magee — who is now once again balder than me — goes Hollywood — or, perhaps more accurately, its literary equivalent. But if NPR truly is that comparably glitzy valley where all cultural figures go to be lionized, I want to know when we’ll start seeing the high-priced callgirls and strung-out heroin addicts that come with the territory. Thankfully, Mr. Magee is neither a high-priced callgirl nor a heroin addict. But to prevent him from getting too smug (not that he would or anything, but it’s good to have insurance), I’ve arranged several packages of humble pie to be delivered on Tuesday morning.
  • In response to Dan Green: Ken Kalfus’s A Disorder Peculiar to the Country is a fantastic (if flawed) novel precisely because there is no direct parallel between the events of the divorce and 9/11. In juxtaposing the WTC against the divorce, is it not possible that Kalfus is — at least as I read it — taking the piss out of anyone who attempts to draw a direct parallel between life and history or who clutches onto 9/11 like a bright orange life preserver preventing them from embracing life’s choppy waters? Sure, all of you hipsters are looking to Gary Shteyngart as the guy who might be “the next Vonnegut,” a strange term that I have heard in certain circles no less than twelve times in the past four days. Okay, that’s fine. But while Shteyngart certainly brings great talent to the table, it is Ken Kalfus who goes that necessary extra step further in our current literary age and who offers a very necessary kick in the ass towards conventional reader interpretations. Let me put it this way: Disorder so thoroughly wowed me with its bawdiness and its gleefully caustic tone that Kalfus immediately bumped himself up to one of those authors whose every volume I would read upon publication. Just so I can watch where he’ll go.
  • Sarah answers the question that every mystery reader has been wanting to know: Where did Marilyn Stasio come from? Not surprisingly, there was a time in Stasio’s career in which she still had a bit of piss and vinegar. Regrettably, that epoch seems to be over.