Author / Edward Champion

Posts by Edward Champion

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

BSS #121: Gary Shteyngart

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Contemplating an ethnic switch to Russian.

Author: Gary Shteyngart

Subjects Discussed: Prince Myshkin and Misha Vainberg, Doestoevsky as a muse, fat man fiction, getting inside a corpulent character, Biggie Smalls, hip-hop traditions in other countries, technological references in satire, the apocalyptic novel vogue, the paucity of satire in contemporary fiction, the metafictional elements of Absurdistan, the 19th century plotting techniques for Absurdistan, the importance of notebooks, literary fiction as entertainment, linguistic slumming and lowbrow metaphors, kissing the back of testicles, going up against Cormac McCarthy in the Tournament of Books, the suspicions against comic novels, dick jokes, connectivity vs. inhabiting another person’s mind, and not being able to exist without writing.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Shteyngart: I also work in bed and don’t really move very much. I don’t know. My metabolism has been great so far. So I’m not so big. But when I was thirteen or so, I was actually a very husky child. I had to have a special suit made for my bar mitzvah. A special husky suit. So there’s a big fat guy inside this little frame that’s dying to get out. And the other thing is, I guess, was the American novel, A Confederacy of Dunces. And I was thinking primarily of Ignatius O’Reilly, one of the — I was asked recently to pick my favorite book in America in the last three decades and that was the book that came to mind. A wonderful rambling historical — a place also very rooted in its locality. New Orleans. And about a guy who loves to consume everything in sight. Those Lucky Hot Dogs, I’m thinking of. So I love to eat myself. And I love everything to do with food. So I wanted to make my guy gigantic, and I wanted to make him a real consumer — in a very American mode, but also in a kind of nouveau riche Russian mode.

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by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • Last night’s overwhelming support for the Herring Wonder exceeded even my expectations. I felt bad for Craig “The Crippler” Davidson, who maintained gravitas near the end amidst a decidedly pro-Ames audience. I was very impressed with Miss Saturn — and, no, not the way you’re thinking. Swinging forty hula hoops in varying degrees of elliptical rotation is no small feat. David Leslie orchestrated the elements. Gleason’s Gym owner Bruce Silverglade destroyed the Burgess Meredith stereotype. Patrick “The Mangina” Bucklew and Valmonte Sprout were fantastic, but need to work on their timing. They entered the ring on the second round and caused considerable confusion. I was sitting next to Silverglade and he looked as if he was prepared to draw blood when this happened. Others dwelt unduly upon who Ames was dating. Referee Dominic Manatho and I quietly performed our duties. And the call for blood was something to see.
  • Gary Kamiya comes to praise the editor, not to bury him, leaving the Rake to meet Kamiya halfway.
  • Warren Ellis interviews William Gibson. (via TEV)
  • Antoine Wilson locates the vicious circle that many of us out here on the Internets are caught in.
  • Oh yes, Brockman, the entendres are fully intentional.
  • New York examines the Mediabistro sale and concludes: “In fact, Touby’s success underscores the difference between the current (seeming) bubble and that of the late nineties: The way to cash out now is to get bought out, not to go public. And until the right buyer shows up, all that most of us can do is stand back and guesstimate what’s worth what.” If I didn’t know any better, this seems a disingenuous way of evoking Chris Anderson’s hypothesis without actually typing in the dreadful words “long tail.”
  • RIP George Tabori.
  • Kassia on why literary embargoes don’t matter.
by Edward Champion

The Big Fight

Remember: the fight is tonight at Gleason’s Gym, 77 Front Street, at 8:00 PM.

The fighters: Craig Davidson (boxing record 0-1) and Jonathan Ames (boxing record 1-4)!

The opening act: Miss Saturn and her hula hoops!

The card girls: Patrick “The Mangina” Bucklew and Valmonte Sprout!

There is also a rumor that a woman will paint her body and play accordion.

I am now prepared for my duties as ring announcer. And there is considerable excitement from all parties.

The after party is at Rebar on 147 Front Street, where I understand there are affordable beverages.

Don’t miss it!

by Edward Champion

BSS #120: Berkeley Breathed, Part Two

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[This podcast continues our two-part interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Berkeley Breathed. The first part is available here.]

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Searching for penguin brides.

Author: Berkeley Breathed

Subjects Discussed: The rising sales of graphic novels, the future of newspaper comics, reservations about Opus being available in digital form, mass market phenomenons, digital audiences vs. print audiences, the “death” of music, the Beatles vs. Gnarls Barkley, shared audience response, on replacing the cartoonist old guard, YouTube, the Doonesbury motif of characters looking into mirrors, cultural appropriation, Breathed’s rocky relationship with Garry Trudeau, why the first year of Bloom County is uncollected, great cartooning as a synthesis of decent writing and decent illustration, Christopher Hitchens, surreal humanism, the cartoon as populist entertainment, the poor reception to Outland, why the kids from Bloom County have not appeared in Opus, the inadequacies of reader reaction via email, the origins of Oliver Wendell Jones and African-American characters in comics, the Banana 6000 and Apple’s advertising, and being ripped off by Microsoft.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Breathed: We had readerships of 50 to 100 million people in the ’80’s and ’70’s for a given piece of entertainment — a single strip. Same person in Kentucky is going to be reading it. It’s the same person in L.A., New York City. You’re not going to have that. Instead of having seventy-five comic strips with readerships of 20 to 100 million, you’re going to have thousands of comic strips with readerships of several hundred to a thousand. That’s a sea change in its effect on society. And the pop culture, I think, has an effect. The unifying aspect of pop culture, I think, is overlooked. And we’re losing that. We’re not all listening to the same music. We’re not all reading the same cartoons. We’re not laughing at the same joke across the country. It’s a unifying aspect of our nation that’s passing.

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