- A quick reminder that Jonathan Ames and Craig Davidson will be fighting tonight at Gleason’s Gym at 8:00 PM.
- Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s excellent comic, Y: The Last Man, is being adapted into a film by the folks behind Disturbia. I am unsure how many Hollywood dollars will be committed to training monkeys, with the animal trainers spending hours attempting to reproduce Guerra’s juxtapositions of Ampersand on Yorick’s shoulders. But I’m convinced that monkey accuracy will be the key indicator as to whether this is a successful adaptation or not. Hell, this particular film could very well set a precedent for persuasive monkey behavior. If Clint Eastwood, who I understand has some experience in these matters, is somehow involved, then this film adaptation will go forth without a hitch.
- Guitarist Brian May is completing his Ph.D more than twenty-five years after he abandoned it for a music career. Presumably, having to endure Ben Elton’s dumbing down of Queen’s legacy was enough to push May over the edge.
- Tod Goldberg offers tips on how to write an essay for Parade.
- A.L. Kennedy has a new story in this week’s New Yorker. (via Maud)
- Dan Green responds to the opponents of the Harry Potter opponents.
- I stopped getting excited about new Noam Chomsky volumes when I turned 22. A glowing orb on my hand went off, signaling that there were better ways to be political than celebrating the art of writing lifeless sentences.
- Tim Rutten insists that the embargo hoopla is all about the green.
- The Weekly World News, one of the most important newspapers of our time, is shutting down. The News‘s fabrications were the best of all the tabloids. And I can’t think of another publication that will be able to offer the same kind of amusement as I wait to purchase broccoli. (via Pete Anderson)
- Speaking of which, here’s Magazine Death Pool — sort of a Fucked Company for periodicals.
- The American Scholar‘s Charles Trueheart revisits Lawrence Durrell fifty years later.
- This is bizarre: Carcassonne has been transformed into an Xbox game. But truthfully, can those delightful tiles actually be replaced by a television screen?
- Harriet Baskas examines the connection between used bookstores and airports.
- An interesting comparison beween Enid Blyton and J.K. Rowling. Blyton, incidentally, wrote 10,000 words a day. (via Book World)
- The Washington Post examines DC Fringe offerings, which are considerably literary.
Author / Edward Champion
Jimmy Page, Plagiarist?
This Bert Jansch adaptation of a folk song, “Black Waterside,” sounds an awful lot like “Black Mountain Side,” does it not? And here’s the original “Dazed and Confused.” (MP3)
Well, that’s not all that Jimmy Page was ripping off from other musicians.
(via MeFi)
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Another Great Gone
Appointment in Samarra Revisited
I’ve met Howard Junker — the man was silly enough to drink a barely drinkable pint of Pabst Blue Ribbon with me — and I also email him from time to time. He’s a quietly intelligent and friendly gentleman. I also know that he’s outspoken about what he likes and what he doesn’t like. He does this not to be spiteful, but because he cares tremendously about literature. Like any good literary enthusiast, he demands the best out of people. And if that means telling people point-blank that their work isn’t up to snuff, then that’s simply the way that Howard operates.
But for Stephen Elliott, a writer who purports to chronicle misfits and the misunderstood, a remark Junker made at a competitive reading contest was enough to send him over the edge.
Elliott misheard a remark that Junker made concerning Elliott’s “literary merit.” Elliott didn’t come up to Junker or ask for an apology or express his anger or initiate any attempt to clear things up. (As Howard wryly notes, Elliott didn’t even ask to settle things in the alley.) Instead, he threw beer onto Howard Junker, as well as the new owners of the Booksmith — who are also both very kind people. There was no explanation. No effort on Elliott’s part to talk things out.
Junker immediately left the room without causing any additional fuss. What was Elliott’s response? “I don’t understand why Junker left that night. I had a shirt in my bag he could have borrowed.”
I realize that Elliott has had a tough life. But this does not justify acting like a boor in the present. Particularly when the target is as understanding a man as Howard Junker. Things did not have to escalate to this level.
As Junker noted, “‘Literary merit’ is not a term I use on my own, and it is certainly not among the criteria I use to judge a man as a man. A man, I feel, should be able to hold his beer. Should be able to take his lumps. Should exhibit courage in the face of adversity. And so on.”
The very least that Elliott owes Junker is an apology. Real men own up to their mistakes.
What Elliott did is far from taking his lumps, far from exhibiting courage, and far from being a gentleman.
Early Morning Roundup
- I can truthfully think of no duller candidate for a lead review than this guy.
- Other Ed, currently counting Rowling units, on Walter Kurtz.
- Mr. Mitchelmore raises an interesting point about prejudices before reading. I think that a book, no matter how overexposed the subject matter, is still capable of surprising a reader if an author is good enough and that it’s a bit foolish to discount an author’s creative possibilities within a given formula. If anything, seeing precisely what Coetzee will come up with after so many books about writers writing books is the more interesting question. Hell, is not David Markson’s “Novel” tetralogy — if we must group them together — essentially about a writer writing a book? You’d be hard-pressed to call his approach similar to Stephen King novel featuring a writer writing a book.
- Regrettably, I had to miss the Harlem Book Fair. But Richard Grayson was there dutifully reporting.
- Spoon is not treading water. The new album is a fabulous head game with what the long-time listening base is expecting. (Case in point: the abbreviated “Your” in the title “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb.” And where’s the Y in “Rhthm and Soul?” And why a song about a Japanese cigarette case? That’s the kind of thing you’d expect from a band desperately seeking objects in a hotel room to write a song.) I’m liking this album very much because of these elisions, which also manifest themselves in such “ghost” flourishes as that sequenced horn section which opens up “The Underdog,” only to not quite match up with the bass notes in that chorus’s expected pomposity. (And then the “horns” shift to a clear synth voice around the three minute mark.) No, it’s not as overtly experimental as something like Kid A and these production decisions aren’t immediately clear on the first few listens. But it’s still pretty fun. And even if you don’t sign on for this sort of thing, there are still slacking rockers (“slockers?”) like “Finer Feelings” and “Don’t You Evah.”
- And speaking of Mr. VanderMeer, here he is again in this week’s Book World.
- More after sleep.