Author / Edward Champion
The “Waiting for the Phone Guy” Roundup
- Wi-fi is in rather abundant supply in the new pad. Alas, I dare not leave for coffee. Phone guys are rather finicky. They give you a three hour block. You leave for two minutes. They never come back.
- Haggis is excerpting A.M. Homes. On a similar note (and capsule still forthcoming), don’t miss this revealing A.M. Homes interview on Segundo.
- While it’s certainly true that writing sometimes pays at sweatshop levels, was there any need to turn it into an export processing zone? As Bill Peschel reveals, this selfsame exploiter also trumpets her own achievements as a freelancer. Or is that freeloader?
- The difference between bullshit and humbug. (via Books Inq.)
- Litbloggers found in school library. (via Bookshelves of Doom)
- Stephen Dixon profiled.
- The Encyclopedia Britannica? Maggots, all of them. (via Scott)
- Massacres at the Chron.
- David Ulin has details on Jim Crace’s Useless America.
- “How to Talk Mean and Influence People” (via Kenyon Review)
- “Transitory Cities” — the winner of the Boston Review short story contest. (via Laila)
- Phone guy’s here. More later.
Before He Won an Oscar, Philip Seymour Hoffman Was “That Guy”
The 20 Best “That Guys” of All Time. Alas, no Elisha Cook, Vincent Schiavelli, or Woody Strode. But it will do for your next cocktail party conversation.
A Disturbing New Trend!
Roundup
- If cursory glances at MSNBC headline tickers on the flight over are anything to go by, the Judeo-Christian world seems to be up in arms with Rosie O’Donnell and Cindy Sheehan. Given the relatively ridiculous nature of both figures, I hope you’ll pardon my own similarly pedantic concerns with Giants pitcher Armando Benitez, who deserves a serious reaming for last night’s abysmal performance. The man blew a potential twelfth inning victory over the Mets by serving up not one, but two balks. I watched this game, wondering if I might be easily converted from the Giants to the Mets through this rather uncanny propinquity of two teams playing for two towns I’m currently more or less in between. Alas, I learned that a Giants partisanship is a difficult personal persuasion to shake. The median arrogance expressed by certain Mets players, which outdid even Barry Bonds’ strut and swagger, dissuaded me, as did the Giants’ fantastic field work. If one is to choose a relatively trivial topic to become obsessed with, well then I choose baseball. Bluster from the likes of Rosie O’Donnell is predictably and unfathomably one-note. When one considers that Rosie O’Donnell’s career has essentially been predicated upon a shaky talent for chatting and bluster, one wonders why anyone would pay millions of dollars to provide such “entertainment” to the masses. It’s almost as bad as paying out a few million to a hothead kid who wants to play ball.
- Carolyn Kellogg cracks the LATBR.
- The Best Novels You’ve Never Read. My own picks (if we’re talking the last ten years) is Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish and Rupert Thomson’s The Book of Revelation.
- If you can get past Silverblatt, he’s talked with John Banville.
- Speaking of literary interview craziness, the Segundo backlog stands at around fourteen, including a special two-parter and all the APE nonsense. And I haven’t even started with BEA. Please bear with me. I sent off the last of about thirty boxes to FedEx yesterday.
- I guess nobody told Gabriel Garcia Marquez that you can’t go home again.
- I could care less whether Peter Carey’s Theft is a thinly veiled attack on his wife or not. Shouldn’t the bigger question be whether or not it’s a good book?
- Lots of Pessl discussion at Callie’s.
- Also, far too much information for me to sort through. Will try for another roundup later. BEA reports are forthcoming tomorrow!