Author / Edward Champion

Posts by Edward Champion

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

Introducing Wayne Chestnut, Father and Guest Blogger

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Here at Return of the Reluctant, we do our damnedest to keep on top of the latest literary trends. (Well, not really. We’re fundamentally lazy, but ideas are spawned nonetheless.) With Neal Pollack and Steve Almond now turning their hands to the heartwarming genre of “alternative” thirtysomethings who have spilled their seed and now feel compelled to splatter their paternal woes onto the page, we’ve recruited Wayne Chestnut, an MFA dropout who still harbors some dim hope of literary credibility, to drop in from time to time. Here is his first entry.]

Last night we put Jilly in front of the TV, something Elaine and I hope to do more often so that we can avoid real parenting and snort a few lines off the bedroom dresser mirror. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a very happy father, and I realize every day that within my child I can see things about the world that I haven’t seen before. Particularly if I’m stuck in a k-hole or if I’m in a bourbon-induced haze. Drugs are good this way. All parents should try them. Sometimes being a coked out asshole has its benefits. It gives you the strength to see beauty, and it gives you the beauty to have sleazy fantasies that go well beyond your parental responsibilities, which are just so fucking incredible. And if you’re not a parent, you simply cannot understand. It’s a bit like being gay.

I think of things like, “Holy shit! I have spawned and she’s so beautiful. And if I weren’t her dad, and she were a few years older, maybe she’d be a great fuck! How am I going to deal with her when she starts to develop into a woman? Will I then still be capable of an erection without Viagra?” You see, fatherhood isn’t nearly as banal as you think. Take that, Gawker!

chestnutyuppie.jpgSometimes I look into Jilly’s eyes and I find patterns. Sometimes she burps into my face, and it’s the timing of these burps that reveal good stocks to invest in. I then communicate these patterns to my broker. It’s a bit like that story I once read in a class, “The Rocking-Pony Winner.” Except the kid doesn’t die at the end. If Jilly keeps this up, then I should be able to retire before I’m 50.

But I’m sort of digressing, which is what you’re supposed to do in a blog. I’m a writer. I authored a book containing short stories, all of them about slacker protagonists who eat corn chips while listening to goth industrial. Every single story had that theme. So I know a few things.

Like I said, Jilly was in front of the television. It was a large television. A good flat-panel screen. The kind of television that only a family of three should invest in. I know this because this is what the man at Best Buy told me. I foresee a great future ahead, as Jilly becomes less cuter (the terrible threes, they call it, with lotsa temper tantrums) and I start to fool around on Elaine during my midlife crisis. But I’m a dad, first and foremost. And I’ll clean up any mess that Jilly pukes up before heading off to a clandestine appointment at the Days Inn. I’ll tell Elaine I’m working late and, if I’m feeling in a good mood, I’ll even do the dishes.

Anyway, where was I going with this?

I look at this television and realize every day that it’s probably a better parent than I am. And to think that it didn’t come out of a uterus! It was built by a bunch of guys at a factory. I have one channel and I have to sleep. The television has about 500 channels and it never sleeps.

Jilly will grow up seeing this television as better than me. And for what? Because I use it as a surrogate babysitter? Because I enjoy recreational drug use?

Well, maybe. But I’m the one who sired Jilly. Make no mistake.

by Edward Champion

AMS Bankruptcy Links (1/8/07)

  • There’s continuing coverage at Galleycat, with additional commentary from Sarah, as well as the effects of AMS’s bankruptcy on Quarto, a publisher that has suffered significant losses (to the tune of $1.5m in payments). More on Quarto here.
  • Additionally, Sarah has unearthed some considerable corruption within AMS over the years. I’m hoping to investigate this in more depth soon, but it appears that numerous AMS executives have been subject to SEC criminal charges since AMS purchased PGW.
  • ICV2 has more, reporting that AMS has had considerable legal expenses over the years: over $14 million in 2005 and $6 million in 2006 (although offering no sources for these figures).
  • Icarus Comics suggests that the AMS bankruptcy should serve as “a warning” and that Diamond, despite all the criticisms leveled its way, is an efficient and profitable distributor.
  • Charlie Anders suggests supporting publishers through alternatives (such as the magazines at McSweeney’s and Soft Skull’s fiction subscription).
  • The San Diego Business Journal tracks down AMS’ largest shareholder. The man’s name is Robert Robotti. His stock dropped from $3.4 million to $650,000 after the bankruptcy. That’s 7% of the outstanding stock. Robotti says that the bankruptcy move was the right decision. He would not reveal the steps in progress to preserve AMS, but it does involve selling the company.
  • Kathryn Cramer offers some analysis on why publishers were continuing to use AMS as a distributor when AMS had several executives cooking the books. It may be because of AMS’s near-exclusive access to the discount retailers. Cramer’s question is whether or not AMS held a monopoly in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
  • But the biggest potential news comes from Publishers Weekly: AMS may be selling off PGW. PW says it has sources which suggest that there have been discussions along these lines, but until there’s more reliable information here (like PW offering a named source), this is mere conjecture.
by Edward Champion

You’re Seriously Asking Me for My View on “The English Patient?”

A good number of Charlie Rose interviews are now available through Google Video. (They had previously been available for $1.00 per view, but Google has since added video ads, making them free, and helpfully demarcated these ads through blue dots on the timeline.)

dfwcharlierose.jpgWhat this means, of course, is that the infamous DFW interview is now available. If you haven’t seen it, this is the interview in which Rose, who doesn’t seem to have read much of DFW’s work, asks DFW (wearing, believe it or not, a bandanna and shirtsleeves) about everything but his books. DFW comes in at the 23:17 mark.

It’s the telltale indicator of how low the literary journalism bar has fallen (compared with, say, the Dick Cavett shows of the 1970s, where Cavett or his researchers actually read the damn books) — a veritable train wreck and a true revelation of Rose’s illiteracy. A visibly uncomfortable DFW is bullied by questions that pertain to David Lynch, with Rose boasting about interviewing Lynch instead of talking about DFW’s work. Rose’s ignorance is astonishing, particularly as DFW educates Rose about the history of postmodern literature.

And this was only ten years ago.

[RELATED: Here’s Dave Eggers from 2000 (at the 25:38 mark), just as A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius became a success and in the early stages of developing the humorless temperament we all know him for today. Early on, Eggers remarks, “I thought [the title] would anger the right kind of people.” Eggers angering people? Who would have thought? That’s not what McSweeney’s is about!]

[MORE FUN: David Foster Wallace, Mark Leyner & a very young Jonathan “I consider myself my own reader” Franzen (1996, all interviewed at the same time, 36:26), Ian McEwan (2005), Toni Morrison (2003), David Halberstam & Bret Easton Ellis (1999), Ian McEwan (2003), Victor Navasky (2005), Jonathan Safran Foer (2002), John Updike (1998), Martin Amis & Gore Vidal (2003), Richard Ford (2005), John Updike (2003), and Jhumpa Lahiri (2003).]

by Edward Champion

Believe It or Not, There’s Someone Lazier Than Dave Itzkoff

What Jenny D said. It strikes me as anti-intellectual to waste time in a review bemoaning the length of a book (and in this case, it isn’t even the book being reviewed), and it reveals just how much of a mousy barnacle Allan Sloan is, who may very well be perfectly fit to report on business but is wholly incompetent to publish work in a book review section.

The other asinine statement from Sloan: “As with the Bible or Moby-Dick, you don’t have to be familiar with the entire work in order to grasp its essence.” What next from Tanenhaus? Championing SparkNotes over the text itself?

Apologists can defend Tanenhaus for his Whittaker Chambers biography all they want, but this kind of recidivist attitude has no place in a weekly book review section.

Absolutely no brownies for Tanenhaus. In fact, he should be baking us some.

As for the drive-by assault on Anthony Burgess (which comes courtesy of Paul Gray), the only thing “comfortably ho-hum” here is the flagrant vacuity within Mr. Gray’s head. Gray’s noggin clearly hasn’t entertained a curiosity about literature in quite some time.

by Edward Champion

Reason #142 Why Dave Itzkoff is a No-Nothing Assclown

New York Times: “All science fiction has some element of titillation — a strategy of taking known facts and stretching them to the limits of credulity, for the purposes of both entertaining and enlightening.”

Gee, I thought the purpose of speculative fiction was, much like many other novels, to provide a narrative that reflected the human condition: sometimes using provocative ideas or meticulous atmosphere (a la China Mieville) and, in the case of hard sf, sometimes employing rigorous scientific justification to explain the imaginative scenario (and thus pushing the narrative well past “the limits of credulity”) (a la Robert Charles Wilson’s excellent Hugo-award winning novel, Spin). That Itzkoff sees science fiction from a failed English major’s dichotomous mind set (“entertaining and enlightening,” but not challenging, humanist or literary) is a great indication that he should probably recuse himself from literary criticism. His work for the NYTBR reads like a Strom Thurmond-like politician trying to use States Rights Democratic Party rhetoric (circa 1948) to run for President in the 21st century.

[RELATED: Levi Asher points out that Tanenhaus’s team can’t even get basic Beat history right. Maybe they truly are operating as if it’s 1948 at the NYTBR.]