At the moment, we’re contemplating just how rapid our hair has receded in the past year. Quite literally, it has gone from a benign recession to something that is now quite serious. It is now falling out faster than snow.
We tried buzzing it down short but, alas, the hair has continued to abscond from our scalp. We’ve contemplated doing away with it altogether. But the last thing San Francisco needs is another thirtysomething Lex Luthor clone running about. What next? Taking up running five miles a day and getting one of those obsessively meaty physiques? We have no wish to look like half the other balding men in our neighborhood.
Besides, we sunburn quite easily. So the more protective coating we have at the top of our head, the better.
This is, of course, a needlessly moribund assessment. Because the other side of the coin is, as female friends have been telling us, Sean Connery and Patrick Stewart.
However, our modest anxieties are relieved by our joy at seeing the litblogosphere taken seriously by a major media outlet. We, of course, weren’t picked. We suspect this has something to do with out recurrent anticapitalist diatribes and our chronic skepticism, if not the hair situation referenced above. But several other fine folks were.
So we salute them while adamantly refusing to look as absurd as Max Barry (pictured below), which seems to us the easy way out:
Magic Hours by Tom Bissell: This marvelous collection of essays chronicles everything from film shoots to novelists rescued from oblivion. (The essay on the Underground Literary Alliance, with its portrait of raucous factions, unexpectedly reveals how soft today's literary world has become.) But if you peer between the cracks of these smart pieces, you may very well see how cultural lives are formed from the most unexpected life choices. And as we follow Bissell's development as a writer over the years, that goes for Bissell as well. (
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway: Harkaway's latest novel greatly improves on his previous book, The Gone-Away World, which I'm already on record as praising. Angelmaker adopts genre elements without ever feeling like a genre book, and it leads me to believe that Harkaway is well on his way to a narrative grace close to China Miéville's. Yet inexplicably this very fun book, which includes an eightysomething badass named Edie Banister, a mysterious mechanical object that may destroy the world, farcical scenarios involving lawyers and the police, and some unexpectedly moving moments about fatherhood, doesn't appear to be getting much attention in American newspapers. Nothing from the snobs at The New York Times Book Review, nothing from The Washington Post. And since I can't get Harkaway on Bat Segundo, I hope this Jump Up and Down mention gets you hopping as well.
The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel: Unless you're really pressed for time, forget Jonah Lehrer. If you want to understand creativity and its relationship to neuroscience, then the bowtie-wearing Nobel laureate is your man. In addition to being a physically beautiful book (you will drool over many of the paintings), there are helpful overviews on optical illusions, science, biographical backgrounds, and many vital figures from the Vienna Secession. Kandel's enthusiasm (and his call for greater unity between the humanities and science) is contagious.
Readerville isn’t a blog.