We were reminded Thursday evening that there’s this fantastic place called the Outside World, where people congregate and converse and marvelous human behavior goes down. So the next episode of Bat Segundo still lingers in a close-to-final state of completion. Keep watching the skies. About ninety minutes of new content is coming over the course of two shows.
But let’s talk of the Naughty Reading Photo Contest. Yes, there’s been a pleasant din buzzing about, with people planning fantastic ideas. But we’ve received only one entry! While we expect the floodgates to open closer to the deadline for entries (August 31), as literary folks are often procrastinators, we remain quite concerned that people here seem to think that reading is a wholesome activity. We remind our readers that reading is also a solitary task, which means that there’s plenty of wiggle room here for deviance. The nation may be ensnared in a puritanical atmosphere, but that doesn’t mean that you have to be. So if you’ve got what it takes, the time has come to put your camera where your passion is. We dare you to be naughty!
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (