AUTHORS: Do You Have What It Takes?
It’s the ultimate reality series, the ultimate game show and the ultimate half-hour of intriguing storylines. The Ultimate Author is an awesome television program packed with entertaining, engaging and interesting events. Each week, contestants go toe-to-toe in a writing competition that tests their ability to develop attention-grabbing content.
Casting Call: June 16, 2007. Fort Lauderdale, FL.
[via gawker.]
What will Japan boy do next?
this is what writers email each other about
no, Japan boy, no!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6656417.stm
very ugly dog (now deceased):
BSS #101: Martin Amis
Author: Martin Amis
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Inveighing against Stalinistic safeguards.
Subjects Discussed: The relationship between Koba the Dread and House of Meetings, the Soviet experiment, the original format of House of Meetings, the critical reception of Yellow Dog, the effect of reviews upon Amis’s confidence, Time’s Arrow vs. House of Meetings, writing about the gulag in the splendor of Uruguay, comparisons between Soviet Russia and post-9/11 Western life, the unnamed protagonist in House of Meetings, parallels between Yakov Dzhugashvili and the protagonist, Joseph Conrad as model for House of Meetings, writing dialogue without quotes, social realism vs. the Martin Amis stylistic imprint, making light of Stalinism, second generation Soviet novels, responding to M. John Harrison’s observations about “the long way round to avoid a cliché,” settling upon a Russian patois, poetic references in House of Meetings, mythological references, the hangover metaphor, the protagonist’s uncannily resilient memory, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, the period of despair after Yellow Dog, and how Amis stocks up for future comic novels.
EXCERPT FROM SHOW:
Amis: There were several very good reviews, but the bulk of them weren’t. And it wasn’t just the reviews. I mean, anyone who could hold a pen was queuing up to write some exultant piece about, you know, “Crawl away and die,” saying, “All we can do now is pity him” and all this and so over. Nice to have your pity, mate. I particularly value your pity. To feel such dislike centered on you and centered on your book. I mean, I’d been written about far from sympathetically for quite some time, but it was alright when they were just having a go at me and my character and my activities. But when they attack your book, in those terms, it’s much more painful. It’s like watching your child being scragged in the schoolyard. So, yeah, I think it wouldn’t have been human to have not felt that and felt it as a blow to your confidence, which is what it really is intended to be. I think Baudelaire said, if you’re a writer, all you have is your opinion of yourself and your talent and your reputation. And that puts food on the table. That’s your livelihood — it’s your opinion of yourself. So, yeah, I think my confidence was affected by it.
For Later Reading
Martin Amis’s 12,000 word essay on Islamism. Reaction from Steve Mitchelmore.
[UPDATE: Still haven't read it, but Laila responds.]
Too Illegit to Quit?
Pop Matters reviews Martin Amis’s Yellow Dog and berates Tibor Fischer for jumping the embargo. Meanwhile, Edward Guthmann interviews Amis in the San Francisco Chronicle, scoring a silly Keith Richards photographic homage and utterly strange description: “His voice is deep and rich, seasoned by a lifetime of smoking — imagine Ronald Colman or Jeremy Irons, only rougher. His mouth, often compared to Mick Jagger’s, is full and voluptuous and, even in repose, suggests an incipient snarl.”
The New York Times offers their Notable Books of 2003 list. (user: dr_mabuse, pw: mabuse)
Record label Murder, Inc. shall henceforth be known as “the Inc.” I haven’t seen anything this silly and squeaky-clean hit the hip-hop world since M.C. Hammer shortened his name to “Hammer” — an eleventh-hour career move to appear edgier.
Dark Shadows AOL IM Icons: Granted, this 1960s soap opera, now available on DVD, is an inexplicable form of crack cocaine, despite pillaging every known story in the classical horor canon. But who knew that people would get this obsessive?
And it appears that those sharp minds at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have decided to ask the dead for help in their September 11 investigations. What next? Enlisting an Ouija board for first-hand testimony? (via MeFi)
