Category / Blogging

by Edward Champion

“Where Are the Litblog Groupies?”

The last time I went to the bookstore, I produced my business card to the sexy and bespectacled young lady behind the counter shortly after informing her that she had the most beautiful tits that I had ever seen. I was, of course, tactful about this. I did not, for example, use the word “beautiful.”

I told her that I was Edward Champion and that I ran one of the greatest literary blogs the Internet had ever seen since September 30, 2005. She asked me what century I thought I was in. I answered, “The 21st.” She then told me that I was a hundred years behind the times, knocked the wind out of me with a hard and painful chop to the jaw, and had several impecunious teenagers (scrawny young men whom she referred to as “co-workers”) using their diminuitive muscles to throw me out of the bookstore. There were five attempts to push me through the door, but all tries proved useless until the last one, when these two gaunt co-workers threw me onto the sidewalk without losing their breath. One whapped me with the latest issue of Marie Claire the entire time to keep me appropriately stunned. His ruse worked. I was then photographed by the young lady and added to a “Megan’s Law”-style database of men who hit upon attractive bookstore clerks.

As any of my readers know, I got into the litblog business for the chicks. My love of literature, if any, was tertiary at best. Like other people, I expected this young lady to allow me to feel her up or offer a Linda Lovelace impression simply because I was entitled to it. Was this really a mistake? I was a litblogger, dammit! Where other people earned their way into bed through an osciallating combination of charisma, caring and alcohol, was not I, as a litblogger, deservedly on the fast track system by default?

Didn’t my obsession with literature entitle to me to complimentary rolls in the hay? Women I didn’t have to pay for? At the very least, she might sell her story to The Sun and find out if litbloggers were, as the rumors suggested, worse in the sack than some of our most shameless septuagenarian whoremongers, who also doubled as men of letters and were eventually published by the Library of America shortly after their penises dessicated into an unusable state and they eventually met their maker.

Say what you like about being a litblogger and a cad, it leads to a wide spectrum of silly things to write about. Now, whenever I write a blog post, however much I might be looking forward to exposing some literary news development, once I see the “Publish” button in my blog software template, all I can think about is the one time I sat at my computer and jerked myself off silly, simply because I was bored and had run out of books to read.

I had apparently spent the night alone: I had apparently stripped down to my socks and sprayed aerosol cheese over the whole of my body. I then called a friend and asked if he knew anyone could lick the cheese off, ideally wearing a Wonder Woman costume. The friend then told me that I was a sick reprobate and refused to speak with me again — even after I sent him complimentary tickets to a ball game, as well as a 312-page letter of apology.

Maybe in America, the litbloggers with sexier names than mine, Gwenda Bond, Mark Sarvas, Maud Newton, are rock’n’ roll enough to spend better evenings than this. They are probably more focused and they have probably never touched aerosol cheese in their lives.

Have I gone too far?

by Edward Champion

A Tour of “Cliterary” Blogs and Websites — XXXVIII

The other day, while bemoaning the fact that my tongue had not touched a clitoris in seventeen years and remembering that my life had become so vapid and meaningless that I had resorted to this ongoing “tour” of cliterary blogs in an effort to get linkage (4,300 visitors last week! Thank you, Terry Teachout!), I came across this letter in one of my scholarly periodicals:

Dear Penthouse Letters:

My wife and I were trying to spice up our sex life. One evening, she suggested that I dress up in a human-size cocker spaniel costume. I asked her why she wanted me to do this. And she confessed that she had been dissatisfied with me for some time. She had resorted to illicit relations with Pumpkin, our pet cocker spaniel. She had persauded Pumpkin by putting a Milkbone up her cunt, which Pumpkin proceeded to masticate upon. And then, attracted by my wife’s smell, Pumpkin proceeded to perform cunnilingus on my wife.

I must confess that after hearing this, I was torn as to whether I could even waggle my tongue within my wife’s inner recesses and, in particular, her clit. But once I had donned the dog suit, I became comfortable with performing cunnilingus — often with Pumpkin helping out whenever he craved a Milkbone.

— A NEW KIND OF DOGGY STYLE, Fayetteville, NC

Allowing “A New Kind of Doggy Style” a little leeway, we can see that this isn’t a sad story at all. It seems to me that his wife has gusto and a creative solution to an ongoing problem. Cunnilingus has always struck me as a practice that is, quite frankly, too much effort for the typical male. Why should anyone be burdened by it? Further, why should anyone write about it when their critical skills are bankrupt? The short answer, I do believe, is that these cliterary bloggers are not critics. They are that rare species of thinker known as the enthusiast. And they should spend less time writing about the clit and more time licking it. One should grant these moonlighters scant stock, given that the real cliterary enthusiasts, however misguided, are hidden behind locked doors, evading strange and antediluvian North Carolina laws that are, rather inexplicably, still on the books.

In fact, it seems to me that some of these conditions are reflected in cliterary blogs such as John Bruce’s. I’ve already discussed Bruce’s failure to say anything positive about the clitoris. He writes like an embittered and impoverished muskrat who has not fondled a bare breast in some time or, failing that, a man who would need an instruction manual to discover the advantages and pleasures of his own cock. One can infer from Bruce’s writing that his penis is quite small and flaacid.

In fact, if you were to put an ice cream cone in Bruce’s hands, he would probably throw it instantly into the garbage can, declaring it a foolish distraction. So miserable a man is Bruce that one wonders why he expends endless pages saying nothing but negative things about the clitoris. Perhaps, if properly coaxed, Bruce might learn to lick and love the clit.

But then why should he? What are we likely to get from a man so hopeless in reasoning, so clueless in connecting, and so diffident about the clit? Why did you choose to write about the clit, John? If you don’t like clits, shouldn’t you consider the anatomy of another gender?

Further, there is the strange association of clits with some unspecified hillock known as Mt. Hollywood. While any competent scholar is well aware that much of the porn industry can be found in the Los Angeles area, why stand in the shadow of some dubious mountain? Is it possible that Bruce will never climb the mountain? Even a few steps up the incline? Even in a half-hearted way?

I’m still learning more about these cliterary bloggers, but I’m sure we can all agree that careless reading and an inflexible mindset is the ultimate justification for being an inveterate wanker.

by Edward Champion

Gawker Homage to boo.com?

What drugs has Denton been given his design team (perhaps in lieu of proper compensation)? The Sploid redesign is entirely unnavigable, makes little sense from an aesthetic standpoint (Drudge homage? WTF?), and doesn’t even have time-date stamps to separate old news from new news. In short, it’s a waste of Ken Layne’s talents, because the six-column setup has no apparent purpose, much less a heading or a guide or a structure that normal human beings might utilize to, oh say, peruse a site’s contents.

by Edward Champion

Up Next from Ms. Skurnick: Check-Out, No Vacancy and Thank the Gods That This Isn’t the Bates Motel.

You’ve no doubt heard of Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits (and rest assured, we here at Return of the Reluctant haven’t even begun to start our coverage of that puppy; stay tuned; there’s something special in the works). But there’s another fantastic litblogger out with a tome. Lizzie Skurnick, aka The Old Hag, has just published a poetry collection called Check-In, which you can now order from Caketrain.