So if you like to see David Duchovny getting laid, Californication‘s your show, I suppose. Showtime: No Limits. Why don’t they just call the show Duchovny’s Dick and get it over with?
I haven’t meticulously examined Adam Gopnik’s lengthy take on PKD yet, but when I do, I hope to offer a lengthy response. There are many things that need to be addressed here.
” all, this book paints a punishingly bleak picture.” Leave it to Janet Maslin to demonstrate all the subtlety of a 16 ton weight’s impact upon a reader’s skull. Please, Maslin, go back to film reviewing. You were good at that.
In this preposterous article, Arthur C. Brooks argues that adjusting our society for income disparity is unnecessary, because studies show that the level of happiness hasn’t changed since 1972. Obviously, Brooks is unaware that people often prevaricate when asked “How are you doing?” or “Are you happy?” The more interesting question is whether the General Social Survey accounted for this discrepancy. Are people more conformist in 2004 than they were in 1973? And, as such, are they more inclined to say that they are “very happy” when an auspicious surveyor presses them on the subject? Furthermore, by what stretch of the imagination is improving social and financial conditions for all a bad thing? Why does Brooks naively separate opportunity from income inequality? It’s not a matter of being envious, but of ensuring that more people have a chance to live legitimately happy lives. Moving cash around from the haves to the have nots so that more income can be redistributed for the benefit of a society is a start, seeing as how government is currently disinclined to do this.
UK broadband customers are going to be paying the price for the popularity of online video. Will American providers attempt something similar?
I’m with Scott. It seems patently absurd to invent bullshit genres around current events. This blog, incidentally, by way of operating presently in August 14, 2007, is a post-9/11, post-Katrina, post-Rove resignation blog. I will do my best to write with angst and importance, but I can’t promise anything.
Between this and the Hitchens review, I really want to know what fumes NYT staffers are inhaling at the new building. Seriously. (via The Gurgling Cod)
If there’s an author named Kate, chances are that she’s been interviewed for The Bat Segundo Show in the past month. This week will see an onslaught of Kate-themed podcasts, carefully timed with this week’s Katharine Weber love at the LBC.
The World Fantasy Awards nominations are now up. Regrettably, the greatly overrated Lisey’s Story has taken one of the Best Novel slots. But a certain Mr. Rowe made the list. And Jeffrey Ford has two nominations!
Oh no, Maud, it’s The Book of Revelation hands down. And I can also make a strong case for The Insult. I’ll be sure to offer more vociferous words on the subject if you track me down in person this Friday at McNally Robinson, where the big Rupert T himself will be there.
Holy shit! There’s a new Old Curiosity Shop film adaptation. Who the fuck’s playing Quilp? And is it now okay to laugh when Little Nell dies? No heart of stone here, I assure you.
Mark Sarvas, Ron Hogan, and some guy who makes phone calls are interviewed in the latest article describing how litblogs might make a difference.
Laura Bush and Jenna Bush are now planning to write a children’s book. One suspects that the results will be worth of the same misdemeanors that come to Jenna quite naturally.
Stephen King claims that critics didn’t do the Harry Potter series justice. His main beef: “When you have only four days to read a 750-page book, then write an 1,100-word review on it, how much time do you have to really enjoy the book? To think about the book?” (His italics.) Well, name one hard-core Harry Potter fan who didn’t wolf down the final book in quite the same way, The problem with King’s assessment is that he doesn’t exactly come across as the populist Lionel Trilling ready to atone for these apparent critical inadequacies — which, in indolent fashion, he does not cite. With King, we get such critical insights as “the Potter books grew as they went along,” “the hypnotism of those calm and sensitive voices, especially when they turn to make-believe,” and “[h]er characters are lively and well-drawn, her pace is impeccable.” I have long defended Danse Macabre as a thoughtful populist meditation on horror films and literature. But if King cannot offer examples from the text as to why Rowling’s voices work and if he must stick to Bart Simpson-style observations (to claim that the books “grew as they went along” is to simply observe the rising page count across the volumes) when he has about 1,800 words to rant, then he is clearly not the guy to fulminate on the subject. King made this exact speech before, actually suggesting that the works of John Grisham should be treated with some reverence. Such ridiculous posturing — particularly when it includes a repeat offender like Grisham (and I have read two of his books) — does all books a disservice. Is there not some middle ground whereby the critic can recognize the literary merits of a popular book while also recognizing egregious assaults upon the English language? (via Smart Books)
Speaking of disgraces along these lines, I have learned that Marilyn Stasio will be reviewing Rupert Thomson’s Death of a Murderer in this week’s NYTBR. My own considerable thoughts on this volume will hopefully be revealed later, but I’ll simply say that a book as complicated as this one really can’t be summed up in a capsule. Don’t tell this to the Tanenhaus crew, who regularly espies phrases like “mystery” and “science fiction” and immediately throws the tomes into the newspaper equivalent of Section 8 housing.
Well, if Stu Bykofsky is going to adopt such a hysterical polemic (he can’t be serious, can he?), I’d say that the best thing for America is to have a group of people beat the shit out of Bykofsky. And then once Bykofsky has recovered, another group can do this three thousand more times: one beating for every life lost during September 11th. The unity brought by all of these attacks, alas, won’t last forever. (What kind of sick bastard would write such a thing? I can’t be serious, can I?)
I can assure Bob Hoover that I’m not “safe and warm in the Carpathia.” But if bloggers are rescuing print journalists to some degree, I should remind Mr. Hoover that the Carpathia was sunk by a U-boat. That’s the thing about sailing out here on the waters and making waves. Nothing is impermeable, particularly when hubris and political diatribes replace reason while maintaining the ship.
Elton John wants to shut down the Net. Personally, I think it would be more beneficial if the Net found a way to shut down Elton John. His extraneous position has been tolerated by music listeners now for far too long. The time has come to deactivate him. (via Books Inq.)
And RIP John Gardner. Gardner single-handedly revived the Bond novels in the 1980s and kept this young reader excited (after all, there were no more Ian Fleming books left to read). (via Bill Peschel)
James Wood has jumped ship from The New Republic to The New Yorker. Said Leon Wieseltier: “The New Republic plays many significant roles in American culture, and one of them is to find and to develop writers with whom The New Yorker can eventually staff itself.” This may be a wild stab in the dark, but I don’t think Wieseltier plans on tap dancing anytime soon over this.
So if the publishing industry is dying, why is Jane Friedman so convinced that it is “the healthiest I have seen it in a very long time?” HarperCollins has seen its annual revenue shift from $737 million to $1.3 billion. But how much of this comes from gutsy instincts? And how much of this comes from business consolidation? We’re not getting anything close to the whole story here. (via Written Nerd)
Richard Nash announces that there will be a brand new Donald Barthelme collection! Flying to America, containing 45 pieces of previously uncollected pieces, is coming. In the meantime, if you need a Barthelme primer or pick-me-up, Jessamyn West’s page is a good start.
Michael Blowhard has some significant beefs with tables of contents in magazines. But if you want to talk about labyrinths contained within magazines, let’s talk about all those goddam ads you have to flip through to get to the TOC page. I’ve often found myself flipping through about forty to fifty pages of ads just to find the TOC. To add insult to injury, the TOC is often staggered across multiple pages without so much as a helpful notation as to where to find the second page. Which means something like this: TOC Page One, 12 pages of ads, TOC Page Two. And this is the seminal idea that Michael hasn’t considered. Magazines are now designed to be completely unnavigable for the reader. It is now almost impossible for a reader to not get lost within several pages of advertising. Thus, the marketing team can pride themselves on a design in which advertising comes first and content comes second. But the magazine design and navigation fails as a result. The advertisers are favored more than the readers, because they bring in more revenue for the magazine. (Or did you honestly think that all those cheap magazine subscriptions were pulling in most of the income?) In fact, the situation is so tilted in favor of the advertisers that it’s quite possible that magazines may very well be doing the work of advertising agencies. Which makes me wonder why we don’t just call the chief offenders “adazines” — a soporific drug compelling people to buy stuff they don’t need disguised as a journalistic endeavor.
Sorry for failing to report this, but the Man Booker longlist is here, if you care. Normally, I’d get excited. But this is such a safe and predictable series of titles.
One of Levi’s major causes — hell, he brings the subject up every time I see him — has been the pricing disparity between hardcover and paperback. He’s now enlisting readers and bloggers to begin the discussion to end all discussions on this subject. So go over to Litkicks and feed him all sorts of info on the subject.
Jonathan Rosenbaum on Bergman. Not the tribute you were expecting. (via James Tata)
I don’t really agree with the suggestions made in this somewhat interesting revisitation of Kerouac. Various individuals bring out the standard charges — that traveling and writing on the road is largely a middle-class endeavor, that the age of Beat-like exploration is dead, et al. If there is a literary paucity, I’m wondering, however, if it’s more of a case of the publishing industry taking fewer chances on work they deem as experimental. (via Books, Inq.)
I’ve been informed that Issue #4 of A Public Space features a lengthy piece involving Vollmann in Toronto (including illustrations). As soon as I get my hands on a copy, I’ll offer a report on this essay.