• Until I observed last night’s series of fireworks displays across the East River, I had not encountered political fireworks in the literal sense. It seems that the Jersey authorities were extremely pissed off after Battery Park was closed to the public. So from Jersey’s side of the Hudson, the Jersey boys proceeded to offer as momentous a show as public money could offer — minutes before the Macy’s display had begun. Their fireworks, which declared with every burst that Jersey was as much a part of the July 4th celebrations as the big boys, were designed to be seen across a considerable expanse of water. At first, the assembled throngs on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade appreciated this. And I had to smile and empathize over the Jersey effrontery. Yes, it was a case of flagrant dick wars. But it was the kind of symbolic penis measurement that reminds everyone that there’s more to life than deep pockets. All of us ducked beneath umbrellas, buffeting a downpour that lifted shortly before Macy’s 9:20 PM start time. But the minute that Macy’s began launching jellyfish low-risers and smiley-shaped explosives into the sky, the crowd quickly turned on these apparent Jersey upstarts, becoming deeply vociferous about how “we” — meaning New York — had showed the folks in Jersey. Yet, “we” entailed Brooklyn and Queens for the most part. There was something deeply allegorical about all of this: private money vs. public money, proletariat vs. bourgeoisie, New York vs. New Jersey. And I soon began to understand that East Coast provincial lines were more ridiculous than I ever imagined. But it was still a good show. And I’m not just referring to the fireworks.
• While I contend with the largest podcast backlog I think I’ve ever had (which includes APE and BEA coverage), the folks behind the BookExpo Podcast have released Maud’s interview with Shalom Auslander. There is thankfully at least one use of the word “foreskin.”
• Mark Sarvas has inside dirt on Tom McCarthy and Soft Skull.
• Manga turned into Noh drama.
• Mark Sanderson reports on the Tina Brown launch party craziness in London. Apparently, Brown was upset that Tony Blair, Madonna, Helen Mirren, Julie Christie, and Shirley Bassey had crashed her party, or were rumored to attend. Here’s a PR hint, Tina: When you publicly announce that classy women like Helen Mirren and Julie Christie weren’t invited, this causes any slightly curious outsider to consider the questionable éclat in the party planning stages.
• As if the email scammers weren’t bad enough, Nigeria also has a crisis in literary criticism.
• I will have more later when the caffeine kicks in. (Will it kick in?) I blame incongruous holidays.

• I looked at the clock a minute ago and it read differently from how it reads now. I do not know if it is a reliable clock, but I am considering taking it in and getting it replaced. The problem is that I purchased the clock quite some time ago and have since lost the receipt. I believe I purchased the clock for about $20 and I am wondering if any exotic entrepôt exists to understand and remedy my circumstances. Perhaps I have simply misperceived the clock. Or perhaps I should simply accept the clock’s strange temperament — that is, once I get past the sentiment that the clock is not cognizant. Maybe I’m the clock and the clock is the observer who reads me differently. I’d consider drinking at this point to place this predicament into some perspective. But I have accidentally ingested a double dose of Tylenol Chest Congestion pills, which indicates that it “helps loosen phlegm (mucus)* and thin bronchial secretions to make coughs more productive.” It was an accident because I relied on this clock, expecting to take my next dose “every 4-6 hours,” and the clock lied to me. I have also not detected any “thin bronchial secretions” and I have no way of knowing if my coughs are “more productive.” This phrasing seems to suggest that I am more a machine than an actual human being. And perhaps I look to the clock with the hopes of commiserating with a fellow machine. But what am I doing relying upon Tylenol catechisms and phrasings for advice? The whole point of this post was to offer a roundup at an incongruous time and here I am going into a needless segue about clocks and expectorants. Expect the unexpectorant. Expect further a bulleted item (or more) that actually pertains to current literary news.
• Nicolas Cage and his son have decided to have you pay for their father-son bonding experience. If you ask me, this is a very shrewd marketing move, although the tax consequences now pertain to the paternal consequences and it could get very ugly, if Mr. Cage and his son Weston are not careful.
• Like Carrie, I wish I could report upon my athletic triumphs. Alas, there have been none to speak of these days — in part because I contend with the effects of acetaminophen, which I don’t believe is particularly helpful in maintaining an exercise regimen. But I’m very happy for those who do report their athletic triumphs. We should all do this before what little remains of our personal liberties is taken away.
• Tayari Jones offers a response to Martha Southgate’s essay. Southgate also offers this addendum.
• I haven’t read as many romance novels as I should, but if it’s bad for me, perhaps I can report on this instead of athletic triumphs. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, demonstrating its dubious commitment to literature, has decided to serve up a bizarre she-said, she-said matchup over the issue of whether reading romances is bad for you. A few strange leaps in logic later and the romance defender is claiming that porn is bad for you. What neither of these two silly columnists tell you is that the National Foundation of Irresponsible Statistics has determined that asinine columns, particularly two extremely histrionic ones juxtaposed against each other, are 425% more harmful than porn, romance novels, and second-hand smoke combined. (via Smart Bitches, Trashy Books)
• Arthur Salm talks with Susan Vreeland about what she reads.
• Michelle Richmond goes Hollywood.
• The Star investigates Jim Harrison’s gourmand tendencies.
• This week’s New Yorker features a lengthy Margaret Talbot piece on liars.
• Elizabeth Hand on Rick Moody.
• Hasdai Westbrook on the Gunter Grass 92nd Street Y appearance.
• As is typical of these “roundup” posts, they have become mere one-sentence summations. There is no witty barb to match each link. I have failed you, blog reader, and I shall flagellate myself with the nearest weapon when I am not as lazy. Because I realize this is unacceptable. Whether this is because of temporarily diagnosed ADD or fatigue, I cannot say. But with this, I send this post into the bristling online pastures — as sure an athletic triumph as I am bound to experience tonight.

* — Helpful, don’t you think, of the Tylenol company to offer this parenthetical comment, yes? All this time I had thought phlegm and mucus were two entirely separate concepts, without a biological Venn diagram to connect them. But now I have learned that phlegm is mucus too! Did I know this before? I shall ask the clock, which knows all!

• The Bay Area Intellect, a website that I was regrettably unfamiliar with when fog-drenched weather was a regular part of my daily life (as opposed to a Somerset Maugham-like tropical humidity), offers a report on the Katherine Taylor reading. Howard Junker, however, is surprisingly absent from this report. I do not know if last week’s controversy was ever resolved. Did Junker and Taylor submit to pistols at dawn and resolve this issue with the appropriate satisfaction? And can we believe that the Howard Junker now blogging at ZYZZYVA Speaks is the real Howard Junker? If Katherine Taylor was capable enough to devise a fictive Katherine Taylor, then I contend that it is equally possible that Taylor actuated a Howard Junker alter ego. Whether this Howard Junker surrogate has been programmed to tip well is something I leave the blogs to speculate over.
• A Valve correspondent investigates how descriptive language leads to personal disgust. The interesting question is whether one’s personal reaction is joined at the hip to a larger groupthink response. For example, if you or I see a steaming pile of shit being whipped up on a hot plate (and as the twisted bastard concocting this example in the early morning, I could probably go a lot further in disgusting you), then we might both agree that this is disgusting. But at what point do our individual responses relate to some conformist impulse? And is there some responsibility of the author to balance a reader’s judgment of a disgusting image with that of how far one goes in describing it? Discuss with class.
• The weather as comic strip. Another missed opportunity in perception: any real-world view of windows from another building. (via Darby Dixon)
• Reading in a Foreign Language.
• John Krasinski reads one of DFW’s “interviews.”
• Jennifer Weiner: “It took a little longer than five days, but the Times’ book blog has finally belched up its completely gratuitous Gary Shteyngart reference (if his book is just now being reviewed in England, it’s new to you!).” In defense of Garner, however, regular gratuitous references to authors (which reminds me that Matthew Sharpe’s Jamestown is much funnier than its idiot detractors* give it credit for) are what litblogs are all about.
• The Rake that is quite curious about what the Spice Girls might effect with their reunion. Yes, dear readers, I’m coming out as a closeted Spice Girls fan. It takes some astonishing moxie to pen lyrics like “Yo, I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want / So tell me what you want, what you really really want / I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want / So tell me what you want, what you really really want / I wanna I wanna I wanna I wanna really / Really really wanna zig-zag ha!” By my count, that’s eleven uses of “really” in one stanza. Name me another song in the history of pop music that dares to immerse itself so boldly in high school vernacular.
• Rodney Welch offers a dissenting view on The Savage Detectives. (via Dan Green)
• An ebook reader for the iPod?
• I’m not sure why this doesn’t surprise me exactly, but it appears that Michiko and Andrew Keen have locked lips. (via The Millions)
• It’s sitting in my vertiginous pile of books. So I can’t quite comment on Edward P. Jones’ editorship on New Stories from the South 2007 (and I actually have a lengthy post about Southern writers and a number of recent books I’ve read that I hope to write eventually), but Maud has an excerpt from Jones’s introduction.
• Elizabeth Hand on Rebecca Curtis.
• J. Hoberman on the CIA and the 1954 film adaptation of Animal Farm.
• To respond to Mr. Orthofer’s complaint about American coverage of Günter Grass (or lack thereof), I don’t think the fault can be leveled exclusively at the newspapers. I left about eight voicemails to set up an interview with Grass and had planned to hole up with thousands of pages of Grass before talking with him. (I did, after all, have no wish to waste the man’s time.) Not only did the publisher fail to return any of my calls (the least that could have been said was “No”), but the publisher never sent me a review copy of Peeling the Onion. Now granted, I don’t harbor any illusions that I’m entitled to any of this (and, indeed, never have). But I have a feeling that other media outlets may have received similar treatment. Ergo, the paucity of coverage.

* — By Susannah Meadows’ logic, we should discount Shakespeare’s comedies. After all, Measure for Measure is not funny in that ha-ha way and is therefore inured from exegesis. This is the attitude espoused by someone incapable of understanding the novel as nothing more than a bauble that amuses her. Which begs the question: if Meadows cannot comment properly on Jamestown‘s thematics or maintain a cogent and convincing argument, why then is she not working as a film critic for the New York Post?

• Michael Cunningham talks with Boston Now about how books are adapted for the screen. Alas, Cunningham offers no answers on why music from Philip Glass is the only reason why film critics take bloated literary adaptations so seriously.
• R.U. Sirius talks with a post-prison Josh Wolf.
• Tod Goldberg pens a love letter to US Airways.
• Early video of Indiana Jones 4. I can think of a better use of bandwidth than disseminating a large video file of Lucas and Spielberg drinking champagne and sitting in an old car. What next? A 350 MB Quicktime file of Harrison Ford passing a kidney stone?
• Dan Wickett rolls out his sixth litblog panel.
• Okay, you celebrity news obsessives, listen up. If Elizabeth Crane, who is perhaps one of the more obsessive of the obsessives, thinks that Paris Hilton is beneath her notice, then there’s a pretty good chance that the news is sizably insignificant.
• Richard Nash: “Using a variant on the word ‘fuck’ in an interview with Salon will triple your company’s website traffic.” Future Salon interviewees take note.
• Alas, this blog is rated a mere R. I’m clearly going to have to do better to match Gwenda’s NC-17. I apologize for not being sleazy enough. More dick jokes to come!
• Dale Kreiger looks into the technological tools of writers.
• Michael Chabon’s shtekeleh.
• Pete Anderson reports that Other Voices is no more.
• Rick Kleffel podcasts Susanna Moore.
• If you’re a regular of Charlie Anders’ excellent Writers with Drinks series, Charlie is looking for feedback on rethinking it.
• I somehow missed this, but Across the East River Ed has reviewed On Chesil Beach.
• The Shining cuckoo clock. (via Quiddity)
• Josh Glenn points to the Critical Compendium as a good source to track reviews.
• There’s now a new reading stunt afoot: The Book Awards Reading Challenge. (via A Life in Books)
• Mr. Teachout, please see Raging Bull immediately. For the record and perhaps rather frighteningly, I’ve seen all but four films on the list. I feel particularly embarrassed for not having seen Murnau’s Sunrise.
• Andrew Wheeler offers an early look at the new Tom Perrotta novel.
• Also from Wheeler, who got it from Max: a PDF of Murakami’s 1973 novel, Pinball.
• Clive James: “My feeling that I would have been a happier man if I had been a painter and indeed a happier man if I had been a gravedigger.” Give James points for honesty, but run the other way when he approaches you with a shove for “yard work.”
• Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights has been named the best children’s book of the past 70 years.
• Rent Girl is heading to Showtime.
• Kate Christensen talks about MFK Fisher on NPR. (via Bibliophile Bullpen)
• Andrew O’Hagan gets the Leonard Lopate treatment. (via Bookslut)
• Sarah Bradford reviewed Tina Brown’s book for the Spectator. The Spectator refused to print it, without citing a specific reason. The Guardian has run the review. I didn’t find Bradford’s review to be overly pugnacious. Is the Spectator pulling its punches? I am trying to track down the current literary editor for the Spectator, but alas, the Spectator website doesn’t load for me. I would be grateful if someone could pass along this information to me. I wish to know why the Spectator would rather run puff pieces rather than honest reviews. (Of course, if the literary editor wishes to address these questions to the public, my comments remain open.)
• Malcolm Lowry reconsidered. (via Bookninja)
• Pearl S. Buck’s lost manuscript of The Good Earth has been found! (via Bookshelves of Doom)
• Matt Cheney on “the literary establishment.”

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• Is Michael Chabon the first author to credit his writing software in the acknowledgments section? I’d like to thank WordPress and Firefox for permitting me to write this sentence. I’m absolutely positive that there was no other way I could have blogged in quite the same way or quite the same circumstances, had it not been for these two stunning programs. If someone gets me drunk enough this weekend, I will be sure to tattoo that silly Firefox logo into my upper arm. After all, I pride myself on my individualism. And if you want a link to Chabon’s Google Calendar, here you go.
• What is the Nigerian literary scene like after Abiola Irele’s infamous statement?
• Dan Green examines the Small Beer anthology Interfictions.
• Rebecca Mead on Obama’s poetry.
• Is Annie Dillard done writing? (via Orthofer)