• LBC members Dan Green and Scott Esposito* on “style vs. substance.”
• There’s hope yet for writers over forty. John Freeman (NOT an LBC member) believes the 40 year old Mark Z. Danielewski to be a “nice young man.”
• Greil Marcus on Twin Peaks (via the Rake, who, as it so happens, is an LBC member)
• LBC member Jessica Stockton has, perhaps, committed a solecism by publishing “Confessions of a Former Genre Slob.” This author is not, repeat NOT, an LBC member. And we will be having all sorts of serious discussions inside the LBC to decide the appropriate method to slap Ms. Stockton on the wrist.
• Jeff VanderMeer (NOT an LBC member! Shock! Horror! A kitten has died!) is editing a pirate anthology.
• Mark Thwaite is not an LBC member either, but he’s had the temerity to interview Hilary Spurling. Who does he think he is? A professional?
• And speaking of diabolical amateurism, Phil Campbell has talked with Lorin Stein. Neither of these two men are LBC members. And it has caused me considerable pain and grief to link to that post. If I were President of the LBC, I am certain that the members would be coming at me with pitchforks. I’m sorry. I’m seeing my therapist on Sunday.
• There was a time when Bud Parr was an LBC member. But he is no longer with the LBC. So it’s a bit dodgy for me to link to his post on amateur book reviewing.
• I just got a call from LBC founding member Mark Sarvas. He’s telling me never to link to anyone or anything outside of the LBC again. He insists that we need to be as incestuous as the Hapsburgs and that I may “face severe consequences.” But how can I blog, Mark, when there are so many interesting viewpoints that are both inside and outside the LBC? Oh well. I’m sure things we’ll sort themselves out.

* — If John Freeman intends to promote the NBCC on the Critical Mass blog, then I suppose it’s only fair that I, likewise, promote the LBC.

• Three hours (I think) of sleep, lots on the plate, but I can tell you this much: Bill, the producer I hired six months ago to help me with The Bat Segundo Show, recruited the Three Cheap Tenors for a return appearance. Bill tells me that the tenors sang about the fruit basket sent to Lev Grossman. But I suppose you’ll know for sure once the show goes up in the next day or two.
• Big Bad Blog comes out in favor of the passive voice. Because passive voice is often used to great effect by writers. I couldn’t imagine sentences more stunningly utilized by people. People regularly stun us when they save their verbs for the end. These sentences, which are often exciting (instead of being mere “exciting sentences”), are fantastic for essays being padded out, often written by desperate undergraduates. So thank you, Big Bad Blog, for bringing this point, which is quite salient, home. The cocktails are being prepared and imbibed. The pinatas are being smashed by children. There is a sense of excitement, which is currently being experienced, as I write these words. The revolution has, and shall be, long lived.
• Still don’t believe passive voice is the bomb, baby? Well, you haven’t experienced Bob Hoover’s scintillating prose.
• 3-D TV? In the works. And you won’t need glasses. The more important question: will the inevitable development of 3-D porn, perhaps watched by octogenarians while testing Viagra, cause a rash of cardiac arrests?
• Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper too? Maybe. After you pass the sodium chloride. (via Sarah)
• John Freeman asks, “How can the print and online worlds work together to broaden the scope of titles talked about in the media, and what’s worth reading today?” (Emphasis added.) You can talk the talk, Mr. Freeman, but can you walk the walk?
• Perhaps one might find answers to Freeman’s Theorem (likely lesser than Fermat’s) at the Housing Works on September 27 at 7:00 PM. Maud Newton, Lizzie Skurnick, Newsday‘s Laurie Muchnick and the Philly Inquirer‘s Frank Wilson will be on tap to answer the questions that Freeman prefers to run away from.
• It’s been linked a number of places, but it’s still an astonishing statistic: 98-99% of books are out-of-print. But on the bright side, if we apply Sturgeon’s Law, only about 10% of books are worth reading.
• TimesSelect: nearly 200,000 schmucks subscribers.
• I had no idea Best of the Fest was still around.
• Max fleshes out this year’s MacArthurs. No word yet on whether any of them are good in bed.
• Carolyn Kellog has eighteen months less to live. The story’s attracted so much interest that Lifetime Television has commissioned a TV movie starring Lori Petty as a friendly, crimson-haired Angeleno who moves to Pittsburgh, only to discover that a man named Bob Hoover (played by Don Rickles) is stealing her life away, a few days at a time. The film will feature tearjerking speeches, a beautiful score by John Tesh, and Susannah York in a supporting role as the neighbor who urges Carolyn to fight back.
• Jason Boog has the scoop on a $100,000 cash exchange hooking up old media with new media.
• I’ve long harbored a strange faith in the U.S. Postal Service, even when they screw up my mail or scowl at me when I retrieve my packages. But Tayari has the smoking gun for why you should believe.
• The history of the yellow legal pad. Unfortunately, this story hasn’t been optioned by Lifetime Television.
• Lee Goldberg writes fan fiction!
• Jerome Weeks’ farewell column: “And, of course, there’s the pleasure of irking some people, notably bloggers. Mustn’t forget that.” What was that line about “working together,” Mr. Freeman? I didn’t get that.
• And, finally, Megan Lindholm on how she became a famous writer. Yes, it can be done without sleeping your way to the top. (via Miss Snark)

• The Man Booker folks have set up a blog. Some preliminary thoughts on the nominees: “SARAH WATERZ ROCKZ!” and “YO! MOTHER’S mILK. pwned. lol!”
• Book World discovers Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend for the first time and takes umbrage with the protagonist’s growing paranoia and savagery. I don’t think Matheson intended Neville to be a beacon of sanity. The great thing about apocalyptic stories is that it permits the author to explore how fundamentally warped the human race is. And I’m sure if a league of vampires continuously screamed, “Come out, Champion!” without letup, I’m sure that, no matter how I think I’d react, I might end up a lot worse than Neville.
• Is Barbara Walters so insane after all? (via Bookninja)
• Why? (via The Millions)
• Ronald D. Moore on Star Trek‘s 40th anniversary. (via Locus)
• The Telegraph appears to have confused its book section with a gossip column.
• Is Karl Rove the Machiavellian genius everyone’s made him out to be? Or not?
• Clive Owen supports Daniel Craig as Bond. I only wish that he could have endorsed himself in the role before they cast Craig.
• President Bush promoting global literacy? Huh? His own words: “One way to defeat hopelessness is through literacy.” Remember that as you contemplate who sits in the White House for the next two years.
• Move over Bulwer-Lytton. Is Amanda McKittrick Ros the world’s worst writer? More here.
• James T. Kirk: literary inspiration?
• Why the rich go broke.
• Journalism is becoming increasingly female-centric.

• Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, the only screenplay Coppola wrote that wasn’t an adaptation, is one of the finest films to come out of the 1970s (better, I would argue, than the first two Godfather movies). But does the film’s taut narrative structure and grand ethical questions make for meaningful television? How many variations of “He’d kill us if he had the chance” can be said over the course of 22 episodes before the mystery unravels? (via Lee Goldberg)
• Is a bestseller guided by a hook? The Publishing Contrarian opines that Kim Edwards’ The Memory Keeper’s Daughter would have sold like parkas in Juneau regardless of its literary value.
• If it’s any consolation, I don’t get it either.
• Thomas Quinn on the Rebus books and Rebus’s possible death. There’s a big ballyhoo over how a guy like Ian Rankin could possibly be thinking about killing his bread and butter off. But I suspect that it’s easier for Rankin to effect than most people think. Perhaps Rankin is tired of writing in Rebus’s metier or would rather annihilate his hero after having said everything he’s needed to say through him. I suspect, however, that Rankin’s Quandary will turn out similarly to what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle went through. (via Jenny D)
• Scott takes umbrage with John Freeman’s review of Only Revolutions. While I quibble over Scott’s claim that House of Leaves lacks literary experimentalism (it was a thunderbolt, sir!), he does have a good point about the long legacy of experimental novelists who have been long ignored by newspaper critics.
• C. Max Magee reproduces a dispatch from the Brooklyn Book Festival.
• “Who knew Joyce Carol Oates would be so funny?” That’s the lede by a bemused staff writer for The Beacon News, who apparently isn’t aware of Oates’ long history of dark comedies and mysteries. It’s understandable. These are often occluded by her literary reputation. Even so, I’m getting really tired of the generalization that anyone who is considered “literary” is incapable of being funny. One of the great joys in talking with John Updike was being able to reveal that, contrary to the way people reacted to his BEA fulminations, the guy was a jester. For those who insist that Oates is “too serious” because she turns out too many books or Updike is “stiff” because he expresses his concerns about digital books, I wonder how you can seriously suggest that authors who regularly delight us with their sentences and who express their great powers of invention are without a sense of humor. Aside from the notion that anyone who associates as adeptly as Oates and Updike has to be concocting some pretty amusing shit in a drafting phase, it also takes a certain off-kilter person to become a writer. It takes an even more idiosyncratic person to stick with it and become successful, whether through sales or reputation. Anyone contending with multiple paychecks of varying dollar amount arriving in their mailbox at strange intervals has to have a sense of humor about it, if they want to stay sane and keep pushing forward.
• Perhaps in response to Sara Gran’s Brooklyn article, the Associated Press makes the case for upstate New York. My own essay on the overlooked literary Meccas of Bakersfield and Peoria will be appearing in this week’s PennySaver.
• The Scotsman: “I had high hopes for the two titles under consideration here, by novelists Ali Smith and Nick Hornby. Suffice to say that one is going on the shelf, and one is going to a charity shop.”
• Derik observes that a new serial authored by Seth can be found in the New York Times.
• Slushpile talks with T.R. Pearson.
• The Seattle Post-Intelligencer talks with James Ellroy: “My tape recorder is useless because he punctuates his sentences with the ‘F’ word like other people use commas and periods.”
• Sarvas at the West Hollywood Book Fair.
• A conversation with Stephin Merritt and Lemony Snickett.
• Arthur Salm examines a slate of recent memoirs.
• Jeff Bryant enters the track-by-track description game with Tindersticks II. Rumor has it that Mr. Perez, the originator of this trend, will turn out another one.
• If you’re an indie bookseller complaining about your financial woes, look at it this way: you could be hawking books in Baghdad.
• Etymologic: The Toughest Word Game on the Web. (via Books, Words & Writing)
• William Gibson predicted lonelygirl15.
• Scott Westerfield on how he names his characters.
• And, more later, kids. FYI: It’s a week crazier than a group of penguins trying to hold a cocktail party on a melting icecap. So if it’s a little light than the norm, my apologies.