Jeeves is officially being retired from Ask Jeeves, presumably because paying out a licensing fee to the estate of P.G. Wodehouse was too much of a prohibitive cost. The new site is utterly bland without the literary butler.
Betsy Retallack has found an unusual poetic inspiration: her husband’s obsession with junky cars. The success of her first poetry collection has inspired a second book, Whither the Axle My Sweet Love Gutted for Me from the Yard?
Robert “Prolfiic Is My Temperament, Prolific Is My Interviewing” Birnbaum talks with Andrew Delbanco.
Well, I guess Jessa Crispin hates such “desperate” works as James Joyce’s Ulysses, e.e. cummings’ No Thanks, Lord Byron’s early poems, Willa Cather’s One of Ours, Waltman’s Leaves of Grass, Thoreau’s Walden, Virginia Woolf’s early novels, and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style (which was initially self-published).
Haven’t forgotten about the Black Swan Green discussion with Megan. It’s coming. The ball’s in my court. But there are many things currently going on. Hopefully, we’ll get up the copious correspondence next week.
I have a little under ten books to log for the 75 Book Challenge, including my long and long-delayed thoughts on Perlman’s Seven Types of Ambiguity. Again, spare moments, hopefully soon.
Segundo: Three podcasts to finalize, some very special authors (including one HUGE surprise!) coming in the upcoming weeks, including Jonathan Ames, who also got a chance to talk with Pinky’s Paperhaus when rolling through Los Angeles.
Michael Crichton: global warming expert for the Bush administration? If so, it’s good to see our government consulting novelists to determine public policy. Personally, I’m hoping Bush can meet with Erica Jong, so that our sheltered manboy president might become acquainted with the “zipless fuck.”
A good friend and I have been discussing the forthcoming release of Basic Instinct 2. Between the constant references to the first film (“Ever fucked on cocaine, Ed?” reads one email subject line; “You wanna play? Come on!” reads mine in return), we’re wondering two things: (1) Will this film help to make older women sexier? (If so, huzzah!) (2) Isn’t this film a few years too late (like, say, a decade) to be riding on the coattails of the first film? Well, it appears that even the film’s advertisers don’t know how to market the film properly. Come on, Columbia. Surely you can be more explicit about why people are planning to see this film.
If you’re a writer, Zoetrope Virtual Studio sounds like a bad cross between fan fiction and American Idol. Apparently, one is not permitted to be “mean” (read: offering honest, ball-busting advice which might actually help a writer to advance in his craft) to other writers. If you want to be a serious writer, why bother with this nonsense? If you need that kind of affirmation, enter a county fair or join a twelve-step support group instead.
Jeff has the goods on a Hold Steady show. Unfortunately, the Hold Steady (a band highly endorsed by Return of the Reluctant!) didn’t make their way through San Francisco. But word on the street is that one Tito Perez somehow managed to see them.
Ed Falco himself is on deck today at the LBC. Do be sure to ask him questions.
Just when you thought Leo “When I Need You” Sayer had served his purpose and disappeared from the face of the earth (well, only to torture you over the speakers during a late-night Denny’s meal), the 70s pop song falsetto now fancies himself a novelist. The protagonist? A musician, of course. “[A]ll the people I would have loved to have been.”
There isn’t much money in interviewing writers on the radio. What’s even more revealing in the article is that Christian radio actually discourages smart literary programs like Conversations on the Coast.