Category / Roundup

by DrMabuse

Bright Lights, Big Menu

I was going to pull some second-person take on Jay McInerney as New York Times restaurant critic. But, dammit, Liz Spiers beat me to it.

Kate DiCamillo has won the Newberry this year for The Tale of Despereaux. The book concerns a mouse who falls in love with a princess, which is a story that (in all seriousness) I’m likely to get behind. In her early days, DiCamillo collected more than 470 rejection letters, which shows not only that persistence pays off, but that it probably kills a lot of trees in the process.

Monotori Kishi’s Misshitsu, a comic book depicting gonads and, well, a lot of sex, has been ruled obscene in Japan. The obscenity precedent was laid down in 1957 with a Japanese translation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Meanwhile, here at home, the Supreme Court has said no to an appeal in the Tony Twist/McFarlane battle.

Marginalia and Other Crimes shows library book damages in all their sad glory. (via Maud, who’s now back from her trip in Florida).

And, damn, Spalding Gray is missing. (via Bookslut)

by DrMabuse

Quick Quickies

Since it is book-related, Paul O’Neill fesses up that the Iraq plan was in place well before 9/11. The first major blow from an insider.

Updike’s first short story: “The moment his car touched the boulevard heading home, Ace flicked on the radio.”

Anybody have any clues on the Key West Literary Seminar fracas? Moorish Girl (and all of us) wants to know.

Six Bay Area ladies talk mystery writing.

A big Blair-like blowup at USA Today. Jack Kelley has resigned.

The Times gives a lot of space to the image.

And an engineer attempts to deconstruct postmodern literary criticism.

by DrMabuse

Back from My Hiatus

Liz Spiers has excerpts from the new Peter Biskind book, Down and Dirty Pictures. From what I can tell, Ben Affleck tried to give Harvey Weinstein a fruit basket, with unfortunate results (“Apples! That’s bad taste. Do you know who I am? I don’t eat fucking apples. Who is this guy? I’m going to go outside and kick your fucking ass. You take your apple bitch home and fuckin’ kill him.”). (via Greencine Daily)

Dave Pelzer is now trying out the “regular guy” angle. But how regular can a guy be when he’s made as much money as Pelzer has? Pelzer’s quoted, “Everybody thinks, ‘Oooo, Dave Pelzer. Oooo, Dave Pelzer.’ That’s why I just say, ‘Just shut up and sit down.’ I’m just a regular guy trying to keep my family together. I’m just the village idiot that wrote a book.” Five now, actually, with the just-releaed Privilege of Youth. If Pelzer’s such a regular guy, if he truly is a self-proclaimed village idiot, then why do people keep buying his books? And why does he keep landing those lucrative lecturing gigs? Hey, Dave, I’ve got your “regular guy” right here. It’s called unshaven, unpublished dude, maybe collecting unemployment, having a Top Ramen fiesta.

Speaking of regular guys, the Globe has an obituary up for Samuel Albert. Albert was an insurance executive who worked long hours and raised five kids, squeezing in a poem when he could find the time.

Need an angle to pitch your project? Try the grey market. The Financial Times writes, “Eighty per cent of the country’s wealth is controlled by the over-50s but 95 per cent of adspend targets people under-50; 86 per cent of over-50s say they don’t relate to most current advertising yet, for example, 66 per cent of new cars are bought by people over-45. The over-50s in employment outspend their under-50 counterparts by 20 per cent. And over the next 20 years the over-50s market in the UK will grow by 30 per cent, while the under-50s market will shrink by 5 per cent.”

The possibilities here are limitless. We’re talking a Steely Dan reunion, a fiction market saturated by endless Anne Tyler-like variations on suburban white males descending into mid-life crisis action when their $200 fillet mignon arrives slightly undercooked, and more sex and nudity involving older people (Diane Keaton’s flash was just the tip of the iceberg). So go at it, brave new marketers! You’ve spent a small lifetime getting hep to the demands of a coddled generation just out of high school. But do you have what it takes to get acquainted with the likes of “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number?”

The funny thing is that thirty years from now, people will be demanding a reunion of OutKast.

by DrMabuse

I Love You Too, Irvine (Sort Of)

To his supreme credit, Alexander McCall Smith claims that his remarks about Irvine Welsh have been “misinterpreted.” Welsh’s status has been downgraded to “a partially indecent hooligan whom I’ll never buy a drink for.”

A new Michigan law requires publications that depict “explicit content” to be covered up. Booksellers and reading groups are furious. And they’ve filed a lawsuit. In the meantime, they may want to consider covering up Ann Coulter’s books. Pretty explicit stuff, given that she’s advocated blowing up the New York Times building, as well as suggesting, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” (via Sarah)

Catherine Kennan has a very juicy piece on highbrow personals. It doesn’t get any closer to understanding the phenomenon (who can?), but it does feature a very amusing exchange between Kennan and one of the guys behind a personal ad. And it’s impossible to resist this ad: “Find the 10th coefficient in the expansion of the binomial (1+x) to the 20th power. Then love me some more. Mathematical Ms, Cambridge.” (via Chica)

The latest culprit behind declining book sales? USA Today suggests it’s the DVD.

Sarah Waters has turned down a Who’s Who entry because she’s not sure how relevant the directory is to today’s world.

Columbia Journalism Review has a piece on former New Republic editor Gregg Easterbrook. It’s another guy fired because of blog story, but the cause here is far more nefarious (and strangely immediate).

And more on Norr from the Daily Planet. Efforts to track down settlement terms are nice from an outside source, but there are few conditional questions revealed.

by DrMabuse

Shorties

And the Whitbread goes to Mark Haddon’s The Very, Very Curious Incident of the Dog Who Was Let Out by the Baja Men in the Morning, Afternoon and Night Shortly After He Was Fed His Meal, which I’ve been meaning to read. Except I can never remember the exact title.

David Mamet is insane.

I didn’t realize the Alexander McCall Smith/Irvine Welsh thing had legs, but even in Scotland, they need their “bag of bones”/”entertainment not literature” Vidal/Mailer in-fights.

Andy Hamilton won’t write for BBC1. Hamilton claims that Auntie Beeb has pressured a writer to remove lesbian characters from a script to “incorporate the conservative tastes of focus groups.”

Modern Humorist: “Where are all the R’s? Is it a typographical error? Does the writer simply not like R’s? Or are there mysterious deeds at play, and are the R’s somewhow involved?”

Birnbaum talks with Jonathan Lethem. Birnbaum even gets Lethem to fess that Laura Miller is “making a contribution to literary journalism.” Birnbaum also shoots the goofy gale with Neal Pollack. Among the revelations: “[Eggers] said he didn’t want me along because my stuff was much more confrontational and in your face and aggressive and loud and profane. He wanted to take McSweeney’s in a more respectable direction. And then one day I woke up and my link was off the site. And I wasn’t a McSweeney’s guy anymore. Overnight. My main conduit for communicating over the Internet had been removed, so I had to start my own site.”

And The Chronicle has apparently reached a settlement with Henry Norr.

[1/23/06 UPDATE: It is quite likely that the Henry Norr story will be slipped under the rug. But I think it stands as a remarkable testament as to how a journalist’s outside activities are controlled to a great extent by his employer. As the newspapers continue to cut the coverage and eventually begin to drop, I am wondering if they’ll become even more controlling. Henry Norr, happily, is still writing — largely for online outlets. He can be found contributing reports for Macintouch and is still actively filing no-bullshit Macworld reports from the front lines.]