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Roundup
- The publishing offices are closed. Many now salivate for fireworks, barbeque, and more intriguing acts of lunacy that serve as an excuse to celebrate the 232nd occasion of this nation’s existence. What then does another roundup bring to all this putative jingoism? Perhaps not much. Which is just as well. Perhaps I shall expatiate further into where my own doubts cross into solemn Americana on Friday. But for now, I collect links and annotate.
- Morgan Freeman will, at long last, play Nelson Mandela. So the headline says. This is all fine and dandy, but I’m a bit alarmed. Are we to infer that USA Today believes that Freeman can play no other part? Freeman is an actor — at times, a very good one. But it seems to me that a very good actor should avoid typecasting whenever possible. Freeman is more than Mandela. He can play a good deal more than an elder statesman. So aside from the years of studying here, why then should we expect him to “finally take” this role? Because he’s 71? Because he comes across as authoritative? Will Samuel L. Jackson face similar problems in twenty years?
- Dirk Gently is set to crossover into the Hitchhikers universe. Shall we expect the worst? I mean, the guy who’s whipping this up is using the whole “It came from Douglas Adams’s notes” excuse. And The Salmon of Doubt was hardly the great book we expected, despite coming from Douglas Adams’s hard drive. Is Douglas Adams the new V.C. Andrews? Can we expect more books and adaptations and liberties with the man’s name attached? Only time and the estate’s need for money will tell.
- For those interested in the long tail’s effect on the book industry (there are still people who swallow this?), the Harvard Business Review has a longass article that challenges Chris Anderson’s theory. By the way, Chris, I’ve got your long tail here. It’s called long-term poverty. (via Richard Nash)
- So where do you find John Banville interviews these days? Could it be Mark’s?
- A lengthy review of How Fiction Works. (via ReadySteadyBook)
- How ignorant is the average American voter? (via Pages Turned)
- Some French historians are now claiming that King Arthur was propaganda. They have also lodged complaints against the Round Table, finding it an implausible invention because its elliptical design is unsuitable for adulterous affairs. I suppose they have a point. After all, a good rectangular table is more practical when bending another person over.
- Benjamin Lytal revisits Revolutionary Road, which Callie is understandably ruined by.
- How Hunter S. Thompson beat his writer’s block. Or did he? Is talking really writing? And is the editor not so much editing as he is enabling? (via Enter the Octopus)
- Lost now has a book club. The hope here is that all the folks committing their energies in message forums over what the show actually means (here’s a hint: they’re making this shit up as they go along) will translate into similar theorizing about books. (via The Literary Saloon)
- And is it just me, or do I get the sense that Kidz In the Hall’s pretensions will sound laughably dated in ten years? I’m telling you, The In Crowd is about as tough as a puppy running up to you in the hood and licking your hand. This is hip-hop for cowards and poseurs.
Roundup
- I read Sam Tanenhaus’s atrocious article and withheld comment. Conveniently elided it from my memory. It was not the work of a passionate reader. It was the work of a man who believes he has something to say about literature, but who must bang out a piece in five hours while overseeing two sections of a newspaper to prove that he is a “writer” by way of being published in the New York Times. But Jeff is right to call bullshit on this piece. Because Jujitsu for Christ blows A Streetcar Named Desire out of the water with its indelible description of summer heat. (And let’s face the facts. The weather was only a tertiary component to the more explicit issues of lust and frigidity running rampant throughout the play. Then again, as fucked up visceral playwrights go, I’ll take Edward Albee over Williams any day. So perhaps some tendentious sensibilities may be impairing my take here.)
- Clay Felker has died.
- “Literary agent” Barbara Bauer, Ph.D. has had enough. She’s now suing 19 bloggers and websites, including Wikipedia and the SFWA site, for writing critical things about her, which she seems to have misconstrued as defamation. And yet Bauer and her attorney couldn’t be bothered to talk to the New Jersey Star-Ledger. And why sue when you can revert changes or initiate a self-serving edit war? Seems cheaper if you ask me. But then I’m not the one with the Ph.D. Assuming, of course, that Bauer actually has a Ph.D. Her official site is strangely mum about which university actually accredited the doctorate to her. In the meantime, plunge into the experiences others have had with Bauer. That is, if you don’t get a crazy email asking for $1 billion because you used of her name. Incidentally, a search at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office turns up no record for “Barbara Bauer.” As such, Bauer is a person whose actions are open to fair criticism. And if she is indeed charging “processing fees” for reading the work of her “clients,” which is behavior that is commonly associated with the actions of a scam agent, then she is most certainly an agent you should not be dealing with. (via Pinky’s Paperhaus) [UPDATE: The judge has dismissed the Wikimedia portion of Bauer’s lawsuit.]
- “You can’t be a decent martyr on an empty stomach.” These are certainly words to live by. And I intend to offer this maxim to the next suicide bomber I meet in a bar. (via Occasional Superheroine)
- Is a war with Iran going to happen?
- Stephen Burt offers a lengthy but critical essay on Philip K. Dick, suggesting that the Library of America should trot out James Tiptree, Jr. as well. Which, come to think of it, isn’t a bad idea.
- Congratulations to groom-to-be Levi Asher!
- By the way, does anyone know why old Newsweek articles from decades ago are now coming up as recent items in Google News? Is Newsweek trying to stack the deck and is Google on the case?
- The Guardian attempts to track the sources of literary works used for spam email, but ignores the copious Lovecraft that seems to be hitting my junk mail.
- And I agree with Jeff VanderMeer’s assessment on John Twelve Hawks.
Roundup
- It appears that NPR plans to expand book coverage on its website, largely because “books are among the top three topics attracting traffic to the NPR site.” I can only ponder what the other two topics might be, but I’m guessing that it’s neither gerontophilia nor Half-Life mods. Nevertheless, this does demonstrate that the current demise of books coverage may be greatly exaggerated. If newspapers and other publications wish to carry on as if books don’t matter, and if they wish to live in a future in which they choose not to associate themselves with books, whether it be the coverage or the brand, then people will go elsewhere. To places more reasonably associated with books. So the question that any publication should be asking right now is whether it wants to lose such a prized audience. (NPR, incidentally, is ranked 1,633 on Alexa. So this ain’t exactly a small potatoes question.)
- The rather appropriately named Perry Falwell was accosted by a woman who insisted that he purchase a bundle of books from her deceased husband. He discovered a kinky alternative usage for these tomes. It remains unknown whether the woman in question has been informed of her husband’s sordid secret or if she may have been one of the subjects photographed for these clandestine purposes from beyond the grave. But I’m thinking that she did know what was going on and was only being friendly. We should all be asked every so often if we must really love to read. By the same standard, those at a sex party should probably be asked every so often if they must really love to fuck, so that they might be afforded new literary entry points. (via Bibliophile Bulletin)
- Meanwhile in a London high court, freelance journalist Shiv Malik is being asked to hand over source material and pay legal costs for a book on terrorism. The source material in question was limited to a specific terror suspect only after he fought an overbroad judicial order at the cost of £100,000. What’s striking is that the judges criticized Malik, pointing out that the journalist had “achieved very little from these proceedings.” If by “very little,” the justice is referring to tiny sliver of UK journalistic freedom that now costs a comfortable annual salary to fight, then I suppose he’s right. But I doubt that Josh Wolf and Vanessa Leggett going to jail for similar purposes here in the States amounted to “very little” for them personally. “Very little” is also one of those handy modifiers one can just as readily apply to the probity of such unwavering authoritarianism.
- Character actor Don S. Davis, a man who was born to play authority figures and who I’ll always remember as Major Garland Briggs, has died.
- Ruth Wajnryb kickstarts a linguistic meditation from a sentence taken from an email. Me? So long as the article’s typo stands, I’m now contemplating just what “a friend of mind” is. Does the cerebral attachment to “friend” suggest that one is not permitted to feel when communicating? That there should be some separation between conceptual riffing and giddy exuberance? Did Ms. Wajnyrb type “mind” instead of “mine” deliberately? Is this an Australian thing? And why didn’t she opt for “my friend” in that lede? If she truly meant to pin down a cerebral friend, should it not have been “a friend in mind?” Or is this a reference to Toni Morrison? Sixo loving the Thirty-Mile Woman? Could it be that my problem with this phrase has something to do with my feelings for Morrison? Or perhaps my hesitancy here comes from my objection to the societal expectation that we must separate thoughts and feelings, choosing one or the other. Particularly when we’re writing letters. But if T.S. Eliot objected to this dichotomy, then I feel sufficiently justified in lodging my own complaint (even if I don’t possess even a tenth of Eliot’s poetic knack and acumen) and I would encourage others to do the same. There are some days in which I am careful with my words, and other circumstances in which I am overtaken by a wonderful emotional torrent! To acede to one or the other (and it’s often wholly the mental) seems a rather humdrum and uninteresting life to me, but the choice seems to suit many people and ensures that a swimming pool can be constructed in the backyard or the last ten payments on the luxury car will go through. But for me, it’s resulted in a few awkward social encounters in which I feel compelled to suggest that there is an inverted, if not anarchically fused, way of living.
- And this is most certainly the way to respond to a rejection slip.
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