Category / Uncategorized

by Edward Champion

Keith Gessen

What to do about Keith Gessen? I have, aside from a few satirical posts referencing ancillary parties, remained silent about the man. There were a few desperate propositions from others to interview him for The Bat Segundo Show: one from an n+1 intern and one from a publicist. Lots of flattery directed my way. But I politely declined. I felt that interviewing Gessen, who seems to prize himself above all else, would position me within that undistinguished maw of gossip, and I have tried to avoid these atavistic incisors whenever possible.

This afternoon, I stumbled onto a post at Young Manhattanite and left a comment, suggesting that Keith Gessen, however loathsome his actions, was not a guy to get in a tizzy over. That he was someone who would eventually go away. Then I left the apartment, walked around, and got lost for several hours in a very interesting book about fish. All this was before I was aware of this Gawker post or Keith Gessen’s troubling Tumblr blog, which I first thought was satirical, but now realize is a staggering cry for help. And I now know that my instincts were sound all along.

Keith Gessen is a very troubled man going through a very public breakup. But he’s also a man who desperately wants to matter. And in wanting to matter, he now occupies a Donnean islet, obsessing over what others write about him on the Internet, reproducing the emails, basking in them like a masochist. Whatever your feelings about Gessen, this is a sad and terrible and unhealthy impulse. And I want to urge Gessen to leave his apartment, walk around, and get lost for several hours in a very interesting book about fish. Or at the very least not give a shit. I can’t imagine what Paul Slovak’s thinking right now. That is, if Slovak’s thinking about one of his authors past the six-week publicity window.

I’m Gessen’s age. And there was a time in my mid-twenties when I felt similar to the way Gessen now feels. Many young men go through this. It’s not unusual.

But there comes a time in a man’s life, roughly around the age of thirty, in which he must make an important decision about how he accepts himself, remaining as humble as possible so that he can embrace others and enjoy the wonders and follies of life. If he does not, his next few years will be very difficult for him.

I suspect Gessen has not had that moment. And it is for this reason that I urge all parties to not comment upon or regard the man. This is something that Keith Gessen has to do on his own. Blogging won’t help you and it won’t help him.

by Edward Champion

The Real Enemy Mine vs. The Reel Enemy Mine

My review of The Reel Stuff, an anthology of horror and speculative tales turned into Hollywood films edited by Brian Thomsen and Martin H. Greenberg, appears in today’s Los Angeles Times. In addition to the reading (in most cases, rereading) I had to do for the review, I watched many films: hence, the crazed kudos for Candyman posted at some ungodly hour not long ago.

Johnny Mnemonic had the consolation of some unintentionally hilarious moments and Screamers was a hoot, complete with a distinguished Canadian actor licking a knife and scowling, “It’s never sharp enough.”

But the worst film of the bunch was Enemy Mine. I hadn’t seen the film in almost two decades, but time had not been kind. Its failure, however, had less to do with its sweeping production value (even with the visible matte lines) and more to do with its almost total bastardization of Barry Longyear’s Hugo and Award-winning novella. Aside from changing the book’s ending to include a literal mine (did they really think the audiences were that dumb?), screenwriter Edward Khmara and director Wolfgang Petersen placed less emphasis on Davidge’s unexpected role as surrogate father, introduced over-the-top meteor showers, and otherwise muted the novella’s themes of war and camaraderie. There is even a terrible moment in which Pepsi product placement gets Dennis Quaid excited.

Longyear’s novella was collected in a handsome book put out by White Wolf called The Enemy Papers, which also featured two other stories, “The Last Enemy” and “The Tomorrow Testament,” set in the same universe. But this went out of print. Thankfully, the book is also available through Back in Print. Longyear also has a website and an interesting history.

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • Like, oh my God! What the hell is going on? Chuck Palahniuk is writing books and I like totally can’t understand him! I mean, like, why is this Palahniuk guy writing about porn? Don’t you like automatically get VD if you have sex with more than one person at a time? Is there a position other than missionary? In Evanston, you get arrested if you even think of downloading porn. Or so my good mama told me. And she was always right! But thankfully I can take my decency to the NYTBR, a respectable publication terrified of printing the word “bulls__t.” God bless America! (via Syntax of Things)
  • John Updike lectures: what’s so American about American art? But the real curious thing about this speech is whether Updike dared to read out his footnotes in front of a crowd.
  • Publishers are often demanding their top-sellers to pump out a book a year, and the article has a quote from hack novelist Robert B. Parker that is truer than he realizes. (via Sarah)
  • There are some days in which you want to kick a spoiled fanboy in the teeth for his unwillingness to try out anything that even remotely strays from the beloved canon. And then there are other days when you just laugh your ass off over how petty they are.
  • The International Society for Humor Studies is the place where those who have not laughed in over a decade arrive when their services as human beings are no longer required. The rest of us go to an IHOP and cry when the blueberry syrup runs out. (via Bryan Appleyard)
  • Michael McClure on why we still need the spirit of the sixties. (via Booksurfer)
  • Amazon UK and Hachette Livre UK are duking it out over who gets the greater spoils. Amazon’s response? “As a company we do not comment on our relationships with publishers.” As concerned citizens, we do not comment on our relationships with avaricious asshats. (via Booksquare)
  • Colleen Mondor has quite rightfully taken an advertising blog tour concept to task. I had similar thoughts in 2005 when Kevin Smokler did something similar with his Virtual Book Tours. (Smokler, it should be pointed out, has abandoned this idea for this sounder idea that benefits everybody.)
  • The Internet is killing off porn theaters in Bogotá.
  • And if you need an audio alternative to yet another dismal and soporific installment of the Slate Audio Book Club — where you can hear Troy Patterson, who sounds as if he’s smoked a good deal of skank weed, flex his purported but nonexistent acumen with a CliffsNotes summary of Anna Karenina (I managed to get to the 4:22 mark before Alt-F4ing) (and fuck me, this is a longass sentence with too many asides) — this CBC podcast has Canadians getting into a tizzy (one getting a stomach ache!) over Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke.
by Edward Champion

Bolaño, Oh Bolaño!

Roberto Bolaño! If you were still alive, I would perform fellatio upon your great member, bobbing up and down without break until I had attained the great literary spiritual condition known as chronic lockjaw. Do not fear, Great Literary Corpse of Bolaño! I do hope that you can hear me. I am not a necrophiliac, but I will still read every scrap you have ever written upon! If there is an obscure photograph of you, I will scan it and turn it into a screensaver. If there is an audio file of you flatulating into the great Chilean winds, I will link to it and declare it A Fart of Significance! For it came from your Great Literary Backside! If there is a 3,000 page first draft of a novel that you have written, I will read it and annotate it and do nothing else! I will sell all of my stocks and buy NOTHING BUT YOUR BOOKS! For you are Bolaño! And I am a mere literary peon! I cannot even think about your work without salivating or pissing my pants! You are Bolaño! A genius! Incapable of fault! To declare you a Great God is enough! With these hollow plaudits, I offer Significant Thoughts About Your Work that will be declared Significant because they evoke your Great Name!

I will name my first son Roberto and my second son Bolaño. I will name my next dog Tinajero. If he barks in objection, I will shoot him in the head and obtain another dog and name him Tinajero. And if the second dog objects, I will continue to shoot these dogs in the head over and over until I have found a mutt who answers to the great poet’s name! I will eat lima beans even though I know them to be unappetizing. For how else can I summon Ulises’s spirit than to invoke his name? How else might I find Tinajero?

I will have sex with any woman who will declare herself both a Bolaño lover and a Visceral Realist. I will obtain the clap because I know what it means to be both visceral and real. I will get into brawls with any literary acolyte who does not worship at your altar, who does not look to poetry as the solitary salvation of humankind, and I will be your pimp. I will start a cult and collect money for the Bolaño Foundation! The followers will then start harassing anyone who does not worship at your altar. We have learned lessons from Allende.

If others claim that my life is worthless, that I smoke too many bowls, that I do not write or take responsibility for my actions, then I will not listen. For your wisdom is final. I will wallpaper my room with your image. For you are Bolaño! And my collected output is worth worse than One Mighty Page of your oeuvre.