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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Sue Grafton

Sue Grafton recently appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #320. Grafton is most recently the author of U is for Undertow.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Looking for a man named Snake to help him escape from Santa Teresa.

Author: Sue Grafton

Subjects Discussed: Kinsey Millhone’s early announcement to the readers regarding the bad guys, foreshadowing murder, not writing the same book twice, the ethics of investigation, the emotions associated with kidnapped children, Jaycee Dugard, Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan, gray areas of moral conduct, the difficulties reconciling real crime and fictional crime, the horror of people killing each other over a pair of tennis shoes, Grafton’s comfort level, working from an arsenal of journals, juggling voices and large character canvases, the writer’s fantasy of having the luxury of time, the solace of observing creative struggle in past books, being influenced by the complaints of a single reader, the motivation behind creating a mystery writer character, Howard Unruh and Grafton’s “Unruh,” why Grafton wishes to take the alphabet series to Z, Grafton’s reluctance to embrace Hollywood and Grafton’s early career as a screenwriter, Nabokov’s The Original of Laura, and Grafton’s relationship with readers and the mystery community.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Grafton: I don’t like to repel readers. I mean, we’re always dealing with homicide and violence of this sort, which is difficult enough. I don’t want to rub that in my reader’s face.

Correspondent: So it’s like, on the one hand, with this crime, you wanted to keep it off stage so that the gory details didn’t come front and center.

Grafton: Right.

Correspondent: But in other instances, like what we just talked about, you like to foreshadow and give the reader a taste of what’s going on. Do you feel these are contradictory impulses?

Grafton: I don’t know. If they are contradictory, I hope it’s an interesting contradiction. In some ways, in the reports you get about the crime itself from another child who is involved, by hook or by crook, nothing evil happens. And I hope I’ve gained a little sense. This is a story about people who make mistakes, people who use poor judgment. It is not the act of wicked evil men. These are kids who do something stupid and it backfires.

Correspondent: But in a way, at least when I was reading you, it almost struck me as being more horrible — not to get into Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil, but that’s essentially what you set up here. These people are sucked into the situation by virtue of their own stupidity. Their drug use, who they hang out with. And it almost feels — have you read A Simple Plan by Scott Smith?

Grafton: No.

Correspondent: It was made into a movie with Billy Bob Thornton and the like. But it’s a similar thing, where you start off with one guy and he does one act, and then another action. And you suddenly realize you’re drawn into a world as he’s doing really horrible things. And there’s a justification for everything. And I really did find that you did establish that there’s a weird little justification for how things developed. And even though these are horrible crimes, there’s some underlying motivation. This goes back to structure and the like. What did you know about you prior to setting it all down? And I do want to get into the writing process a bit. But what did you know first off?

Grafton: Well, part of what I feel I’m doing here is — and some of this I discover after the fact. I think of this as the anatomy of a crime. This is that strange subterranean accumulation of events that results in a crime. And I thought it was interesting to look at it from that perspective. One thing I’m fascinated by, at this pace in my career, is gray areas. Black and white and evil, while repellent, are not as representative of the public at large. Many people, I think, cross the line. That’s always a question to me. What makes people cross the line? Most people are law-abiding, good-natured, and yet circumstances. You know, I think many criminals are not evil people. They’re not pathologically twisted. Many ordinary folk somehow wander from the straight and narrow. And those kinds of deviations, and those kinds of crimes, are interesting to me. Because they’re a little closer to the norm. They are still outside what I consider acceptable behavior. But it’s not as cut and dried as many types of crime might be.

The Bat Segundo Show #320 (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

Too Much Kirsch in the Fondue

At some unspecified point in the future, words will be transmitted along these pages at the older frequency. But my services, such as they are, have been increasingly required elsewhere. For now, this space serves as a depository for podcasts, odd video clips (many of my own making), quick quips, short announcements, and the odd review or essay every now and then.

by Edward Champion

The Last Blog Post of 2009

This is the last blog post of 2009. If this post were written by another blogger, I would probably be telling you about how 2009 was the worst year in recent memory or I would probably be arguing in very persuasive language about how the noughts were the worst decade since the beginning of the Judeo-Christian calendar — a charge that I cannot guarantee for sure, since I was not alive when we started keeping tabs on the years. But I cannot do this. Because 2009 raped me. And as a rape victim, I am too ashamed to chronicle the specific details of 2009’s violent actions. This would be a classic he said/she said situation, were 2009 able to respond to my allegations. But because 2009 is not a person, and merely a year, it cannot defend itself from my rape charge.

The major ethical question here is whether I am (a) lying about 2009 raping me, (b) a bit too influenced by other excitable, finger-waving, end-of-the-year posts, essays, and articles, or (c) attempting, through some foolish and over-the-top catharsis, to find a disingenuous manner with which to accuse 2009 of rape. It may very well be a combination of two or three of these elements. Were I interested in attaching some end-of-the-year list to justify my rape allegation against the year (and the decade), you might more ably believe in my convictions.

But I prefer to operate in the present and learn from past mistakes. If 2009 did rape me, I will certainly do my best to ensure that future years will not violate me. But were any of us really violated? And why do we all insist on putting the blame on any one year? Wikipedia informs me that “projection is always seen as a defense mechanism that occurs when a person’s own unacceptable or threatening feelings are repressed and then attributed to someone else.” Is it fair to project our more difficult emotions onto a single year?

There are a few absolute projections that I can make right now. But I can say that the next post I write will be in 2010. I am not sure if 2010 will rape me. It’s just too early to tell. Now that I have begun to ruminate upon 2009, I am not sure if the year actually raped me. Yes, there was a struggle. But it’s not as if 2009 was some strange year who picked me up in a bar. We knew 2009. And it is said that most rape victims suffer not from the despicable actions of strangers, but from people they know. But 2009 is not a person. It is a year. And we have something that 2009 does not, which is the ability to exist longer than 365 days. So is all this negative self-reflection (or, this post’s reflection of other self-reflections from other blogs) the result of not being able to confront the glorious prospects of the present?

Perhaps. But irrespective of these difficult questions and inside one earnest sentence devoid of satirical intentions, I do wish everyone a very happy new year!

by Edward Champion

No

No. Not. Nipple. Noodle. No. Twat. Not. No N. No. Keep it no. One word. Did you hear me? No. No. No. No. Yes. Not exactly. No. Nugatory. Negative. Nipple. Stop. Not. No. No. No. Why no? No. No answer. No reply. No. No. No. No. No. No. Stop. Next sentence. No. No answer. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Know? No. It’s no. No. No. Recite. No. No. No. Yes. No. No. No. More nos. No. Nose. No. Nostril. No. No. No. No for no’s sake. Your orgasm’s fake. No. No. No. Bank balance? No. Tax returns? No. Republicans? No. No. No. It’s better. No. No. Beat? No. Nipple. Noodle. No. No. No. No. Pessimist? No. Nihilist? No. Any -ist? No. No. No. Noist. Gnomist. Gnome. No. Troll. No. No. No. What purpose? No. No. No. Pho. No. No. No. Should read this. Should Vado this. No. No. No. Stet. No. No. No. Tweet. Twit. Tit. No. Fuck. No. Fuck no. Fuck not. Fuck you. Fuck me. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Nip. No. No. No. No. Pull. No. No. No. No. No. Mad? No. Sad? No. Beast? No. Ugly? No. Beauty? … … … … … … … … Ellipse. Ellipse. Ellipse. Ellipse. Ellipse. Ellipse. No. No. No. Style? No. Words? No. Sentence? No. Answer? No. No. No. No. Economy? No. Sociology? No. Psychology? No. No. No. No. No sake. No. No state. No. Non. Null. Nyet. No. No. No. Same in Spanish. No. Conceptual exercise? No. Purpose? No. Corso? No. Coarse? No. Polysyllabic? No. Silly? … … … … … … … … Morse? No. Nipple. Noodle. No. Doodle. No. Poodle. No. No. No. Ellipse. Ellipse. Ellipse. No. Ellipse. No. Eclipse. No. No. No. No. No. Printable? No. Sendable? No. Flexible? No. Fungible? No. No. No. No. Repetition. No. No. Repetition. No. Ellipse. No. No. No. Not at all. No. Not at all. No. Appropriate? Yes. No. No. No. No. Pattern? Ha. No. No. No. Ha. No. No. No. Ha. Ho. Do the math. No. No. No. No. You can’t print this in a newspaper. You can’t print this in a magazine. You can’t print this in a blog. No. No. No. No. No. Does no have any meaning? No. It should. No. No. No. No. No. Context. No. No. No. Crucifix. No. No. No. No. Na. No. No. Nip. No. Tip. No. No. Sip. No. Stultify. No. Send. No. Shazam. No. Prism. No. Secret. No. CIA. FBI. DHS. No. No. No. No. Acronyms eat at the table. No. No. Experimental? Genius? No. No. Conceit? No. Purpose? No. Just imagine. No. Can’t imagine. No. Ideal no. The first no was uttered thousands of years ago. No. No. The second no was uttered shortly thereafter. No. No. No. Means nothing. No. Use it or lose it. No. No. No. Lingua franca. No. No. No. A cross-culture no. An ironic no. A surly no. A burly no. No. No. That’s what he said. No. No. State of mind. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

by Edward Champion

Untapped Currency

Headspace hijacked by entirely unanticipated events. A slight reconfiguration of the brain, a sudden impulse to stop here and start there. Whittling down distractions. The very thing keeping so many others mired in pathetic fixations and unhealthy obsessions and desperate gropes at credibility as the whole operation burns into oblivion, with the remaining gaunt wolves sniping about at the remaining scraps. One need not be a depressive to survive, although miserable people sure do love their company. They are already starting to turn on each other, and it’s sad to watch. Particularly when one isn’t involved and one is powerless to intercede. One need not surrender to fear and complacency. It is reality which one must face. Not dwelling on a job you hate. Or the constant mining of personal experience and invading other people’s existences in lieu of therapy. Or the childish failure to be yourself. Or the reliance upon a fabricated identity you can’t believe in. Or the inability to be true.

No, I’m not writing about me. I’m writing to you. Not you, that guy who has his shit together. Yeah, keep it up and give me a high five. Let me buy you a beer when I have some money and you’re next in New York. And not you, the guy who gets what’s going on here. And not you, the dude who doesn’t quite grok, but isn’t afraid to flaunt it. Process of elimination. Yeah, that pack. See them? Yeah. They’re fucking terrified. I know. Man, I wish I had a job or some happiness to give them, but you know the old proverb about horses and water.

Well, where does that leave us, kiddo? I mean, we’re all busy fighting our own wars to stay alive. But can we spare a few minutes? We may not have dimes, brother, but when they take away your job, the new commodity is time. And that’s a unit you can budget. So how bout paying some of it forward? Nothing public, mind you. Off the radar. Collective savings. An invisible Federal Reserve trading in an untapped currency.

by Edward Champion

Nitrous Oxide

Reality is a toxic oxidant that we inhale at least eight hours a day. We take in the redolent whiff of the shit-stained social contract that we never got a chance to revise or look over. Learn the language and you get lost in clauses, becoming one of the lawdogs barking a sweet song in court just after spooning oodles of corn-based sugar in a rushed breakfast of dry cereal. It is hard to dwell on this nightmare without sounding like a strident agitator. They’ve taken our passions and transmuted them into cliches. Those great quotidian moments are corrupted by the sharp clacks of harsh teeth clasping upon a small shred of meat that has to be chewed up to go around six times. The portions are wrong. The plates are big. The eyes are bigger. The stomachs grow. And any decent gesture is declared a collective and contrarian sully upon all the agents pumping savagely into the air.

Reality. Confess it and you’ll be deemed pathetic. Sing true only in code. Don’t mention the pennies you’re collecting from the insides of the couch. Don’t mention the finite nature of this sad copper supply. Bring up the Socratic method and you’ll see your queries misconstrued as endorsement. Your options are the limp pose of reason and the unsettling truth of passion, but never anything in between. The eccentric’s teeth is a bit crooked. Never mind all the good ideas she’s had. Throw her out on her ass. She’ll be homeless in six weeks. Then maybe she’ll change.

Can’t handle that? There’s plenty of fantasies and parallel universes to choose from. Take your pick. If you don’t have cash to nurse a beer in a bar or you can’t trust anybody, there’s always the men confessing their private griefs to strangers over the microphones during a first-person shooter. Be careful with what you disseminate though. It could be picked up later. They haven’t quite put a microphone on every street light. But that camera wasn’t there last year. That’s not paranoia. It’s reality. Or is that fantasy? Open your eyes long enough and you’ll believe they’ve stayed closed.

Simulacra are dangerous. But several realities run atop and intertwine with each other. There are cities within cities. People within people. Nobility within nobility. Boxes within boxes. It’s just a question of how far you want to dig, and most people are getting a bit tired with the shovel.

Effects of nitrous oxide: dizziness, depersonalization, analgesia. We could all use a little analgesia right now, right? But who will narc on the narcotics? When the rubber bullets send you to a rubber room, the linguistic symmetry becomes a discordant shock to the system. We talked of the Bush Doctrine, but nobody knows the Obama Doctrine. They raise their voices with hysteria and the truth gets confused with lunacy. Hold the line. Love isn’t always on time. Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, but that was forty years ago. When nouns were customizable shoes rather than rigid marketing terms. Hope. Just do it. Dance your ass off. Who wants to be a millionaire? Who really can be a millionaire?

by Edward Champion

Housing Works Report

The bloggers won tonight. But that’s only because our teammate Catherine Lacey knew her stuff. If I learned anything from the last time bloggers went up against an opposing team, it’s that men really don’t know anything, even when they think they do, and that they should hold their tongues. Sure enough, I held my tongue many times — in large part because Time Out New York mentioned something about cunnilingus after the event and for a more practical reason — the buzzer I was using had a two second delay and I was unable to answer questions I knew in my sleep pertaining to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Philip K. Dick.

Kenneth C. Davis was an extraordinary moderator, expressing considerable patience with the more obnoxious part of our team (i.e., me) while showing no diffidence whatsoever in repeating some of the more indecent answers (“Longfellow’s ‘Fuck'” and “Frankly I Don’t Give a Damn O’Hara” — again, me). Open Letters Monthly’s Sam “The Man” Sacks gets major props for going to the other side twice when we had a full table. And aside from the aforementioned Catherine Lacey, I must commend teammates Buzz Poole and Jason Boog for likewise demonstrating great skill and bravado.

I must also thank the dutiful audience for enjoying these hijinks and for stepping up to the opposing table. (Some audience members, including the one and only Miracle Jones, went up twice.) And, last but not least, gratitude should also be directed to Rachel Fershleiser, who organized the whole shebang.

I also saw some dude with a flipcam taking video. So presumably some embarrassing video will eventually show up on the Internets.

For those who attended, thank you very much for showing up. For those who had the stones to challenge the book bloggers, you likewise have my unwavering kudos.

by Edward Champion

An Interview with Edward Champion

interviewjfspoof

atstartt the end of the end of May, edrants.com announced the appointment of its American editor Edward Champion to the role of acting editor. Up until this point in time, it had never occurred to us to have American editors, acting editors, or indeed editors of any type. There was just one guy at the helm named Ed. Perhaps his first name is actually “Editor.” But since certain literary magazines have seen so many people leaving, resigning, and otherwise exiting the doors with a banker’s box of literary belongings, it seemed necessary for us to apply a needless degree of self-importance to this website. Champion came to edrants.com after working in various office jobs and has been with the website since December 2004. During that time he has interviewed over 300 authors and written for numerous newspapers. He hopes to continue to boast about himself because he’s under the false impression that community comes naturally through relentless self-absorption. Ergo, this interview, which doesn’t carry a byline but appears on the very website that Champion claims is editorially independent! edrants.com recently caught up with Champion to talk abut his background, his inspirations and future issues posts of edrants.com.

Can you tell me a little about yourself? What’s your background?

I was born in California, and was beaten regularly by my parents. I tried to get a job delivering newspapers, but was told that John Freeman was delivering all the papers in the neighborhood. And since Freeman wouldn’t give up a few blocks, I was forced to work in a greasy diner, where the doors were locked until midnight and I was forced to hitch rides to and from work by an unpleasant busboy named Linus, who demanded the occasional hand job. The consequences of these hand jobs can be seen in the present cutbacks in newspaper book review sections. John Freeman tried to save them, but even he couldn’t. And yet he gets a silly promotion and an Observer article, and I’m trying to string together checks to pay the rent. I’m developing an ego. This worries me.

What excites you most about edrants.com?

The celebration of myself. The opportunity to take smug photos of myself with books and to pretend that my foldout chair is something more than it really is because there are books stacked on top of it.

The chance to do this now is also a great privilege. Because I’m white and I’m male. I don’t believe there’s a lack of good writing in our world, but I do believe that we should only publish boring suburban fiction. The kind of soporific stuff you see in the New Yorker, but that permits people to curd the spasms of their dismay into a balled up Kleenex. As a cultural website that is read internationally, edrants.com is in a unique position to be found by desperate men at 3:23 AM. The men will get pissed off that they didn’t find pornography and they will begin sending me death threats by email. It’s what our readers expect of us. I hope you don’t mind me using the first person plural.

Not at all.

Good. I was beginning to get worried. I really needed some time to develop some kind of narcissistic personality disorder.

How do you think edrants.com can be improved?

It’s absolutely perfect the way it is, you ungrateful bastard! We don’t live in an Anglo-American world anymore, except we do. Because I’m the Acting Editor of edrants.com and John Freeman is the Acting Editor of Granta. You need to have white bread elitists in power who pretend that they really care. We need to do a better job of pretending that we’re actually reading writers who aren’t white. And that means name-dropping a continent or two, rather than a country.

In what direction will you take edrants.com as Acting Editor?

We need to write more long profiles of Edward Champion. We need more videos of Champion in bathtubs with naked women. If YouTube won’t post these videos, then surely YouPorn will. We’re not a website really, but a cultural space and — excuse me, just sifting through the document the marketing people gave me — and, yes! A cultural space where anything can happen.

Will edrants.com continue to be themed?

Well, it was never really themed to begin with. I don’t know where you’re getting these questions from. We are averse to themes because they remind us of too many themed office parties in which a lot of miserable people sat around drinking cheap merlot in red paper cups under a pinata for a Cinco de Mayo-themed party. Nevertheless, the world needs more themes. We need themes so that people can be reminded of what they already know instead of actually challenging their perceptions.

Every now and then, though, we’ll have no theme. Until that crazy Swedish bitch calls me to London and asks me what the hell I’m doing with her money. Then I’ll sheepishly give you an edrants.com with themes attached.

by Edward Champion

Great Fiction Not Written by White People

As Darby Dixon III has suggested, with the exception of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Dick Meyer’s list of great books written after 1900 has all the literary sensibilities of a grand wizard. To counter Meyer’s vanilla extract sensibilities, here’s a very hastily assembled list of great American fiction written after 1900 not written by white people. This is by no means an authoritative list. It pretty much came together in one mad mnemonic rush. I have also limited the list to one book per author. But all of these books have moved me or wowed me or otherwise floated my boat in some manner and are certainly worth your time. Please feel free to add more to the list in the comments.

Chimamanda Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
Octavia Butler, Kindred
Ana Castillo, The Mixquiahuala Letters
J. California Cooper, A Piece of Mine
Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren
Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine
Percival Everett, Glyph
Ernest J. Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying
Aleksandar Hemon, The Question of Bruno
Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Ha Jin, Waiting
Edward P. Jones, The Known World
Nam Le, The Boat
Chang-Rae Lee, Aloft
Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress
John Okada, No-No Boy
Z.Z. Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
Susan Power, The Grass Dancer
Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
Zadie Smith, On Beauty
Colson Whitehead, John Henry Days
Richard Wright, Native Son

by Edward Champion

In Which I Am Interviewed by Colin Marshall

Colin Marshall, who runs the excellent KCSB program, The Marketplace of Ideas, was very kind to interview me recently. And he’s apparently accused me of being a pioneer. I wish to assure everyone that the “pioneer” label has less to do with anything I’ve ever done and more to do with a few trips for chicken through a notable fast-food restaurant chain. Nevertheless, I’m learned that the program aired today and that it will be made available through the show’s website. I was fired up on a lot of coffee when I talked with Colin. So I hope that I said a few things that were intelligent over the course of the hour. I’ll add the link to the specific show when it becomes available.

[UPDATE: Here’s the link to the show.]

by Edward Champion

Tools of Change: The Rise of Ebooks

Panelists: Mark Coker (moderator), Joe Wikert, April Hamilton, David Rothman, Russell Wilcox

If I had to compare Tuesday’s panel with Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, I would say this. Claire Danes was superior to April Hamilton. Russ Wilcox, a rather cocky gentleman who spoke like some snobby Yale know-it-all with his head held high and dashed off a number of wild and extravagant and unprovable claims, would be comparable to Nick Stahl. The difference is that Wilcox isn’t living off the grid. Indeed, despite the technological benefits of his E Ink invention, he’s all too happy to smudge his fingers and sell the human race to Skynet. David Rothman was Ah-nuld, and he did okay. Regrettably, there wasn’t a nude T-X character who liked to seduce and kill, but I suppose Mark Coker, who started off stiff but began to prove his sardonic worth upon poking holes in Wilcox’s extravagant vale, will fit the bill. But Joe Wikert was the smartest guy on the panel: open to present technological realities and a man who, unlike all the other panelists, was not entirely willing to buy into all the hype.

While I will confess that the Brad Fiedel theme played in my head at numerous points, I can say this. With Coker and company relying on Amazon’s dodgy 10% figure, along with Sony’s extravagant claim that 300,000 Readers had been sold, I was skeptical. Ebooks, after all, represent only one half of 1% of the total market. And to my knowledge, there hasn’t yet been a figure from an independent third party to determine if ebooks are indeed the great white hope that will decimate print and get all of us fighting robots in an apocalyptic future.

Rothman said that Amazon’s DRM was what was really killing this natural evolution. In order for the ebook market to expand, it’s going to be necessary to consider open source. Wikert likewise agreed that DRM had to go away, but added that any e-reader should consider adding value to the print products. If future e-readers didn’t do this, then they would eventually hit an artificial ceiling. “When you’ve got a hammer in your hand,” said Wikert, “everything looks like a nail.” He hoped to see more exemplars of rich content. Video and dynamic possibilities. Fancy little bells. But nobody on the panel chose to consider the issue of whether it would be the author or the publisher that would provide this additional content. Still, Coker did joke that the iPhone might be programmed to vibrate at a certain tone upon a new e-volume of erotica cascading against the technological shoals.

Wikert elaborated further. One product, he said, could be calibrated based on what that person wanted to do with it. He urged the audience (and those who work in this industry) to not only study the latest technologies, but to be actively involved in using these technologies.

This sense of play and flexibility did not apply to Russ Wilcox, who should have worn a T-shirt reading I’M HERE TO PIMP MY GOODS in large lettering readable from half a mile away. Wilcox suggested that Moore’s Law now applied to e-readers. The speed of E InkTM innovations now doubles every eighteen months, all contingent upon brightness, contrast, and speed. He foresees this future: In 2010, the flexible displays expand, with a larger size permitting an advertising-driven model in which the profit machine becomes self-aware. By the end of 2010, a full color e-paper device hits the market — initially limited to pastels. Over the next eight to ten years, various color e-readers duke it out with each other and geeks presumably choose sides in the forthcoming jihad. He also cavalierly predicted — with no hard sales or trend data; because we all know that he’s sworn to corporate secrecy on the subject — that in eighteen months, 2-3% of American households would have e-readers in their homes. Coker quibbled with this, pointing out that he would need an enormous growth rate for this massive jump to happen. There was no mention of the limping economy, much less the incentive for Joe Sixpack to buy the latest Kindle at a gargantuan cost, only to see another version released less than a year later.

I am not really certain why April Hamilton was on this panel. But she brought up a notion even more preposterous than the failure to consider the time and money it would take for authors and publishers to generate dynamic content. She believed that smartphone applications would be the future. Never mind that the book is a rather specific medium and that, indeed, some books may not necessarily work this way. As Rothman observed, because of an iPhone’s limited storage space, apps have the tendency to be deleted. This prompted a rather defensive answer from Hamilton, delivered in the timbre of a beauty pageant contestant, “I would say there’s no single answer.” Well, can you perhaps agree that you might be wrong? Can anyone at this damn conference confess that they really don’t know where things are heading?

Actually, yes. Wikert was wise enough to point out that the early version of the iPhone in 2001 looked rather silly and that the current version of the Kindle will look silly in five years. It helped to talk shop with rapid technological evolution in mind. Wikert expanded on the panel’s general anti-DRM sentiment by suggesting that a Kindle App Store might open up Amazon’s possibilities.

Wilcox suggested that Stanza wouldn’t exist without Kindle. This gave him a ripe opportunity to trot out a catchphrase pertaining to the unit: “the container affects the experience.” And just as he was about to get beyond the topic of E InkTM, he then suggested that E InkTM wouldn’t really make its way onto cell phones. The outside of cell phones maybe. But I wondered whether Wilcox might somehow find a way if Nokia came to him with millions of dollars. Then he might appear on another panel, hold his haughty head up high, and remain absolutely convinced that he was right. (Note to Wilcox: If you’re going to talk like a snob, it helps to speak like William Buckley.)

I don’t want to delve into Ms. Hamilton’s Indie Author Movement (almost TM, but since it represents “the people” in a rather naive manner, I will leave subscript silliness outside of my report). Mainstream publishing just doesn’t have what the Indie Author needs. And how dare these other authors tsk-tsk their fingers against self-publishing? It’s not vanity at all to pay your hard-earned money for a slapdash operation without editorial oversight. The books industry, Hamillton proudly declared, is now as ignoble as the movie industry. Nothing more than highly commercial fare! I mean, they haven’t thought about the niche markets at all! An author publishing her work was never vanity.

“Uh, great. Thanks,” responded Coker.

By the time Wilcox brought up “tipping points,” I wondered if the bright young thing had ever considered the common reader. Fortunately, the next panel brought this very important subject to the center.

by Edward Champion

Tools of Change: Initial Report

During a morning in which news of layoffs at HarperCollins and the future of BookExpo America was severely reduced in time and topography, here at the Marriott Marquis, Tools of Change rolled on. I appear to be the only guy here wearing a T-shirt, but not the only one nursing a hangover.

I’ll have some reports of the panels later in the afternoon. But I can report that the crowds here are largely male, that the recent publishing news has left those attending this conference with their hopes somewhat crestfallen, and that Tim O’Reilly and Cory Doctorow offered a few contrarian questions to Jon Orwant — that too cocksure man from Google, who answered in response to a critical query, “It’s not me; it’s the algorithm.” Orwant’s answer is quite fitting, because nobody here I’ve talked to really does have the answers, nor do they want to take responsibility. A CEO insisted to me that his POD machine will change the world, but when I asked him about whether or not an independent bookstore could afford to lease it, he refused to divulge the details. A new e-reader displays a crossword puzzle, promising “annotations and marks,” but one cannot so much as fill in the letters for 4 Across. Peter Brantley lectures to his audience like a New Age dope hoping that we’ll accept his mantras about “social community” without question, but there are considerable holes to his sunny utopian vision.

Nobody knows anything. But people wish to carry on as if they somehow do know everything. And that means being on the cutting edge for any half-assed technological development that gets people’s eyes bulging out of their sockets.

That’s not the change we were promised. And these aren’t necessarily the tools you’re looking for. But we all carry on. Let us hope we aren’t fiddling while Rome burns.

by Edward Champion

Cry of the Hornet

The loud flashes pierced into his eyes as they ushered him before the cameras. The shrapnel of sharp questions sliced into inextricable loss that the men behind the massacre could never tally up or scratch away, and for which they still hadn’t apologized.

He still flinched from the stench left in the wake of the carcass that had once been his home, the hillock of his humble life, the now obliterated pile for which he had moved hard mountains. He had wanted to die with them, but he was halfway through a twelve-hour shift when he got the call. At the moment his cell phone chirped, he was selling a pack of Marlboros to a gloomy guy sliding dimes across the counter, grumbling about the economy. But he knew he had to go on.

He couldn’t believe the news and he couldn’t close the store. There was nobody else. And if he didn’t move a hundred dollars by day’s end, they’d be short for the month. There were no savings.

The pilot had lived, ejecting just before the Hornet rammed into their humble stucco home. He wanted answers, but his neighbors only offered spooky silent stares. Shadowy details loosened once they saw his dark inquisitive face. The deaths had been sudden. The wreckage would be remunerated. The tall thin plumes could be seen as far away as Poway.

Now he was here. Lost in a crackling haze of slapdash queries he’d somehow felt obliged to answer. The journalists asked him what he thought of the pilot, but they’d never know the fluke of this sacrifice. They asked him what he was going to do next. Forgive so that he could go somewhere and grieve, but not forget.

God, he had loved them. It wasn’t so much not seeing his daughters grow up or his wife grow old or even his grandmother’s kind smile, but the comforts of their happy routine. The knowing twinkle that came when she read his mind. His kids discovering some pedantic joy he’d somehow overlooked. All now dry and irreplaceable rivers frozen into the hazy pool of memory.

He couldn’t remember the words that the cameras and the microphones had recorded. But he must have said something. The phone never stopped ringing. The letters kept coming. They’d even tracked down his email address. They called him a hero, but he had only done the right thing. And he wanted to go back to work because it was the only regular routine he had left. Even if it meant crying and remembering in the lonely terrain of the dark while they sung the stark ballads now attached to his name.

by Edward Champion

State of Affairs

All energies are currently reserved for this deadline. I have made the assignment a bit more difficult than it needed to be. But that’s what happens when you hire me. I am not the type to tackle an assignment in any formulaic way. It must be fun. It must involve honest labor. If it does not crackle in some sense, then it’s not worth doing. But a fillip spills over to this blog, just as it always does, creating another entry that is not so much about blogging, as it is about why I am not blogging. (It is because people are paying me not to blog, or rather to devote my energies elsewhere. But this seems to be the end of these enjoyable professional endeavors for now. But I hustle, hoping to find more.)

Others might posit a simple explanation, confining the reason to a single sentence. Normal people certainly would. I was recently identified as an “acclaimed writer” in a press release, although I have yet to win an award aside from the Cracker Jack prize that is, thankfully, available to any dutiful bodega customer, and I certainly have no time right now to work on my fiction, which saddens me a bit. (A writer with a bountiful financial cushion recently complained to me that he had to spend a whole week coming up with an idea. I wonder if he truly loves his art. I certainly do, and have more ideas than time available.) But, on the whole, I remain sanguine and pro-active. The general state of affairs involves something that happens when you spend most of your time hustling. I assure you that I am merely a man trying to get by on intellectual labor. It is certainly not easy right now. And I’m far from alone. Every good and talented soul I know is hurting — including those who are better than me.

Much of this has caused me to reconsider just what I’m doing. Very few people cared about the New York Film Festival, and certainly none of the outlets I pitched were hep to the idea of detailed coverage. So I felt compelled to atone for this inadequacy, doing what I do. And this is increasingly becoming the justification for why I devote much of my energies to this site: because nobody else is doing it. Because nobody wants to do it. Nobody is willing to throw money at the arts anymore. I’m happy to carry on doing it. The landlord, however, requires rent. This is why I have spent a good deal of time scrambling for a way to make this place — Segundo and the lot — self-sustaining. I’ve even managed to get a number of potential sponsors to talk with me. 2009, they say, that’s when we’ll go with your plan.

But there are two and a half months left in 2008. Thus, the dilemma.

So, for the moment, I have frozen production on The Bat Segundo Show for 2008. For how long, I do not know. Could be weeks, could be months, could give it up completely. There are still many interviews in the can, and a few interviews I’ve yet to conduct. So it doesn’t mean that the show itself won’t continue to pump out installments. All told, we’ll probably get to Show #250 by the end of the year. (And for the record, I could easily do a hundred more of these shows and still have fun with this.)

I won’t ask for money. I don’t want to abuse this idea too much. We tried the pledge drive, fell short of the goal, and I tried to keep the thing going on my own dime as long as I could. Thanks to all those who kindly contributed. It helped more than you know. If Segundo is to carry on, I’m going to have to lock sponsorship into place. There have been talks. There has been some interest, but fish don’t wish to bite until next year. Presumably knowing the precise guy will sit in the White House next year is the bait they’re waiting for.

So that’s where we’re at. Don’t worry. I haven’t given up, but I’m trying to survive right now. So if things are sporadic or piecemeal here, well, you now know why.

by Edward Champion

Deadline

Barring any necessary coverage of the impending apocalypse (or minor distractions), I am stepping away from this website for a few days to be a good monkey and meet a looming deadline. Which is also why I have been sporadically answering emails. All is well. But all is busy. More soon. Many very cool things are coming up the pipeline in terms of podcasts and long-form content. Here’s a hint for one of the forthcoming podcasts:

by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Bonnie Tyler

Bonnie Tyler appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #237. Tyler is the legendary singer behind such tracks as “Vernal Equinox of the Mind” and “Holding Out for a Supervillain.”

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Nothing he can say, a total eclipse of the Bat

Guest: Bonnie Tyler

Subjects Discussed: Tyler co-writing most of the tracks on the album, Wings, singing vs. songwriting, breaking up with managers, shyness, hairs that stand up on the back of the neck, turning down a song by Jim Steinman, songs that involve the devil, Desmond Child, James Bond, Tyler turning down the Never Say Never Again theme, Heartstrings and recording cover songs mostly from male recording artists, the song selection process, Meat Loaf, rehearsing “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” the seven minute opuses on Faster Than the Speed of Night, a group of passengers who were traumatized by Tyler singing on an Air France jet, Noel Gallagher, contending with hardcore fans, a 15-year-old Australian who claimed to be Tyler’s daughter, avoiding retirement, the number of shows Tyler performs a year, the endless onslaught of greatest hits albums, the Psion SMX and iPods, country music, Duffy, what Bonnie reads, Les Dawson, Tyler tells a bawdy joke, Botox, ageism, music videos and photo shoots, being judged on physical appearance, looks vs. voice, MTV and YouTube videos, the nightmare of making music videos, restrictions from record companies, independent labels, and music and the Internet.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: Going back to Wings, I actually wanted to talk about “Crying in Berlin.” This song, out of all the songs that I’ve listened to of yours, sounds the most like a James Bond song. And I do know the Hindustan Times reported in 2006 that the only thing that could bring you out of retirement was recording a James Bond theme of some sort. I’m wondering if you’ve considered approaching the Bond producers to sing a song just as you called up and contacted [Jim] Steinman, and said, “Hey, I want you to go ahead and produce this particular album.”

Tyler: No. It just happened. They just asked me. Would I like to do a song? And they sent me the song. “Never Say Never,” right?

Correspondent: Yeah.

Tyler: And I listened to it, and I thought, “Ugh! Shit! I don’t like it.”

Correspondent: It is one of the weakest of all the Bond themes.

Tyler: I really would die to do a James Bond song, you know? But I can’t do it. My heart wouldn’t have been in it. I had to turn it down. Now how many people turn down a Bond song, I don’t know. But I turned it down because I didn’t like it. And I was proved right. Because I think out of all the songs.

Correspondent: Who remembers it?

Tyler: I can’t even remember it.

Correspondent: (sings) “Never say never again.” Yeah, I know.

Tyler: I don’t remember. It didn’t appeal to me at all. So I turned it down. And that’s the only regret that I have. But it was…

Correspondent: It wasn’t actually an official Bond movie, technically speaking. Because it was produced outside the [Albert] Broccoli camp. So I think you’re on safe ground.

Tyler: It was a Bond movie!

Correspondent: It was a Bond movie, but it wasn’t official under the Albert Broccoli camp. It was a Sean Connery once-over. Because it was also Thunderball revisited.

Tyler: Whatever. I got offered one and I turned it down.

Correspondent: Did you consider reapproaching them and saying, “Hey, I’d love to do a James Bond song. But this one doesn’t cut it. Can I bring in one of these many songwriters who are sending me songs?” Did you try that tactic?

Tyler: No, I didn’t. But you’ve just given me a good idea. (laughs)

BSS #237: Bonnie Tyler (Download MP3)

This text will be replaced

by Edward Champion

The Blogging Cliche

An eleventh-hour interview, a looming deadline, and a few other things currently occupy just about every minute of my time. (I slept three hours last night.) Because of this, emails are sporadic at best (but I will respond to anyone who tells me that they have terminal cancer or something) and posting has been reduced to one of these typical announcements that you find on a blog, in which the blogger declares how little time he has and proceeds to use a sliver of this temporal paucity to write a post like this. Which makes one wonder whether the lack of time might be a slight understatement — emphasis on slight, mind you — or the blogging itself represents an utterly fey respite from the work. Whatever the case, I’m not good for much here until I whack down these obligations. Bear with me.

by Edward Champion

Setting the Filthy Record Straight

As Carolyn Kellogg notes, an angry mob has descended upon Susan Carpenter because Carpenter used the term “cunning linguist” in a review. But Carpenter is not the one to blame. For it was I, dear readers, who sullied the Los Angeles Times back in February 2007 by including the term “cunning linguistics” in a review. And this was a review of a YA title, no less. So I am the one here to blame for infecting the Los Angeles Times with such filth. Approach me with your pitchforks, angry mob. I am at the mercy of your perfunctory assaults.

by Edward Champion

The Story That Has No Name

[EDITOR’S NOTE: While traveling on a bus, several passengers endured the drunken and boisterous clamor from several obnoxious frat boys in the back. They could not be quelled or cajoled to quiet down. In an effort to deal with these circumstances without going insane, my girlfriend and I started writing the following story on a laptop, switching off every 300 words or so until the battery died. The warped results can be read below. Aside from the brain monster and other supernatural elements, this isn’t that far removed from what actually happened.]

Their drunken bellows roared from the back of the bus, veering as aimlessly as a driver without a map, demanding all destinations.

There were twelve of them. And they sat in the back. They sang off-key. They shouted horrible jokes. They laughed at their limp bons mot. But there was no sign from the passengers in the front. No actions. Nothing so much as a “please be quiet” or a “hey I’ve got a headache here, would you mind keeping it down?”

They were the center of their own universe. Their universe belonged to them. And that universe involved the bus. Even if that meant lighting up a bit of skank weed or spilling the bottle of Jack onto the fraying gray carpet. Even if that meant seizing the seat of the eighty-two-year-old lady, telling the elderly cunt to sit the fuck in the front before I munch on your muff.

Fury floated across the faces of those who sat in front of them. One man who worked as a bounce tried to get this fakers dozen to stop. But they wouldn’t. The bouncer figured he could break six of their necks easy. But the bus was moving. It was already late. And he, like everybody else, just wanted to get the hell home.

Bellows, cackles, and frat house cries were the order of the evening. And headaches burgeoned and tempers flared until there was a sudden screech of the brakes.

“What the fuck was that?”

The fakers dozen waited.

“Yo, why we stop?”

But there was no movement from the driver. No stirring of life from the passengers.

Their faces looked out the window, but there wasn’t the single sound of cars passing, nor even the trusty wisp of the wind.

“What the fuck’s going on?” said Enrique, who was high as a kite on Don Julio.

“Well, fuck that shit,” said Harold. “We can have ourselves a good time whether the bus is moving or not, eh?”

They shouted at the top of their lungs again, expecting a reaction from all the chumps who had bought tickets for this ride from hell. But there wasn’t a sound. Not a peep. Not even the muted sigh from an exasperate.

Dawn, just one of two girls of the fakers’ dozen, nudged Harold in the shoulder. “This is really weird, why isn’t anyone else saying something?”

“Fuck if I know,” said Harold, “and why should you care?”

“Because it’s creeping me out! You should see what’s going on.” Dawn poked Harold in the small of his back. He yelped and Gregg, sitting the furthest away from him, bellowed, “She’s got you by the balls again, H!”

Harold’s face blushed. Struggling with the sense of shame that accompanied it, he denied Gregg’s claim with equal volume, then turned back to Dawn. She had that needy look again, like her world couldn’t work without him turning the lever all the way to the end, and once more he wondered why he was banging her, even if only on Sunday afternoons. She wasn’t that hot. And now she wanted him to stop the party in the backseat and check on – it flew out of his head.

Dawn stared at him, not wanting to understand Harold’s total enslavement to attention deficit but knowing she had to. Of course it sucked. Nothing got through to him, not even basic human decency. She tried to remember why they fucked every Sunday, why she was sitting with his sorry-ass friends, why she was smoking their low-grade weed. And why they were the only ones making noise.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll go and check.” She shoved Harold harder in the small of his back and took secret pleasure when he cried out. The rest of the twelve voiced their displeasure, too. “You always have to spoil everything,” said Enrique’s fuck buddy Miranda, a joint dangling from her mouth. Dawn hated her the most, but fighting Miranda was like trying to engage with a brick wall.

She stared ahead, focusing intently on the front of the bus. It was strange to think of silence as being louder than noise, but that’s what Dawn thought as she made her way to the driver’s seat. When she did, all thoughts of silence versus sound escaped her mind.

Because the driver was gone.

“Hey, what the fuck?”

“Silly bitch at it again,” said Harold. “Always looking for someone new to blow!”

“I’m serious, Harold. There ain’t no driver here. Just a buncha….”

That’s when the first of the fakers dozen went down. Harold was keeping track.

“Dawn?” called Harold.

“Stupid bitch. I’ll suck your cock better,” said Miranda. The weed was hitting her head almost as hard as Enrique’s tequila.

Enrique laughed. Everything was funny with Don Julio, almost as funny as it was with jello shots. Not that he went in for that pussy drinking shit. Even the sight of Dawn falling down, as if sucked through a hole at the bottom of the bus like some human-sized chunk of strawberry shake slurped through a giant straw.

But where the fuck was Dawn? And why the fuck weren’t the passengers ahead saying a goddam thing?

“Hey, assholes,” shouted Harold to the front. “You paying attention?”

There wasn’t a peep from the passengers.

“Ain’t it a bit fucking funny that nobody’s saying a FUCKING thing?”

Harold tapped the shoulder of the woman in the seat in front of him.

“You paying attention, you cunt? Dawn’s gone, you fucking….”

But her shoulder dissipated into a shower of ashes. Harold looked at the other passengers. They were all grey husks. Even the colors of their clothes had faded to gray.

And still there wasn’t a sound outside.

Harold looked at Enrique, who was still laughing at nothing. This was the guy who was supposed to be his best buddy? When the girl he was fucking would happily ask anyone, especially Harold, if she could suck him off? When he wasted himself day and night on that Don Julio shit when everyone knew it just made Enrique look and act like a bigger chump? And now that Dawn was fucking GONE, all Enrique could do was sit around and laugh?

Harold could hardly process what was happening, but he knew this: everything was a big fucking lie and he had to do something. So he lunged at Enrique, hands going for his best buddy’s throat.

“What the FUCK are you doing, you mongrel waste of a piece of shit? Dawn – did you even SEE what happened?”

“Harold, calm the fuck down,” Miranda slurred, “You don’t have to get so violent. What’d Enrique ever do to you?”

“He never did anything! He never did anything for any reason!” Harold pointed to the vanished woman in front of him. “And now she’s disappeared, too. The whole bus has disappeared and everything’s grey and he does fuck-all!” Harold tightened his grip on Enrique’s throat. The laughs turned into slight choking sounds that made Enrique sound even more pathetic. “You really pick ’em, Miranda. You foolish little slut.”

“Hey, don’t call me a -” But Miranda didn’t have a chance to finish her sentence. The left side of her head began to melt, starting with the blond hair framing her face, to her cheekbones, down to her neck and collarbone. Then the right side melted away. A husk of grey nothing remained, and even Harold, who only cracked open his introduction to neuroscience book once every few weeks, recognized the color as being the same as the mush making up most of a person’s brain.

Miranda’s brain. Right. In front of him.

He dropped his hands from Enrique’s throat and screamed. Then screamed even louder when he heard Enrique’s stupid, pathetic little laugh start up again.

“What the fuck? The two hos of the fakers dozen are gone?” shouted Harold. “What? The? Fuck?”

Enrique was laughing his ass off. Shit, this was better than that viral video he had watched of the guy shoving the peanut jar up his ass and bleeding all over the fucking place.

“Enrique, are you paying attention?” Harold screamed.

Miranda’s gray ash had splattered all over him. He had become a human-sized Miranda ashtray, so to speak, in less than a second. And this was fucking funny. But then Enrique realized that he couldn’t move. The ash had seeped into his skin, casting a gooey mold and pinning him to his seat.

Enrique stopped laughing.

“Guys, what the hell’s going on?”

Two small globular claws punched their way out of Miranda’s brain. The claws begin to snap at Enrique, clacking in a staccato pattern that Enrique recognized from some mariachi techno shit he’d heard that day on some MySpace page. Some band called The Frat Boys Heading to Manhattan. Shitty name, shitty concept, but good music. And now the good music was biting right back.

The brain leaped forward and the claws tore at Enrique’s throat. Great geysers of red exploded from his torn neck. Enrique couldn’t laugh. And he certainly couldn’t scream. The Miranda brain monster had clawed out his larynx and was snapping further. There was only the sound of hollow gargling. A broken pipe experiencing an unexpected brush with the air.

As Miranda’s brain supped on Enrique’s blood, it seemed to obtain more energy. And the claws began moving faster. Snapping quicker. Suddenly, two eyes burst out of the brain. Harold knew those eyes well. They were Dawn’s.

Harold’s brain split across his corpus callosum. The left part coolly told him to get the fuck off the bus, because everyone who stayed on it either turned into gray brain ash or got killed by it. The right part got more to the point: RUN!

He listened to the right part of his brain and sprinted down the center. The Miranda-Dawn monster was gaining on him, flinging blood towards Harold that he had to duck to avoid. He reached the front, keeping his eyes well away from what remained of the other humans and looked for the door.

And then he could not move. Almost against his will, he turned away from the door and faced the Miranda-Dawn monster. When it spoke, the voice was terrible and emitted a smell not unlike human decomposition. It filled Harold’s nostrils and the gag reflex was overwhelming.

But he found a way to swagger because because hey, he was Harold Motherfucking Chase and no one, not even a monster, was going to mess with him. “You might think you’re a badass monster but you’re really nothing but a double-ho-bag of pussy stench,” he gritted out, each word more difficult to speak than the last one.

The monster laughed and the resulting sound was like feedback from a microphone, the whiny pitch growing louder and more intense until Harold thought his eardrums would burst.

He wanted to turn, reach the door, but his feet would not obey. Then his legs. Then his torso. He looked down and it wasn’t that they couldn’t move. They had transformed. He was becoming grey ash from the tips of his toes until his midsection, his chest, up and up. He had a dim memory of a strange-voiced man singing about being eaten by a boa constrictor until ‘oh heck, it’s up to my neck. Oh dread, it’s up to my head.’

The monster laughed again, and Harold’s eardrums succumbed. As they shattered, he let loose a matching sound of agony and torture that he could not hear. Neither could anyone else. Except the monster.

And when it did, and Harold was nothing more than a puff of grey matter, it grinned.

by Edward Champion

Emails

Some anonymous scum has been spoofing my main email address, pulling a joe job on me and causing me to wade through thousands of bounced emails from time to time. And while steps have been taken to secure things, I understand from a few folks that some of my emails aren’t getting through. If I haven’t responded to you, please try emailing me again. Hopefully, things will be back to normal in the next week or so.

by Edward Champion

Daniel Murphy, Esquire Hack and Blog Pilferer

August 8: Reference here to self-defense video and Bas Rutten.

August 15: Reference at Esquire blog to self-defense video and Bas Rutten, along with August 10th Bas Rutten mention.

Can’t these hacks come up with any original material these days?

[UPDATE: Daniel Murphy writes in to correctly point out that his Bas Rutten summation came on August 10, 2007, not August 10, 2008. On this point, I was wrong. But like Dwight Garner, who claimed that he “had never seen” Largeheartedboy before after he ripped off Book Notes for his “Living with Music” series, Murphy claims that “he has never visited” this website. I’m sure that Esquire has likewise “not heard of” Matthew Tiffany’s site. Never mind that Mr. Tiffany called Esquire out for a sentence pertaining to Joyce Carol Oates, which mysteriously disappeared without an apology or an explanation.]

by Edward Champion

Slow News Day

Leon Neyfakh: “The editors and assistants of Farrar, Straus and Giroux received an upsetting e-mail yesterday morning from the venerable publishing house’s director of operations informing them that the water in their building on 18th Street was being shut off until the following day. The building manager had reported ‘unanticipated problems,’ but a promise was made that they would be resolved very soon.”

Me? I’m waiting for the forthcoming story on Jonathan Galassi’s bowel movements. If it’s that slow in the Observer offices, I suspect some bored art director might come up with a disturbing infograph.

by Edward Champion

Response to Moynihan: August 15

Michael: I have never professed to be a Kremlinologist. And indeed I have not ventured a lengthy opinion about the Georgia crisis, in large part because I don’t currently feel sufficiently qualified to write about it. Not now, at any rate, until I’ve read many books on the subject (now being obtained). And while I do tend to swing left on matters of geopolitical import, this does not necessarily mean that I will gravitate to Russia or Georgia before my considerable reading on the subject. I am not certain what blogs you read or reference. But some of us out here are giddily impetuous on some topics (generally those which are ephemeral and thereby remain ripe for satirical musings), while remaining quite serious about other topics that require due diligence. Let us not fall into tendentious lines, sir.

by Edward Champion

Responding to Piggott: August 15

Mark: You are clearly unaware that most writers are inept when it comes to minding the store. Hence, the whole agent thing. Like the church and state-like separation of advertising and editorial at a magazine, the agent ensures that the writer can carry on writing his novel without concern for how it might sell. For that is the agent’s business. If the agent is good, the agent will understand the writer’s temperament, work very hard to maintain a scenario in which both agent and author benefit, and figure out a way to make a manuscript marketable. Just about everything out there has an audience. It is not the writer’s concern to care about the scope of that audience, but to simply write as true as he can. It is the agent’s concern to translate what the writer has offered into something that the publishing industry requires: namely, a salable book. The current literary agent system creates a protective buffer, unless the writer is avaricious enough to write for the lowest common denominator and take matters into his own hands because he may have a perfectionist impulse. Chances are that such an individual is not really a writer, but is probably an agent incognito. You have obviously had some bad experiences with agents. Perhaps like other writers, you cannot mind the store. This is your problem. And you need to stop playing the blame game and take responsibility. The world does not owe you a living.

by Edward Champion

Responding to Champion: August 13

Edward: Well, that’s a cynical attitude to have. Are you really going to give up so easily? You and I both know that you are a stubborn mule when it comes to living the good life, even if the good life brings its share of penury and isolation. But here’s the thing. I think what you’re really upset about is having to abdicate your joie de vivre for a supporting role in a humorless office. But this does not necessarily have to be permanent. And it does not mean that you have to sacrifice your vivacity. While the obituary is by no means final, maybe Segundo isn’t what you’re meant to do. There are these novels that you’re writing. Two unfinished. And what of the polyamory play (also unfinished) that you did all that research for? Or those radio plays you wrote? You’ve been grumbling about being so caught up with work and saving Segundo that you’ve had no time at all to write fiction. Maybe you’re just postponing the inevitable. Because you know they’ll go after you once it’s out there.