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by Edward Champion

Goodbye Rats

Total body count from traps: six.

I haven’t heard a peep or a scurry the past few days. The exterminator believes they’re gone, but we laid down more traps just to be sure.

But I’m relieved to report that Chez Ed is salubrious and once again open for business.

The exterminator, however, was a far too giddy bastard about all this. I remained brave as he threw mice-laden traps within inches of my feet. Perhaps he was putting the test in testoserone, but I lived to tell the tale.

by Edward Champion

Has Eli Horowitz Redeemed McSweeney’s?

So does Dustin Long’s Icelander live up with the rest of the McSweeney’s fiction books that have been overseen by Eli Horowitz (specifically, The People of Paper and Here They Come). Laura Miller seems to think so. She’s called the book an “endearingly wacky puzzle novel,” a phrase that, if you’ve read Miller’s reviews, doesn’t come from her lips all that often. The verdict’s in on a look see until more reviews trickle in, but this does sound promising.

by Edward Champion

No Love for Elliott?

Kirkus Reviews offers thoughts on Stephen Elliott’s latest: “Elliott (Happy Baby, 2004, etc.) explains in his introduction that enough of these pieces contain autobiographical components to make the whole collection serve as a memoir. If that’s true, too bad for him, not because he’s had such a hard time finding the right partner to dominate him in a consensual S&M relationship, but because his relationships are so mind-numbingly dull.”

Ouch.

by Edward Champion

Stephen Dixon’s Version of Musical Chairs

Failbetter: “I didn’t merge the last two novels of the I. trio into one. The trio became a duo when McSweeney’s rejected the second voume of the work, then called 2. They rejected it, they said, because they were cutting back on their fiction. So I removed 2 from the trio, rewrote it in its entirety (something I’ve been doing a lot with my work the last few years), gave the I. character a name, and submitted the work, as Old Friends, to Melville House, which took it in a couple of weeks. Then McSweeney’s wrote, saying they were starting a new fiction series and they’d like to see 2. I said 2 was now Old Friends and unavailable, would you like to see 3, which was now End of I. and also entirely rewritten from first page to last? They did and they took it.” (via Moorish Girl)

by Edward Champion

In Praise of Charles Willeford

Thanks to the coercive efforts of a certain someone, I have begun reading the works of the late Charles Willeford. I’m now almost done with Miami Blues, the first of Willeford’s Hoke Moseley books, and I’m kicking myself for not having heard of the guy before. (I was familiar with the 1989 film based on the book, which I enjoyed, but I had no idea it was based on a source. Willeford is best experienced on the page.)

Willeford was a mystery writer, but, unlike other criminal anthropologists, he dared to venture down some pretty batty avenues of human behavior. Consider the opening of Miami Blues, where “blithe psychopath” Freddy Frenger breaks the middle finger of a Hare Krishna at an airport simply because he is bothered by him. Much to the surprise of Frenger (and you have to love the way that this name connotes “finger”) and all concerned parties, the Krishna ends up dying of shock. And detective Hoke Moseley is on the case. But Moseley, while having a shrewd instinct for spotting an ex-con, is a terribly lazy man in denial of his investigative talents. He prefers to park his car on the lawn than find a parking spot.

What makes this book so good isn’t just these great behavioral ironies or the way that seemingly inconsequential violence transforms into a grand mess. Willeford is equally concerned with a batty precision for details, which reminded me very much of Murakami’s work. Having stolen a suitcase with a size 6 dress, Frenger then has the hotel clerk call up a prostitute who will fit the dress, so that he can use this dress as a commodity.

Also, I haven’t read any other novel that’s dared to reveal a character who can’t copulate through the usual orifice because he was so used to sodomy in the joint. Anyone who could whip up this scenario is both a ballsy and entertaining writer, a gleefully warped mind who deserves your attention.

This forthcoming approach to grit, which feels lived in and genuine, together with Willeford’s concentration on the cultural and economic forces disrupting Miami (and his characters’ oft racist reactions to it), is what makes Willeford’s work substantial enough for those who hover between that troubling threshold between mystery and literary fiction.

Incidentally, Willeford had initially penned a second Hoke Moseley book called Grimhaven, where Moseley killed his daughters. But the book was rejected because of this audacious move and remains, to this day, unpublished, with hard-core Willeford collectors offering considerable dinero for fourth-generation photocopies of the manuscript. Willeford would end up writing more Moseley books (Miami Blues was, after all, a strong seller), but I’m hoping that some indie publisher (Akashic, are you listening?) might find a way to get this published today. I think Willeford might be amused that even from beyond the grave, he still has the power to shake things up.

by Edward Champion

Otto Peltzer Wants to Run Away

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This post, as you’ve probably already gathered, is a parody of Otto Penzler’s New York Sun column. But since Mr. Penzler has threatened me by email, I have added this note to state that THIS POST IS A PARODY, and it is reflective of a character named “Otto Peltzer,” not Penzler.]

It was just as I was trying to figure out another way to hate myself and the world at large when I stumbled upon something called a graphic novel. I’ve been told the graphic novel is “hot with the kids.” But I have yet to apply the thermometer to some near-homeless urchin hanging outside my great island of choice.

When I was a kid (or perhaps “kiddish”) back in 1985, my great imprint, The Mysterious Press, published Raymond Chandler’s screenplay Payback. I have no idea why anyone needed to publish again. I, Otto Peltzer, had the final word. I was the great mystery tastemaker. There were learned and entertaining people writing learned and entertaining introductions back in those days. And I was the one making these learned and entertaining business choices, which were, in turn, certainly more learned and entertaining than these young upstarts at Arcade Publishing, who think that by drawing crude diagrams that they can somehow “reinvent” the genre. Without a doubt, this choice may be considered “entertaining” by a few declasse individuals. But it is far from learned. Need one say more?

As everyone knows by now, there is a bestselling author named Dan Brown. His first name is Dan, his last name is Brown. These two names aren’t as interesting as my own. Perhaps the time has come to use the Russian patronymic to Manhattan culture. It would certainly help me keep track of various bloodlines on Father’s Day.

I’ll sign off with words of wisdom from Alfred Shinola, a writer who I alone have read: “Life is a terrifying ordeal and, if one cannot abide by the first priority of run away, carrying a frown and holding grudges are satisfactory seconds.”

by Edward Champion

A Michael Moore Publicity Stunt?

So there’s a mysterious publicity stunt that was announced over at Galleycat. Apparently, a book that will have an initial print run of 300,000, categorized as “Biography & Autobiography” and “Childhood Memoir” will be revealed on August 10. The book will be published under the William Morrow imprint and will be “a shattering, provocative and mesmerizing true story.” The ISBN number is 0061138959, but alas, there is no trace in this ISBN directory or this one. There’s nothing in the Library of Congress either.

There are a few things to consider here. The book is timed around the fifth anniversary of September 11 and it will come out just before the November midterm elections. This suggests to me that the book will be political, likely leftist, in nature.

Bill Clinton and Al Gore, the two most likely politicians to have this kind of pull, aren’t HarperCollins authors. Neither is Al Franken. Barack Obama has already written a memoir.

But Michael Moore is a HarperCollins author. And I have a feeling he might be the mysterious author here. Think abuot it. Moore hasn’t done anything since Fahrenheit 9/11 and has been trying to figure out a way to damage Republicans since the 2004 election. Consider his statement back on November 5, 2004, whereby he noted that “we’ll need the element of surprise in 2008.” In fact, on April 16, 2005, he solicited his fan base for ideas on “what our next move should be.” In other words, Moore has been stewing over this question for quite a while. And given that a book’s production cycle is about a year and a half to two years, it is possible that he came upon the idea shortly after his solicitation and pitched it to HarperCollins.

Stupid White Men was a Regan Books release and went on to sell 481,343 copies. Those kind of sales would justify a 300,000 print run. In fact, Stupid White Men shares the publisher identifier number in the ISBN number that was released. The mysterious book’s ISBN is 0-06-113895-9.

Stupid White Men‘s ISBN: 0060392452. (The same publisher identifier: 06)

The Harper Paperbacks edition of Downsize This: 0060977337.

So why put a populist like Michael Moore on its distinguished William Morrow imprint? Answer: They know that Moore’s books will sell like hotcakes. Let’s not forget the big flap over Stupid White Men, where Moore was asked to tone down a few sections of the book. And given Moore’s history of temper tantrums, I suspect that HarperCollins’ top brass decided to play to Moore’s ego by making this surprise announcement.

Is this an attack piece on George Bush’s childhood?

I will put in some phone calls into HarperCollins to see if they confirm or deny that the book in question is Moore, as well as look into getting more info on the ISBN number.

In the meantime, perhaps someone with a Books in Print account might want to look at the ISBN number.

[UPDATE: It’s not Moore.]