Andrew O’Hehir has written an interesting review of Andrew Dalby’s new book, Rediscovering Homer. Dalby has suggested that Homer was actually a woman and that the Iliad and the Odyssey were written 70 to 90 years earlier. While Dalby’s arguments appear to be more casual conjecture than thesis with examples, O’Hehir, running with the speculative ball, raises a provocative point near the end of his piece, where he identifies Aphrodite’s lay-down-and-take-it-sweetheart advice to Helen as a feminine anxiety that a man might have difficulty understanding and thus writing about.

I don’t know if I completely buy this interpretation, or if the gender question is as important as either of the two Andrews suggest. We are talking about (a) a tale that has been passed down through oral tradition, (b) a translation from Dalby that may very well be as “leaden” as Latimore’s which fails to contain the nuances contained within the original Greek, and (c) a decidedly patriarchal world from about 2,600 years ago in which feminine complexity was discouraged or swept under the sand.

Could the anxiety that O’Hehir detects have more to do with the Iliad‘s considerable cast of vengeful gods (i.e., their behavior)? Let’s not forget how much the gods are responsible for what goes down in the Iliad. Athene provides the arrow that wounds Menelaos. Had it not been for this interference, might the Trojans and the Greeks have patched things up? Had not Apollo provided an assist to Hector in killing Patroclus, would Achilles have been galvanized into action? (My hunch is that he would have remained a wuss. In this sense, it might be argued that he is, centuries before Benjamin Kunkel’s Dwight Wilmerding or Nick Hornby’s Rob Fleming, literature’s ultimate manboy slacker prototype.*) A hardcore gamer might take respawning for granted in a first-person shooter, but this is precisely what Zeus does to Hector after Hector is felled by a stone.

What I’m suggesting here is that the Iliad is as much a tale of gods vs. humans as it is a chronicle of behavioral nuances. (It’s a lot more than that, actually. But one point at a time.) The gods are just as abject, hubristic and inveterate as their human counterparts, but their actions often trump the comparatively picayune efforts of Achilles and his fellow mortals. (And for those curious about the relationship between gods and humans, Mary Lefkowitz’s Greek Gods, Human Lives looks like an interesting book on the subject.)

If Aphrodite’s advice is framed within this larger-than-life attitude, I don’t know if identifying the words as distinctly male or female in origin is any more important than calling a woman who likes “masculine” activities a tomboy or a man who likes “feminine” activities a metrosexual. But if Dalby’s book (and O’Hehir’s reviewing) will get more people thinking about some of the behavioral nuances within one of our most seminal works of literature, then I may just have to pick it up.

* — If O’Hehir is going to have fun with contemporary allusions, I will too.

[UPDATE: Richard Grayson emails in and points to this 1897 Samuel Butler “translation,” which names “The Authoress of the Odyssey.” In other words, between this and the Graves book cited by Jenny Davidson in the comments, the idea of Homer as a female author has been around for a long time.]

“Video pitches are where it’s at!” (via Valleywag)

January Magazine editor Linda L. Richards offers some first-hand coverage of an island wildfire gone wrong. Thankfully, Linda is okay and her house is still standing. Hang in there, Linda!

There may not be a Books by the Bay this year, but one thing that’s more dependable is Paul Reubens Day. It all goes down this Saturday, July 29. Fifteen years after the infamous exposure. (via the SFist)

The Chronicle of Higher Education: “The problem is you can’t get to where I am now without going through a decade or more of immersion in a highly politicized and anti-literary academic culture. You have to spend so many years conforming that, by the time freedom presents itself, you don’t know why you became an English major in the first place. You might even have contempt for your seemingly naïve students, who represent the self that you had to repress in order to be a professional.”

Hilarious. Thanks for the laughs, Mr. Wolfe.

And, by the way, it should be patently obvious to anyone reading this blog that I don’t have a brain, that I am “psycho-sexual,” that I am “near-misogynist” (I beat my girl the other day and she liked it) and that I am a far from well-adjusted individual. It is only through the slimmest of margins that I manage to hold onto my day job. There is no need for Mr. Wolfe to take away precious time from “working on a book” to prove what he already knows and believes, and what you should know and believe too. No one is more mystified than I am that you continue to read this banal drivel. It is all composed without a single synaptic impulse. It is contrived and hopeless in intent. There is little in the way of insight and I regularly mangle the English language. The only reason why people like John Updike talk with me is because I blow the man in the alley.

Powell’s Chris Bolton, who raved about Scott Smith’s The Ruins earlier in the year, sets down his thoughts in full-length review form: “Let me be clear, then: The Ruins won’t change your life. It likely won’t be the very best novel you’ve ever read. And, frankly, if it is, you should read more novels. It is, however, a thoroughly skillful, dark (sometimes bleak), and riveting thriller, and that’s just what it sets out to be. In that sense, it fulfills its mission with aplomb.”

The book arrived in my P.O. Box this week. I’ll give the sucker a whirl quite soon and report my findings in an upcoming 75 Books entry.

John McNally takes Jhumpa Lahiri to task for applying for a $20,000 NEA grant designed to help writers at a critical point in their career. McNally notes that Lahiri received a $4 million deal for her next two books.

Lahiri applied for an NEA fellowship after her financial success. Her name is listed here, among the “Literature Fellowships in Prose” fellowship winners. Amazingly, Lahiri has the temerity to write in her NEA acceptance blurb:

The fellowship is a gift in two ways. First, it will allow me to finance childcare, making it logistically possible for me to write. Second, in a period when my creative life often threatens to vanish behind the responsibilities of motherhood, my grant will remind me that I am also a writer, and that as compromised as the hours at the desk may be, they are necessary and vital.

You mean to fucking tell me that after the $10,000 she received for the Pulitzer, the $7,500 she received for the PEN/Hemingway award, the who knows what kind of high five to low six-figure sum she received for selling the Namesake film rights to Mira Nair, and the 200,000 copies of The Namesake sold (and that’s just in the States) that Jhumpa’s hurting for fucking cash? (And let’s not forget that her husband is the Executive Editor of El Diario La Pensa, the nation’s oldest Spanish-language newspaper, who can’t be doing too shabby.)

What a crock of shit. Even if Jhumpa does live in Brooklyn.

So what are Alberto and Jhumpa doing? Blowing all their money on Twinkies?

Okay. So let’s give Jhumpa the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she hasn’t cashed all the checks yet. Maybe the pair’s just really bad with money. Maybe they’re cash poor or the money’s “tied up in investments,” as the old saying goes. A 2003 San Francisco Chronicle interview reveals this little tidbit:

Before the Pulitzer, my husband and I were sharing a small one-bedroom, and I was writing in the corner of the bedroom. Now it’s a little larger, but with our son, I still don’t have a room to write in. It hasn’t catapulted us into some sort of surreal existence. I still do my own laundry. We have a modest two-bedroom apartment in a nice neighborhood; I have a woman looking after my son for three hours a day. We ride the subway. We go to the grocery store.

You do your own laundry? You do your own shopping and ride the subway? You don’t have a room to write in? Cry me a fucking river, Jhumpa. About 90% of the fucking human population lives this kind of life and they don’t complain.

And you have the fucking temerity to apply for a $20,000 fellowship? A sum which, for another writer, is the difference between working a full-time job and a part-time job? The difference between having additional energy to write a novel over a year and popping Benzedrine. They too have families.

If Jhumpa Lahiri had any sense of decency, she’d do what Jonathan Safran Foer did (and tried to do with quiet nobility before he responded here) and give back the money to NEA. But I suspect that she won’t. After all, there’s a launderer and a professional shopper to pay.

Levi Asher: “[I] wonder if I haven’t been taking out my anger about various global events on a few poor writers and critics. The truth is, Jonathan Lethem and David Orr are really not what’s wrong with the world today.”

I’d like to clear the air right now and respond to the troubling rumors that are now circulating around the Internet.

There are some people who misunderstand my relationship with my box of Kleenex and the porn that I download through Kazaa. I have had a relationship with the former for almost twenty years and the latter as long as I have had access to broadband. So I can understand why people might think that I masturbate, but I don’t. I assure you that it is a very close kinship I have with Kleenex and a pedantic curiosity I have with naked bodies undulating in my Media Player window. The porn, with its grunting and amateur acting, is calming and haiku-like and often prevents me from grinding my teeth. But I do not masturbate to it.

Because of these misperceptions, I have a strong sense of what Oprah’s going through. There isn’t a definition in our culture for this kind of bond between a balding thirtysomething man and his Kleenex. So I get why people have to label it — how can you be this close with a box of Kleenex without being sexual?

Well, dear readers, believe it or not, I am. And it’s not the kind of relationship you might expect. The truth is, if I did masturbate, I would tell you, because there’s nothing wrong with masturbating.

So I’m asking you to stop disseminating these vicious lies. Leave me alone with my box of Kleenex and let me live my life, damn you!

[WARNING: For those who haven’t seen the film Closer, this post contains spoilers.]

I had been urged by certain individuals, knowing of my own auctorial penchant for stylized dialogue, to see Closer, a film directed by Mike Nichols and written by Patrick Marber (from his own play). They told me that this film contained the magic code for relationships. They told me that the film contained literate and human moments that, as Roger Ebert wrote, were “refreshing in a time when literate and evocative speech has been devalued in the movies.” Having now viewed the film, I was disappointed to learn that Closer is something of a sham — the intellectual equivalent of reading a People puff piece. And I am left wondering if cinema has reached a point where a film like Closer, which suggests that all humans enter relationships with the idea of committing immature discretions without the filmmakers giving us time to explore the motivations behind such behavior, is the best that Hollywood can do.

Granted, the film is not without interest. It is well-directed. It looks good (particularly during a photographic exhibition). It is, in my view, something of a predictable train wreck to experience, but it does offer a bit of structural prowess in chronicling a four year period. Julia Roberts acts the best that she can, using her trademark doe-eyed gaze to gain not sympathy from the audience, but a sense of self-loathing. Clive Owen is sensational. Jude Law is passable. If there is a weak spot among the thespic quartet, it is likely Natalie Portman, who comes across more like a child rather than a mixed up woman in her her mid-twenties. Her “Thank yous” during a melodramatic strip club scene might have easily been uttered by a parakeet savant. Her mad cooing for Owen simply cannot be believed because it lacks nuanced vernacular.

I suspect it is Marber who is at fault here. (And Marber should know better, given that he wrote the play when he was just over the other side of thirty and should have been close enough to his twenties to understand the visceral and often confused miasma of youth.) When “intelligent” dialogue is motivated by behavior expressed through stilted wit, rather than the decidedly unintelligent patina of emotional turmoil, which often involves a certain inability to articulate, why opt for the clever line? Case in point:

LARRY: You’re seeing him now? Since when?
ANNA: Since my opening last year. I’m disgusting.
LARRY: You’re phenomenal. You’re so clever. Why did you marry me?
ANNA: I stopped seeing him. I wanted us to work.
LARRY: Why did you tell me you wanted children?
ANNA: Because I did.
LARRY: And now you want children with him?
ANNA: Yes, I don’t know.
LARRY: But we’re happy, aren’t we? You’re going to stay here and live with him?
ANNA: You can stay here if you want.
LARRY: Oh, look, I don’t give a fuck about the spoils.

“I don’t give a fuck about the spoils.” While there’s something to be said for a witty aphorism uttered during a tumultuous moment, notice the complete lack of “ums” and “uhs” during this pivotal development point. Notice how this preposterous line comes after the revelation that Anna, who is married to Larry, has slept with Dan. Notice how Barber lacks the courage to make Larry reduced to a ball of clay. He must be clever! Instead of expressing any kind of meaningful confusion, he must utter lines in complete sentences. And so must Anna (“Because I did.”). Interrogation is to be expected from a jealous character during such an pivotal interruption, but there is nothing here in the dialogue which suggests or even insinuates Larry’s sense of remorse or following up on the news that Larry has just confessed that he has slept with a prostitute. This emotional release comes later, timed for a near pre-programmed audience response, when Larry weeps upon Anna’s shoulder. Even more disheartening, this is dialogue, believe it or not, uttered by characters in their mid-thirties.

Clearly, this is a case of Nichols wanting to revisit Carnal Knowledge/Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? territory. But Marber is neither Jules Feiffer nor Edward Albee (or even Ernest Lehman). Even a line like “Answer me, you ball-busting, castrating, son of a cunt bitch,” a tone somewhat dated a mere thirty-five years later, carries a jealous conviction.

The problem is that Closer lacks the courage to throw itself over the edge and to throw us, as a result, into the choppy waters of infidelity. It confuses its own self-justifying intelligence for joie de vivre (or, in this case, misère de vivre). Most importantly, it fails to offer us a behavioral hint for why the characters commit the indiscretions they do. And without that pivotal motivation, or some soupcon of emotional release, why then should we be invested in the characters?

The fun begins again this week over at the LBC. This quarter’s selected title is Michael Martone’s Michael Martone, which was my personal favorite of the bunch. The other nominees include Paule Constant’s White Spirit, Kellie Wells’ Skin and Edie Meidav’s Crawl Space. Podcasts are in the works featuring interviews with all of the LBC nominators, Martone, translator Betsy Wing, Wells, and an upcoming tag-team interview (more of a conversation really) with Mr. Esposito, Our Young, Roving Correspondent and Ms. Meidav over Indian food. Many of these haven’t been cut to tape, but they will be very soon.

New Scientist: “Now the body of Farinelli, the most famous castrato opera singer, is to be exhumed to learn how he achieved such dulcet tones.”

The Australian: “Inquirer submitted, under a pseudonym, chapter three of [1973 Nobel Winner Patrick] White’s The Eye of the Storm to 12 publishers and agents. This novel clinched his Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973, with the judges describing it as one of his most accomplished works. Not one reader recognised its literary genius, and 10 wrote polite and vaguely encouraging rejection letters. The highest praise was ‘clever’. A low point was a referral to a ‘how to’ book on writing fiction.”

Tony Bourdain is trapped in Lebanon.

I won’t be able to make this, but Paul Malmont, author of The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, will be reading in the Bay Area on the following dates:

Tuesday, July 18th @ 12:30 pm
Stacey’s Bookstore
581 Market St near Montgomery, San Francisco
www.staceys.com

Tuesday, July 18th @ 7:00 pm
M is for Mystery
86 East Third Avenue, San Mateo
http://www.mformystery.com/events.html

Malmont also claims (first come first served, one presumes) that he’ll be offering rides to those heading down to San Mateo from the City. San Francisco literati may want to take him up on the offer if they’re interested in an in-vehicle chat with the man himself. But I suspect this is an elaborate attempt on Malmont’s part to collect some gas money.

“Actually, this is good,” my drinking buddy said when my blog got ignored once again by a few members of the literati. “You don’t want humorless New York types or Me Generation holdovers to sully your comic instincts.”

My drinking buddy then drew a caricature of my receding hairline on the back of a cocktail napkin. The thin reddish fuzz, the sad balance of my forefront follicles, resembled the collection of pubic hairs I had just seen in the men’s room after micturating into the urinal. As a former girlfriend put it, quoting Dr. J as was her wont shortly after smothering me with her bosom whenever we watched the Final Four, “I live my life trying to never appear to be a small man.”

Yet here I was, thoroughly ashamed of my drinking buddy’s slapdash sketch, which he had spent all of two minutes on. I was a small man. In the days that followed, I would still appear to be a small man. All because of the considerable alcohol I had ingested that evening.

It had left me impotent. I had downloaded several MILF Hunter videos from Kazaa, but it was to no avail. How could I get an erection again? Through the act of writing? Perhaps if Graydon Carter offered me a moist kiss, with his reassuring cigarette breath, then I might be small no longer. Indeed, to smell was better than being small, and all it took was switching one vowel. How often had I had this conversation with myself? How often had I stared at myself naked in the mirror hoping that the New York Times might subsidize my writing therapy? It was only through writing an op-ed column that I might be able to purge myself of these demons.

My writer friends thought the ignorance was great. They knew that I was a perverted bastard and that I should probably take a break from thinking about sex for a few minutes. It was an opportunity, a buzz word, a way for me to take up cross-stitching, a hacky sack I could bounce on the tip of my nose to turn into a hacky sack I could ricochet off my knee. Their ignorance of my blog suggested to me that there were other parts of my body besides my penis. I had conjured up grand conspiracies that they were all out to get me. And perhaps they were.

Of course, like every blogger, I had checked my Technorati rating every ten minutes. I had been obsessively monitoring the links to my weblog even before I started blogging on a regular basis, even before I had a blog, ignoring the advice of my drinking buddy, who repeatedly intimated that there was a world outside my apartment.

“Get a life,” said another friend, who was more blunt than my drinking buddy. “Get over yourself.”

By 8 p.m., my Technorati rank was far from the top 100. I basked in the knowledge that I would never be a Boing Boing or a Gawker.

“You see?” my drinking buddy said a week later. “Now let me draw a picture of your penis, since you seem to be having such problems with it.”

I told my drinking buddy to put down the pen. He asked for a small payment to stop sketching.

And all it took was $256.88, which I slid across the table to my drinking buddy. My penis was erect the next morning.

Edward Champion is the author, most recently, of Return of the Reluctant, a weblog of little worth that you really shouldn’t be paying attention to.

Clueless pro-lifer confuses Onion article for the real thing.

[UPDATE: The above sentence was linked to a weblog, but since the weblog post has been modified to include some grisly images (apparently, this pro-lifer can’t stand behind his words), I’m linking instead to Rebecca Traister’s Salon article.]

Weird Al “interviews” Eminem. (via Waxy)

The Book Standard: “[Robert Downey, Jr.] has an intelligence which shines through all his performances, revealing his intellect as well as his acting abilities.”

Setting aside all the drama of edrants.com going down right now, thanks in part to the betrayal of Andrew Baron, a man in New York who I hired as an “on-demand typist” for Return of the Reluctant (how else did you think I blog so prolifically?), there are a few facts I wanted to set straight because these pesky Internet writers don’t understand that this site’s full name is “Edward Champion’s Return of the Reluctant.” Not “Eddie & Andrew’s Return of the Reluctant.” Not “Edward Champion’s Return of the Reluctant with Andrew Baron.” Not “Return of the Rocketboom.” It’s me. Just me. Understand something: If you pitted my hubris against Mr. Baron’s, it would be a bit like Mike Tyson going up against Evander Holyfield. Not only would I TKO Mr. Baron in a few minutes, but I’d get a bit hungry and bite his ear. Granted, this is only personal speculation. We’ll save the facts for later. But my machismo cannot be understated. After all, Mr. Baron is fighting his own battle right now.

Nothing personal against Mr. Baron. But that’s the way it is in the Web 2.0 economy. Sometimes, you just have to bite your partner’s ear off. Literally AND metaphorically.

I had originally prepared a six hour YouTube video recreating every act of betrayal from Andrew Baron during his four-month employment at edrants.com. I hired six local actors to play different components of Andrew Baron’s personality. There was love and care and jealousy and hate in this video. But it was apparently too long. So I’m now reduced to explaining this in blog form.

Fact: Andrew Baron has a large cock. It’s bigger than mine. I know this because we both dropped our Dockers and it was Andrew who whipped out the ruler. It often clouds his better judgment in matters of the heart.

Fact: I am incapable of burying the hatchet.

Fact: I have ghost-written much of Andrew’s material at Rocketboom and have kept quiet up until now. Because much of it called for Amanda Congdon to whip her head around like a bimbo. But this idea originated from Andrew.

Fact: Andrew’s typing speed leaves much to be desired.

Fact: I am even worse on television than Andrew.

Fact: I did indeed undergo plastic surgery in an effort to woo Andrew to San Francisco. I spent $3,000 of my personal savings to extend my nose to six inches: Cyrano style. If it hadn’t been Andrew’s orifice, it would have been somebody else’s I would have done this for. I am now spending another $3,000 to restore my nose to its original size.

Fact: Andrew sobbed on the phone to me many times. I became his “West Coast therapist.” Never mind that I’m not credentialed. He’s doing worse than you think.

Fact: Nearly all of my paychecks to Andrew bounced and I had to pay him in Macy’s gift cards, which explains his wardrobe. I’m not proud of this. But if you knew what Andrew charged for typing, you’d understand.

Fact: I have written every blog post. Every sentence, every comma, every poorly placed adverb. Every time Andrew tried to edit me, I would call him up and ask him to slap his hand with a ruler. Hard. Repeatedly. I figured that my masochistic suggestions might help him with his Rocketboom project. It appears that I was wrong.

Fact: Andrew initially expressed interest in moving out to San Francisco and then became extremely frightened of me. He drew some of these anxieties out on Amanda Congdon and declared to me by certified mail (return receipt requested) that there was, I quote, “no way in hell I would set foot on the West Coast.” I am very sorry for these developments, Ms. Congdon.

Fact: Two million people who hadn’t heard of Rocketboom now know about it, thanks to my suggestion that Andrew whip up a silly scandal.

So what?! Obviously it hasn’t been important for me to air these concerns before. But if Andrew can do it, then so can I! I only say this now because there are vicious and hurtful rumors going around that have implied that I was the one with the larger penis, all evidence to the contrary. None of this devalues the spirit of edrants. I am positive that Andrew will stop stalking me and that he will stop sending me naked pictures to my cell phone. There are probably more important things to dwell on, but as you all know I’m more than a bit socially maldjusted. I think I’ll eat my own ear tonight for dinner. That’s how much it hurts. Let the Valleywag gossipmongers chew on THAT one for a while.

The latest celebrity to jump onto the novel-writing bandwagon is Goldie Hawn. Of course, no publisher has been named in this news story. So it’s quite possible that this is a passing vagary or a rumor from a publicist.

Washington Post: “Newly tapped, [Thomas] Steinbeck’s writing prowess is like a flood. Steinbeck’s first novel is currently at 1,059 pages and rising. ‘Since I can’t write the greatest American novel, I’m going to write the longest American novel,’ he said.”

You have until August 4 to download many eBooks for free. The Boston Globe reports that there have been 1.5 million downloads in the first few days. (via Bookninja)

Kassia Kroszer has more thoughts.

If you enjoyed the Black Swan Green discussion earlier in the year, on Monday, I’ll begin posting the roundtable discussion of T.C. Boyle’s Talk Talk, now in progress via email. It features none other than Dan Wickett, Megan Sullivan, Gwenda Bond, (hopefully) Scott Esposito and yours truly. Is Talk Talk a genre experiment by a highbrow writer? Or is it something more? Find out on Monday morning as the peanut gallery serves up their thoughts.

And for those who enjoyed The Bat Segundo Show #10, I’m pleased to report that Our Young, Roving Correspondent will be chatting with Mr. Boyle again. Keep watching the skies.

There will also be two podcasts released next week, including a certain Show #50 that some people can wait no longer for.

“Faith may only have two legs, but she has a big heart.” (via MeFi)

Rocketboom Replacement

Jeffrey Wells observes a cinematic trend that I remarked upon in contemporary literature a few months ago: movies that, in Wells’ words, involve “GenX guys in their early to mid 30s who’re having trouble growing up.” (Wells doesn’t cite Adam Sternbergh’s “grups” article from earlier in the year, but it does tie into the nagging question.) Personally, I think that any films or literature dealing with the subject might offer a few valuable reasons why. But to expand Wells’ question, speaking as a man in his early thirties happily immature in a lot of ways, has he not observed the dark underbelly of the American dream (i.e., rising real estate prices, the disparity between the rich and the poor)? Has he not observed the troubling sense of self-entitlement that many twentysomethings (and even thirtysomethings) seem to possess? Has he not observed that couples are getting married and having children later? Or the bedlam of luxuries (cell phones, DVDs, SUVs, the Internet, Scandanivan furniture) that have sent a cultural shock wave through the Western world and beyond during the past fifteen years?

While there is certainly something to be said for growing old gracefully, one might also argue that prudence in choosing one’s calling is sometimes a virtue. Even so, it saddens me to see friends with remarkable potential remaining quite blissfully inert after living lives devoid of chance-taking. Then again, if they’re happy, who am I to pass judgment?