Aside from the fact that I somehow mixed up Han Solo with Greedo during the Eisner-Pekar Questionnaire, the panel went very well. Thanks to all who attended. APE podcasts forthcoming.

Oscar Villalon remains deaf to my queries, but at least my pal Scott Esposito cracked the Chronicle today. And I’m very happy for him. Truly. No bullshit.

…do you feel fine?

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “I love listening to Nirvana when doing deep-tissue massage.”

At the risk of coming across as a solipsistic bastard, here’s the current status of things, in lieu of a blog entry over the next 24 hours:

1. I am overworked right now but happy.

2. I’m pleased to report that I have, at long last, met the delightful Kimberly Askew. I even sang the first part of Janis Joplin’s “Mercedes Benz” to her. (Or was that Nicki? Or was it Kim and Nicki? Mind severely fatigued. I’m sure I’ll recall the precise details in the morning.) Kim saved my ass with a beer that was somewhere between a pilsner and a Stella Artois. And for this, I was immensely grateful.

3. A lengthy report on the May Queen reading at A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books is coming. I don’t know when.

4. At this point, there are eight or so interviews in the can. I don’t know how to release these without overwhelming the listening and reading public, much less pulverizing myself in the process. But if you feel barraged, I greatly apologize. I assure you that the majority of these are quality conversations.

5. Thank you again, Miss Snark, for facilitating all the crazed Bat Segundo stories and providing this overextended correspondent with more than a few laughs. Mr. Segundo has read these and will be responding to the allegations in the next podcast.

6. A reminder: The Alex Robinson interview on Sunday is happening. 3:30 PM at Alternative Press Expo. There will be visuals, a satirical nod to James Lipton, an unusual experiment involving the audience before the Q & A, and Alex and I will be systematically going through his panels to see how they evolved. So be sure to check it out and say hello. This will be a great opportunity to listen to how a fantastic graphic novelist works, as well as ask intelligent questions.

7. Tonight I recorded the most ambitious podcast I’ve ever attempted and it went very well. Stay tuned for an upcoming podcast with dirt dished on Curtis Sittenfeld and the Modern Love section in the New York Times Style section, among many topics.

8. Thank you also to those who have checked up on me. Yes, I am eating three meals a day. I’m still working on catching up on the sleep deficit.

9. Yes, I still owe you email. A few days, por favor.

Wait a minute. DBC Pierre has fans?

Holy cats! Bat Segundo fiction over at Miss Snark’s!

It seems that every time a book or a film dealing with September 11th comes out, someone cries out the words, “Too soon!” It happened recently with Jay McInerney’s The Good Life, when Norman Mailer told McInerney that McInerney should wait ten years before attempting a novel about it. It happened with Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, where people declared it was “too soon” for a novelist to write about 9/11. And now it’s happening again with United 93. The trailer was released to theatres and people reacted negatively. The result? An AMC Loews theatre in the Upper West Side pulled the trailer.

It’s been more than five years since September 11th. And with all due respect to the victims, I’m wondering why today’s artists are so timid with respect to the subject. Is it standard operating procedure to take no chances for fear of offending? I hate to invoke Godwin, but the current silence reminds me of the situation chronicled in the 2004 documentary Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust, which I was lucky to see last year. The film offers a convincing argument that Hollywood adamantly refused to come to terms with the full reality of the Holocaust until years later and points out that later movies, such as the excellent film The Pawnbroker, were coping mechanisms that may have come too late.

This popular notion of repressing or, more accurately, self-censoring dramatizations of recent history hasn’t gone away. Talk of 9/11 and deal with its explicit details, and you are declared insensitive or tasteless. But what better way might our nation come to terms with that terrible day then to expose its explicit details through film, literature, music, painting, sculptures, theatre, opera, ballet or countless other forms of art? What do we gain when our culture reflects the notion that September 11th didn’t happen or shouldn’t be talked about? Piece of mind, perhaps. But limitations which might beget other limitations.

So people are crying and feeling uncomfortable when seeing this trailer. Well isn’t it art’s purpose to do this? And don’t such emotions allow a certain catharsis?

Too soon? If not now, then when?

This Monday, a number of smart and fantastic women (including Meghan Daum, Heather Juergensen, Erin Ergenbright, Michelle Richmond, Samina Ali, Kimberly Askew, Carla Kihlstedt, Flor Morales and Erin Cressida Wilson) will be reading from The May Queen at A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books. The fun starts at 7:00 PM. And then after the reading, there’s an after party at the Hotel Rex bar. Your correspondent will be attending both affairs. Do come by and say hello.

I can’t tell you which book I loathed more: the one that was 342 pages or the one that was 368 pages. 368 pages were, let’s face it, 26 pages longer than 342 pages. But the 368 page book had a larger typeface, which meant that each book took just as much time to read.

As I turned each page, I realized that it was impossible for me to love anything. I despised the characters, I despised the plot, I despised the writer. Sometimes, I even despised myself. Hatred coursed through my veins as my eyes scanned each sentence. I hated the subject. I hated the verb. I hated the subject-verb agreement.

Why should I give any book a chance when it was so easy to hate? The authors had sweated years, but I had sweated hours just reading. I took both books and threw them against the wall. Then I picked them up and threw them against the wall again. And again. Until there was a few dents. Yeah, that will teach you, books. Then I unzipped my fly and urinated on one book. And when I was done, I pissed on the other.

Then I scooped up both books with a dustpan and took them outside and urinated on both of them in public. I was careful with my micturition, making sure that I hit Page 362 in the longer book.

Then I unleashed a torrent of epithets on the books just to show them who was boss.

Then I went back inside and sat down to the computer and wrote this post. I don’t have anything to hate right now. But I’m pretty sure I’ll come up with something. Permit me to reflect.

I still hate both of those books. I will go on hating them until the end of my days. In fact, I’m scowling right now just thinking about the author of the 368 page book. And if these two books have their defenders, then I will hate them.

I hate this blog. I hate you.

Introducing the iGoatse.

Carolyn Kellogg on SXSW: “As a group of us finished lunch, we realized we had an hour to kill before the next session. ‘Where should we go for a beer?’ I asked, standing up. They looked at me blankly. One checked his watch (it was 2:15 p.m.). ‘Come on, it’s SXSW!’ I urged, not realizing I was barking up the wrong network cable. Everyone demurred, preferring to get back to the conference hall, they said, to get connected to the Internet again.”

Saturday over Garner? You’ve got to be frickin’ kidding me.

[UPDATE: My colleague Scott Esposito says it better than I can. But as an aside, what kind of literary appreciation you expect from a woman who writes for Entertainment Weekly?]

Earlier this week, I had a chance to talk with writer B.S. Napkin, a local writer who has published several books, including A Hose for Mr. Bigass and A Bend Near the Bottom. He claimed that he had been suckered out of the Nobel Prize because “the fuckers have a quota on authors who use their first two initials.” Mr. Napkin, a septuagenarian who lives in a rest home near the corner of Geary and Fillmore Streets, understands that his name does bear some resemblance to another writer‘s name and suggested to me that this unnamed author sent critic James Wood a check shortly after Mr. Napkin did, but that this other writer sent the higher bid and that Mr. Wood had abandoned his planned essay, essentially a scholarly series of encomiums, on Mr. Napkin’s work.

Understand that I found much of Mr. Napkin’s assertions quite strange and unfounded. Of course, I’ve seen writers freak out before. Some have even sobbed on my sleeve, suggesting that, as interviewer, I am a pro bono therapist. In fact, I was a bit astonished to receive a check last week from one author who seemed to open up to me the minute I asked him about his mother. I think he misunderstood me. I had asked about a “mother” who appeared in one of his novels. But I was, of course, all too happy to cash this unexpected windfall.

Irrespective of this, Mr. Napkin’s neuroses were cut of an altogether different and quite furious cloth. As I began to ask Mr. Napkin some serious questions about his work, he unleashed all manner of invective. The strange thing was that none of it had anything to do with his own work. Mr. Napkin’s veins quite literally bulged out of his temples as he talked with me. Had he not been busy knitting a sweater for his niece, he likely would have thrown his hands around my neck and strangled me. Anything, of course, to gain the attention of the press.

Shortly before telling me, “I will write no more!” while waving his arms frantically and confessing that a correspondent from Narcissist Quarterly was planning to talk with him right after I finished, Napkin confessed to me the following statements.

“Ernest Hemingway was actually an army of dwarves with a mean penis size smaller than Henry Kissinger’s,” he shrieked, saliva dripping from his mouth.

“Charles Dickens was the son of a motherless goat and really wanted to own a whorehouse. How else do you explain his obsession with the theatre? Such reprobates have no business writing novels.”

Napkin proved, however, to be quite complimentary towards the work of Edward Bulwer-Lytton (“a first-class swashbuckler”) and championed Benjamin Disraeli’s Vivian Grey, insisting to me that Disraeli was a much better novelist than a politician — particularly in his younger years, when he was “flush with piss and vinegar.”

Other than these plaudits, however, Napkin had nothing positive to say about contemporary fiction and promptly asked one of the nurses to wheel him away.

I was a bit stunned that the interview had been cut so short. But at least I had a fantastic interview to unleash to the world.

Or so I thought. I had intended to reproduce Mr. Napkin’s words for an upcoming podcast, but unfortunately I accidentally erased the data.

So I’m afraid you’ll have to take my word for it that B.S. Napkin is the angriest novelist alive, more indignant than those who have taken in Trinidad’s fruit. He will go to the grave bitter, furious and resentful — more so than any other writer in literary history. And so long as he lives, Napkin will find something at fault with even the very oxygen he breathes.