From the years 1942-1966, Orville Prescott served as the main daily book critic for the New York Times. It would seem to me, based on some of Prescott’s remarkable assessments, that Michiko Kakutani’s hostility against nearly almost anything fictional fits in with a long Gray Lady tradition of daily critics who remain mostly hostile to fiction.

On Lolita: “‘Lolita,’ then, is undeniably news in the world of books. Unfortunately, it is bad news. There are two equally serious reasons why it isn’t worth any adult reader’s attention. The first is that it is dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion. The second is that it is repulsive.”

On Catch-22: “‘Catch-22,’ by Joseph Heller, is not an entirely successful novel. It is not even a good novel. It is not even a good novel by conventional standards.”

On The Floating Opera: “Most of this odd novel is dull. Most of its humor is labored and flat. Some of its heavy-handed attempts to shock seem cheap in a juvenile and nasty way rather than sophisticated or realistic, as they probably were intended.” (Never mind that Barth’s first novel is a beautifully twisted satire of Camus.)

My broadband situation will, as of this Tuesday, be rectified. If you have sent email to the edrants account, I am sorry that I have not answered. I will begin responding to this two month (!) backlog next week. Bear with me.

I have decided to grow facial hair for the first time in seven years. In two and a half weeks, I have managed to surprise a few people in New York. I get odd stares from people who have espied me clean-shaven and I sometimes respond, “Humidity, baby!” They do not understand that there are certain sacrifices to perfecting follicle growth. By growing practice facial hair now, I am actually preparing for the winter, where the extra insulation will come in handy should I grow it again. I like to keep my options open. I like to perform trial runs, get measurements, and see if I can come up with some amazing chart after feeding the data into OpenOffice Calc. I like to have some dubious facial hair experience that I can put on a resume and then perhaps get an interlocutor at a job interview to talk to me about it — just to break up the flow for the benefit of others, because interviewers often ask the same questions and they always seem to look austere and professional. And I like to have fun with these things.

Anyway, the facial hair has been a success so far. It’s well past the itching phase and settling in quite nicely. I am not sure if it makes me look any wiser. But I like to think of my facial hair as Robin Williams facial hair: the way that Williams grew beards when he wanted to win an Oscar. I have no real desire to win an Oscar or any award for that matter, but it is fun to be taken seriously sometimes, only to flap out my tongue or blow a raspberry or do something decidedly not serious. Call me an iconoclast of small moments. I suspect that men with facial hair, discounting the buskers of course, aren’t allowed to be silly in certain parts of Manhattan. But then I don’t know. I only have their stern faces to go by. Hopefully, I will start a movement for more silliness from men with goatees, moustaches, and beards. Unless, of course, someone has already initiated such a study. I don’t wish to step on anybody’s toes, or fail to acknowledge the appropriate antecedents.

Can I recommend growing facial hair in New York during July? Well, why not? Live dangerously. Grow something! It’s like having your own personal garden! The only real difference between facial hair and a garden is that you don’t get any ripe fruit with the former. But you do get plenty of whiskers! Who knows? Maybe there’s a barter market somewhere that trades in whiskers for fruit?

Here’s a helpful list for New York freelancers who need to write a needlessly alarmist newspaper piece about what may be killing the novel. So if you’ve run out of ideas and don’t quite know an angle, here are some casuistic ideas for your future pitches! Remember, if you collect a check from any of these ideas, I’m only asking 5%. Be sure to send a check to me within 45 days after the piece runs. Good luck and Allah’s speed!

• Global warming
• David Hasselhoff
• Sudoku puzzles
• People who are really into Settlers of Catan
• Tao Lin
• The bottled water industry
• Right-wing French joggers
• Waffles and pancakes
• Men who leave the toilet seat up
• Women who leave the toilet seat up
• Pet dogs who have been trained by their masters to keep the toilet seat up with their paws
• Marxists
• Eucharists
• Tom Cruise (or any famous Scientologist, really)
• Eco-friendly organic pizzeria owners
• Pot smokers
• Golfers
• Matt and Daniel Mendelsohn
• Lev and Austin Grossman
• Edward Champion
• Killroy

I have been receiving letters sent to my address from people hoping to reach Norman Mailer and a few other authors. I am not Norman Mailer. Nor do I have any way of contacting Mr. Mailer. I am Edward Champion. I’m just some bastard with a blog who happens to interview authors. If you hope to reach an author, please direct your correspondence to the publishers. Not me. Thank you.