John Cleese is starting a blog. The site’s up and Cleese promises activity before mid-October. (via Cinetrix)

On the surface, it would seem that Maud is a nice gal, a talented writer, an able chronicler of the literary world, and, to my continued astonishment, a remarkably thorough correspondent. However, now that I’ve encountered Fraud Newton (defunct after mere days of wasted productivity by some cowardly anonymous employee at The Foundation Center), I have at last seen the light. Fraud Newton reports that beneath the seemingly benign sheen lies a heart of anthracite. This blog has revealed to me that Maud is a cold and calculated manipulator of the first order. I now realize that her friendly emails are part of a grand plot to overthrow the meat and potatoes of Western civilization. Would you believe that Maud has the temerity to lie about her birthday? Who needs the Iraq situation to get angry about when this minx is offering such jocose fibs? Thanks to Fraud Newton, I will avoid visiting New York altogether and I will stop sending her my boxer shorts by post.

No doubt the Old Hag will be the next grand hypocrite to be unmasked in the litblogging conspiracy. (She’s from Baltimore! Enough said.)

The Complete Review has its Cloud Atlas review up. We here at Return of the Reluctant have been nursing this fantastic novel like an exquisitely mixed margarita for several weeks and, given the extent of our notes, will weigh in eventually at a forum to be determined. The short answer is: Yes, this novel is better than the superlative Ghostwritten (we haven’t read number9dream, but we will) and, yes, it’s made us so happy and delirious that we’re actually using the first person plural against our better judgment.

Dear Safeway, Albertson’s, Lucky’s, and the Like:

While I appreciate the care and service of your cashiers trying to be “personal,” of which more anon, what gives your company the right to have these clerks address me by name when I haven’t offered so much as an introduction or a handshake? That isn’t exactly personal, is it? I speak of these Super Saver Cards that clutter my wallet and the transactions that involve swiping a credit card through a machine, thereby giving your clerk several pieces of personal information (and who knows what else) with which to launch an impromptu conversation entailing some three seconds of labor? When in fact it’s quite likely I’ll never see the clerk again.

Who was the marketing wizard who decided that this breach of privacy needed to go down just after I paid a fortune in groceries, with the “Thank you, Mr. Champion” timed as I am being handed a longass receipt that resembles a slightly wider version of 1930s tickertape? Is the implied message here that you not only know who I am, but that your stores are giving me a paper noose with which to hang myself? Is this some odd homage? Am I meant to leap out of a building like those unlucky businessmen wrangling with the ironic coda to the Roaring Twenties? Is the message here that I can never win? That even if I were to bring in cash you would, by some technological marvel, figure out who I am and still salute me with the invasive words? “Thank you, Mr. Champion.”

I mention this because sometimes I have come in with cash, and I have denied the existence of my Super Saver Card. This has resulted in a mystified expression from the clerk and often considerable alarm. I am then pressured to sign up for a Super Saver Card. I decline. I am asked again. I decline again, even when I know it will save me about $2.67 in my current purchases. This has happened several times, irrespective of the length of the line. What makes the decision creepier is that the clerk actually stops sliding items across his scanner just to ask me this pivotal question, which is apparently important enough to supercede all other service. Sometimes I fear that if I do not produce the Super Saver Card, the clerk will call management. Nevertheless, I hold out. After a brief impasse, the clerk then scans the final few items, but not without slamming a can of tomato sauce hard against the slick plastic surface, as if to suggest that because I have not exercised my Super Saver Card option, I have dramatically inconvenienced him, if not caused irreparable injury to his work ethic, pride and reputation.

Who was the madman that spawned this code of deportment? And why should “Mr. Champion” and Super Saver Cards matter so much? Most businesses would be proud to recoup an additional $2.67 that I choose to give to you out of a strange combination of laziness and concern for civil liberties. But your respective stores have actually taken umbrage because your profit margin is lesser.

Or to put it another way, what the fuck?

Confused and terrified of the American shopping experience,

Edward Champion

Australian News: “Those on low-carb plans lost weight more quickly over the first six months but failed to shed much more over the next six. Those on low-fat, low-cholesterol diets continued to lose weight throughout the year. There was no difference over the full 12 months.”

Boo yah, low carbers! I win!

Wired: “Americans are willing to ‘get naked’ for their government if they feel it will make them more secure. That’s the conclusion Jeffrey Rosen reached in his new book The Naked Crowd, which explores the willingness of Americans to abandon privacy for perceived security.

BBC: “But the movie’s conclusions – true or otherwise – and highly emotional interviews with bereaved parents and injured soldiers will have a big impact on audiences around the world.”

Roger Ebert: “The film shows American soldiers not in a prison but in the field, hooding an Iraqi, calling him Ali Baba, touching his genitals and posing for photos with him. There are other scenes of U.S. casualties without arms or legs, questioning the purpose of the Iraqi invasion at a time when Bush proposed to cut military salaries and benefits. It shows Lila Lipscomb, a mother from Flint, Mich., reading a letter from her son, who urged his family to help defeat Bush, days before he was killed. And in a return to the old Moore confrontational style, it shows him joined by a Marine recruiter as he encourages congressmen to have their sons enlist in the services.”

1490 WBEX: “Coldplay singer Chris Martin says he and wife Gwyneth Paltrow have no idea why they decided to call their baby Apple.”

E.L. Doctorow: “Writing isn’t just a matter of putting words on a page. If you do this long enough, there’s a kind of loss of self. It can drive a writer to drink, depression, whatever. The hazards are quite visible in the physical wreckage.”

Jerry Jenkins: “Jesus is our model. His parables were clearly fictitious, while communicating truth with a capital T.”

It’s been reported everywhere, but grab the goldfish cracker cover of Tom Perrotta’s Little Children while you can. Pepperidge Farms, in collusion with Perrotta to obliterate all remainders, has provoked a recall.

Since I don’t have the time right now that my sexy colleagues do to read an author’s collected works and interview some writer about the pressing issues of the literary world, and since pith is the order of the day, the other night, I had a conversation with Good Ed and Bad Ed. Neither of them are authors, nor are the collective two half as interesting as Andrew Sean Greer. Good Ed is a nice, considerate entity living within my body who sometimes treats people to lunch, walks old ladies across the street, and the kind of guy you might take home to meet your parents. Bad Ed, by contrast, is the Loki to Good Ed’s inveterate angel. Bad Ed is known to scowl, drink too much, and offer scathing remarks without apology. What follows is my transcription, which took six days and several bottles of lager to get through before the tape inadvertently cut off.

ED: I notice that you’ve been reading Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent and that you were getting through the book only with complete reluctance.

GOOD ED: I’m sure Ms. Diamant is a nice woman. Perhaps the problems started with me. I must confess that, as an atheist, I don’t really have much of a religious background. So I may not be as familiar with Genesis as other folks are.

BAD ED: Shut up, bitch. A bad tale is a bad tale. The lady can’t write. “Ruddy” and “red” in the same sentence to describe that insufferable tent? “Impassive” and “without expression” in another sentence later in the book? What kind of shit is that? Two things that mean the same damn thing. I’ve got your red, ruddy, and rosy bluster right here.

GOOD ED: I don’t think you’re being fair. This was a neglected tale that needed to be expanded and elaborated upon. Feminist subtext and all.

BAD ED: Oh please. Expansion of an oft told tale? Don’t even pretend that you weren’t snoozing to Gregory Maguire’s Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. I remember that you were one disappointed mofo when you were reading that puppy. You want feminist subtext? Go read Doris Lessing or Margaret Atwood.

GOOD ED: Can I give you a hug?

BAD ED: Hell no, bitch.

ED: Okay. Hold it. Time out, you two. I can see this conversation is getting heated and I haven’t even asked my second question. What prompted you to read this book?

BAD ED: That cute girl who recommended it.

GOOD ED: What?

BAD ED: You’d suffer another insufferable Rushdie novel for the opposite gender, wouldn’t you?

GOOD ED: Hardly an issue now, given that we’re going out with a very fantastic lady these days. And how dare you make this personal!

BAD ED: What’s that? Do I detect the whiff of dishonesty?

ED: Let’s be fair here and suggest that you were looking for alternatives.

GOOD ED: Fair enough.

BAD ED: Not fair at all. Be honest. How many books have you read with the intent of digging up these hazy analyses for a highly literate foxy lady?

GOOD ED: Again, not an issue. And premeditated reading? You’re insane. I genuinely dig Atwood.

BAD ED: Preventive reading. Why subject yourself to trash, sweetheart?

GOOD ED: The standards are high.

BAD ED: Dear Lord, you’re sounding like Laura Miller.

ED: Okay. Stop! Stop! This is not what I had in mind.

BAD ED: Hey, it was your idea to put us in the same room.

GOOD ED: Highly unprofessional. Let’s talk books. Maybe about how great Cloud Atlas was.

BAD ED: Since when did you care about being professional?

[Sounds of scuffling, whimpering and various shouts.]

GOOD ED: [unintelligible]

ED: But I…

[Here, the tape cuts out.]

Shelley Jackson has published a short story entirely on human skin. The story, “Skin,” is 2,095 words long and was published on creative writing student Rob Poulos. Poulos is currently being sent to various literary magazines with a SASE.

Metherell Towers, Britain’s oldest nudist camp, has been put up for sale. The nine-bedroom chateau was opened up by Edward Hemingway, cousin of Ernest, back in the 1930s. The inside dirt is that Hemingway wrote nude standing up, with the typewriter roughly at waist level. And certainly granddaughters Marguax and Mariel have had difficulty keeping their clothes on in the films that they appeared in. Is there some nudist streak within the Hemingway genotype? I leave the fine investigative team at the Literary Dick to sort this out.

The Vancouver Courier is unimpressed with Don DeLillo’s 1999 play Valparaiso, pointing out “it doesn’t make for fully satisfying theatre. At the heart of DeLillo’s play, there’s a sad, sad story and the impact could have been overwhelming. But that’s not where DeLillo wants to go and so Valparaiso doesn’t go there.”

Newsweek takes a look at The Escapist Unbound, suggesting that literary involvement with comics is the key to mainstream acceptance.

James Sallis is crazy about Walter Tevis, a native San Franciscan, pointing out that by Tevis’s own admission, The Man Who Fell to Earth is “a very disguised autobiography.” The now famous book had been rejected multiple times by publishers, despite Tevis’s remarkable success with The Hustler. Here’s an audio interview with Tevis from 1983 just before his death. And last August, Bookslut’s Michael Schaub took a look at The Queen’s Gambit. And back in 1999, both The Hustler and The Man Who Fell to Earth were named by Jonathan Lethem as two examples of great novels overshadowed by their film adaptations

Angry Asian Man, among many others, is interviewed about the sexual identity of the Asian male by the L.A. Times .

At a Canadian bookstore, a discussion of Howard Rotberg’s The Second Catastrophe was interrupted by an Iraqi Kurd and Palestinian taking umbrage with Rotberg’s words and ethnicity and spouting off antisemitic epithets. But the two hecklers wouldn’t be arrested because Rotberg shouted back at them.

Hari Kunzru, who nabbed a cool £1.2 million for The Impressionist, hopes to repeat his success with his second novel. “I’ve become so used to the good life that I can’t imagine going back to pauperhood,” said Kunzru. “Writing isn’t just a testament to my abilities. It’s also about stock options.”

Worst. Apartment. Ever. And here I was thinking that I was a bit messy. (via Six Different Ways)

Ron points to The Slush God, the blog of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction assistant editor John Joseph Adams. As Ron notes, it shows promise, not just for the insider’s dope, but for anyone interested in the kind of submissions likely to be returned back to the writer.

Kevin gets published in the National Review, Maud interviews Salar Abdoh, and while silent on how the new job’s going, Sarah has the Top Ten Mysteries from Booklist.

On this front, my hope is to get similar substance along these lines toe-tapping in this humble corner. However, due to current existential demands, I wish to inform my reading public that this blog is likely to suck for the next month and a half. Blog epicures are encouraged to check out the folks at the left until the beginning of July. I’ll keep posting as I can. But I assure you that the content here will be written in haste, the arguments and supporting points will be flimsy, and the news obvious and hastily stumbled upon. Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.

David Kipen examines California literary journals in detail. Kipen notes that Zoetrope‘s latest issue doesn’t reflect a California consciousness, but notes that the current crop extends beyond mere gimmicks.

Sarvas’ interview with Andrew Sean Greer is up.

I find myself transfixed by the continuing decline of Naomi Wolf. The journalist stands, still riding on the success of a well-researched, successful and thought-provoking book The Beauty Myth, just after her anticlimactic assault on Harold Bloom. Faced with the prospect of triumphantly rebounding from this abyss with another thought-provoking article on gender relations, she tackles the recent Iraq torture photos. All of which would be shocking enough, of course, were the journalist in question not trying to apply gender roles to an inexcusable moral disintegration that defies such easy dichotomies.

If Lynndie R. England, the woman photographed next to the prisoners, were a reasonable human being, if she did not insist that she was doing a good job, if the trailer park minx did not justify her barbarism, photographed or unphotographed, with the understatement of the decade, ” Mom, I was in the wrong place in the wrong time,”, then perhaps a reflective essay along Wolf’s lines would be necessary. If Wolf had, for example, compared England with Private Jessica Lynch, a figure used as casus belli and conveniently forgotten by the current crowd, in her essay, she may have had more credence. But like most pundits, Wolf clings to the innocence that Kurt Vonnegut recently wrote about and, as a result, remains tragically ridiculous.

That Wolf is just as capable as Maureen Dowd of hyperbole shouldn’t come as a shock. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this generation of journalists is more likely to engage in jejune deconstructions of barbarism than actual reporting and analysis. Why bother to explain when the American public and their media mouthpieces are so willing to keep their heads in the sand? Why bother to demand accountability when there’s the latest reality television show to cling to? And why bother to get inside atrocity when you can drag up the porn argument?

Naomi Wolf has transmuted into that impassive grad student who would respond with ideology instead of revulsion. Being detached is one thing. One expects a journalist to do her best objective work under ugly circumstances. But when theory is promulgated and porn is summoned up as the magical reason why (much like video games and movies were used to justify Columbine), one wonders whether America is capable of taking responsibility for its own representative behavior. Does the feeling of helplessness beget a feeling of removal? I leave greater minds to speculate on this troubling question.

For those visiting Nob Hill, the following two maxims hold:

1. Nobody drinks coffee at a cafe, especially early on a Sunday morning when most normal people are bound to enjoy it. (They all have espresso machines at home, if they drink coffee at all. And besides, what sort of madman buys scones or pastries before 10 AM?)

2. Nobody would dare to buy the Sunday New York Times from a corner store or a supermarket. (They all subscribe to it. Only plebian intellectual types will slap down their five bucks with the glorious, grousy, and growling hawker just outside Cala Foods.)

Should you find yourself visiting a friend or a loved one and not wish to commit yourself to an unexpected cardiovascular workout (as I did this morning), please keep these two things in mind upon your next visit.

The landlord has temporarily turned off the hot water until 5PM (and I forgot about it) and I have too many things to do, including tweaking the last ten minutes of the play. Expect a return on Monday. In an effort to provide more pith, I hope to write about the following next week:

• The stunning mediocrity of Anita Diamant and the problems of transposing familiar tales to novel form
• The promised Book Babes followup
• A post on first lit loves inspired by correspondence with the erstwhile Terry Teachout
• Larry Sultan‘s wonderfully smutty photograph expo at MOMA

Ron points to this despicable column from the Book Babes, which not only suggests that journalism and book publishers should hold back in their coverage, but actually states the following:

[D]on’t you think that it’s reasonable for people to expect that depravity won’t be served up with our cornflakes? This expectation has been sorely tested this week. Over and over again, we see the same photos of prison abuse in Iraq. And now, you can even witness the slaughter of an American innocent on the Internet. When does freedom yield to a form of depravity, of witnessing torture and death as if it were normative?

The stunning ignorance and willing denial expressed in this paragraph requires not only a detailed response, but a call to action that will get things changed at Poynter. At the moment, I do not have the time for either. But rest assured, for all who signed Mark’s petition and for all who give a damn about the current journalistic clime, I will be in touch with you in the near future. More to come.

Nabakov’s private papers have been auctioned off for £500,000. Among the items sold were drawings of butterflies, various zoological papers and a crude doodle of a pearl necklace.