Like Mark and Maud, we’ve completely obliterated Amazon as a purchasing option. No gifts or random packages sent from there anymore, thank you very much. You won’t even find our wishlist. Those kind and remarkable people lurking behind the scenes will have to stay the course until we get our obscure objects of literary desire tranposed and listed onto safer pastures. Rest assured, we don’t take Amazon’s PAC funding lightly and, as previous actions have demonstrated, we’re adamantly sociopathic in our boycotts. This week’s dartboard cutout? Why, Jeff Bezos, of course!
We do, however, think that the inestimable Mark Sarvas is overdoing it with his Time subscription legerdemain. The magazine is, without a doubt, useless. When you factor in their neurologically inert coverage of current events (witness such prima facie pronouncements as “The poisoning has already given him martyrlike status among his supporters, but it also raises questions about whether his health will allow him to serve with sustained vigor,” and the moronic machinations become apparent) and the fact that a mere four (four!) of their Persons of the Year have been women, it’s really a no-brainer. The magazine was established by Briton Hadden and Henry Luce to reduce the information of our times to jejune gardyloo processed by dullards. Or to cite Luce directly, “Of necessity, we made the discovery that it is easier to turn poets into business journalists than to turn bookkeepers into writers.”
Birnbaum might drop-kick our asses for riding the adjective with two Js, but in Time‘s case, it’s readily apparent that no other modifier cuts the mustard in quite the same way.
(Furthermore, it would be criminal for us not to reveal how much we loved the Man of the Year moment in The Big Lebowski, whereby slacker Jeff L glimpses himself in a mirror styled along the Time yearly hard line. It’s one of the film’s most overlooked gags.)
We now return you to our regularly scheduled hiatus.
Magic Hours by Tom Bissell: This marvelous collection of essays chronicles everything from film shoots to novelists rescued from oblivion. (The essay on the Underground Literary Alliance, with its portrait of raucous factions, unexpectedly reveals how soft today's literary world has become.) But if you peer between the cracks of these smart pieces, you may very well see how cultural lives are formed from the most unexpected life choices. And as we follow Bissell's development as a writer over the years, that goes for Bissell as well. (
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway: Harkaway's latest novel greatly improves on his previous book, The Gone-Away World, which I'm already on record as praising. Angelmaker adopts genre elements without ever feeling like a genre book, and it leads me to believe that Harkaway is well on his way to a narrative grace close to China Miéville's. Yet inexplicably this very fun book, which includes an eightysomething badass named Edie Banister, a mysterious mechanical object that may destroy the world, farcical scenarios involving lawyers and the police, and some unexpectedly moving moments about fatherhood, doesn't appear to be getting much attention in American newspapers. Nothing from the snobs at The New York Times Book Review, nothing from The Washington Post. And since I can't get Harkaway on Bat Segundo, I hope this Jump Up and Down mention gets you hopping as well.
The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel: Unless you're really pressed for time, forget Jonah Lehrer. If you want to understand creativity and its relationship to neuroscience, then the bowtie-wearing Nobel laureate is your man. In addition to being a physically beautiful book (you will drool over many of the paintings), there are helpful overviews on optical illusions, science, biographical backgrounds, and many vital figures from the Vienna Secession. Kandel's enthusiasm (and his call for greater unity between the humanities and science) is contagious.
You just wanted an excuse to say “gardyloo” again …
Perhaps. But give me a better colloguialism and I’ll happily promulgate.
Colloquialism, even. Damn, can’t spell so close to the holidays.
That was a sizeable break? What’s a small one?
By the way, did you hear the one about Jim Harrison and…
In Time’s defense (and the only one I have for it), they have a Comics columnist, Andrew Arnold, (online though, so no need to subscribe) who does good work and is consistently worth reading
I think my new favorite word is “lachrymose”.
Consider this a warning!
I love a man who can’t stay away …