All is not well in the New York alt-weekly world. Gawker reports that the Village Voice has proposed a contract for its writers that not only almost completely cuts out benefits, but offers a wage increase of $15/week. $15 may not get you health care, but it might just get you a movie and a few slices of pizza! Or perhaps a mousetrap to buy for the rat-infested warrens that the Voice overlords hope their staff can inhabit.
Now perhaps this has something to do with the rumors making the rounds that New Times and Village Voice Media are planning a merger in an effort to obliterate all remaining alt-weekly competition. After all, strategic alliances between the two behemoths have worked in the past. And labor and antitrust laws haven’t been a concern for these two bastions of progressive and “independent” media.
Fortunately, Voice workers aren’t taking this lying down and are planning a strike. One would hope that Norman Mailer, one of the original founders of the Voice, might channel his rage and energies towards these developments, rather than some book critic whose words he could easily ignore. But then that would involve Mailer living up to his self-projected image as an elder statesman, when we all know that he’s really a hollow shell.
(via Booksquare)
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (