Literary Smackdown This Sunday!
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on December 5, 2008
Filed Under Literary Smackdown
At last year’s Independent Small Press Book Fair, an imposing man posing in a tux (or perhaps not) took charge of a Literary Trivia Smackdown. The man was Tim Brown. This feral contest of wit and esoteric facts pitted A Public Space against The New York Review of Books. I attended this smackdown as a participant, entreating A Public Space to do better. I vowed to Mr. Brown and all the participants and all of the audience members and just about anybody who would listen that a group of litbloggers would be happy to challenge the winner to a new match. At long last, the great divide between print and online would come together in a battle of wills.
Well, the New York Review of Books won. And everything was set for this weekend. But at the eleventh hour, the New York Review of Books ran away, due to a combination of health problems involving one panelist’s father and fear. While all sympathies go out to this panelist’s father, one wonders whether the New York Review of Books abides by a helpful theatrical adage applicable to nearly all scenarios.
Thankfully, PEN America has stepped in at the last minute, stepping away from their human rights duties to contend with the strange specimens trawling and caterwauling in the litblogosphere. And the show will go on!
The litbloggers will be represented by Levi Asher, Eric Rosenfield, Sarah Weinman, and some assclown named Ed Champion. We may sing a few of our answers, or provide light verse to accompany our responses. I may bring a musical instrument or, at the very least, some spoons to play in between rounds if there is enough demand.
The PEN America team will be represented by David Haglund, Meghan Kyle-Miller, Larry Siems, and Lilly Sullivan. It is not yet known how serious this quartet plans to take this literary smackdown. But we have been informed by Mr. Brown that rules are now in place, and that apparently one can use a lifeline. Should our own team prove deficient in answering a question and require a lifeline, we will employ funny voices.
All of this silliness is going down at 4:00 PM this Sunday at the General Society Building located at 20 West 44th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenue). A considerable number of subway lines will get you there: the 1, 2, 3, A, C, E, R, and N.
Should you wish to cheer us on or mock us, the choice is happily deferred to you.
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
[...] final event of the day is a trivia smackdown pitting representatives of PEN versus a team of literary bloggers, billed jokingly (I think) as “a showdown between new media and the old guard.” [...]