John Sutherland: “The piece was, I believed, mildly sarcastic. YouTubers were not amused. For a day or two, I was YouTube-famous. The contents of their video responses – which at the time, could all be summoned instantaneously from the Wikipedia entry – are bruisingly abusive. ‘Die! You asshole!’ rants one paunchy YouTuber, jowls quivering with homicidal rage. ‘Your head is so far up your arse you can see your tonsils,’ offers another, with a show of that less-than-Wildean wit for which YouTube is justly famous. (They seem for some reason to be obsessed with the rectal tube.)”
More Butler Interview Excerpts
Again, when I tell you that you must read Jack Butler’s Jujitsu for Christ, and when I point out that the Rake ain’t lying when he says “everyone should go out and buy a copy of Jack Butler’s Jujitsu for Christ,” this is a bona-fide hot reading tip for you — nay, an entreaty!* That is, if you give at least ten good goddams about literature! Butler’s work is criminally neglected by the cool kids. (I’m looking at you too, Good Man Park!) But what I’m thinking is that some of us Butler boosters might be able to restore the good man’s graces into the echelons that they belong.
With this in mind, you can read a few more excerpts from the aforementioned Butler interview, courtesy of Jeff Bryant and Prof Fury!
* And really I have Tangerine Muumuu to thank for all this, since she was the one who got the book in my hands. Inexplicably, Jack Butler’s work is about as impossible to find as a Saturday Night parking spot in San Francisco. As soon as I track down another copy, she’s getting one.
Roundup
- From 1934 to 1949, the Philly Inquirer published “complete illustrated novels” in its Sunday book review section. You’d be hard-pressed to find even the most secure and well-funded Sunday supplements doing anything like this today. (via Books, Inq.)
- Primo Levi’s “A Tranquil Star.”
- Keith Gessen asks, “Where is Martin Amis heading next?”
- Behold: New Critics.
- Obviously, Kim Bofo has never read Faulkner. The “clever literary thing” is something known as eye dialect, designed to convey cadences in phonetic terms. It is not intended to be “clever,” nor is it intended to spawn anti-intellectual hostility from across the big pond. More information can be found here and here.
- Joyce and Beckett play golf. (via Fimoculous)
- The 11 Least Intimidating Movie Villains. (via Quiddity)
- Poor Mike Judge. Fox doesn’t deserve him.
NBN Trumps Perseus PGW Offer
We’re now less than a week away from the February 12 bankruptcy hearing. But this morning, PW reporter Jim Milliot revealed that one of the two mystery buyers was the National Book Network. NBN made a better offer to PGW clients than Perseus. NBN plans 85 cents on the dollar and only a three-year contract extension (as opposed to Perseus’s 70 cents and four years). Further, NBN has filed an unsecured claim to retrieve the remaining funds, instead of an administrative claim. This is a good sign that NBN might be spreading some of the monies around to the creditors. Galleycat has a memo of NBN’s offer for your perusal.
Radio Free PGW, in a shocking digression from its trademark cynicism, has signaled its approval of NBN, writing, “Hopefully, this will mark an end to the hard sell and arm twisting, and we hope to never hear the words ‘sixty-five percent’ again.”
Of course, since many PGW clients have signed agreements with Perseus (and from what I can determine, these agreements are by no means final; Perseus must have 65% of the PGW clients signed on before the February 12 hearing for the deal to go through), it will be interesting to see how this showdown between NBN and Perseus plays out. And what of the third rumored AMS purchaser? Will we see 90 cents on the dollar and two years? 110 cents on the dollar and six months? Come on, indie presses, hold out and watch these titans tear their follicles out while trying to woo you!
New Jack Butler Interview
A hot tipster has informed me that a Jack Butler interview will be appearing in the Summer/Fall 2005 issue of the Mississippi Quarterly. What’s more, said tipster somehow scored a copy of this interview and passed it along, to which I raise my highball glass with gratitude. Of course, I wouldn’t mention any of this if I didn’t provide you with a sneak peek. So here goes:
JB: I soon resolved not to become a rehasher, a writer who goes back to some imagined South of the past and merely iterates the stereotype, however vigorous the stereotype might seem. This resolve was not the result of loving SF. It was just, who wants to be a copycat?
My scientific and SF background came to the rescue. I appropriated from physics the notion of the multiverse. My multiverse consists not only of the quantum probability alternate universes, but all of the universes that can be imagined (including, like Woody Allen, those of fiction), and, as I like to say, all of those that can’t be imagined as well. I work, from time to time, on a collection of stories patterned loosely after The Canterbury Tales, which I call Tales from the Multiverse. It owes a lot to science fiction, but more to Chaucer’s incredible poem.
Since my Yoknapatawpha is the multiverse, I am freed from the constraints of consistency.
* * *
You hear that, gang? To paraphrase a really crappy cartoon about robots, there’s more to Jack Butler than meets the eye. Sometimes, anachronistic education is the mad and unexpected muse.