by Edward Champion

Writers with Drinks

I’m not one to plug my fictive endeavors (and frankly I’m still bemused that I’ve been invited to do this, perhaps because they associated the “drinks” part with me; who knows?), but this is a reminder to any and all interested parties that I will be making an appearance at Writers with Drinks on Saturday, January 20, 2007 at The Rickshaw Stop at 7 PM, along with writers who are much better at this fiction thing than I am. In fact, the hell with me. Check out this lineup: Michelle Tea! Andrew Sean Greer! Kim Stanley Robinson! Michael Blumlein! Justin Chin! I mean, how can you not swoon over that roster?

I will be reading the first chapter of my novel in progress. There was an impromptu test reading over the weekend, largely because Mr. Asher coaxed me to read it in front of a small group of literary types.

The Writers with Drinks performance will be considerably more high-octane, and it will also feature a live reprise of Part One of “The Neurotic Chronicles” (for those who haven’t heard it) and possibly some audience participation.

Check it out! There may also be another very special guest.

by Edward Champion

Is Colson Whitehead Stuck on Novel #4?

From New York Magazine: “Colson Whitehead, author of John Henry Days, The Colossus of New York, and Apex Hides the Hurt, is currently holed up in the bistros of his neighborhood, Fort Greene, at work on his next novel, which is about a teenager who subsists on TV dinners and toils at an ice-cream parlor (the novelist’s traumatic summers in a Hamptons scoop shop are documented in his New York Times essay ‘Eat Memory, I Scream’).”

Now this seems a bit suspicious to me. First off, a novelist shouldn’t be in the business of describing an unfinished work. And when pressed by an interviewer, the novelist should probably just say, “Yeah, I’m working on something. Next question.”

But in this instance, Whitehead has offered an answer. And it isn’t “a teenager overcoming a personal obstacle” or “a teenager who comes of age.” No, the great human angle on this story is “a teenager who subsists on TV dinners and toils at an ice-cream parlor,” suggesting that cultural reference comes before character development or that Whitehead is riding the great food crutch that many writers dwell on during a gestation period.Of course, it’s probably unfair of me to read so closely into an answer like this. Nevertheless, after the lackluster Apex Hides the Hurt (a passable novel, but lackluster in comparison to his two previous books), I worry about Whitehead’s ability to deliver.