- Robert Birnbaum talks with Martin Amis for the fifth time. Lots of good stuff, including Amis describing how to hit the reader over the head on a character’s race.
- RIP Arthur Schlesinger, although turning Barbra Streisand on to The Economist is the least of his achievements.
- Good Man Park reports that a new issue of The Believer is out, with a Stephen Elliott essay on breaking up available online.
- Yes, screw the bloggies! Happy seven years, Quiddity!
- It’s been linked all over the place, but it’s still worth your time: ephemera from Children of Men.
- Some info on the forthcoming National album. (via LHB)
- Open Letters Monthly is now set up to review the reviewers. (via Mike Harrison)
- Michael Blowhard on the state of interviewing.
- More silly narcissism charges. I’m beginning to wonder, in light of all these allegations leveled at technology, if complaining about what others do with their lives is itself a form of narcissism. Look, someone else could be an intense Scrabble player and spend all of their spare time talking about it. But I’m not going to call them “narcissistic.” Enthusiastic, maybe. Sometimes so wrapped up in their interests that they sometimes forget to eat, sleep, or socially interact, okay. But it does not follow that these folks think about anything but their own interests. Could it be that the “Narcissism!” hues and cries are a new backlash against geeks? (via Speedy Snail)
- Good on this girl. (via Chasing Ray)
- Matthew Tiffany on What is the What: “I read a page, two maybe, at night before the words begin to dance and I drool. I haven’t been reading in traffic, or on lunch break. Then I thought that it was the subject matter; not giving me enough of an escape from the everyday. Which is absurd, because Deng in a refugee camp in Ethiopia is pretty damn far from my everyday.”
- Callie on being a writer again.
- Fuck the FBI. This is ridiculous. (via Maud)
Roundup
– March 1, 2007Posted in: Roundup
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. (
If in that interview Amis replaced “those feckless lit bloggers” with “5,000 words by a young guy who works at the London Review” ya’ll would be up in arms!
Dude, all due respect, but you don’t understand what they mean by narcissism. Geekiness isn’t narcissim. Obsession with a single thing isn’t narcissism.
Narcissism is essentially over-inflated self-esteem. Do you watch the poker? Howard Ledderer and Phil Helmuth are both obsessed with poker, but only Helmuth is a narcissist. At its most extreme it is very much a personality disorder in that it inhibits the ability of a person to effectively operate in the world.