- There’s a new blog covering literary Chicago called Literago, which makes me wonder why San Literisco, Bookhattan, Los Angelinotypes, and the like haven’t lexically blended their way into fruition.
- I think between the dreadful I Am Charlotte Simmons and the preposterous answers in this profile that Tom Wolfe is far from the energetic gonzo that once made him so interesting. A real shame.
- Sarah gets the Litminds interview treatment.
- Dirty Books. (via Maud)
- Dominic Cavendish talks with Edmund White.
- Elizabeth Crane is spending her time falling down. Give her two months and she plans to get a buzz cut, glasses, and a short-sleeved shirt, abandon her car in the middle of the freeway, and terrorize the closest person resembling Tuesday Weld in Chicago. All this under the direction of Joel Schumacher. Be careful, folks. Ms. Crane is a powder keg.
- Ron Silliman laments the lack of serious novelists who start off as poets. As it so happens, there are many who do. Here is a haiku written by Chuck Palahniuk in the late 1980s:
I hate you harder
Scum sucking sheltered yuppies
Cut me twice tonightSo you see, the poets are out there. There just doing writing poetry on the q.t. for understandable reasons. Speaking of which, Palahniuk recently appeared on the Agony Column.
- William Gass has won the 2007 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism, rendering Mick Jagger’s 1968 prediction correct. You see, many music critics have spent years struggling to figure out what the hell “Jumpin’ Jack Flash / It’s a gas, gas, gas” actually means. What these critics didn’t know was that Jagger was correctly predicting Gass engaging in a series of unexpected jumping jacks upon winning the award. In fact, the whole song is laden with literary soothsaying. What else could “I frowned at the crumbs of a crust of bread” represent but the woes of a struggling writer?
- John Sutherland wonders if first drafts should be ignored.
- It appears that Jack Herman is bamboozling Canadian playwrights.
- Isak reminds us that the time to sign the petition to save small and indie publishers from exorbitant postal rates is running out. Send letters and the like, if you care about an egalitarian postal system.
- Here’s one of the silliest reviewing ledes I’ve seen this year.
- Bill Clinton is now providing clues for the New York Times crossword.
- I hope George Murray knew what he was getting into with this troublesome blog post headline.
- There’s a new Zadie Smith story in The New Yorker. (via Bookblog)
My favorite lede of the year: “Ron Jeremy has a big penis.”
Thanks for the Palahniuk link! I hope to see him on Bat Segundo someday.
George knew exactly what he was getting into. He even toned it back for subtlety from “Dick swells to huge proportions”.
In Canada it is typical for a novelist to start off as a poet: not only Michael Ondaatje, whom Silliman mentions, but many others including A.M. Klein, Leonard Cohen, Margaret Atwood, Jane Urquhart, Nicole Brossard, Don Coles, Carol Shields, Leon Rooke, Michael Redhill, Anne Hébert, Mary di Michele, Anne Michaels, Michael Crummy, Elizabeth Hay, Elizabeth Harvor, Elizabeth Smart, John Steffler, Daphne Marlatt,Robert Kroetsch,Earle Birney,Dionne Brand, Anne Hebert, George Elliot Clarke,Joy Kogawa, Robert Kroetsch, Marie-Claire Blais…well, I could go on twice as long but you catch my drift.
Curious.
,