Roundup
Written byPosted on September 12, 2007
Filed Under Roundup
- Hey hey, ho ho, Cornholio has got to go. (via Tod Goldberg)
- Led Zeppelin reuniting? Okay, who needs the alimony money?
- RIP Joe Zawinul.
- Dear Comics Industry: Please Grow Up.
- Now here’s a way to merge Rosh Hashanah with Moleskine.
- As widely reported, the New York Post will be running more book reviews.
- 1 in 3 Americans still believe that Saddam was involved in 9/11. Then again, 1 in 3 Americans also believe that the Bible should be taken literally.
- Christ, you two, get a room.
- A Curious Singularity has started a roundtable discussion of Grace Paley’s “A Conversation with My Father.” (via Matthew Tiffany)
- Is Steven Pinker “the cognitive philosopher of our generation?”
- If this MySpace page is to be believed, Wal-Mart is now asking mothers to check in their babies. Presumably, Wal-Mart has found a legitimate way to sell random babies on the open market?
- I’m no fan of Kathy Griffin, but I don’t see why these remarks needed to be censored. Indeed, the joke’s more tepid than John Lennon claiming that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Will we see Kathy Griffin product burnings? And are we in 2007 or 1966?
- And speaking of which, here’s Jonathan Lethem on the Fifth Beatle.
- An interview with the co-creator of The Bionic Woman. (via Quiddity)
- So what do you do after a Coney Island career running around as the eponymous target in the “Shoot the Freak” booth? You go to law school.
- Only the New Yorker would find a way to get Baudrillard and Facebook in the same paragraph.
- Where are the men on TV? Anglling for your job, Rebecca, in a new reality TV show called Who Wants to Be a 3,000 Word Columnist? Stag club only, I’m afraid.
- “Ask Yahoo! is teaming up with Yahoo! Answers to bring you Ask Mike.” No, this is not what anyone asked for. When I sent in my question to Ask Yahoo!, I damn well expected Yahoo! to answer it! And now you’re telling me that some lesser being named “Mike” is the guy responsible? Who the hell is Mike? And what can Mike offer that Yahoo cannot? Are you now outsourcing?
Comments
2 Responses to “Roundup”
Leave a Reply
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.)
It’s a wonder Zep has been able to resist this long. This time around, though, if Page performs while sitting in a chair, it will be due to rheumatism, and not the previous night’s epic round of pharmacological abuse.
Lennon’s claim was more culture critique than self-glorification, wasn’t it? That’s how I’ve always interpreted it.