Roundup
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on May 23, 2008
Filed Under Roundup, Uncategorized
- While I must confess that there was a minor impulse to satirize the sad, icky, and delusional article that is currently making the rounds and sullying the New York Times’s credibility, I think I’ll simply stay silent on the matter. I urge all parties to do the same. This was a calculated and desperate effort from the Gray Lady to get you to link to the piece, comment upon the piece, eviscerate the author’s reputation, and otherwise drive traffic their way. If there’s one thing New York media welcomes, it’s this sort of hapless gossip. And rather than give this individual the attention she clearly pined for, I think I’ll take the high road here (or perhaps the middle road, since I am not quite obliquely referencing it). There are larger issues to think about: war, poverty, class and race division, rising food prices, the election — just to name a few. These are all more deserving of your attention than a young woman’s failure to understand just how hopelessly unaware she is of her own self-sabotaging impulses. (I read the article twice just to be sure. And these impulses became apparent the second time around when I realized just what was unintentionally revealed within this disastrous confessional. Some writers, I suppose, are content to pillage every inch of personal territory in order to “matter.” Not me, I assure you.)
- Wyatt Mason has been giving good blog of late. The man has been tantalizing us with a striptease summation of the Wood-Franzen event that went down at Harvard not long ago. Part One and Part Two are now available. There are indeed considerable shortcomings in Franzen’s argument, particularly with the quotes presented in Part Two. But rather than offering my own thoughts, let’s see indeed how Mason rejoins. Tomorrow, he says, with a chance of scattered showers and G-men knocking on our doors to ask us how we spent our stimulus packages.
- I have found myself of late RSVPing to parties and not attending. This is not a common practice of mine. And yet it has occurred. Therefore, I apologize to all those who have sent me invites and who have received such treatment from me. When one moves many books, one finds one’s self (one!) in something of a time-crunched pickle. 70% of the books have been shifted. I believe there’s now somewhere in the area of 4,000 volumes. Pickles will indeed be served on the other side. They will not be time-crunched, I think, but they will be tasty.
- I don’t know if it’s entirely fair to use a photo as a book blurb, but it occurs to me that more folks should be photographed with shades, a wind-swept blazer, and a book in one’s left hand. Will GQ follow suit? I think not. But I’m looking at this photo and I’m thinking to myself that even I might adjust certain proclivities, if it will make such developments happen on a more regular basis. Is this Obamamania on my part? Perhaps. But you’ll never see a Hollywood actor look quite this badass. It’s all in the wrist action. It’s all in the book. (This, by contrast, is appalling.)
- Sometimes, it takes a kilt-wearing journalist to point out that Scrabble has turned sixty. And with this, we see that even addictive board games become septuagenarians with little fanfare. There is no justice.
- Will B&N buy Borders? (via Bookninja)
- “Golden age of storytelling,” my ass. Not when you stick to squeaky-clean stories. Not when podcasters abstain from decent radio dramas (this one included). Not when Sam Tanenhaus continues to host the most soporific literary podcast known to humankind. (via Booksquare)
- Speaking of which, Dan Green incites some controversy about authors as marketeers. Personally, I don’t necessarily oppose an author as a marketer, provided the marketing is predicated upon some justifiable creative component. A few days ago, while revisiting John P. Marquand’s work, I discovered that Marquand had written an additional piece for a magazine featuring Horatio Willing (the narrator of the Pulitzer-winning The Late George Apley) complaining about how Marquand took all the accolades without credit. It was a fun piece, and you’ll find it collected in the out-of-print Thirty Years. I imagine it was written with promotion in mind. But it had the same spirit of subtle hilarity that you’ll find in Apley.
- Only a man as deranged as Dave White would live blog the How I Met Your Mother season finale.
- The Nation unveils its Spring Books issue. (via The Complete Review)
- BBC4 interviews Terry Pratchett. (via Locus)
- Ways of Seeing: YouTubed. I’ve loved this program for many years and for many reasons. But I was always intrigued by the way in which John Berger used his show as a pretext to talk with women about female nudes while wearing one of those groovy and unbuttoned 1972 shirts. Draw your own conclusions. But you can’t get away with this in 2008, I’m afraid. (via Mark)
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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.)
Oh, why must your post a teaser like that and then not reveal the article? Do you realize you’re torturing me?
Nevermind.
I’m actually quite thankful the Times published that article because I felt I never had the full story until now. And what a story! It was a gripping tale that made me feel guilty I could only bare to skim through it. My favourite dramatic passage:
I opened my eyes. “Don’t delete it,” I managed to say. “Just make it all password-protected.”
I shuddered. When does her full-length memoir come out?