Roundup
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on July 8, 2008
Filed Under Roundup
- While self-appointed pundits wax ignorantly about how they’ve finally learned to appreciate comics years after everybody else has, it is refreshing to read a piece by someone who is candid about what he does not know.
- Bob Osterhag summarizes Obama’s opportunistic bolt to the center quite well, and he echoes my own gripe about invasive wiretapping being retooled into “an important surveillance tool,” a noun phrase that is one masterful piece of bullshit. Well, I’ll vote for the smarmy fuck, even if he’s managed to fool Laura Miller. Then again, at this point, I’d vote for Mickey Mouse if he were on the Democratic ticket.
- Sarah and Orthofer report that Dutch crime writer Janwillem van de Wetering has passed away.
- David Crystal offers a defense of text messaging, pointing to its creative potential. And I’ll remember Crystal’s article the next time I drunkenly type “wr r u? out of $! pls buy me nthr pnt!” on a sad Saturday night in a pub. Apparently, there’s genius within those two sentences. Not desperation. The real question here is whether I can the transcripts of these text messages to some university library equally foolish enough to take my collection of aborted manuscripts. (via Magnificent Octopus)
- Trouble in paradise? Gawker has reduced the pay rate per page view. It’s only a matter of time before Nick Denton comes up with the bright idea of having contributors pay him to write for Gawker. (via Persona Non Data)
- Apparently, a controversy has erupted over the Colt 45 beer can.
- In Brazil, authors are treated like rock stars. In Brooklyn, authors are treated like deadbeats who should get a real job.
- CBS News has talked with Richard Ford. And there’s an accompanying photo of his marked up manuscript. It remains unknown, however, whether or not he has changed his mind about basements in Terre Haute.
- Well, Rob Peters, you may be an incurious bore and all, but I assure you this blog is still maintained for fun. Why don’t you team up with Springsteen and write a new song called “3 Million Blogs (And Nothin’ On)?” (via Mental Multivitamin)
- I’m still looking for this year’s quintessential summer album, but I have to say that The Ting Tings’s We Started Nothing is a hell of a lot of fun. And I particularly dig the closing rocker, “We Started Nothing.” And incidentally, if you’re in New York, The Ting Tings are playing a free pool party with MGMT and Black Moth Super Rainbow at McCarren on July 27th. [UPDATE: Alas, perhaps my enthusiasm was misplaced. I certainly hope that this isn't a typical live performance.] [UPDATE 2: Also worth checking out: Revolver, who I find more interesting than Fleet Foxes.]
- And a demolition worker has uncovered a Tolkien postcard behind a fireplace. Apparently, Lord of the Rings is so huge on this planet that even the termites were salivating.
- Also, this just in. McNally Robinson NYC is changing its name to McNally Jackson, a move that the store hopes will reflect its commitment to independence instead of a chain store mentality, among other reasons.
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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.)
Contact Ed by email.
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
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Thanks for the shoutout Ed. Hope you’ll make it to our name-change party. Right now the McNally Robinson href points to that same embarrassing TingTings video, though.
Ahaha, “wr r u? out of $! pls buy me nthr pnt!” made me laugh quite a bit. Positively Homer Simpson-esque!
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