- “The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick” by R. Crumb (via Rebecca’s Pocket)
- The scoop on Norman Mailer’s next book. Looks like the old dog might be competing with Tom Wolfe for “worst last novel ever.”
- Douglas Coupland opens a can of whoop-ass on Canadian literature. It’s only available through the New York Times Select portal, but the gist here is that he’s declared it to be at the mercy of the Canadian government.
- The Guardian attempts to find patterns in UK bestseller lists. I know a few conspiracy theorists they might want to consult first.
- C. Max Magee on hard-to-pronounce literary names.
- Newspapers are starting to discover the Internet. At this rate, maybe four years from now, they’ll discover that the Smashing Pumpkins broke up.
- I’m surprised nobody has made the correlation between YouTube and America’s Funniest Home Videos before. Is there some pattern to be found in these videos?
- More on McCraw. It seems that McCraw has now sued former editor Jerry Roberts for $500,000. (via Romenesko)
- “Once More with Hobbits” (via Gwenda)
- Rick Kleffel is reporting from WorldCon.
- Carolyn Kellogg on The Mysteries of Pittsburgh casting call.
- “The Pressure to Be Exotic” (via Booksquare)
- Novelist Masako Bando has confessed that she threw kittens over a cliff that her pet cats gave birth to. As publicity stunts go, I’d say this was maybe a tad extreme. Why couldn’t Bando take out a full-page ad somewhere or get in a physical altercation the way that most batshit crazy authors do? The big question: how will the bar be raised here?
- MySpace: The Magazine.
Roundup
– August 25, 2006Posted 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. (
Saturday 26 August 2006.
Sir —
Regarding “The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick”:
http://kitchensinkmag.blogspot.com/
http://kitchensinkmag.com/sectionlayout.php?mainsection=reverseangle&story=scannerdarkly