Save Segundo Update
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on August 12, 2008
Filed Under Bat Segundo
First off, thanks to those who have pitched in, both with kind words and dollars, to the August pledge drive.
For those who missed out on the Save Segundo Campaign, here’s an update on where we’re at. We’re still working hard to line up advertising for the show and have had a few kind leads and nibbles (nothing firm yet), and we will be stepping up our efforts big time in the next few weeks. We have also scheduled as many interviews as humanly possible during the time we have left, which is roughly around mid-September. (We’ve just released two more shows, and we’re planning on releasing a very special show, which involved a considerable amount of reading and preparation for a forthcoming guest whose time we certainly don’t want to waste, later this week.) The hope is to keep Segundo going uninterrupted for the next few months. However, we’re still facing a shortfall for our pledge drive. And if we can’t raise these funds, which represent a stopgap between the present and a future time in which we will have advertisers in place, then we’ll be forced to abandon Segundo for a month or longer while we scrape together the money to stay afloat. And if that’s what needs to be done, that’s fine.
But we’re hoping that we can continue to keep Segundo on the air without interruption. There are many authors coming through in late September and October who we’d like to devote our energies to. Your continued support of the show through this pledge drive will help us to carry on at the pace of eight shows a month.
So if you’ve enjoyed Segundo, or found any of these conversations valuable, feel free to chip in a few bucks to keep the joint running. If you can’t, no harm, no foul. We’re going to try and keep this operational as long as we can.
Thanks again for listening.
Comments
One Response to “Save Segundo Update”
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.)
[...] Ed is still selling pencils. Buy one. This is one of those NY Times things that I can’t link to, so I have to guide your eyes. Go here and it’s on the top right and it’s a bunch of little heads with the title Cover Stories. It talks about a few things. One, most authors don’t get a say about their cover art which totally awful and unfair and a bad model. Two, Chuck Palahniuk is, not surprisingly, a complete weirdo. Three, Milton Glaser, who created the iconic I (Heart) New York, also created this utter piece of garbage. Seriously, again, how did that thing get greenlit? [...]