Pictured above is a basement in Terre Haute. It is within this damp and miserable environment that 26-year-old literary blogger Jerrold Hysteria muses about literature, often mocked and belittled by newspaper critics who cower under desks the minute that they hear the words “Tanenhaus Brownie Watch” or “LATBR Thumbnail.” Mr. Hysteria has received forty-two phone calls from novelist Richard Ford in the past week: all of them collect. Mr. Ford seems to think that Hysteria is the litblog force that caused The Lay of the Land to be considered less worthy than Independence Day. Mr. Ford has a lot of spare time.
Mr. Hysteria, alas, does not have Mr. Ford’s luxuries. Why then would he operate in a basement?
“I don’t know why he pays attention to me,” said Mr. Hysteria by email. “I’ve only read The Sportswriter and didn’t care for it.”
Mr. Hysteria runs the literary blog Richard Ford Ate My Tuna Salad Sandwich and Didn’t Pay His Half of the Check and he is just one of many litbloggers who has been blamed for many of the current problems in literary culture. Mr. Hysteria has a Technorati rating. Mr. Ford does not.
Because of this, Mr. Hysteria, like many other litbloggers, needs your help.
Here is what you can do to save blogs.
1. Please tell Richard Ford to stop calling Mr. Hysteria. This is costing him serious time and money. He lives in a basement.
2. Please tell John Freeman that Mr. Hysteria would like to give him a hug and means no malice.
3. We’re also going to need someone who doesn’t mind traveling to Terre Haute and doesn’t mind basements to give Mr. Hysteria a lap dance.
There will be more published here on what you can do to save the blogs. We’ll be asking major figures, such as Lorrie, the angry chick at Starbuck’s who “doesn’t know what the fuck a blog or a book review is,” to weigh in here in the coming weeks.
This is serious business. There are men over thirty crying about this.
SAVE THE BLOGS! Starting with Mr. Hysteria in Terre Haute.
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. (
Maybe Mr. Ford doesn’t like bloggers in Terre Haute basements because they, unlike the conveniently located Colson Whitehead, can too easily elude his saliva.
I think you should also run a graphic of the spitting image of Richard Ford on this post.
Hey, that looks like the basement I write from. I guess all litbloggers are cut from the same cloth.
That is one sorry looking basement! That’s a place people should only be spending time in if they want shelter from a tornado or need to hide a body.
,..] http://www.edrants.com is another great source of tips on this subject,..]