No less an authority than University of Wisconsin professor Barbara Chatton has revealed that the film form is bad for Dr. Seuss. Chatton notes that the predictable rhymes make the Seuss books encouraging for beginning readers and points out that kids tend to resist the tacked-on morals Hollywood insists upon. Next year is the 100th anniversary of Mr. Geisel’s birth.
The Boston Globe profiles thriller writer Derek Raymond. All of his books are out of print in the States. Also in the Globe is an interview with Marion Cunningham, a lady interested in bringing back the family dinner hour. She points out that some people have never seen other people cooking. But what does this really mean? Will we see an upsurge in kitchens with mirrors (to add to the many reflective surfaces)? I envision a sudden wave of kitchen narcissism, of lonely people cooking alone, admiring themselves in the mirror, standing naked save for a “Kiss the Cook” apron, and swinging a brand new garlic press like they mean business. Not much of an identity, I know. But if I was pressed to predict a trend for 2004, this would be it.
Aniruddha Bahal is pleased as punch. As you may recall, Bahal won the Bad Sex Award earlier this month. He says book sales have spiked and notes that, “A lot of people actually thought it was a good piece of writing.” This from the man who wrote of breasts that were “placards for the endomorphically endowed.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has an update on the island in The Egg and I.
And the latest person to sue Disney is French author Franck le Calvez, who claims that Nemo is a ripoff of a character he created named Pierrot.
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. (