April Fool’s Day has come and gone. But for those who missed the fun, here’s a list of links to the entries:
Samantha Power to “Give the People What They Want”
Adam Kirsch Tests Out New Sense of Humor
Love in the Air for Gessen and Sarvas?
NBCC Plans “The Month of a Thousand Panels”
Daniel Menaker Branches Out Into Motion Pictures
Rachel Donadio Continues Transformation Into Younger and Stupider Curtis Sittenfeld
Litbloggers Agree That Blogging “Takes Too Much Time”
Neal Pollack to Write Dad Essays Until the End of Time
William Vollmann Turns in Uncharacteristically Slim Children’s Book
Orange Unveils Male-Only Banana Prize
“Pretentious Literary Fiction” to Get New Section in Bookstores
Border Protection to Ban All Foreign Writers from Entering States
Michael Bay and Bruce Willis On Board for Flann O’Brien Film Adaptation
Lone Literary Geek Decides to Hate Sloane Crosley
Harriet Klausner Gives Three Star Amazon Review
We now return you back to our regularly scheduled programming.
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. (
What about NY Observer Hopes People Still Read: http://gawker.com/374525/ny-observer-hopes-people-still-read? (Unless that one was actually real!)
Well Leon’s Pub Crawl column turned out to be real, so maybe the ORB is, in fact, true??
I’d rather see the film version of Flann O’Brien’s THE THIRD POLICEMAN. (Starring Sylvester Stallone.)
Ed, you fool me half the time no matter what the date. Your perspective often, not always, leaves me wondering: uh, why didn’t I know that? Or, wait, maybe it’s a comic presentation.
But these? Too funny even for you, even though one or two strike me as not entirely unlikely.
I’m watching Jeopardy on April 1st. For one quick shot of Alex Trebek asking us to stay tuned for the following commercial messages, he had a mustache again. Before that shot, and after the commercial break, the ‘stache was gone. Did anyone else see that?
For the amount of time I watch Jeopardy, I did indeed catch the mustache thing with Alex Trebec! LOL too funny, I am currently watching it and it brought back that memory!