The Been Caught Stealin’ Wi-Fi Roundup
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on May 31, 2008
Filed Under Roundup, Uncategorized
- Thanks to some technical trickery, I am now stealing wi-fi on my relocated desktop computer. This casual pilfering should last only a few days, and I have tried to keep this bandwidth theft to a minimum. Which means that email is spotty these days. (I should also point out that I am not really answering email because of this thing called settling in.) But now that we’re all here (or, rather, some of us are here; many are at BEA), let’s get down to business.
- Here is what I am apparently missing in Los Angeles: A booth where you can get your teeth whitened for $99. Dozens of dinosaur finger puppets. Sherman Alexie exclaiming, “Holy motherfuck! That’s Judy motherfucking Blume!” Faux surprise over the Scott McClellan book. Prince a reader? Litbloggers at BEA and not one of them is typing. The Rapture is Coming! Intriguing Germans with ridiculously named websites. A Mac in tow but no posts to show. A partnership between Amazon and S&S. Neil Gaiman stalkers. A women sprawled out on the floor before a taco run. Well, so far, it doesn’t seem all that different from a sunny afternoon in New York. But here’s Callie with no doubt the first of several reports! I hold out faith that prodigious reporting will expand beyond the established quirky details.
- Marc Weingarten writes about McSweeney’s, discovering Yannick Murphy and other fine authors two years after everybody else has. For his next piece, Mr. Weingarten will be writing about this really cool new band, LCD Soundsystem!
- Jeff points to a bookstore trick now becoming a more increasingly common practice: more bookstores are returning books 90 days before the tab is due.
- There is little left to mine, Mr. Sedaris. Please draw your attentions outward and evolve as a writer so that your humor can once again flourish. (via Quill & Quire
- Nicholson Baker reviewing in the NYTBR? Has hell frozen over? (Richard Russo and Marisha Pessl are in there too, making me wonder if Dwight Garner is turning the joint into a literary answer to those periodic Battle of the Network Stars specials that once aired on ABC. As it so happens, two of these reviews are quite good. You can probably guess which of the three is written with abject narcissism, instead of insight in mind.
- Anthony Lane on Sex and the City. The last paragraph in particular is dead on. (via The Old Hag)
- Maud wants to say just one word. Are you listening?
- The Reading and Book Buying Habits of Americans. (via Mark Athitakis, who has a few conclusions)
Comments
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.)
- I'm only up this late because I had too good a time earlier this evening. 6 hrs ago
- RT @rakesprogress Terra Haute Blogger Beginning to Think Lit Blog Co-op Isn't Going to Call http://tiny.cc/moYal 7 hrs ago
- Is it just me or do the pans and zooms in this Paul Auster interview make it look like a creepy surveillance video? http://bit.ly/h9t35 7 hrs ago
- More updates...
Contact Ed by email.
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
- Will Resurface Later
- The Bat Segundo Show: Hal Niedzviecki II
- Alain de Botton on Responding to Critics
- Alain de Botton Clarifies the Caleb Crain Response
- Despotism (1946)
- Inside BookTour.com: A Q&A With Kevin Smokler
- Dia de los Vivos — Flower Parade 2009
- Alice Hoffman: The Most Immature Writer of Her Generation
- The History of Verizon, Part Three (September to October 2000)
- Hoaxes Are Still Possible in the Internet Age