We Blame William Inge for This
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on December 7, 2008
Filed Under Brown, Tim, Literary Smackdown, PEN America, inge-william
The litblogging team had an early lead. But when our team fumbled an answer, PEN America took control of the literary trivia smackdown. We knew every answer that they did. But they had the opportunity to respond first. And in most cases, we didn’t know every answer that they didn’t know. You could sense some common polarity here. And it wasn’t too long before they jumped ahead of us by a good ten points.
It looked for a while that we wouldn’t stand a chance in hell of making a comeback. And then a bit of magic happened. We then took control of the questions, and inched our way to within striking distance. PEN America needed sixteen points to win. And we clawed our way up the mountain to a 15-13 shortfall. I urged Eric Rosenfield not to get too cocky about this, but the man was dripping boatloads of saliva. Had my hand not rested upon his right shoulder, he would have bolted out of his chair and performed like a spastic mascot before the PEN America team.
That’s when Levi Asher and I betrayed the litbloggers. The question was simple: What award-winning playwright wrote the script for the Marilyn Monroe film, The Misfits? Now I’ve seen the film and I knew the answer. It’s not a great film by any means. But somehow my brain misfired. I’m confident that our collective mistake had something to do with the spoons I brought. I played the spoons during every correct answer to ensure that there was a certain harmony in the air. Some pleasant syncopation that would get the audience on our side. Something that could turn this imposing smackdown into the living embodiment of a John G. Avildsen film.
But somehow Levi and I had blocked Arthur Miller’s name — the name we knew — from our noggins. By some mnemonic phenomenon, the two of us thought simultaneously of Bus Stop, a film adaptation that had indeed originated from a William Inge play (although George Axelrod wrote the screenplay).
“That’s Inge!” I cried.
“William Inge! Yeah!” Levi agreed. “Go for it.”
We remain convinced that PEN America, as amicable as they were, had placed some kind of hex upon our heads. Something to perplex us. Something that might cause us to declare more income on our tax returns.
Sarah Weinman, of course, knew the correct answer. But the two of us were too fast, too caught up in our enthusiasm, and the two words were uttered into the mike.
“Wrong,” said Tim Brown, who was clad in a spiffy tuxedo that could outclass Bill Cullen’s sartorial oeuvre.
We couldn’t backpedal from this mistake. Arthur Miller had once been the president of PEN America. We were fucked. And we had fucked ourselves. Making it a doublefuck, or possibly the kind of strange gymnastics that only great geographers like Artemidorus can identify.
And so PEN America, an organization that we proudly salute, smacked us down during the literary smackdown. But everyone played a very good game, offering strange answers when we didn’t know the correct ones, and we made some people smile.
The most important thing to take away from this friendly competition is that just about every literary person has the same interests and enthusiasms. The print and online people don’t have to drink from different fountains. And it’s too bad that the New York Review of Books wasn’t there to share the magic.
[UPDATE: WNYC has an audio report of the smackdown.]
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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.)
Well Ed, you should have watched out for that PEN bunch. Obviously it’s a case of give ‘em an Inge and they’ll take a Miller.
If I understand this correctly, and as I was not there I rely upon your account, you blame the loss on 1) the inappropriate use of eating utensils, 2) the supernatural, 3)impulse control issues, and 4) not sufficiently tuning in to the wise women in your immediate sphere. 3 and 4 just might be lessons worth meditating on.
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