We Regress the Error
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on May 7, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized
Dear Peter:
I write to impress my most profound apologies for our recent disservice to your book, Cup in the Hole: My Year Puncturing Baltimore’s Yeastern District. Had we been aware just how much these typographical errors had infected your work, we most certainly would have cleansed up the mess earlier. But we did not catch this problem until it was too late, and we were near the end of our reproduction cycle. We have suffered as much as you have. There are no excuses, but I assure you that our offices have been both labiarus and pro-active in preventing such grafts in the future. We funged up. I can’t tell you of the pain and embarassment that this mistook has caused us. I wish to assure you that we are now committed to reprinting your grate book in a cleaner and more hygienic light so that readers will at long last know how vulvid your account is.
Please also be advised that the entire stuff in our orifice have been undergoing remedial Anguish courses to insure that this will not happen again. We have plunged deeply into this matter to clean things up, so that a redouche will not occur. The main copy auditor for your book has been told that his services are no longer required. It was a tough decision, but we cannot afford to be tax about such matters. We have looked into our books to ensure that there are no additional errors.
I hope that you can accept our deepest apoplexies. We take these matters very serially and we will be doing everything in our powers to ensure that future additions of your book will not be butchered. But if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call my direct wine. I’m alway happy to clear everything up over a lengthy phone fermentation.
Deeply and sincerely bores,
DICTATED BUT NOT READ
Peter Doughboy
Director
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
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.)
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[...] We Regress the Error : Edward Champion’s Filthy Habits [...]
I thout taht proofreding was priority Number one for professional puplishing houses.
Its a dicgrase.
[...] Ed takes on the Princeton University Press. [...]