Mark gives Rose/Birnbaum a run for their money and interviews Dan Rhodes. While there aren’t any Elton John-like confessions, the interview’s a good read. I hope other literary blogs will start taking it to the next level and start interviewing authors who come through their respective towns.

Marty Beckerman claims that he was misquoted by Rebecca Traister. This isn’t the first time Traister’s been accused of overeager journalism, though, to Beckerman’s credit, he never demands a brawl with David Talbot. (via Bookslut)

Spalding Gray’s body may have been found. An autopsy is underway to determine identification.

And a London librarian claims that nursery rhymes are naughty. Of course. We all know that the spider sitting on Little Miss Muffet’s tuffet is really a horny dude with eight dicks. The curds and whey are clearly graveside bukkake. We all know that the grandma-eating Big Bad Wolf represents a guy with an older woman fetish and a closet subscription to MILF Monthly. And we all know that Sleeping Beauty was the princess that the rabble couldn’t chat up and take back to the inn. Nursery rhymes are indecent! It is my fervent hope that the Bush Administration will prevent this filth from corrupting the minds of our children.

If you don’t believe me, one hard look at “Georgie Porgie” should obviate all innocence:

Georgie Porgie, puddin’ and pie

[Clearly, the elided G illustrates that the rhyme is not about “pudding,” but about “putting it in.” Centuries before the naughtiness of American Pie, “Georgie Porgie” establishes in its first line a distinct pastryphilia. The implication of “Poor G” after “Georgie” implies a guilt for the events about to happen. Furthermore, like Nostradamus predicting the threat of Saddam Hussein, the basis for Georgie is not George IV, but George Michael and his infamous bathroom incident.]

Kissed the girls and made them cry.

[If Georgie Porgie intended merely to kiss the girls, then his behavior would be relatively harmless. But the fact that the girls are crying suggests one of two possibilities: (1) either Georgie Porgie has halitosis (unlikely) or (2) Georgie Porgie is a closet rapist, causing untold grief. Note how easy it is to replace the line with “Screwed the girls and made them cry.”]

When the boys came out to play.

[Not content with forced debauchery, Georgie Porgie expands his horizons and illustrates to his peers that he swings both ways.]

Georgie Porgie ran away.

[Again, by anticipating the furor over same-sex marriages, the nursery rhyme proves to be well ahead of its time. Instead of coming to terms with his polymorphously perverse nature or indeed atoning for his sins as a rampant rapist, Georgie Porgie decides to run away and return to his cave. The subconscious message being fed to children is that not only is it okay to “make girls cry,” but that one’s true deviant nature must be kept from the populace, ideally in an isolationist environment, much like the Catholics.]

A Welsh booklist has been considered too highbrow to be relevant. The Welsh have insisted that booklists aren’t for them. A spokesman for the Eisteddfod Preservation Society said that they’d rather spend all day complaining about the weather than caring about contemporary culture. “Besides,” said the spokesman. “We were telling stories long before Chaucer.”

T.C. Boyle has no hope whatsoever. Beyond that, there’s the question of why T.C. Boyle remains hit-or-miss with the literati. The Chronicle doesn’t get many answers, but they do get some quirky quotes from Boyle. His National Book Award-nominated novel, Drop City, hit paperback not long ago. He’s currently on tour. If you pick up this month’s Harper’s, you’ll find a Boyle story. There’s also another great story called “Chicxulub” (referenced in the Chronicle piece) in the March 1, 2004 New Yorker.

Meanwhile, NPR has some fun audio clips up of T.C. Boyle’s old band (including T.C. singing “I Put a Spell on You”).

If you haven’t read Boyle, and you’ve failed to perceive my mad gushing for the man, some good titles to start with are The Road to Wellville and World’s End.

Sara Paretsky has a new V.I. Warshawski novel out. (And I’m curious as to why everyone’s favorite mystery blogger has remained so silent on Paretsky, beyond an enigmatic high school connection which nobody need talk about.)

While Yardley dismisses Studs Lonigan, Roger Ebert, of all people, digs up an evening he spent in 1968 with James Farrell. There’s some interesting tidbits, including Farrell deliberately avoiding sleep so that he can write 20 hours at a stretch, four of Farrell’s novels burned in a fire (and thus unpublishable in the days before computers), and Farrell’s personally penned obituary. Even James Brown, having met Farrell early in his career, had to concede “the hardest working man in show business” title to Farrell after discovering his working habits. However, when Farrell died in 1979, the title was officially restored to Brown.

Intersting statistic: Michael Moore sold 1.1 million copies of Stupid White Men in Germany. Probably because the title of Bill O’Reilly’s latest book was mistakenly printed up as Are the Crazy American Conservatives Looking Out for You Now? Run Away! They Get Very Angry on Television!

The New Yorker: “[Christian historian Elaine] Pagels explained that the four gospel writers of the New Testament probably wrote between 70 and 100 A.D. These were the years following the Roman defeat of the Jews, which left the Temple and the center of Jerusalem in ruins. Acts of sedition by the Jews against their conquerors were met with swift execution. As a result, Pagels said, the Gospels, which were intended not as history but as preaching, as religious propaganda to win followers for the teachings of Christ, portrayed the conflict of the Passion as one between Jesus and the Jewish people, led by Caiaphas. And, though it was the Roman occupiers, under Pontius Pilate, who possessed ultimate political and judicial power in Judea, they are described in the Gospels—and, more starkly, in Gibson’s film–as relatively benign.”

Frank Rich: “Thus we see the gospel according to Mel. If you criticize his film and the Jew-baiting by which he promoted it, you are persecuting him — all the way to the bank. If he says that he wants you killed, he wants your intestines ‘on a stick’ and he wants to kill your dog — such was his fatwa against me in September — not only is there nothing personal about it but it’s an act of love. And that is indeed the message of his film. ‘The Passion’ is far more in love with putting Jesus’ intestines on a stick than with dramatizing his godly teachings, which are relegated to a few brief, cryptic flashbacks.”

The Washington Post: “The District school system is investigating allegations that a teacher at a Southeast elementary school showed sixth-grade students excerpts of the R-rated movie ‘The Passion of the Christ.'”

The Miami Herald: A man in Jacksonville sold out of all Passion-related merchandise.

Reuters: Passion still #1, moves past $200 million mark.

After much writing, revising, and a particularly nasty stomach ache (which may have had something to do with my recent dietary transition to more substantial viands), I went through my back issues of The New Yorker, a stack so severely vertiginous that it threatened to ransack me in the night shortly after transmuting into a carnivorous, vengeful, buckram-bound collected periodical requiring all attentions.

I discovered an exceptionally well-written profile of Lyle Lovett. The profile was written by Alec Wilkinson. At the age of 24, Wilkinson was fortunate enough to befriend the late William Maxwell. (In fact, Wilkinson wrote a memoir about this entitled My Mentor: A Young Man’s Friendship with William Maxwell. Here’s an excerpt.)

I’m not much of a Lovett fan, but Wilkinson is such an incredible, omnivorous observer that I found myself completely submerged into the story. Here’s Wilkinson describing nearly every nicety within Lovett’s house:

The house is furnished sparely. In the parlor, the principal adornments are two saddles, each in a corner on a sawhorse. A plaque on the kitchen wall that says “Beware of Bull” commemorates an encounter Lovett and his uncle Calvin had two years ago with a bull in the pasture behind the house. They had delivered a check to a bulldozer operator who was digging a ditch. Walking back across the field, they discussed a pecan tree that had no leaves when it should have and whether it had to come out. The bull walked slowly toward them. Lovett had found the bull in the pasture as a day-old calf. The calf had followed him as he walked through the herd looking for its mother, and when no cow acknowledged it Lovett decided to raise it on a bottle. Once the bull turned two, Lovett stayed out of its way, since it was playful and was big enough to hurt someone without meaning to. Klein, who is sixty-nine, has worked with cattle all his life, so Lovett felt, as the bull approached, that if there was any reason to be worried Klein would tell him. “Usually, you throw a hat down on the ground or slap your leg,” Klein says, “and a bull will stop long enough for you to leave.”

I won’t dare reveal what happened to Klein, Lovett, and the bull. You’ll have to read the whole thing yourself. But this is the kind of descriptive detail segueing into gripping tale that is the mark of a top-notch writer. Wilkinson certainly picked up a lot from Maxwell. And I was so impressed by his prose that I’m going to try and track down everything the man’s ever written. Anybody interested in creative nonfiction needs to check this guy out.