Month / September 2005

by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show #8

Approximate Interview Date: Early September 2005 in a locked hotel conference room.

Author: Bret Easton Ellis

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Cold and impoverished.

Subjects Discussed: The two Brets, finding the voice of Bret the narrator, “ten years on an outline,” metafiction, origins of Lunar Park, Stephen King, the use of brand name description in fiction, the rules of fiction, subtext, B.S. Johnson, the dramaturgy of writing about writers, episodic fiction vs. narrative fiction, pushing boundaries, 9/11, irony, the generation between 1961 and 1971 and the generation after, keeping track of young writers, Stanley Elkin and being cognizant of humor, responsibility within Ellis’ work, on being a wuss, television vs. fiction, BEE’s anger, the Lev Grossman profile, 1941, on being a movie person, the Jayne Dennis website, Jamie Clarke’s Vernon Downs, Ellis’s politics and American Psycho, rich people, corruption, Roger Avary and film adaptations.

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by Edward Champion

When You’re a Fink, You’re a Fink All the Way

If you have a Yahoo email account and you eventually find yourself writing about something that might be considered inexplicably dangerous (if not now, then perhaps in the not-too-distant future), you may want to ensure that your personal information is fabricated. Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang has confirmed that Yahoo provided journalist Shi To’s private information to Chinese authorities. The journalist was then sentenced to ten years in prison. What was Shi’s crime? He dared to spell out media restrictions in place within China. Former President Bill Clinton also weighed in at an Internet forum, saying, “The internet, no matter what political system a country has, and our political system is different from yours, the internet is having significant political and social consequences and they cannot be erased.” He then went into a panegyric about how none of this had any negative effects on e-commerce.

It’s good to know that in the Clinton and Yang vision of the Internet, business comes first and that political extradition and freedom of speech is as expungable as a spam message.

by Edward Champion

The Christian Science Monitor: A History of E****** — First Draft

Some scholars have suggested that it all began with a 1749 novel written by John Cleland. The novel’s title was composed of two words: The first being a slightly naughty term for one’s, uh — how shall we put it? That thing you sit on. The second being more acceptable for the Christian ear: namely, “Hill.” However, this hill must be clearly distinguished from the immoral “thrills” one might find on another “Hill” immortalized in rock and roll music. Or perhaps not. It’s clear that the parallels here are inevitable. I must warn you, dear reader, that should you spend at least five minutes contemplating this issue, you may find yourself spending most of the weekend praying to God for forgiveness.

This book, written by Cleland when he was in debtor’s prison, was the first e***** novel. It depicts a certain young woman’s initiation into things we really can’t talk about in this publication. Let’s just say that Ms. Hill, the eponymous character, wasn’t exactly spending all of her spare time cross-stitching.

One might argue whether these unspeakable actions should even be put to pen. The risk of offending so many people clearly outweighs the value of rationally discussing what some have argued to be an everyday and harmless issue.

And yet, almost cavalierly, the writers couldn’t refrain from writing. There were volumes penned by Frank Harris in which this ineffable subject was broached. D.H. Lawrence, thought to be innocent enough with his classic story “The Rocking Horse Winner,” demonstrated his true colors and ineluctable perversion with “Lady Chatterley’s L****,” causing at least four septuagenarians to have cardiac arrests before they had finished reading the first chapter. And then there was that Henry Miller guy who wrote about what shall henceforth be referred to in this essay as It, banging out descriptive passage after descriptive passage of It It It with all the gusto of a man who hadn’t discovered the advantages of tight breeches…

[Whoops! Did I just write that? Editor, please strike.]

…with all the gusto of a man who hadn’t discovered the advantages of, uh, abstienence.

Soon, e****** became a cottage industry. Together with its less steamier cousin, the H******** romance, everyday readers became drawn to cheaply produced paperbacks that not only featured vivid descriptions of It, but dared to suggest It with muscular, long-haired hunks [Editor: Is that too much?] rescuing ripe beauties clad in diaphonous clothing [Oh come on, Editor, you asked me to write about it!].

by Edward Champion

Gawker Homage to boo.com?

What drugs has Denton been given his design team (perhaps in lieu of proper compensation)? The Sploid redesign is entirely unnavigable, makes little sense from an aesthetic standpoint (Drudge homage? WTF?), and doesn’t even have time-date stamps to separate old news from new news. In short, it’s a waste of Ken Layne’s talents, because the six-column setup has no apparent purpose, much less a heading or a guide or a structure that normal human beings might utilize to, oh say, peruse a site’s contents.