This year’s MacArthur Fellows have been announced and the one and only George Saunders has made the list. John Zorn too. (via Gwenda)
Month / September 2006
Roundup
- The Man Booker folks have set up a blog. Some preliminary thoughts on the nominees: “SARAH WATERZ ROCKZ!” and “YO! MOTHER’S mILK. pwned. lol!”
- Book World discovers Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend for the first time and takes umbrage with the protagonist’s growing paranoia and savagery. I don’t think Matheson intended Neville to be a beacon of sanity. The great thing about apocalyptic stories is that it permits the author to explore how fundamentally warped the human race is. And I’m sure if a league of vampires continuously screamed, “Come out, Champion!” without letup, I’m sure that, no matter how I think I’d react, I might end up a lot worse than Neville.
- Is Barbara Walters so insane after all? (via Bookninja)
- Why? (via The Millions)
- Ronald D. Moore on Star Trek‘s 40th anniversary. (via Locus)
- The Telegraph appears to have confused its book section with a gossip column.
- Is Karl Rove the Machiavellian genius everyone’s made him out to be? Or not?
- Clive Owen supports Daniel Craig as Bond. I only wish that he could have endorsed himself in the role before they cast Craig.
- President Bush promoting global literacy? Huh? His own words: “One way to defeat hopelessness is through literacy.” Remember that as you contemplate who sits in the White House for the next two years.
- Move over Bulwer-Lytton. Is Amanda McKittrick Ros the world’s worst writer? More here.
- James T. Kirk: literary inspiration?
- Why the rich go broke.
- Journalism is becoming increasingly female-centric.
Thomas Harris: The Laziest Titler in the Publishing Industry
Today’s big news: Thomas Harris has turned out another Hannibal book, just in time for the holidays. I’ll keep my thoughts on Mr. Harris’s books to myself. There is something more troubling at work here.
The new book is called Hannibal Rising — this after the imaginatively titled Hannibal.
Was ever there an author more lazier with his titles? Where other authors might give you titles like Special Topics in Calamity Physics or I Feel Bad About My Neck, words that make us curious about the inner contents, Mr. Harris has decided upon Hannibal and Hannibal Rising.
Well, I don’t believe it’s too late. And, as a public service to Delacorte Press, I offer the following titular alternatives:
- Bride of Hannibal
- Revenge of Hannibal
- Hannibal Strikes Again
- Son of Hannibal
- It Came From Hannibal
- The Amazing Adventures of Hannibal & Hannibal
- Hannibal X
- Just When You Thought It Was Safe: Hannibal
- The Hannibal That Wouldn’t Die
- Hannibal: Season of the Witch
- Fishing with Hannibal
- The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Hannibal
- Hannibal, Hannibal
- The Night of the Living Hannibal
- Putting the Nib in Hannibal
- Hannibal: Dream Warriors
- Hannibal II: Electric Boogaloo
- I Ate Out With Hannibal and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt
- Hannibal, How About You?
- My Dinner With Hannibal
- Hannibal’s Marauders
- Hannibal Disco Derby
- Hannibal Will Be 25 in the Year 2000
- Hannibal: Not the Cannibal You Were Expecting
- Hannibal, American Style
- The Good, The Bad & The Hannibal
- I Once Knew a Cannibal Called Hannibal
- Once, Twice, Three Times a Hannibal
- Hannibal Cordon Bleu
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Hannibal
- Hannibal, Too
- I Have No Hannibal and I Must Eat
- Hannibal: The Early Years
- Hannibal on Handball
- Hannibal If You Love Jesus
- Hannibal Takes Manhattan
Slate Audio Book Club Returns in October for More Base Generalizations
Big news from those cute and cuddly sophists over at Slate! After “a late-summer hiatus” trying to figure out if black writers should be talked about or ignored, the garrulous gang has nailed down the decidedly Caucasian Michael Pollan as their author of the month. Will Katie Roiphe try tapping some hazy memory of a Pollan book she may have read in college under the pressure of politically correct profs? Will Stephen Metcalf hijack the conversation with a turgid aside about how Pollan has earned too many accolades? Find out “in mid-October,” when the audio segment is ready. Let us hope that some brave soul will be able to make it past the thirteen minute mark.
Bush Prepares U-Turn
President Bush, having decided that a left turn is out of the question and that a right turn would only make his poll numbers worse, has done the unthinkable: he’s settled on a U-turn. Politicians rarely do this. It’s often a highly dangerous thing to do while driving. But then politicians of Mr. Bush’s ilk are exceedingly rare and they are known to play by different rules.
It is unknown whether Mr. Bush intends to use his blinkers or check his blind spots. Political pundits are still trying to figure out if this will be a three-point turn or quite possibly one of those daring 180s you see large sports utility vehicles perform in four-stop intersections, nearly taking out the innocuous sedans politely waiting their turn to cross. Nobody knows the make of the vehicle that Mr. Bush will use, or whether this vehicle is a hybrid or equipped with GPS, or whether this vehicle’s special features have any bearing on Mr. Bush’s decision to make a U-turn.
What we do know is that he has at least “prepared” a U-turn. The U-turn might be next week or next month. It could be tomorrow. But it will almost certainly be reconsidered after November, depending upon how things turn out.