Month / September 2006

by Edward Champion

Terms from Random House

TO: Buyers of James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces
FROM: Random House

We here at Random House are pleased to announce that we have reached an agreement with readers who were misled by James Frey’s “memoir.” If you purchased a copy of this book, you are entitled to the following refunds:

  • If you return the dust jacket of the A Million Little Pieces hardcover and draw a moustache through Mr. Frey’s author photo, you are entitled to a refund of $4.24.
  • If you return page 23, fold it in half, and highlight all traces of the word “the” with a 3M Yellow Highlighter, you are entitled to a refund of $12.92.
  • If your first name is “James” and you incurred psychological damages because you observed another “James” lying through his teeth, we want to assure you that Mr. Frey was not one of the “good Jameses” and that his actions do not reflect Jameses at large. If you fall into this category, return page 118 unmolested, along with a certified copy of your birth certificate. This is good for a refund of $21.82.
  • If you are a friend of Mr. Frey or a member of Frey’s extended family, you are entitled to a refund of $0.14, with the envelope being sent to you with postage due.
  • If you send us a videotape, a VCD, or a DVD, in which you can demonstrate that you led or coerced a group of people to throw at least 200 copies into a public bonfire, we would like to offer you a promising career here at Random House. Please get in touch with our Human Resources department.

Please note that all refunds are subject to a number of city, state, and federal taxes. The above costs reflect the amount that Random House will issue you. We cannot guarantee that some irksome governmental agency won’t take a big bite out of our checks. We feel your pain. Oh, boy, do we.

We promise you that we here at Random House are very, very sorry for having misled you. And if you see Mr. Frey in your neighborhood, please tell him to report to the Random House building. We have a windowless room in the basement that we’d like to invite him to spend the rest of his days.

Thank you for your attention.

Random House

by Edward Champion

BSS #63: Alison Bechdel

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Author: Alison Bechdel

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Revealing his political idiosyncracies.

Subjects Discussed: The meaning of “tragicomic,” Nabokov, Charles Addams, on how the funeral home component of Fun Home has been overlooked, on hitting a wall with words, the advantages of “visual writing,” Michael Lesy’s Time Frames: The Meaning of Family Pictures, Fun Home as a mystery, using maps and annotations in panels to create structure and ambiguity, the presentation of Bechdel’s father, Dykes to Watch Out For, on selling Fun Home to Houghton Mifflin, the influence of graphic novels, Maus, Harvey Pekar, uncouth forms of madeleine tea, ancient computer modems, rotoscoping, Ralph Bakshi, cross-hatching, analog vs. digital illustration, typesetting, Proust, Camus, the use of ten-cent words in comics, on posing in photographs for visual reference, Six Feet Under, Jill Soloway’s Los Angeles Times review, and literary respectability for comics.

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by Edward Champion

BSS #62: Carl Sheeler

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Guest: Carl Sheeler

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Ejected due to the apparently “serious” nature of politics.

Subjects Discussed: Running an unorthodox senatorial campaign, Howard Dean, the similarities and differences between Whitehouse and Sheeler’s platforms, problems with Sheldon Whitehouse, on Sheeler styling himself as “the next Ned Lamont,” more problems with Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island’s status as a blue state, efforts to determine Sheeler’s positions, even more problems with Sheldon Whitehouse, universal health care, negotiating the mechanisms of the Senate, on impeaching Bush and the Democratic silence, the monies available for universal health care, the baby boomer generation, generic drugs, the economics of expired patents, placing ceilings on oil and gas, speculation on whether Our Young, Roving Correspondent is a Republican, U.S. energy policy, the Manhattan Project, the U.S. energy infrastructure, hybrid cars, James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency, alternative energy in China, the emerging middle class in India, the trucking industry, the expense of overhauling the energy infrastructure and the possible burden on the working class, Los Angeles, and the transportation grid.

[LISTENER’S NOTE: Due to a technical snafu, the final minute of this conversation was unexpectedly cut off. We apologize for this podcast’s abrupt ending.]

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