- Steinbeck’s hometown will lose its public library system because of a financial crisis. Locals have placed a black armband onto a six foot bronze Steinbeck statue.
- Salon interviews Jerry Stahl: “I’ve pretty much been pegged for life as ‘that junkie who wrote ALF.'”
- Sylvia Plath’s Ariiel has been read in its entirety for the first time. Several effigies of Ted Hughes were burned, but not enough of them had been created to last throughout the duration.
- Hemingway’s secretary has penned a memoir. The book will be part of a new Modern Library series called For Whom the Staff Tolls, which will include memoirs from Papa’s accountant, cook, and masseuse.
- A secret staircase reported to be the inspiration for Mrs. Rochester has been rediscovered in North Yorkshire. Several actors in the area have offered to fill in for the mad woman in the attic, but none of them have proved convincing enough for the local historical society.
- Nick Hornby addresses the “no snark” policy at The Beleiver: “And of course, there’s no consensus on what is an ‘egregiously bad’ book.” Apparently, he hasn’t read I Am Charlotte Simmons.
- Ian McEwan reveals some dirt about his new novel: “a British neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne, leaves his central London house to pick up his car – a sleek, silver Mercedes 500 – to drive to his regular game of squash.” Not much, but at a recent reading, McEwan also read a passage about Perowne overcoming his shame in owning a car. McEwan also assures the Times that he isn’t taking any kickbacks from BMW.
- The upcoming Barbara Boxer novel (which, along with Mark, I must express my apologies for) gets some press at the Contra Costa Times. Giving new meaning to the mantra “Write about what you know,” its protagonist is “an activist senator who does battle with right-wing ideologues.” It remains my firm hope that Boxer spends more time doing battle in real life rather than fiction over the next four years.
Author / DrMabuse
Tanenhaus Watch
We’ll give Tanenhaus half a brownie point this week because it’s close to Xmas. This week’s NYTBR is a big mixed bag. We advise against the continued employment of Joe “I Never Met A Subject I Didn’t Hate” Queenan (along with the end of silly photo captions such as “Johnny Unitas of the Colts” asuming that educated folks aren’t familiar with football legend-team associations). But we dug the Truman Capote profile, which combined biography, light critical consensus and some naughty bits into a hot essay by the always excellent Daniel Mendelsohn.
However, Laura Miller needs to get out of the house more. We take pride in our dirty minds, pointing out that sexual suggestion and naughty jokes come with most of our book recommendations (some over the course of our lives, in flagrante delicto), while recommending that intercourse itself is best performed rather than endlessly talked about.
Gone Fishing
I’d initially posted some ballyhoo about taking a break. But announcing yet another hiatus strikes me as not only repetitious, but vaguely dishonest. This blog has always served as a beacon for truth. A skewered truth, a truth restricted by my own blinders, sometimes a downright ugly honesty. But truth nonetheless. I’d be doing my readers a disservice if I didn’t explain why my appearances here will be less frequent.
William Gaddis once described it as “the rush for second place” and composed an essay on the subject in 1981. He dared to chart how a certain spirit of rebellion in American culture was often spawned by a gnawing sense of failure, a long and frustrated nose cantilevered against a morose and pockmarked face that frowned long into the deepest shadows of yesteryear. The feeling that one’s efforts weren’t worth much in the long run. The successful person in our society, the hard-liner who plays by the rules and makes partner or vice president after a decade or two of thankless labor, is in so deep that it would never occur to him that there are others who starve and scrape for an altogether different success. These lower-end feeders are often derided as failures. Their needs don’t meet the basic burden. But what would our world be without these non-conformists who perform unspoken deeds in the dead of night?
Whatever measure of success one finds, there are hard choices. Passion flaring over common sense. And when a bottom-end straggler reaches a certain age, when the hair falls out and the crow’s feet form around the eyes, there comes a point where one wonders why it continues. Because persistence pays off? Sometimes. Because no man is an island? Definitely.
The duty remains, the steadfast flow follows. But it requires rumination and rest and unseen labor and barely any sleep. I’ll be back, but right now I’m reoiling the wheels. And I’m smiling as I dance in the dark.
[UPDATE: In response to certain socipathic nitwits who clearly have more time than I do (and whose currency is so inflated that they feel the need to goad some A-1 folks), I quote Carl Sandburg: “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”]
[UPDATE THE SECOND: Publisher’s Lunch reports this item: “Separately, the NYT Book Review has announced that next Sunday’s issue will present a considerably slimmed-down 100 Notable Books of the Year. They will publish their list of top 10 books of the year on December 12. Editor Sam Tanenhaus says of the ‘more selective’ list, ‘In general, we favored strong narratives. This happens to be a year when some of the best books, fiction and nonfiction, were about or set in the past.'”
[I can’t tell you how sad this makes me feel. One of the great annual joys is seeing the NYTBR present a crazed list that backs up their credentials as a book review source for one of the nation’s major newspapers. It essentially communicates to the reader that, love or hate their selections, the NYTBR is doing its job. But more importantly, much like the recent joys of the IMPAC longlist, the sheer number of books is something to cheer about, an annual occurrence that offers a friendly nod to reading. The reader finds the morsels he may have forgotten about and a few titles he didn’t know about. It’s a win-win situation between reader and listmaker.
[That Tanenhaus would scale this down to a piddly selection of ten (no doubt with Leon “Scummy Little Reviewer” Wieseltier’s involvement) proves that, despite his recent poetry issue and the inclusion of James Wood prominently on his pages, he still remains an asshat who is, in all likelihood, Bill Keller’s corporate handmaiden. That he would dispense with such a proud tradition in favor of audience-friendly “10 Sexiest Books Alive” homages to People convinces me that, unless he offers a compelling alternative, he’s not going to get any brownies on my watch.
[NO BROWNIES FOR YOU, MR. TANENHAUS!
[UPDATE TO SECOND UPDATE: The good Dr. Jones, fresh from his excavations in Nepal, informs me that we can’t withhold baked goods until the final tally. To uphold the brownie fairness doctrine, I renege on my brownie decision until we see what happens over the next two weeks. Tanenhaus shall salivate at his own peril.]
A Special Therapeutic Column from Jonathan Glandzen
In May 1981, a few months into the Reagan administration, my father and my brother Colin and in fact every member in my family started fighting. They weren’t fighting about Reagan, per se, but they wanted to give me a solid foundation for long-term neruosis. I never blamed anyone for the fight, but years later, after making a mint off of my novel, The Peregrinations, I felt stifled by the smell of cash around me. I had been approached by several financial advisors who suggested long-term savings and IRAs. They wanted me to live and travel and roll around like a self-entitled pygmy while my fellow writers starved. Had I been rude to Oprah? Had I forgotten the little people?
In considering my sordid sobbing history, I remember that it was Colin who first suggested that a real man took control of his life and that obtaining this confidence was easier when one was well grounded. Every time I tried to be myself, I was faced with Colin’s menacing shadow. Colin made less money in his life than I had in a single year, and yet he was secure, happily married, and encouraged me to roll into a fetal position at family reunions.
I think back to those halcyon days of 1981, because, despite my upper middle-class upbringing and a stable, albeit occasionally combative family, I was frightened every time I had to make a decision. I didn’t learn to tie my shoe until the age of 26 and it took a Iris Murdoch type who knew what she wanted to deflower me in grad school. She must have anticipated my hunky looking author photo — the bane of my existence since my success. She never revealed her name.
But there was some comfort growing up — no thanks to Colin, thank you very much. On my night table was the Marmaduke Omnibus, a dogeared (if you’ll pardon the pun), decaying paperback that I had found one day in the dumpster. I opened its pages and discovered that someone had written “This shit isn’t funny” on the inside front cover. This austere warning didn’t faze me one bit. Indeed, there was a sense of comfort in seeing Marmaduke’s innocuous disruption of the household. Like me, Marmaduke didn’t know any better. My heart quivered over Marmaduke’s long ears, and I soon developed an intimate relationship with Brad Anderson’s creation that posed certain problems during adolescence. Marmaduke, as you might imagine, was the only dog that counted. It took several Siamese cats, four parakeets and a few goldfish before I could allow another dog to roam in my own home.
Thankfully, my therapist understood this. After the unfortunate sprinting incident at a cocktail party, I was given a ritalin prescription. This, I might add, at 36.
Throughout the years, Colin suggested Bloom County, The Far Side or “hell, even Doonsebury.” But my mind was made up. Even Boondocks was too much for my refined sensibilities. It was Marmaduke or nothing. Other people I met had bad heroin habits. For my own part, I had a sociopathic obsession with a comic strip that wasn’t particularly funny.
Momentary Sayonara
There’s nothing really to say. And the last thing I want to do is lecture like Neal Pollack. So I’m going the hell away for a week or so. I leave these pages to the annoying spammers, the killer barflies, and perhaps the Superfriends, if they even remember their passwords. No bullshit hiatus here. Just casual indifference and a return to these pages after a much needed lost weekend with Paul Giamatti. I might even teach a red state virgin a thing or two about reproductive rights.
Oh, and fuck you, Homeland Security.
[UPDATE BEFORE FLIGHT: Holy hell. Maud’s opened up a can of whoopass on Neal Pollack. On the Pollack question, I should point out that Lenny Bruce’s last days were spent reading from law books pointing out the absurdity of true writ. It was, by all reports, the dullest standup comic routine ever devised.
[Also, McSweeeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, Michael Chabon’s followup to the Treasury of Thrilling Tales, is (so far), a marked improvement over its predecessor and well worth your time. It certainly helps that RotR fave David Mitchell has a Number9Dream-like tale in there, propinquitous to cool contributions from Margaret Atwood, Poppy Z. Brite, Jonathan Lethem, Roddy Doyle, China Mieville, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King and Peter Straub. Charges of nepotism aside (Julavits and Waldman show up), I’d love to see Chabon edit one of these things every year or two. Of course, if he could include a few overlooked folks like Paolo Bacigalupi, Barry Malzberg, Kelly Link, and the prolfiic Paul Di Fillipo, his rants against genre ghettoization might have more credibility. Now, flight.]