To hell with Martin Amis. For my money, Richard Ford’s outdone all of Amis’s antics. And we’re talking just this week alone. He spat on Colson Whitehead, apparently in retribution for Whitehead’s review of A Multitude of Sins. Who knew that the man behind the passive-aggressive Frank Bascombe was so belligerent? Ford is at work on a third Bascombe novel right now, and, at this rate, I’m wondering if Bascombe is going to transform into a Bronsonesque, gun-toting vigilante. (via MacIntyre)

Within mere blocks of 826 Valencia lies an open underworld of drugs, prostitutes, and assorted refuse. Cadaverous figures huddle within the shadows, shooting up what they’ve managed to collect, greed and addiction flickering within their eyes. What will they get today or tomorrow?

Endless trash covers the streets. Fast food wrappers, leaflets that have drifted from the northwest, bottles rolling under the tires of cars. Skeletal women dressed in nearly nothing, with dark red streaks covering their faces, their arms covered with the tell-tale blotches of a bad heroin habit. These ladies wander to the ends of alleys, looking to spread their legs for a quick score. Cars pass by. Horny bargain hunters who have no problem getting off into victims open their doors. For twenty dollars and a reduction of standards, they jism into an overused orifice.

It is almost impossible to walk down some sections of Shotwell or Capp Streets and not encounter cracked vials or used syringes. It is almost impossible not to be propositioned or hectored by those who would suck cock for a pittance to maintain their addiction.

And then there’s the fascinating Hispanic/Caucasian culture war that’s been going down since the mid-1990s. Walk along the edges of 16th Street at night and you will find brightly lit neon restaurants and bars that are clearly trying to compete with the urban identity that came before. The telltale signs are through the windows. Smug, pomaded white boys with their pearly whites sitting in their inner sanctums, ordering for their girls from an overpriced menu and ready to hightail it to Marin so they can get the hell out of this godforsaken strange land. Upscale sushi joints adjacent to biker bars, tattoo parlors next to ridiculous oxygen bars. Steel grilles over windows next to walls plastered with flyers for some musical act from Berkeley next to a pizza-by-the-slice joint that welcomes all. But mainly we’re talking the doctrine of separate but equal. More delineated than ever before.

But when these white boys saunter down the streets, you can see the fear in their eyes. And it’s not just the fact that many of them can’t speak a word of Spanish (although they try). You can see them curl their gym-toned arms around the shoulders of their honeys. You see them sidestep around blacks or Latinos raising a ruckus. These white boys are intimidated by volume. They can’t seem to distinguish timbre, between folks having a good time and folks trying to intimidate. While it’s true that addicts can be found looming in certain quarters, in the eyes of the privileged (for they blow a few Franklins on a Friday night without a second thought) nearly everyone of color is an addict. Addicted perhaps to having a good time, in most cases.

I mention all this because, as I said, this world is within a few blocks of 826 Valencia. It’s a fascinating world. And I love it. You can learn a lot about human beings just by standing on the corner of 16th and Valencia for a few hours.

But for all of Dave Eggers’ purported streetcred by way of the locale, not once have I seen him dwell upon this cultural microcosm. In fact, in the latest McSweeney’s, he boasts about editing the issue at some Northern California B&B. And there is also mention of Daly City, a suburb south of San Francisco that is really no different from any other minimall magnet.

Which makes me wonder what the hell he’s doing in San Francisco. I’m pretty hard-pressed to demonize a guy who managed to get William Vollmann’s longass treatise fact-checked and published. But if he’s so ignorant of the culture that surrounds him, if he cannot recognize the fascinating struggles and conflicts and characters that populate this majestic sector of the City, then frankly he has no business being here.

“Book Babe”: A book critic who makes crude generalizations and cowers in the face of literature.

“Coetzee”: To snarl during an interview. (Ex. The subject prefered to Coetzee rather than answer the stupid question.)

“drowning in Mitchell”: Whereby the avid reader obtains the oeuvre of a “difficult” writer, with an overconfident swagger and the vain hope of being ahead of the curve, only to find themselves thoroughly confused by previous books (such as Ghostwritten) in anticipation of the next labryinthine title (e.g., The Cloud Atlas). (Ex. I thought I had the time for the Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon, but it looks like Neal has me drowning in Mitchell.)

“Gabo”: In its original use, “Gabo” was a nickname for Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Now it is used as shorthand for any author’s name that a reader is fearful of uttering in full. Particularly used with names that Caucasians have difficulty pronouncing, such as “Jose Saramago.” (Or: Oprah Winfrey.)

“Jayser”: An act involving inserting leaflets into multiple copies of a hardback after several shots of hard liquor.

“plowing the dark”: Refusing to leave a library or a book collection and failing to experience life. The term was inspired by the obsessive readers drawn to Richard Powers’ intricate yet spellbinding books. Often, readers who plow the dark must have a book forcefully extracted from their fingers. The process of plowing the dark is, in most circumstances, altruistic. But somehow a forceful argument must be propounded by the friend hoping to recalibrate a heavy reader’s sanity.

“tanner house”: To face unreasonable expectations before taking on an important task.

“to Tivoli”: The original verb transitive involved an older human behaving like a child. The usage has now broadened to include older readers who read books that that are clearly beneath their regular comprehension. An example would involve a septuagenarian guffawing over Mad Magazine or E. Nesbitt. It is also worth noting that the initial pejorative use has lightened somewhat since its entry into the vernacular in February, and is now used in an affectionate context. (Or. Sarah Weinman)

World Book Day: Any well-intentioned event that falls upon deaf ears.

The Age: “When the US State Department designated a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist as a ‘cultural ambassador’, it probably did not plan for him to go around the world calling his president a ‘moron’ who governs an ‘evil empire’. Nor did it expect him to boycott Israel because of US foreign policy, nor to warn Australia that its culture would be ‘gobbled up’ by a free trade agreement.” (via Literary Saloon)

The transition from nice guy to insufferable bastard has been proceeding quite well. But I would be remiss if I didn’t stop in and mention Safe for Work Porn, a collection of photos that is pure genius. Particular standouts are the water sports and the man standing behind the couch with the receding hairline. Okay, back to the cocoon, sans Don Ameche. (via Weirdsmobile)