“I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.” — Booker Washington

“Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong.” — Peter T. McIntyre

“Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” — Will Durant

“One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.” — Rita Mae Brown

“The opposite of love is not hate, the opposite of love is ignorance.” — Brian Hwang

“If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.” — A.A. Milne

“Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on The Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics.” — Arthur M. Schlesinger

“Beware the fury of the patient man.” — John Dryden

“When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.” — James Baldwin

He may not be as hunky or as lucrative as Nick Laird, but Boris Starling is cadaver-crazy. Not only are his novels filled with corpses, but he also appeared as one on television. “I’ve already started making plans for how my own corpse will look like,” said Starling. “My family has a proud tradition of being buried in open caskets.” Clearly, Jim Crace has nothing on this guy.

Alex Beam calls Charles Portis “the greatest writer you’ve never heard of.” Ron Rosenbaum’s also crazy about him. So is Tin House‘s Cassandra Cleghorn. Portis is having four of his books reisused by the Overlook Press. And if you can’t wait, the Atlantic has one of his stories available online.

[UPDATE: Ron points to this helpful Ed Park profile. Today, I read the first four pages of The Dog of the South and laughed my head off. It looks like Portis may live up to the hype.]

Carol Shields’ stories are have been adapted for Canadian television. Sarah Polley makes her directing debut with one story. John Doyle suggests this might be the way to market dramatic television to Canadians.

Speaking of television, for those (like me), who don’t have cable or (unlike Peter Sellers) don’t watch, here’s the edited highlights of a conversation with John Updike. Updike writes 1,000 words every morning and says the great secret is “sitting ability.” Nothing new under the sun.

Inspired by Sarah’s repeated hosannas, the search for Rankin’s early Rebus novels continues. No results yet, but on the way home last night, I did find two perfectly good, barely touched Jane Smiley hardcovers left in a box on the street. (The box had been recently put out. Despite bearing a preponderance of chick lit, several people dug into it right after me with telling avarice.) It’s amazing what kind of gems people will discard on the streets or at garage sales. It’s also fascinating how a particular book you’re looking for will crop up when you least expect it.

In the case of Rankin, oh sure, I could have ordered the book through Alibris. But that would be too easy. I enjoy the hunts through used bookstores, the conversations with the proprietors and tome-happy, toe-tapping and criminally underpaid clerks, and the tips other people offer on books. Of course, if I don’t find the Rankin book by the end of the month, then I’ll go the Alibris route. But I think there’s some serendipitous discovery being lost when we order a book online. The spine sticking out adjacent to another book, the different editions, the strange cover art. There’s something magical in the way our brains index all this visual intake and retain unexpected authors, which in turn lead us to unexpected books. We may not remember every title, but we are capable of noticing a recherche edition on the stacks that we haven’t seen elsewhere.

The online book buying experience doesn’t offer anything close. You can’t reach for a dusty book at the top of a shelf, or climb to the top of a ladder while impersonating Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face. It doesn’t offer anything close to the silent “A-ha” whisper when you enter these sanctums santorum with fellow book freaks. The obscure author, part of this pleasant tomb for the unknown titles, signaled with a protruding finger and a deep assurance that you must read him.

The used bookstore may take time away from one’s life. Time away from reading or writing or loving. But it does offer a way for one to amalgamate the reading experience with living. Or possibly the illusion of it. The books, as usual, come first.

Jay Griffith’s A Sideways Look at Time has won the 2003 Discover Award for Non-Fiction. The award, sponsored by Barnes & Noble, grants Griffith $10,000 and heavy promotion in B&N stores. There’s just one problem. The people at B&N can’t keep track of publishing dates. Griffith’s book came out in 1999.

Michael Chabon on Philip Pullham.

The 2004 Northern California Book Award nominees have been announced:

Best Novel:

L’Affaire by Diane Johnson
Dream of the Blue Room by Michelle Richmond
And Now You Can Go by Vendela Vida
Daughter’s Keeper by Ayelet Waldman
Old School by Tobias Wolff

Short Story Collections:

Red Ant House by Ann Cummins
Denny Smith by Robert Gluck
How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by Z.Z. Packer

Poetry:

Life Watch by Willis Barnstone
The Starry Messenger by George Keithley
Notes from a Divided Country by Suji Kwock Kim
Apprehend by Elizabeth Robinson
The Room Where I Was Born by Briane Teare

Non-Fiction:

The Chinese in America: A Narrative History by Iris Chang
Her Husband: Hughes and Plath, a Marriage by Diane Middlebrook
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West by Rebecca Solnit

Children’s Literature:

The City of Ember by Jeanne DePrau
Oh No! Gotta Go! by Susan Middleton Elya
Just A Minute: a Trickster Tale and Counting Book by Yuyi Morales
The Day the Babies Crawled Away by Peggy Rathmann
Vampire High by Douglas Rees

Special Award: Translation: TBA

Lifetime Achievement: Philip Levine

The winners will be announced on March 24, 2004, and since the event is local, I may just be covering it.

And if there’s any lesson to be learned from this deal, it’s to keep your relationship with a best-selling author and take advantage of the nepotism. Nick Laird has won a six-figure deal for two books. The first one is titled Utterly Monkey. Kyle Smith is no doubt steaming after passing on a date with Z.Z. Packer. (via Maud, who I will never refer to as diminuitive)

The X-rays and dental records match up. Spalding Gray is dead. The world is lesser because of it.