I read Sam Tanenhaus’s atrocious article and withheld comment. Conveniently elided it from my memory. It was not the work of a passionate reader. It was the work of a man who believes he has something to say about literature, but who must bang out a piece in five hours while overseeing two sections of a newspaper to prove that he is a “writer” by way of being published in the New York Times. But Jeff is right to call bullshit on this piece. Because Jujitsu for Christblows A Streetcar Named Desire out of the water with its indelible description of summer heat. (And let’s face the facts. The weather was only a tertiary component to the more explicit issues of lust and frigidity running rampant throughout the play. Then again, as fucked up visceral playwrights go, I’ll take Edward Albee over Williams any day. So perhaps some tendentious sensibilities may be impairing my take here.)
“Literary agent” Barbara Bauer, Ph.D. has had enough. She’s now suing 19 bloggers and websites, including Wikipedia and the SFWA site, for writing critical things about her, which she seems to have misconstrued as defamation. And yet Bauer and her attorney couldn’t be bothered to talk to the New Jersey Star-Ledger. And why sue when you can revert changes or initiate a self-serving edit war? Seems cheaper if you ask me. But then I’m not the one with the Ph.D. Assuming, of course, that Bauer actually has a Ph.D. Her official site is strangely mum about which university actually accredited the doctorate to her. In the meantime, plunge into the experiences others have had with Bauer. That is, if you don’t get a crazy email asking for $1 billion because you used of her name. Incidentally, a search at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office turns up no record for “Barbara Bauer.” As such, Bauer is a person whose actions are open to fair criticism. And if she is indeed charging “processing fees” for reading the work of her “clients,” which is behavior that is commonly associated with the actions of a scam agent, then she is most certainly an agent you should not be dealing with. (via Pinky’s Paperhaus) [UPDATE:The judge has dismissed the Wikimedia portion of Bauer’s lawsuit.]
Stephen Burt offers a lengthy but critical essay on Philip K. Dick, suggesting that the Library of America should trot out James Tiptree, Jr. as well. Which, come to think of it, isn’t a bad idea.
By the way, does anyone know why old Newsweek articles from decades ago are now coming up as recent items in Google News? Is Newsweek trying to stack the deck and is Google on the case?
The Guardian attempts to track the sources of literary works used for spam email, but ignores the copious Lovecraft that seems to be hitting my junk mail.
It appears that NPR plans to expand book coverage on its website, largely because “books are among the top three topics attracting traffic to the NPR site.” I can only ponder what the other two topics might be, but I’m guessing that it’s neither gerontophilia nor Half-Life mods. Nevertheless, this does demonstrate that the current demise of books coverage may be greatly exaggerated. If newspapers and other publications wish to carry on as if books don’t matter, and if they wish to live in a future in which they choose not to associate themselves with books, whether it be the coverage or the brand, then people will go elsewhere. To places more reasonably associated with books. So the question that any publication should be asking right now is whether it wants to lose such a prized audience. (NPR, incidentally, is ranked 1,633 on Alexa. So this ain’t exactly a small potatoes question.)
The rather appropriately named Perry Falwell was accosted by a woman who insisted that he purchase a bundle of books from her deceased husband. He discovered a kinky alternative usage for these tomes. It remains unknown whether the woman in question has been informed of her husband’s sordid secret or if she may have been one of the subjects photographed for these clandestine purposes from beyond the grave. But I’m thinking that she did know what was going on and was only being friendly. We should all be asked every so often if we must really love to read. By the same standard, those at a sex party should probably be asked every so often if they must really love to fuck, so that they might be afforded new literary entry points. (via Bibliophile Bulletin)
Meanwhile in a London high court, freelance journalist Shiv Malik is being asked to hand over source material and pay legal costs for a book on terrorism. The source material in question was limited to a specific terror suspect only after he fought an overbroad judicial order at the cost of £100,000. What’s striking is that the judges criticized Malik, pointing out that the journalist had “achieved very little from these proceedings.” If by “very little,” the justice is referring to tiny sliver of UK journalistic freedom that now costs a comfortable annual salary to fight, then I suppose he’s right. But I doubt that Josh Wolf and Vanessa Leggett going to jail for similar purposes here in the States amounted to “very little” for them personally. “Very little” is also one of those handy modifiers one can just as readily apply to the probity of such unwavering authoritarianism.
Character actor Don S. Davis, a man who was born to play authority figures and who I’ll always remember as Major Garland Briggs, has died.
Ruth Wajnryb kickstarts a linguistic meditation from a sentence taken from an email. Me? So long as the article’s typo stands, I’m now contemplating just what “a friend of mind” is. Does the cerebral attachment to “friend” suggest that one is not permitted to feel when communicating? That there should be some separation between conceptual riffing and giddy exuberance? Did Ms. Wajnyrb type “mind” instead of “mine” deliberately? Is this an Australian thing? And why didn’t she opt for “my friend” in that lede? If she truly meant to pin down a cerebral friend, should it not have been “a friend in mind?” Or is this a reference to Toni Morrison? Sixo loving the Thirty-Mile Woman? Could it be that my problem with this phrase has something to do with my feelings for Morrison? Or perhaps my hesitancy here comes from my objection to the societal expectation that we must separate thoughts and feelings, choosing one or the other. Particularly when we’re writing letters. But if T.S. Eliot objected to this dichotomy, then I feel sufficiently justified in lodging my own complaint (even if I don’t possess even a tenth of Eliot’s poetic knack and acumen) and I would encourage others to do the same. There are some days in which I am careful with my words, and other circumstances in which I am overtaken by a wonderful emotional torrent! To acede to one or the other (and it’s often wholly the mental) seems a rather humdrum and uninteresting life to me, but the choice seems to suit many people and ensures that a swimming pool can be constructed in the backyard or the last ten payments on the luxury car will go through. But for me, it’s resulted in a few awkward social encounters in which I feel compelled to suggest that there is an inverted, if not anarchically fused, way of living.
Based on the steady onslaught (or is that recent onset?) of dumb feature articles within the Atlantic‘s pages these days, it would seem to me that the magazine lacks even the gooiest scrap of albumin these days. Fortunately, this video clip, featuring Atlantic editor and National Review film critic Ross Douthat attempting to explain his “working sociological theory” on the superhero archetype to the whip-smart Dana Stevens, may offer some context and unintentional hilarity. Because the discussion is executed in split-screen (although, oddly enough, nobody mentions Brian De Palma), one observes Stevens’s face drooping in near disbelief as Douthat offers the most generalized response imaginable to her question. Stevens then proceeds to demolish Douthat in a few sentences. It probably isn’t a fair fight, even with Stevens being kind and subduing her intellect. But if you enjoy this kind of thing (I’m afraid I do and I would pay good money to see a hack like Edward Douglas chewed up by Stevens), you can witness the complete thirty minute smackdown.
Even at the rate of one show per day, there remain a good deal of Segundo shows that I need to finish summarizing. But for those who need more and who want to jump ahead of the curve, you can find more on the main Segundo site, including a recent conversation with Andre Dubus III that features a strange interruption by a hotel catering manager and a particularly egregious poem about the Olive Garden.
I think Junot Diaz may be the first Pulitzer Prize fiction winner to confess that he is addicted to a video game. And he’s done all this in a very thoughtful essay. Not even putative Pulitzer geek Michael Chabon, who has bitched quite a lot about snobbery, has had the effrontery to confess anything like this. So for this, I salute Diaz, who comes off as a class act, while Chabon remains a hopeless bellyacher. And this also has me contemplating why America remains so behind the curve on video games. If Martin Amis could get away with writing a book about Space Invaders, then why can’t Richard Russo or Jhumpa Lahiri come out of the closet and confess that they’re big Donkey Kong fans or that they laughed at a Judd Apatow movie? (via Sarah and Shane, the latter of whom has scared the living fucking bejesus out of me with this oversized Camus photo. Tonight’s nightmare will begin, “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday,” and I will wake up in sweat and tears in the morning, craving cold biscuits.)
Even authors of crazed picaresque fiction need cheatsheets, although this chart is missing the much-needed “Wacky Sidekick.”
For all of their folderol of free information and civil liberties, Cory Doctorow and company have proven to be just as adept at Stalinist revisionism. Boing Boing has deleted every reference to Violet Blue in its archives. I’m stunned that anybody would do this. These are the actions of spineless fascists. And, as Rex of Fimoculous observes in the comments, he too was deleted for being remotely critical of Boing Bong. Joanne has more.
Nigel Beale podcasts Harlan Coben and questions some of Coben’s unapologetic commercialism.
The time has come to pity the rich. $10 million doesn’t go nearly as far as it once did in New York. And the situation appears so dire that the rich can afford nothing more than a futon and IKEA accessories for living room furniture. Perhaps the children can be entrusted to lodge the appropriate protests against these oppressive conditions. (Second link via Books, Inq.)
The Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday didn’t particularly surprise me. The Second Amendment will always be valued and upheld more vigorously than the Fourth Amendment. Nevertheless, one must single out Obama’s eggshell-walking remark — that the ruling “will provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country” — and compare it against the moral outrage of his peers. It was Feingold and Dodd who led the filibuster against the FISA bill, ensuring that it would not be considered until after the July recess. Not Obama. A few days ago, Jon Stewart began mocking some of Obama’s recent duplicities, assuring his audience that it was okay to laugh. I suspect the diffidence had less to do with Stewart betraying his liberal audience, and more to do with the dawning realization that Obama prefers opportunistic audacity to illusory hope.
Starship Sofa has interviewed Michael Moorcock — part of the interview takes place close to the Eiffel Tower: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. Why they needed two guys to grill Moorcock is beyond me, but there’s some interesting discussion. (via Enter the Octopus)
Ken Doctor examines how the recent Yahoo-Google ad partnership could provide a few problems for newspapers. You see, 40% of US dailies signed up for Yahoo’s forthcoming AMP platform. But with major execs bolting from Yahoo, Doctor believes that this could hinder AMP development. It’s an interesting speculation, one that I’m not entirely willing to buy into, but Doctor does raise some good questions.
Thank goodness that newspaper have kept all the chicks and just about anyone who isn’t Caucasian out of their sports sections. Some other interesting survey findings: A sports columnist is twenty times more likely to be the newspaper staffer with the smallest penis and fifty times more likely to answer a spam advertisement for a penis pump.
Within blocks of my apartment, there is a dumpster serving as a veritable buffet for vermin. Last night, while walking home, I observed the most corpulent rat I have ever seen. It was nearly the size of a medium-sized cat with a swirling tail nearly a foot long. Its belly was so large that it could not even scamper properly. It was reduced to a slight kangaroo hop on its hind legs. Its gait reminded me of Leroy Anderson’s “Plink, Plank, Plunk.” A typical New York sight. But what amused me was the unknowing film crew that had set up a craft services table within five feet of this dumpster the next afternoon. Someone — presumably the property owner — had cleaned up this rat haven in the morning, making it look as if the trash was picked up nightly. I also know that a restaurant operates almost adjacent to this dumpster. Nice folks, but they’ve told me that they don’t have insurance. And I am understandably reluctant to eat there. This question of proximity has me pondering just how much we might be sharing our meals with the rats in this fantastic filthy city.
Tao Lin wants his next novel to be like a 10-piece chicken nugget meal. There are two novels I’m working on right now. It is now quite a race to see which one will cross the finish line first. If I had to offer a dining metaphor for my own work, one is like a series of hastily made peanut butter sandwiches that are wolfed down under trying circumstances in the middle of the night, with the fridge light flickering and the possibility of the gas being shut off. The other is a collection of variegated brunches that I hope will cause the diners to appreciate the food they’re enjoying and the circumstances they were prepared under.
It seems that Jon Krakauer has cracked over his forthcoming book, The Hero. Unhappy with the manuscript, Krakauer is holding onto it, sleeping with it, feeding in formula, waiting for the words to goo-goo back at him and comfort him in the middle of the night. I won’t let you go! We’ll be together FOREVER! I’ll protect you from those foster parents at Doubleday! You won’t end up a latch key kid, manuscript. I’ll be the bestest daddy you ever had! Let the state try and take you away! They’ll throw me in jail before I relinquish you, my darling darling manuscript!
It’s fascinating to see that Richard Eder’s review of Albert Camus’s most recently translated final notebook — something you’d think was a shoe-in for the Sunday section — can now only find life in the daily New York Times.
There’s an intriguing-looking BBC1 documentary attempting to search for Murakami. But it wasn’t much of a search. Murakami showed up rather quickly and didn’t scamper away. I feel cheated and I haven’t even seen the film. Considering the promise, one hopes for a diligent search, an overturning of rocks, an unexpected insight into the man in question. Could it be that the majority of BBC1 arts producers wish to make the literary equivalent of a hunt for lost keys the stuff of dubious import?
The self-published author J.D. Sousa has an odd plan. If he gets his book into Blockbuster stores, enough people will buy it. By some strange magic, it will be turned into a Hollywood movie. I don’t know if Sousa is fully informed of the shift in the last few years to VOD and DVD rentals by mail. And do Hollywood producers really hang out in Blockbuster? But he is selling one or two books a day at various stores. Sousa’s march may not have the gangbusters quality of a Starbucks Book Tour, but I can certainly see a future in which authors and publishers initiate more exclusive chain store distribution methods.
I haven’t read Michael Ian Black’s book, but I’m almost ready to support his campaign to defeat David Sedaris. Sedaris no longer has any interesting personal experiences to mine for his essays, and he hasn’t been funny in years. What prevents me from full partisanship here is Black playing things too safe. I want devastating vivisections of Sedaris’s prose. I want pugilism. If Black wants to do this, then he needs to go whole hog. He needs to earn this. Lukewarm challenges might win points at the PTA meeting. But this is New York, dammit. And if Black must pull his punches, to evoke Axl Rose’s immortal wisdom, get in the ring motherfucker and I’ll kick your bitchy little ass.
