The Man Booker Shortlist has been announced:
If there’s any lesson to be learned here, if you’re a British novelist who wants to win the Man Booker, change your last name to Smith.
Over at Slate this week, there’s been a discussion on Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bait and Switch, the followup to her book Nickled and Dimed. This time around, Ehrenreich has moved up the class ladder, pretending to be middle-class and trying to land a job in media or public relations. She goes by her maiden name. She refuses to use any and all contacts, let alone friends for financial or moral aid (although she does allow herself to use references).
The book has been given to various economists to assess and what’ s interesting is the personal nature of their criticisms. Results? They claim that the book is not so much about the middle-class people around Ehrenreich, but Ehrenreich herself. In particular, Alan Wolfe opines, “The construct of the book borders on the unethical; social scientists would never permit an experiment with this much faking. But it also renders the book uninteresting. Who cares what happens to a person who does not exist? You don’t, Tyler, and, frankly, neither do I.”
So the real question here is whether Bait and Switch a stunt similar to Morgan Spurlock’s and whether an empirical approach is now the only way to convey an issue to a mass audience. If it is, this raises an interesting question: Is putting one’s self through various hardships the new form of “scholarship” for a popular nonfiction title? Further, have we reached a point where polemics must be driven by a personality (in this case, the self-styled Barbara Alexander) rather than the bigger picture (burgeoning unemployment among middle-class professionals)?
[UPDATE: Over at Galleycat, A.J. Jacobs weighs in on so-called “stunt writing.”]
As Return of the Reluctant readers know, last year we signed a contract with a well-dressed man who happened to have a pair of horns. The man promised that we would have great artistic success and that, one way or another, we would somehow learn to play more than pentatonic scales on our guitar, wowing audiences with our preternatural abilities. The one proviso, of course, was that we note any and all Jonathan Ames developments on this blog.
As of yet, we have yet to play like John Lee Hooker or Stevie Ray Vaughan and the phone number on the red-horned man’s business card is “disconnected or no longer in service.” (If anyone else knows how to get a hold of “Beezle Bob Harris,” please let me know.) But as we’re men of our word, we must note that Jonathan Ames has made yet another unwonted nonfiction appearance over at the New York Observer. The piece involves tennis, a subway conversation and many other amazing things.
(We should also note that Mr. Ames now has an Observer email address. Does this mean a regular return to nonfiction?)
From Stephen Elliott:
The Progressive Reading Series Presents:
A Special Benefit For The Victims Of Hurricane Katrina
When: Monday, September 19, 7pm
Where: The Makeout Room – 3225 22nd Street, San Francisco, (415) 647 2888
Price: $10 – $20 sliding scale
Proceeds to benefit the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Fund
What: Authors band together to help victims of Hurricane Katrina
Featuring readings from: Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket), Firoozeh Dumas, Julie Orringer, Peter Orner, Daphne Gottlieb, Kaui Hart Hemmings, Truong Tran, Michelle Richmond, Anne Marino, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Tom Barbash, and Michelle Tea
Approximate Interview Date: An afternoon in San Francisco in late August, 2005
Author: Periel Aschenbrand
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Strangely ambiguous about his identity.
Subjects Discussed: Balance between the personal and the political, evolution of The Only Bush I Trust is My Own and Body as Billboard, getting clearance from friends and family, online dating, on being half-Israeli, half-New York Jew, Gaza and the Palestinians, provocative book covers, accessibility and extremism, responding to the Philadelphia Weekly, public perception, the T-shirt as message, ironic imagery, Sandra Bernhard and “endorsement,” Monique Wittig, shock value, concerned citizens vs. political activists, the waning stigma of the F word, Lenny Bruce, epithets, “date rape,” vintage T-shirts, the validity Motley Crue, the unexpected removal of a T-shirt, cognizant egomania, Mr. Rushdie, conversational vernacular in memoirs.
The Washington Post: “Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking [Gov. Blanco] to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state’s emergency operations center said Saturday.”
If there was an ultimatum issued and troops and aid to save lives were delayed because of this power grab, then the real investigations need to begin right now. Sickening. (via MeFi)
A breather: The new Gorillaz album, Demon Days, is pretty damn happening by the way. Better than I was expecting. Tha album’s subtext is suitably unsure about the world that we now occupy, but it doesn’t squander its ability to rock and groove (“Kids with Guns” and “Dare” are standout tracks) or use aural experimentalism to suggest larger issues (the opening of “O Green World” sounds like there are wild beasts caught within a machine). There’s even a cameo appearance by Dennis Hopper. The tone reminds me very much of Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On.
Salt Lake Tribune: “Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers. Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.”
The following email was forwarded to me. It originates from Lisa C. Moore:
i heard from my aunt last night that my cousin Denise made it out of New Orleans; she’s at her brother’s in Baton Rouge. from what she told me: her mother, a licensed practical nurse, was called in to work on Sunday night at Memorial Hospital (historically known as Baptist Hospital to those of us from N.O.). Denise decided to stay with her mother, her niece and grandniece (who is 2 years old); she figured they’d be safe at the hospital. they went to Baptist, and had to wait hours to be assigned a room to sleep in; after they were finally assigned a room,two white nurses suddenly arrived after the cut-off time (time to be assigned a room), and Denise and her family were booted out; their room was given up to the new nurses. Denise was furious, and rather than stay at Baptist, decided to walk home (several blocks away )to ride out the storm at her mother’s apartment. her mother stayed at the hospital.
she described it as the scariest time in her life. 3 of the rooms in the apartment (there are only 4) caved in. ceilings caved in, walls caved in. she huddled under a mattress in the hall. she thought she would die from either the storm or a heart attack. after the storm passed, she went back to Baptist to seek shelter (this was Monday). it was also scary at Baptist; the electricity was out, they were running on generators, there was no air conditioning. Tuesday the levees broke, and water began rising. they moved patients upstairs, saw boats pass by on what used to be streets. they were told that they would be evacuated, that buses were coming. then they were told they would have to walk to the nearest intersection, Napoleon and S. Claiborne, to await the buses. they waded out in hip-deep water, only to stand at the intersection, on the neutral ground (what y’all call the median) for 3 1/2 hours. the buses came and took them to the Ernest Morial Convention Center. (yes, the convention center you’ve all seen on TV.)
Denise said she thought she was in hell. they were there for 2 days, with no water, no food. no shelter. Denise, her mother (63 years old), her niece (21 years old), and 2-year-old grandniece. when they arrived, there were already thousands of people there. they were told that buses were coming. police drove by, windows rolled up, thumbs up signs. national guard trucks rolled by, completely empty, soldiers with guns cocked and aimed at them. nobody stopped to drop off water. a helicopter dropped a load of water, but all the bottles exploded on impact due to the height of the helicopter.
the first day (Wednesday) 4 people died next to her. the second day (Thursday) 6 people died next to her. Denise told me the people around her all thought they had been sent there to die. again, nobody stopped. the only buses that came were full; they dropped off more and more people, but nobody was being picked up and taken away. they found out that those being dropped off had been rescued from rooftops and attics; they got off the buses delirious from lack of water and food. completely dehydrated. the crowd tried to keep them all in one area; Denise said the new arrivals had mostly lost their minds. they had gone crazy.
inside the convention center, the place was one huge bathroom. in order to shit, you had to stand in other people’s shit. the floors were black and slick with shit. most people stayed outside because the smell was so bad. but outside wasn’t much better: between the heat, the humidity, the lack of water, the old and very young dying from dehydration… and there was no place to lay down, not even room on the sidewalk. they slept outside Wednesday night, under an overpass.
Denise said yes, there were young men with guns there.but they organized the crowd. they went to Canal Street and “looted,” and brought back food and water for the old people and the babies, because nobody had eaten in days. when the police rolled down windows and yelled out “the buses are coming,” the young men with guns organized the crowd in order: old people in front, women and children next, men in the back. just so that when the buses came, there would be priorities of who got out first.
Denise said the fights she saw between the young men with guns were fist fights. she saw them put their guns down and fight rather than shoot up the crowd. but she said that there were a handful of people shot in the convention center; their bodies were left inside, along with other dead babies and old people.
Denise said the people thought there were being sent there to die. lots of people being dropped off, nobody being picked up. cops passing by, speeding off. national guard rolling by with guns aimed at them. and yes, a few men shot at the police, because at a certain point all the people thought the cops were coming to hurt them, to kill them all. she saw a young man who had stolen a car speed past, cops in pursuit; he crashed the car, got out and ran, and the cops shot him in the back. in front of the whole crowd. she saw many groups of people decide that they were going to walk across the bridge to the west bank, and those same groups would return, saying that they were met at the top of the bridge by armed police ordering them to turn around, that they weren’t allowed to leave.
so they all believed they were sent there to die.
Denise’s niece found a pay phone, and kept trying to call her mother’s boyfriend in Baton Rouge, and finally got through and told him where they were. the boyfriend, and Denise’s brother, drove down from Baton Rouge and came and got them. they had to bribe a few cops, and talk a few into letting them into the city (“come on, man, my 2-year-old niece is at the Convention Center!”), then they took back roads to get to them.
after arriving at my other cousin’s apartment in Baton Rouge, they saw the images on TV, and couldn’t believe how the media was portraying the people of New Orleans. she kept repeating to me on the phone last night: make sure you tell everybody that they left us there to die. nobody came. those young men with guns were protecting us. if it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t have had the little water and food they had found.
that’s Denise Moore’s story.
Lisa C. Moore
TMFTML: “Dispatches from Dave E_____, Misunderstood American Living During the Era of Irony
Thanks to the folks at Bloglines, who were kind enough to replace the old feed with the new feed. So for those of you who have subscribed to the old feed all along, wondering why there’s been all this silence (there hasn’t), that’s what happened. Anyway, didn’t mean to break the hiatus, but wanted to clarify the confusion.
The news is so fundamentally awful and depressing that we’ve now resorted to heavy drinking hanging with friends and disconnecting for a tad so that the profound rage, hopelessness and sorrow we feel doesn’t spread like a cancer into the depths of our soul — the way these incompetents in power want it to. We’ll be back on Tuesday.
[UPDATE: We walked thirty miles in 24 hours. If that doesn’t give you a sense of the crazed lengths we’ve gone to in order to remain calm, nothing will. Of course, wiser folks looking at our neuroses from the outside have been kind enough to put things into perspective. We speak for us (and them) in suggesting that you at least spend about twelve hours away from your television set (pointing out that recusal doesn’t necessarily translate into abdicating one’s responsibilities to stay informed!), doing something modest and without thought that reminds you of the world’s profound wonders. When in doubt, feed the ducks or flirt with someone.]
A: I’ve never seen the beginning of A Clockwork Orange. Every time I see the movie on TV, it always starts in on the part where Alex is raping the writer’s wife.
B: Okay, so at the beginning, they’re at this milkbar. They’re drinking milk, which is a sort of crack cocaine.
[ED, a Burgess and Kubrick freak, can’t stop his ears from pricking up.]
ED: Crack cocaine? I don’t think so. Did we ever once see Alex getting a case of the shits? It could have been amphetamines.
B: Methamphetamines, yes.
ED: It could have been alcohol. It could have been a futuristic version of Kahlua. Or do you think that the sensation of drinking the milk was all inside their heads? Perhaps a placebo effect?
B: Well, they did say that the milk sharpened everybody up for a bit of the old ultraviolence.
ED: Yes. But it sharpened them up. One might argue that the instinct to pillage was already there.
B: Or perhaps the milk represented something maternal.
ED: That too!
B: Given the Christ imagery in the film, the milk was a liquified form of heroin.
ED: Wait a sec. So you’re saying then that violence is irrevocably tied in with drugs?
B: Maybe.
ED: Well, I should point out that Hitler was a vegetarian and a teetotaler.
TRACKLIST
1. Let the Niggers Rot in New Orleans
2. It Might Take Years
3. Don’t Need No Aid
4. It’s Always Time for Vacation
5. Wal-Mart Comes First
6. Glad I Never Had to Hack My Way Out of an Attic
7. Nature Ain’t As Bad As a Terrorist
8. Bootstrap Boogie
9. Zero Tolerance
10. It’s Hard Work
11. Flying High at a Press Conference
12. They’ll Forget This Week Next Year
Troubling news from Caitlin Kiernan: It seems she’s been unable to get in touch with Ms. Brite in Mississippi. Jesus, I hope she’s okay.
[UPDATE: Poppy’s okay and has has just posted at her blog.]
Steve Rhodes has taken some pictures of the Young, Roving Correspondent’s interview with Norman Solomon. Do not be frightened by the YRC’s peeling head. Before talking with Mr. Solomon, his forehead was fried by the sun.
