Month / October 2006

by Edward Champion

In Other Words, Write Like Hitch

Christopher Hitchens on Izzy Stone: “Even the slightest piece written by Izzy was composed with a decent respect for the King’s English and usually contained at least one apt allusion to the literature and poetry and history that undergirded it: an allusion that he would expect his readers to recognize. Who now dares to do that? Who would now dare to say, as he did as an excited eyewitness, that there was still something ‘saccharine’ about Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ oration? The rule of saccharine rhetoric and bland prose is now near absolute, and one could almost envy Izzy the sad deafness and myopia that allowed him to tune out the constant bawling from electronic media.”

by Edward Champion

Play the Secret Dance of the Seven Veils All You Want, You Wacky Swedes! We’re At Our RSS Feeds 24-7! We Never Sleep! You Can’t Stop Us!

Reuters: “The Swedish Academy announces the winner of the world’s top literary prize, founded by dynamite millionaire Alfred Nobel, along with four other awards, on a Thursday in October. It refuses to say which until days beforehand, but this year’s announcement is expected to fall on October 12 or 19.”

by Edward Champion

Guess It’s Time to Call the Gray Lady Staffers “A Rotten Bunch of Roscoes”

New York Times Corrections: “Because of an editing error, an article in The Arts on Saturday about the use of the Los Angeles Times building in movies and television shows misstated the surname of the building’s manager of administrative services at one point. As the article noted, he is Cletus Page, and in a subsequent reference he should have been identified as Mr. Page, not Mr. Cletus.”

by Edward Champion

This Week in Marie Antoinette News

You’d think I could simply ignore Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette like any ordinary populist, but, once again, Romancing the Tome steers me to this amusing piece of news. Apparently, the Marie Antoinette Association has blasted Coppola’s film. President Michele Lorin notes, “We’ve spent years trying to convince people that the queen was not just a libertine who told the starving to eat cake. What do you see on the trailer? You see Marie Antoinette eating cake. You see her lying naked on a chaise longue. I fear the film is going to set us back many years.”

No complaints on the egregious 1980s soundtrack? Or Coppola’s diffidence to include Marie’s death? If Marie Antoinette’s most ardent supporters are protesting this film, then heaven help the reactions of a mass audience.

by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

Presumably, Irony is Also a Profane Word for Alton Verm

The Courier: “A Caney Creek High School dad is fired up because the Conroe Independent School District uses the book ‘Fahrenheit 451′ as classroom reading material. Alton Verm, of Conroe, objects to the language and content in the book. His 15-year-old daughter Diana, a CCHS sophomore, came to him Sept. 21 with her reservations about reading the book because of its language….’It’s just all kinds of filth,’ said Alton Verm, adding that he had not read ‘Fahrenheit 451.’” (Emphasis added.)

by Edward Champion

Failing to Muse Me

I’ve had my disagreements with Mr. Ewins about Elbow in the past. But now I must dissent with the man on Muse’s Black Holes and Revelations. The album’s okay, I guess. “Starlight,” with a piano riff that seems less a integral component to the song and more of a nod to mellowing alt-rock listeners (“Yes,” the band seems to assure us, “it’s okay to listen to pop music after thirty.”), shouldn’t get stuck in your head, but it does.

But if an album can be judged on the basis of whether it serves as good road trip music, then Black Holes doesn’t fit the bill. As I was speeding 85 mph in Wisconsin listening to “Map of the Problematique,” contemplating the pretentious song title and its percussive insistence that, dammit, Muse is about something, I felt as if I was being conned. I enjoyed Muse’s melodic aggressiveness on its previous three albums, but at least, back then, the band understood then that vocalist Matthew Bellamy had his limitations. Instead, they’ve thrown this doofus at the forefront of the mix, encouraging his angsty sham. Bad enough that Thom Yorke lost his whiny panache with the solo album, but what can one say when one is greeted by a Thom Yorke imitator whining, “Loneliness be over / When will this loneliness be over?” Meet me on a street corner, Matt, so I can show you a homeless woman who’s truly suffering.

It doesn’t help that Muse possesses the attention span of an infant wired up on Rockstars. They can’t settle on any musical style for more than thirty seconds. On “Invincible,” the most insufferable track on the album, it’s space rock one moment, arpeggio-based ballad the next, 70s prog rock the next, inflated 1977 hard rock solo the next, all with Bellamy whining into your ears like a constipated teenager who needs to be told where the laxative is, and then needs a comprehensive explanation on what a medicine cabinet is and how to open it. The band is so without nuance or feeling that they have the effrontery to subject you to what seems to me, on the whole, to be a transparent music geek trap. And the hell of it is that they’ve succeeded.

But not with me.

Of course, it’s quite possible that Muse is sending up the bloat that the music industry relies upon like crude oil and oxygen. Certainly the final track “Knights of Cydonia,” which emerges after ten tracks of shitty bloat, suggests this.

But real bands give a damn about something outside of themselves. Only David Bowie or Sweet could get away with this kind of masturbatory glam nonsense. (I’ll see your “Soldier’s Poem” and replace it with “Seven Line Poem,” thank you very much.) And while my ears perked up a bit during the first few listens, I don’t see how any decent music lover can respect herself by clinging to such willing bombast.

by Edward Champion

A Special Column from Michael “Sore” Loser

After twenty-two years of hard labor, my 1,468-page experimental novel, Dan Buys a Sofa on the Installment Plan, has received a total of one review — a 300 word blurb written by Cletus Garfield in the Penny Saver, who declared “quite possibly the worst book to take a crap to.” I have since learned that a San Francisco writer may have ghosted this review, but thankfully another San Francisco writer — someone referred to as a “blogger,” who I presume is some kind of German dancer — has permitted me the space to express my grief, with the proviso that my byline includes the nickname “Sore,” which he tells me is Hungarian for “sublime.”

It’s petty and unreasonable for authors to dispute this kind of reception. But since Michael Laser has demonstrated that there is a market for sour grapes, I, Michael Loser, must also join the chorus. Besides, expending energies to whine is better than paying some quack three hundred dollars an hour and, if I play my cards right, I might just get Salon to buy this piece too.

I had high hopes that readers would see my clear homage to Celine, beginning with the way I used “installment plan” in the title and consistently referred to “installment plan” in my work. Consider this excerpt from Page 432:

Dan installed himself on the installed sofa and picked up his guitar, which he had also purchased on the installment plan. He strummed D minor and, five minutes later, he had penned a ballad: “Installment plan / I’m living on the installment plan / I’m breathing on the installment plan / Have you got an installment plan too?” Tunes came easily for Dan. He had a five-subject notebook filled with fresh ballads and had often bartered his ballads away for other home furnishings. A few burly furniture store owners had agreed to an installment plan deal, in which Dan would offer his ballads piecemeal for tables, armoires and chiffoniers — a grandstanding installment plan that would include installation. Could they not see his latent talent? Would he ever compose a masterpiece? Or was he leading up to it with these songs, all of them written on the installment plan?

If Mr. Garfield could not see the clear metaphors and imagery here about how we are all, in some sense, living on the “installment plan,” if he can’t supplicate upon my genius and if readers, in turn, cannot see the true valor of my words, then I may just have to slice my wrists.

Then again, if Salon accepts this piece (and given its history, I am certain they will), then I may just find life worth living after all. I might even be a Great American Writer. After all, writing is all about the roses they throw you at the dais.

I am now working on a second novel called The End of Dan’s Sofa, which was inspired by the great A.M. Homes book and deals with a sofa cruelly ejected from Dan’s apartment, taking up residence in a jail cell, where the sofa strikes up a correspondence with an abandoned Windsor chair.

If the reading public cannot understand the human condition through Installment Plan, then perhaps exploring the consciousness of furniture is the next best thing.

For the moment, I just want an intelligent review. I just want a sale. I just want a hug.

Love me. I’m fragile.

by Edward Champion

This Blog is Not a Marketing Tool

It’s been said several times already, but I feel the need to point out that I am not a spokesman, no matter how much beer, nickel bags, or underwear you send me.

I’m responding to the suggestion put forth by various folks in Josh Getlin’s article, which chronicles the often desperate ploys used by publishers to generate title awareness. Let’s get a few things straight:

1. If you send me a book, I am under no obligation to like it.
2. If you send me a book, I am under no obligation to read it.
3. If you send me a book, I am under no obligation to review it.
4. If you send me a link to some soiree, I am under no obligation to mention it or attend it.
5. If an author comes through town, I am under no obligation to interview her.

(I am, however, under the obligation to acknowledge thoughts and various sweet snacks from other journalists and, as I can, various readers. This is what is known as “breaking bread” in the real world, a concept lost upon poor Sammy Boy.)

Of course, ask nicely, tickle my fancy, and consult the secret “How to Communicate with Ed Champion” pamphlet now making the rounds in certain publishing circles and you may just find a way to twist my arm.

Likewise, I also understand that authors and publishers are under no obligation to accommodate me. But I do appreciate their position and try to respond to any and all pitches and/or queries that come my way.

What does that make me? A very strange media outlet? Perhaps. An opinionated one with esoteric references, a highly subjective approach, and bad puns. Sure!

But none of this makes me (or, for that matter, any of my blogging companions) a marketing tool. In fact, I regularly say no to very nice people and still feel bad for doing so. My time is limited. But this is not marketing. This is a form of opinion journalism.

I think it’s important to lay down a distinction between one who loves books and one who markets books. I love books. No question. I love books so much that I’m often a vocal skeptic about them. But if you want to ensure that your book gets a rave, send it to Harriet Klausner, not me. Of course, your guaranteed plaudit comes at a cost. After all, is there anyone who really takes Klausner’s reviews seriously?

by Edward Champion

The What, I’m in San Francisco Again? Roundup

by Edward Champion

Genre Bashing

On Thursday afternoon, I encountered a pretentious coffeehouse on State Street. I did not know it was pretentious at the time. It was Thursday. I was existing in a pleasant miasmic swirl and I hadn’t ingested anything narcotic. I needed prodigious oil. The overwhelming need for coffee (red-eye flight, one hour of sleep) overwhelmed my abilities to detect yuppie factor. The below picture (about as close to a W.G. Sebald moment as I can offer) should give you a clue as to how zonked out I was:

madisoncafe.jpg

I bring this up not to knock down a Madison coffeehouse that is, in all likelihood, still finding its sea legs (or, this being Wisconsin, lake legs), but to suggest how such an autocratic atmosphere of Caucasians staring intently into a frighteningly similar series of grey laptops, no different from a cube farm really, might spawn or influence the conversation I observed between a humorless barista and a rather sour-faced thirtysomething (apparently one of the regulars):

“What’s going on at the Concourse?”

“Oh, it’s just a bunch of mystery writers. Some conference.”

“Mystery writers? What a bunch of dorks.”

“Well, I suppose it’s good for business.”

Now I was prepared to jump to the defense of mystery writers. After all, I have tried over the years to be a genre-blind reader and see no difference between a book categorized in the fiction section and one categorized in one of those other sections. And it pisses me off when a book is so readily dismissed because of its genre (or, if you’re a mainstream critic like Lev Grossman, you cling to it like a weekend hobby you might try out someday). As a exuberant conversational propagandist, I have done my damnedest over the years to get literary people, everyday readers, and pretty much anyone who reads to consider that the books shoved off into the back of the library or the bookstore are as genuine as their literary counterparts.

In fact, one of the reasons I had come to Bouchercon was to see if I could solicit ideas on how to beat genre ghettoization or perhaps get some thoughts from various people on why the great divide continues to exist. Could a literary guy like me, who goes out of his way to read widely and deeply, allemande with these mystery enthusiasts and work for a better tomorrow? Could we work to extend the conversation further?

But while I had great fun in Madison (if you ever go, you must see the cows that line down State Street and around the capitol; there are also beautiful trees and lakes), I ended up avoiding most of Bouchercon. Oh, there will be a small Bouchercon podcast. But if Bouchercon is the model for the mystery convention, I have no desire to go to one of these things again. There may have been a kernel of truth to what the two people at the cafe were talking about.

Perhaps there’s something metaphorical in the way the first interview I recorded at Bouchercon was seven minutes of conversational gibberish. (Then again, it may very well be Lee Goldberg’s fault. Or my own.)

As it turns out, the mystery writers and mystery enthusiasts I encountered, with only twelve notable exceptions (I did talk far and wide), have no interest in chatting with you unless you have read some obscure novelist. Dare to mention a mystery author who straddles the fence between mystery and fiction and you will be given a look normally reserved for a Mensa member preening down at the commonweal. I tried to talk with these folks with the apparently feeble string of mystery authors I had read. I mentioned Walter Mosley, Stanley Ellin, Laura Lippman, Ian Rankin, Arturo Perez-Reverte, Charles Willeford, George Pelecanos. That’s seven names right there. You would think that would be enough. And failing books, I was prepared to dip into my considerable film noir knowledge in an effort to find some common ground.

No such luck. I was greeted instead with exasperated sighs, guffaws, and a passive-aggressive contempt.

“If you haven’t read mysteries, then what are you doing here?” said one frumpy middle-aged woman, clutching a collection of books to her like the Babylonian Talmud. “Why don’t you go down State Street and drink with the college kids instead?” This was after I asked this woman if she knew of any mystery novelists, outside of James Ellroy, who might employ experimental style.

Well, with prissy elitist attitudes like that, I would, in fact, much rather talk to some drunken twentysomething in a Packers sweatshirt. His incoherent shouting would be more heartfelt. Is it any wonder why the genre isn’t taken seriously? Is it any wonder why no newspapers bothered to cover Bouchercon? (And after about twenty minutes of waiting around, I never did collect my press credentials. The security was so lax that I simply walked right into the Concourse with my gear.)

I talked with a number of mystery writers (among the twelve exceptions) about this issue. They claimed it was because much of the Bouchercon crowd was socially inept. They claimed any number of excuses. I suspect it has something to do with the idea that these people are pilloried at home when they read mysteries and that this is the only time that they are able to announce their interests. But why not stand proud for what you like every day? Why be ashamed when a humble enthusiasm is often infectious?

I don’t buy it. If these people are smart enough to read mysteries and become experts at them, then it follows that at least a few people among the crowd might be smart enough to recognize that the kind of strange hubris I have described above further margnizalizes the genre. It is this attitude that causes the two people at the coffeehouse to dismiss them. And it is this attitude that makes Bouchercon a colossal joke.

Of course, there will always be the books. And I’ll be happy to read them and suggest them to friends. Except I won’t be calling them mysteries. I’ll let the Bouchercon monomaniacs do that. They’re doing a fantastic job expanding the chasm.