Month / October 2007

by Edward Champion

Deborah Solomon Under Fire from Ombudsman

Clark Hoyt: “In fact, there is a protocol, and ‘Questions For’ isn’t living up to it. The Times’s Manual of Style and Usage says that readers have a right to assume that every word in quotation marks is what was actually said. ‘Questions For’ does not use quotations marks but is presented as a transcript. The manual also says ellipses should be used to signal omissions in transcripts, and that ‘The Times does not ‘clean up’ quotations….maybe ‘Questions For’ needs to be rethought.”

I should say so. Incidentally, Hoyt’s piece is in response to Matt Elzweig’s piece, which appeared a few weeks ago.

by Edward Champion

Who Gawks Gawker?

If you are interested in reading an article that will have you clamoring for one cold shower, followed by three more, followed by a week-long regimen of healthy food and abstaining from alcohol, and followed then by some dim yet vociferous hope for a legion of Jimmy Breslins to infiltrate the New York media world, then this longass article is for you. It’s amazing that these folks are so miserable that they would offer such revealing quotes — oh, more revealing than they know! — to a journalist.

by Edward Champion

An Open Apology to Ursula K. Le Guin

In July, I posted an excerpt from a small Ursula K. Le Guin piece. I never had any intention of reproducing Le Guin’s piece in full, because I recognized that it was a short piece. But I now realize that I was wrong to reproduce as much as I did, and I have since reduced my excerpt to one sentence, which I feel constitutes fair use. Cory Doctorow, on the other hand, seems to feel that reproducing an author’s piece in whole is “fair use.” And his disingenuous citation of 17 USC, which entailed reproducing a “single paragraph” of a single paragraph piece strikes me as a dubious interpretation to say the least. His apology is nothing more than self-serving adulation. Whatever one’s thoughts on “information wanting to be free,” when one reproduces the whole of a piece, one knowingly commits copyright infringement. Thus, Doctorow indisputably committed piracy here and should really be careful if he wishes to continue dunning his nose into his idols’ posteriors. Le Guin’s thoughts on the matter can be found here.

by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

Whither the Short Story?

Lydia Jenkins has declared that the literary magazine is dead. Likewise, Jean Thompson recently opined that, due to the considerable commentary resulting from Stephen King’s distress call that the short story cannot be dead. Ms. Jenkins suggests that we do not need any more literary magazines, because they are condemned to endless in-jokes and other conceits, but this characterization only serves to cloud her perception. (For example, can a quality magazine like The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction really fall inside this rubric?) Likewise, what Ms. Thompson fails to realize is that a vociferous array of comments are, by no means, reflective of the situation as King described it — namely, literary magazines arranged in bookstores “along the lowest shelf,” where either literary die-hards or self-immolating hunchbacks collecting disability are inclined to stoop.

Neither Jenkins nor Thompson address the real problem. Short stories are simply no longer part of the general population’s reading diet — at least not in magazine form. Gone are the days where people read magazines to become lost in stories. (And pardon the longass digression, but I also believe that this has something to do with the regrettable paucity of exciting radio dramas along the lines of Quiet, Please. As far as I am concerned, there is something extremely sad about the United States failing to subsidize or encourage radio drama, while the form continues to flourish with public and private monies in Canada and the United Kingdom. I have made more feverish quests than I can count, but unless someone can direct me to a podcast that is on the level of a Mutual or NBC Blue radio drama and that is not merely a recording of an author reading their work, along the lines of Escape Pod or an audio book, not even the great podcasting revolution has offered anything worthwhile. As for audio books, having revisited the form recently out of personal and professional interests, I can likewise assure you that the majority of readers hired for these safe ‘n’ sane outings have been trained to read work without zest or dramatic gusto. The Take No Chances motto, which one expects from the latest family film released by Disney, holds true for this quite promising medium. Rather criminally, the audio books industry made $871 million in 2005 on this soporific racket.)

Michael Chabon made two efforts to revisit this golden era with his two guest-edited McSweeney’s volumes. And while these were certainly fun and welcome diversions, the grand revelation was that the majority of writers, by way of not having reading the magazines of the 1930s and the 1940s, are simply not trained to entertain in the manner that those who wrote for Collier’s and Esquire back in those days did.

Magazines now serve to promulgate news, celebrity gossip, and those Cosmopolitan questionnaires in which I always seem to end up “prepared to entice your man in bed.” (On the latter point, don’t ask me why this ends up happening to me. I merely fill in the bubbles.)

I am not trying to sound elitist here. Nor am I suggesting that any of these developments are bad or represent the end of civilization. Reading, contra the alarmism raised a few years ago by the NEA, is far from dead. Any casual glance inside a subway will reveal no shortage of people who are reading. But if they are reading fiction, they are reading books, not magazines.

So where does this leave the short story (or, for that matter, the radio drama)? Well, I think recent steps taken by Esquire fiction editor Tom Chiarella, in which twice as many short stories are being published this year compared to last year, are a start. If the short story is to survive among the general publication, and this may very well be the key to the ongoing health of literary journals and short stories, it is now up to the general interest magazine to save it by including exemplars of the form within its pages. For that is where the magazines are likely to be stocked in bookstores. Or perhaps the time has come to offer more short story collections in the form of books. (Interestingly, the Chabon-edited McSweeney’s collections were marketed this way. I’d be extremely curious about their Bookscan figures. The fact that a third volume did not arrive may attest to poor sales.)

But practically speaking, if you want to save the short story as a whole and if you want it to be more than merely the niche markets it currently serves, you’re going to have to get the general population reading short fiction. And this means creating magazines, exclusively devoted to fiction that entertains as well as enlightens, that the public will buy. Even if this means a profusion of penny dreadfuls. Is such a thing possible? I think so. But only if markets can be successfully created and only if the writers writing today understand that narrative is just as important as MFA haberdashery.

What we need to do is train a generation of readers and possibly a generation of listeners. That 25% of the general population listens to audio books is an encouraging sign. But what if the audio books became more dramatic, along the lines of a radio drama? And what if these radio dramas (or podcasts) were tied, as the great drama X Minus 1 was, to a major magazine? (X Minus 1 had a close association with the late Galaxy Magazine. People listening to the program could then go to the magazine where they might find similar stories that would excite them. I have no firm figures on the effect the radio program may have had on sales. Perhaps one of Horace Gold’s descendants might wish to weigh in.)

If the short story were truly important in the United States, then someone would step in and find a way in which to reach the great American public. What we have instead are a bunch of embittered MFAs and people who have become tired of reading McSweeney’s, when it’s really King who’s on the money here. While I’ll always enjoy and appreciate short stories, I simply won’t be convinced that they matter to the populace at large until I see subway commuters replacing their mass market paperbacks with fiction magazines, or until I don’t have to stoop down in the bookstore to get the latest issue of ZYZZYVA.

by Edward Champion

Causal Friday

Deadlines, interviews, and other obligations keep me away from Reluctant today. In the meantime, stay tuned for the exciting prospect of seeing no new posts for the next two and a half days! That’s right. I promise you no new content until Monday. Where others might promise you several blog posts today, I take comfort in honoring my pledge of nothing. Because aside from work, there is, of course, some living to do.

And speaking of which, if you aren’t listening to Dr. Dog right now, you’re missing out. Have fun, folks.

by Edward Champion

East Coast Weather

The pattering pelts now hitting my window remind me of long rainy days as a teenager getting lost in mammoth books that nobody else I knew read. I never cared much for the rain in San Francisco. That city was more the natural domain of fog and inconsistent sunshine trickling through ever-shifting clouds. But on the East Coast, rain, thunder, and lightning makes as much sense as it did during those rare days in Sacramento. The five boroughs collectively represent a milieu designed for such weather. That it comes crashing down with such Hollywood gusto during both the summer thunderstorms and the autumn list from the heat is a tribute to its beauty and its fortitude. Alas, this rainy day romanticism comes at a great cost. I am now contending with the worst ceiling link I’ve ever experienced.

by Edward Champion

When Was the Last Time You Received Boilerplate?

Dear Reader:

There isn’t a day that goes by in which your name doesn’t escape my lips, even if I don’t quite know who you are exactly. Although I’m sure they’ll work out the kinks before they send you this message. Humor me. This is boilerplate. And it sustains the illusion that you and I know each other or are capable of having a conversation beyond the almighty books that separate us or serve, in their rightful way, as a kind of surrogate restraining order.

When I immerse my smooth legs into the sudsy veneer of my bubble bath, I wonder why you can’t be there with me traversing the soapy filament. You rock my bathroom environment, [insert first name here], because maybe you are those bubbles. If you have five o’clock shadow, your stubble might bristle against my goosebumped flesh at the end of the day. Not unlike the bubbles. I know you slide your hard-earned money across the smooth surface of the bookstore counter to purchase my books, and I can confidently divine that you would exercise the same fastidiousness in sliding your way across my counterpane. Assuming, of course, that you can pass the intelligence test.

I should warn you, [insert first name here], that I am a married woman. But my four ventricles will beat hot and heavy for you if you do not cower at my great intellect and if you can willfully abdicate your masculinity, your pride, and your thoughts on the mortgage you are now paying in an aggressive game of tennis. You’ve read Double Fault, yes? Well, let us quadruple fault and find folly in two universes. Let us not talk about Kevin, unless your name is Kevin. [Note to editor: Remove last sentence if recipient is named Kevin.] I am sure you come from a perfectly good family, but, like Peggy Atwood, I do not suffer fools gladly. So please come prepared.

Love,

Lionel

(via Bookninja)

by Edward Champion

Nobel Literature Prize Goes to Doris Lessing

lessig.jpgA very nice choice, if I do say so myself!

by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

Why I Will Never Endorse Ron Paul

Sponsored by Ron Paul: HR 300: “Prohibits the Supreme Court and each federal court from adjudicating any claim or relying on judicial decisions involving: (1) state or local laws, regulations, or policies concerning the free exercise or establishment of religion; (2) the right of privacy, including issues of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; or (3) the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation where based upon equal protection of the laws.”

If you think I’m being a bit paranoid about how these three points — curtailing the natural trajectory of the judicial branch and its ability to corral past judicial decisions with present ones — will be liberally perceived by the Republicans, why not hear Ron Paul explain the bill in his own words? “I am also the prime sponsor of HR 300, which would negate the effect of Roe v Wade by removing the ability of federal courts to interfere with state legislation to protect life. This is a practical, direct approach to ending federal court tyranny which threatens our constitutional republic and has caused the deaths of 45 million of the unborn.”

The man even had the temerity to call his bill the “We the People Act.”

Stripping the courts of their right to overturn previous decisions or rule on lower court or state decisions with such an overbroad definition is contrary to what the United States of America is about. I am appalled. No true patriot would consider this court right to be a “tyranny.”

by Edward Champion

Coming Soon to Bat Segundo

Correspondent: It seems very extraordinary that it was only three drafts to get this. I mean, because the prose itself, it has this really illusory speed to it, in the sense that one reads it, thinking, “Oh, well, this is a rather brisk read.” And then you introduce the detail, like the weird guy at the bar. Where did he come from? I don’t remember him being referenced earlier. And yet this often happens, in terms of [the protagonist’s[ perception. So in terms of playing with readers’ perceptions, was this very much in place early on?

tommccarthy.jpgMcCarthy: It fell into place really early on. I mean, as soon as the guy’s voice came, and it came early, because he’s not an intellectual or an artist. He’s just a very average — he’s a Joe Schmoe. He’s some bloke. He doesn’t even have a name. He’s kind of an everyman. As soon as his voice was there, it just picked up its own rhythm and then the set of modulating repetitions and the phrases that come back, they just suggested themselves. It’s like pinball. Once you go into multiple mode, they kind of stay up there for a bit, you know what I mean? And it just seemed to happen with this book.

Correspondent: So the momentum in this book, in writing it, came from these repetitive phrases. These incantations?

McCarthy: Yeah, exactly, there’s a sort of incantatory logic to it. A neurotic repetitiveness. And once that gets going, it kind of auto-repeats. It goes into auto-pilot mode of self-repetition. Like the classical model of neurosis in Freud or whatever. You can see that playing out rhetorically in the writing, in the text of this book, I think.

Correspondent: I actually wanted to ask you about the time period in this book. You make a few clues that it might be the late ’90’s. You have the rising telecommunications stock.

McCarthy: Yeah.

Correspondent: You have the Propellerheads song from 1999 or somewhere along those lines. You have the airport security being particularly lax. And I’m wondering why the late ’90’s time frame seemed to be the best to set this particular narrative.

McCarthy: It’s pretty much when I wrote it. I wrote it from 2000 to 2001. In fact, I finished it just about a month before September the 11th. So it’s kind of ironic. This book has been interpreted as an allegory of September the 11th or reviewed as foreign policy. The hero starts out the victim or some sort of calamity and he ends up the perpetrator of other calamities, which is kind of what the U.S. has done.

Correspondent: Yeah.

McCarthy: But it’s entirely accidental. I mean, it was all written before that. But no, you’re right. It did come out of that. I imagine that it’s set sometime during 1999, 2000, as the stock market bubble was going up and then spectacularly bursting at the end of the book.

Correspondent: Well, you even have the notion of this company, which is Time Control UK. I wanted to ask you about this. I mean, did this come about from the notion of — all you had to do in that time period was essentially write out a five-page prospectus and anyone would give you money? Or were there actually specific companies that you based Time Control UK on?

McCarthy: Oh yeah! These concierge companies were just emerging in the UK, who would more or less do anything for you. They live your life vicariously, or they stretch your life for you. Which I just find kind of fascinating. I mean, it’s quite kind of metaphysical really, you know, you outsource your godliness. You outsource your autonomy, even though obviously you’re paying them. And the stock market, I just found it really fascinating. This bubble and these companies that were just making paper millionaires out of people that had virtually no premise. Like eSolutions. I mean, what on earth is that? I read this article about the South Sea bubble of the 17th century — or was it the 18th century? — where stocks were going so high that people would throw their money at anything and there was a company called A Very Good Idea Yet No One to Know What It Is.

Correspondent: (laughs)

McCarthy: And, of course, its shares sold out in a day. And, of course, it went bankrupt six months later. But in this book, the movements of capital are very much tied in with the movements of everything else. So this idea of speculation, which has an astronomical meaning as well. Contemplation of the heavens. And my hero spends a lot of time just looking at constellations of dust suspended in a stairwell. And they’re either going up or down. And the shares are doing the same thing.

(A two-part interview with Tom McCarthy, the author of Remainder, is coming soon to The Bat Segundo Show.)

by Edward Champion

Is This the Beginning of the Planet of the Apes?

A spam email I received:

To: ed@edrants.com
Subject: Dogs Are Dying In 6 Hours

Friends, especially dog lovers,

There’s an epidemic that has been extremely prevalent in these states:AR, AZ, CA, CO, FL, GA, IN, KS, MS, OH, NC, PA, SC, TN, and TX; however, many other states and some countries such as Australia, Canada, England and others are experiencing a marked increase in the number of Canine Parvovirus cases.

Parvo is normally an aggressive virus that attacks the gastro-intestinal lining in dogs and if left untreated can kill a dog in 24 to 72 hours more than 80% of the time.

However, there’s a new much more virulent mutation that is killing dogs in as little as six (6) hours after symptoms (i.e. yellow frothy vomit, diarrhea/bloody diarrhea, dehydration, lethargy, loss of appetite, etc.) first show.

Instead of symptoms taking days, with this new version the symptoms only take a few hours to fully develop. This newer mutation is like Parvo on crack.This is why dogs dehydrate and die in as little as six (6) hours.

This Parvo killing machine is called 2c (aka F-Strain).There has been a staggering increase in the number of Parvo cases this year with the 2c Strain because: VACCINATED dogs (both puppies and adults) are still becoming infected.Many of the current Parvo vaccinations cannot counter
2c.

And if your dog does become infected, you must be prepared and know all of your options.The typical cost to treat your dog at the vet’s clinic will be anywhere from $500 to over $6000 per dog and your vet will probably give you only a 50:50 chance at a full recovery.

The everyday common things you do with your dog could get him infected: if you take your dog for a walk, go to the park, visit a neighbor’s house, etc. because all he needs to do is step in contaminated feces, vomit, saliva (yes even nose-to-nose contact) can spread the Parvo virus.

by Edward Champion

National Book Award Finalists

I was stuck on a subway when the National Book Awards were announced, but I have to say that the nonfiction finalists are a far more interesting crop (Hitch!) than the fiction finalists. Maybe I was hoping for a more vivid and crackling selection similar to what we had last year. But it may very well be possible that the best books of the year weren’t coming from mainstream literary fiction, but within genre (Brian Francis Slattery’s Spaceman Blues), small presses (Antoine Wilson’s The Interloper) and from across the pond (Rupert Thomson’s Death of a Murder and, depending upon whether you count it as a 2007 book, Tom McCarthy’s Remainder, et al.). So run my own literary sensibilities at any rate. But I likewise think that Lionel Shriver’s The Post-Birthday World deserved a perch, as did Tom Bissell’s wildly ambitious and criminally overlooked The Father of All Things in the nonfiction category.

Before I reveal the awards, and with the full acknowledgment that Robert Birnbaum has likewise bandied about this passage, I’d just like to ask whether any of the five fiction finalists came close to this moment of wisdom from Richard Russo’s Bridge of Sighs (another book I’m tempted to include among the best of the year):

Odd, how our view of human destiny changes over the course of a lifetime. In youth we believe what the young believe, that life is all choice. We stand before a hundred doors, choose to enter one, where we’re faced with a hundred more and then choose again. We choose not just what we’ll do, but who we’ll be. Perhaps the sound of all those doors swinging shut behind us each time we select this one or that one should trouble us, but it doesn’t. Nor does the fact that the doors often are identical and even lead in some cases to the exact same place. Occasionally a door is locked, but no matter, since so many others remain available. The distinct possibility that choice itself may be an illusion is something we disregard, because we’re curious to know what’s behind that next door, the one we hope will lead us to the very heart of the mystery. Even in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary we remain confident that when we emerge, with all our choosing done, we’ll have found not just our true destination but also its meaning. The young see life this way, front to back, their eyes to the telescope that anxiously scans the infinite sky and its myriad possibilities. Religion, seducing us with free will while warning us of our responsibility, reinforces youth’s need to see itself at the dramatic center, saying yes to this and no to that, against the backdrop of a great moral reckoning.

But at some point all of that changes. Doubt, born of disappointment and repetition, replaces curiosity. In our weariness we begin to sense the truth, that more doors have closed behind that remain ahead, and for the first time we’re tempted to swing the telescope around and peer at the world through the wrong end — though who can say it’s wrong? How different things look then! Larger patterns emerge, individual decisions receding into insignificance. To see a life back to front, as everyone begins to do in middle age, is to strip it of its mystery and wrap it in inevitability, drama’s enemy. Or so it sometimes seems to me, Louis Charles Lynch. The man I’ve become, the life I’ve lived, what are these but dominoes that fall not as I would have them, but simply as they must?

And yet not all mystery is lost, nor all meaning. Regardless of our vantage point, some events manage to retain their drama and significance.

Here then are this year’s finalists.

FICTION:

Mischa Berlinski, Fieldwork
Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance
Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End
Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke
Jim Shepard, Like You’d Understand, Anyway

NONFICTION:

Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I’m Dying
Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution
Arnold Rampersad, Ralph Ellison: A Biography
Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

POETRY:

Linda Gregerson, Magnetic North
Robert Hass, Time and Materials
David Kirby, The House on Boulevard St.
Stanley Plumly, Old Heart
Ellen Bryant Voigt, Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006

YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE:

Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Kathleen Duey, Skin Hunger: A Resurrection of Magic, Book One
M. Sindy Felin, Touching Snow
Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Sara Zarr, Story of a Girl

by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • A treasure trove of Quiet, Please.
  • Jennifer Weiner on the most recent Oprah book pick.
  • George Saunders on Colbert.
  • Now see here! Ian McEwan insists that On Chesil Beach is a novel, because the text has been cleverly spread out across the course of 200 pages. LEAVE IAN ALONE! He can’t help the way in which his “novel” (Novel, ha! Boy, it took me about a few hours to read that!) has been marketed by his publishers. Instead of bitching and moaning, why not write your own “novel” of 40,000 words and then see how you feel? In fact, I plan to ensure that another novel I’m working on, On Brighton Beach, which is only a mere 2,000 words, will be nominated for a fiction prize somewhere. Novel, schmovel — when you get right down to it, everything’s flexible in the end.
  • Gilbert Hernandez is the John Lennon of comics? So does this mean that R. Crumb is the Phil Spector of comics? And stretch, and stretch, and bang that profile out in time. And pad, and pad, the deadline’s hard. So do it! (via The Beat
  • There’s a strict new Chicago law that has banned the door-to-door distribution of flyers and circulars, but it may have a harmful effect on free newspapers. Sure, this will mean less free menus for dodgy Chinese restaurants jammed underneath your door. (Personally, I use these for origami.) But be careful what you wish for. There’s a downside to everything.
  • When the revolution comes, I hope they remember that smug reactionary assholes like John Aravosis were against non-discrimination before they were for it. Listen, Aravosis, are you aware of Brandon Teena (conspicuously unmentioned in your piece)? Nobody questions why the T was attached to LGBT because we’re talking about a collective group that has been marginalized, ridiculed, assaulted, and stereotyped for many decades and anybody who is even remotely humanist understands that this is all about making a united front to put an end to discrimination. Thus, having as many people of differing sexual persuasions uniting together is a way to finally address the disparity between straight heterosexual relationships and the LGBT community. That you would want to tear this community apart by asking such an imbecile question or that you would propose that some within the LGBT community are more entitled to non-discrimination than others is a sure sign that you aren’t part of the solution. The LGBT community behind ENDA has displayed more courage and gravitas than most of the weak-kneed Democrats who insist upon compromising here or “alienating” there or remaining fearful that the “religious right” will kill something. Well, fuck the religious right. And fuck you, Mr. Aravosis. Please resurface when your big fat head isn’t so thoroughly lodged up your own asshole and you aren’t such a coward about human progress.
by Edward Champion

Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

Nine Inch Nails: “Hello everyone. I’ve waited a LONG time to be able to make the following announcement: as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate. Look for some announcements in the near future regarding 2008. Exciting times, indeed.”

With Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead now operating without record contracts, perhaps the music industry might want to reconsider precisely how it conducts business. The artists and the listeners are not the enemies. The industry’s continued litigation towards online music listeners, the industry’s sustained avarice towards artists locked into unfair contracts, and the industry’s failure to embrace inevitability collectively suggest that we may very well be witnessing a remarkable revolution that may will leave knock the remaining wind out of record companies. These are indeed exciting times. And one can only ponder whether we will see comparable effects in film and television. Is it too idealistic to suggest that the means of production may very well be returning to the workers?

by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

Questions for Sam Tanenhaus

  • Since Faust was a tragic play, an opera, and a film, how can Schlesinger “paint” his defection as Faustian? Sure, Goethe was an occasional painter, but even he had his doubts.
  • Also, as neologisms go, “irono-babe” is about as inviting as Infobahn. (And why the hyphen? The first step in coining any noun is to present it without a grammatical eyesore.)
  • How can Schlesinger be an omnivore “and a carnivore?” An omnivore eats both plants and animals. Since this little contradictory morsel was inserted via a hyphenated clause, could it be that the copy desk doesn’t know the difference between a herbivore, a carnivore, and an omnivore?
  • What business does an unsubstantiated rumor about Philip Roth’s sex life have in a review of Exit Ghost? I cannot help but wonder if Clive James was asked to spice things up with an indiscretion.
  • If a dead man “has been close to all” four men throughout Graham Swift’s Last Orders, must we conclude that these four men have been lingering close to the dead man’s ashes throughout the novel? Or is proper past tense not part of NYTBR house style?
  • Likewise: “In telling her story in a nighttime whisper, Paula reveals facets of herself and her experience the reader might otherwise never glean.” Conjunction junction, what’s your function?
  • If one buys a book online, one buys it from one’s home computer, not necessarily from Britain.
  • If a shape is a visual form, how does it snap back? Aren’t shapes silent? Also, if time “warps at the edges and then stops altogether,” is time a temporal or a visual noun here? Make up your mind.
  • Also: “Together, this seemingly ordinary couple became the poles of Hampl’s existence, opposing magnetic forces that held their conflicted daughter firmly between them.” Aside from the messy syntax here, this sentence could be easily read the wrong way. If Hampl’s parents are opposing magnetic forces, would they not repel their daughter?
  • “Her previous memoirs portray a woman watching the world go by without her, an outsider gazing in.” Wait a minute. I thought she was gazing outside. Danielle Trussoni appears to be directionally challenged.
  • Conflict of interest much, Sammy baby?
  • “The essays are more chewy — what one imagines Milan Kundera might sound like before his first cup of coffee.” Nice try, Ms. Harrison, but why not evoke a chewy snack instead of coffee?
  • You “want” this and you “want” that, Mr. Taylor. Good Christ, you sound like a spoiled teenager who demands a Porsche on his sixteenth birthday. Criticism isn’t about wanting. It’s about interpreting and understanding.