Month / October 2007

by Edward Champion

John Patterson: A Pox Upon Cultural Journalism

So, John, I read your article and it seems that your number is up. Perhaps you’ve run out of ideas or things to write about. (In the Internet age? With all this interesting information around? Man, you must really be a dunce if telling Nicole Kidman to retire is the best story idea you can come up with.) I mean, here you are, making one of the most ridiculous arguments I think I’ve read in a while about a celebrity who, truth be told, I really don’t care all that much about. And you’ve devoted about 500 words to this and, good Christ, even collected a paycheck for this bullshit!

If only you’d retire. Because now would be the time. With all the fascinating subjects out there pertaining to film (the advantages of shooting in DV, the effects of YouTube and the efforts at control by Viacom, Hollywood people beginning to bankroll their own projects because the studios are being a bit more wary — to name just three lazy things that come to mind as I remain half-awake), this is the best thing you can come up with? Christ, you make Charlie Brooker look like fucking Updike writing about golf. Of all the mangy dogs hungering for freelancing scraps on Fleet Street, how did you of all people get this gig? Was the editor who assigned this so out of his gourd that he looked upon you, John, the rheumatic runt who nobody wanted, to write this feeble attack piece? Did you boff someone? I mean, there’s simply no rational reason I can fathom for the level of self-entitlement (why should a specific actress cater to you when there are countless others out there who you can enjoy?) and bullshit I get from your article. (If you’re going to write a rant, have a purpose, for fuck’s sake.) How long did it take for you to bang this out, Johnny? 45 minutes? (And can you even write? Isn’t “sweltering hot day” redundant? “AWOL” is capitalized, you dunce, because it’s an acronym. What kind of a lede is “It seems that rock’n’roll is no longer paying the bills for some people?” Why can’t you get your math right? You can’t be seriously suggesting that David Lean should be dethroned because Brief Encounter wasn’t prescient enough to reflect the changing sexual mores of the past sixty years, can you? You didn’t really quibble with Sean Connery’s depiction of Bond because he wore a hairpiece?)

That cultural journalism has declined so readily into this unsubstantiated claptrap and that it chooses to favor the John Pattersons of our world — bitter cranks who, in a just world, would be pumping petrol somewhere — is a sure sign that journalistic standards have fallen.

by Edward Champion

A Kinder, Gentler NYTBR Podcast

It appears that the NYTBR podcast has shifted to a kinder, gentler opening tune — which is to say opening music that as safe as elevator music (but certainly not houses). And Tanenhaus is now trying harder to sound warmer than he has in the past. One can only imagine the memos that were disseminated. I commend Tanenhaus for attempting to access that lovely portion of the human spectrum that exists beyond the walls of the New York Times building. But Tanenhaus has all the believability of Tor Johnson in Plan 9 from Outer Space. All the media training in the world won’t do anything to change a man who has all the charisma of a bitter accountant in early April. This podcast, predicated on the We Take No Chances model of corporate complacency, really needs to be abandoned or taken over by someone who still has a shred of genuine ebullience about literature.

by Edward Champion

When In Doubt, Dismiss the Naysayers as Crazies and Dope Them Up

Seattle Weekly: “But for the moment, Susan Lindauer’s strange story remains incomplete. She is confined to a federal mental facility in Texas, perhaps never to get her day in court, according to friends, officials, and public records. Mostly unnoticed, a New York federal judge has found her incompetent to stand trial and ordered further evaluation. She is being held past her scheduled release date, which had been sometime early this month, and, she tells friends, might be forcibly medicated as part of her treatment.”

by Edward Champion

BSS #145: Jeff Parker

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Contemplating memories in a pizzeria.

Author: Jeff Parker

Subjects Discussed: Growing up in Florida, working in a pizzeria, John Sheppard’s Small Town Punk, the working class in fiction, setting the book in the early ’90’s, unexpected parallels to current events, music references, Desert Storm, alcoholism, work ethic, Post-It notes, unusual character names, linguistic affectations, food stamp scams, hidden economies, purple underwear, grenades, two dollar Huffy bikes, diligent fact checkers, small town civil projects, menacing occupations, Richard Linklater’s Slacker, television blaring in the background, tattoos, and literary symbols.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Parker: You know what? I took a writing workshop — well, I took many writing workshops with this writer named Padgett Powell, who’s one of the contemporary — I mean, he’s one of the few pure contemporary stylists in American fiction. Like him and Sam Lipsyte are kind of on the same page. And you know, he just always says this thing about repetition. You know, he says, writing well — all you have to do to write well is repeat yourself well. And so, sort of my strategy really is — I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t be saying this. Because it undercuts the possibility for meaning in the omnipresence of nipples throughout the book. You know, to make it supportable, if you — where else would I put the scarification? It had to be on the nipple. Because it had to sort of reflect the third nipple. It just had to be basically a reiteration of it for, like, the thematic unity of the work. So I see it as a craft point rather than a thematic issue.

Correspondent: So your suggestion to anyone writing is essentially just like: Come up with a vaguely literary metaphor, repeat it multiple times throughout your novel, and, hey! Your critics will love it. It will go down with the readers. And there’s novel writing for you.

Parker: Well, okay, I don’t mean to be so cynical at all. But what I do believe is that, you know, if you have a lot of things going on — that is, like, you’re paying attention to the language and you’re generating, like, complicated real characters that hopefully you can, you know, establish some emotional connection or the reader to. And you have other things going on, you know, then the repetitions, regardless of any meaning you might want there — I mean, the repetitions, like, accrue meaning of their own. You know, that’s the nature of literary art, I think. So, in a sense, yes to your question.

by Edward Champion

BSS #144: David Peace

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Empathizing with surnames.

Author: David Peace

Subjects Discussed: Why it took so long to set a book in Japan, stereotypes, research, the occupation period, the effects of serial killers, language and repetition, dissociation, Japan vs. the UK, Zodiac, police investigation, the difficulties of style, comparing the Red Riding Quartet with the Tokyo trilogy, driving editors mad, Mark Danielewski, typesetting, abandoning a 80,000 word draft, defying predictability, Kabuki metal and silence as an aid to writing, Japanese symbols, women and children as victims, melding fact and fiction to get to an emotional truth, working off a nonfiction template, Eoin MacNamee, Gordon Burn, Don DeLillo, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, “practicing” passages, and the publishing industry’s obsession with “originality.”

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: Could it be said then that you’re attracted to subject matters that lend themselves more to dominantly masculine takes?

Peace: I mean, you know, this isn’t a cop out. But I was raised in West Yorkshire, which is not the most liberal place to be raised. And then I live in Japan, which again is not the most liberal place — you know, it’s not. And I’ve chosen to write about places where I don’t think that, if I was a woman, I wouldn’t be moving out to those places.

Correspondent: (laughs)

Peace: But that does not mean I am like, you know, a sexist or a misogynist. Or…

Correspondent: No, no, I wasn’t implying that!

Peace: And I know you weren’t. For the record.

Correspondent: No. I guess I’m just fascinated by — why do writers choose the subjects that they choose? Whether it’s conscious or not.

Peace: Well, this is the — the terrible thing about book tours is that you like — I’m not really big on self-analysis. You know, I write the book. And to some extent I don’t know where they come from. Or I don’t want to know where they come from. And then when you go — like this is like a three week tour of just talking about yourself incessantly. You know, some writers end book tours with nervous breakdowns. And it’s because they’re being forced to confront things that possibly they wouldn’t want to confront.

by Edward Champion

BSS #143: Katha Pollitt

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Dwelling on legal inconsistencies.

Author: Katha Pollitt

Subjects Discussed: The pragmatism in learning to drive, being lazy, observation as a strength and weakness, “webstalking” vs. Googling, responding to Toni Bentley’s review, what a feminist is supposed to be, whether or not Susan Salter Reynolds has a sense of humor, on writing life stories, Deborah Solomon, the book vs. the person, the politics of writing, whether or not “men are rats,” double entendres, inflammatory reactions, the specifics of sentences, being picked apart in The Nation, reader interpretation, meteorological solecisms, humor and sadness, observation, driving with other cars on the road, Saul Bellow’s “departure mode,” the creative destruction of New York, landmarks being torn down, Coney Island, individual writing vs. community, parental secrets, public information, self-analysis, structuring, poetry, women cast under a spell, Anais Nin, dropping romance, “sperm sisters,” and writing stories.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Pollitt: Well, this is the great thing about writing. You don’t have to give everybody a vote. You are not the community board. You’re you. I write what I think. And if somebody else feels differently, they can write their own story. Now in the real world, the people who didn’t like Coney Island won. They won.

Correspondent: I know.

Pollitt: And the people who do like Coney Island lost out. And I think that they tend to lose out. They tend to lose out. Because I think kind of a mass and corporate development is really zooming ahead in a way that, I think, is very sad.

Correspondent: I’m going to come in here with a raging burst of optimism and say, yes, the Coney Island thing, I find that personally sad. I find many things about the world extremely sad. But one must have some sort of optimism, I guess, in order to kind of carry on. One must believe in something, believe in some sort of good to at least kind of carry on in the face of a lot of terror.

Pollitt: Oh sure!

Correspondent: So I guess I’m wondering why this was not so pronounced. You actually say in this particular piece, I’m going to come across as one of those “Back in my day” kind of people. So why not go for this more all-encompassing reality of what it is to be alive?

Pollitt: Well, I think that’s in other stories.

Correspondent: Okay.

Pollitt: I think that the piece, the book as a whole, does not convey the sense of a world-weary person.

by Edward Champion

BSS #142: Brian Francis Slattery

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Objecting to snobbish Manhattan types who use three names.

Author: Brian Francis Slattery

Subjects Discussed: Matt Cheney’s “leap of faith,” paranoia, the advantages of writing in Guatemala, secret economies, food as cultural shorthand, the underground world of Darktown, H.P. Lovecraft and other fictive antecedents, disparate relationship models, writing sentences without many verbs, locative and temporal fugue states, writing to African music, polyrhythm, disorienting the reader, Square video games, dialogue, ellipses, em dashes, William Gaddis, quotation marks vs. dashes in dialogue, sticking in one’s hometown, attempting to classify the book, coming to New York vs. coming to America, Spaceman Blues as a “systems novel,” sentences, not casting judgment on characters, cockfighting, warning the reader of weirdness, on not knowing the ending, apocalyptic novels, hyperverbosity, resisting the 9/11 card, Don DeLillo, and Pynchonian character names.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Slattery: For a while, I thought that I would have those scenes take place in a specific neighborhood in New York. And I spent a long time thinking about, well what group would I want to focus on and where would I want it to be? And then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I kind of wanted to talk about the immigrant experience — generally. I didn’t want to have to tie it to a specific group. And in some ways, I wanted to talk about the ways that the various immigrant groups, when they get here, will tend to work together. There’s such a thing as an immigrant community. And I wanted to be able to talk about that in a sort of cool and engaging way, and also to really get across the point that that’s this full network that you don’t see. You know, it exists here. But you have to know where to look in order to find it.

by Edward Champion

BSS #141: Chimamanda Adichie

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Finding uses for his Kleenex supply.

Author: Chimamanda Adichie

Subjects Discussed: Young novelists and ambitious war novels, horrible Nigerian critics, the novel as the ideal prism for the Biafra conflict, A Woman in Berlin, the advantages of small details, J.G. Ballard, twins, the advantages of narrative dichotomies, adultery and monogamy, relationship fidelity vs. national fidelity, sensuality, specific sexual positions, serial adultery, the skin metaphor, jumping around in time periods, High Life music, the faults of education as a revolutionary galvanizing point, the ethical vacillation of Ugwu, whether sparse details convey the complexities of war, Toni Morrison’s reluctance to write about sex in detail, the advantages of teaching writing classes, names, whether Half of a Yellow Sun is a political book, an unexpected digression concerning Ms. Adichie’s cell phone, and sermonizing in fiction.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: I wanted to actually talk about the violence in this book. You describe if often very sparsely. The bodies are decapitated. The people are massacred through brutal racism. But you don’t dwell on really elaborate detail of these particular — of this violence. And even Ugwu’s finale — near the end, I mean, his choice at that bar, it’s only like a half page of ethical vacillation. So I wanted to kind of ask you about that. Do you feel that stopping short sometimes really conveys the complexities of war? Was this an issue for you? Or is this more about the narrative than it is about depicting war?

Adichie: I think it’s about both. I do think that, in much the same way that details work better when you’re writing about something huge. I also feel that if you’re writing about something difficult, violent, that less is more. You know? And that sometimes you run the risk of having it become pornographic. I didn’t see myself — I didn’t want to, quite frankly, describe those bodies over and over. I sometimes feel that one tiny detail is enough. I remember reading something about Toni Morrison, where she said, for her, sex scenes were — she tells the reader, a man is on top, the woman is underneath, and she leaves it there, you know. And I remember reading that and thinking — and she lets the reader and she thinks that’s enough. All you need to know is who’s on top and then you make up the rest. I don’t share that when it comes to sexuality. I sort of want to tell you what happens. But when it comes to violence, I think I do. You know, I want to give you a tiny detail and then — I just don’t want it to get…I think that it’s very easy to go overboard with violence and it makes me uncomfortable. And I think that it also might have something to do with the fact that I was always aware that I was writing about something that really did happen to people. And there’s a kind of — I don’t know if it’s respect. Maybe it’s community that I wanted to bring to those scenes of violence.

Correspondent: I can totally see what you’re saying, but doesn’t this kind of get in the way of pursuing the truth further and really getting at this…?

Adichie: No, I don’t think so. I actually think that sometimes it might make it closer to the truth.

by Edward Champion

Deborah Solomon: Unethical Journalist?

A few weeks ago, I talked at length with Matt Elzweig over the phone for a New York Press story about Deborah Solomon. Elzweig had contacted me because I had written critically about her on these pages. Thankfully, Elzweig’s investigations sent him away from my pedantic barbs and into the heart of an interviewer who appears to be breaking the New York Times code of ethics. To add insult to injury, Solomon didn’t even bother to return Elzweig’s calls to clarify the charges.

by Edward Champion

Mini-Roundup

by Edward Champion

A Tale of Two Lousy Scripts

Two recent films — both with problematic scripts — reveal just how a director can rise and fall in relation to his material. Neil Jordan’s The Brave One was a greater treat than I expected: a slightly satirical and strangely sincere chronicle of revenge, guilt, and empathy in the post-9/11 age. (If this interpretation seems a bit of a stretch, consider the moment in which Jodie Foster is sitting in the waiting room after the cops have coldly told her that they’ll get right back at her with her case. Not only is an American flag mounted on an adjacent pole, but the wall behind Foster is composed of an American flag. Jordan’s concern with the horizontal axis continues with a fixed shot of cops arguing about who the vigilante killer might be, with yellow police tape representing the new flag of what America has become, as well as the manner in which Erica kills one of her victims in a bodega.)

braveone.jpgJordan, as I recently suggested to a friend, is the Irish Brian De Palma. He is wildly inconsistent. For every gem like Mona Lisa or The Good Thief, there’s a turd like In Dreams or High Spirits. But when Jordan is on, and he certainly is in command of his faculties in The Brave One, he offers stunning visuals, symbolism both explicit and nuanced, and the kind of cinematic experience presenting the kind of behavioral subtext reminiscent of a D.H. Lawrence story. Neil Jordan is that rarest of contemporary filmmakers: a man who presents literary tropes within an entertainment. And I suspect this is one of the reasons why The Brave One has been underappreciated.

Pay no attention to the script, which offers an unpardonable finale and even a gratuitous flashback to the early days of a woman’s engagement with a doctor (complete with the doctor playing guitar!). Let us instead consider the sneaky things that Jordan does. This is a vigilante movie and there is talk of Erica (the woman in question) crossing the line. So what does Jordan do right before the regrettable events that cause her love David’s death? Visually, he does indeed cross the line. We see Erica and David in the park where the violence happens — the aptly named Stranger’s Gate. Suddenly, Jordan breaks the 180 rule and we see the happy couple from the other side. When Erica’s horrible injuries are being attended to, Jordan intercuts between the happy couple making love and the doctors operating on Erica, with cross-cutting of identical body positions. Jordan is also wise enough to throw Erica into hard focus, with the background often soft around her. He tracks inside Erica’s apartment, with gauze and curtains often occluding our view of her. The line is likewise vertical, as Jordan sways his camera daringly from left to right in a disorienting state as Erica is attempting to wrestle with her new existence.

If The Brave One is a mere exploitation film, how can we deny these visual flourishes? What also of Foster’s convincing performance as a tormented victim?

croweyuma.jpgBy contrast, James Mangold is not, I suspect, a literary man, if his cheap homage to Sam Fuller (hardy har; one of the men recruited is named so) is any indication. 3:10 to Yuma has received the kind of praise suggesting that it is this decade’s answer to The Unforgiven, but I found its Western atmosphere too clean, very Hollywood, and mostly unconvincing. I pined for more dirt and blood, and even convincing makeup when a bullet is removed from Peter Fonda’s corpus. I longed for the Westerns of John Ford and Howard Hawks. Token depictions of the Chinese laborers on the transcontinental railroad are of help, as is Ben Foster’s excellent performance as Russell Crowe’s head henchmen. But Mangold would rather rip off images from Leone’s masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West (the horsemen in the distance, the train station, et al.) and have his composer Marco Beltrami replace Morricone’s choir with synthesized nonsense. The film’s plodding first half is redeemed by a so-so gunfight near the end. But the chief problem with this film is Russell Crowe, who cannot enter a shot without mugging for the camera and seems to be under the mistaken impression that he is Henry Fonda’s Frank. The character of Ben Wade required an actor who carries both the charisma of someone who could convince his underlings to perform despicable deeds and the heartless manner of a cold-blooded villain. Crowe fails on both counts.

Christian Bale is wasted. Peter Fonda is the token Grand Old Actor. In an era in which Deadwood has recently graced television screens, 3:10 to Yuma lacks the multi-dimensional qualities that I feel are necessary to the Western. Doc Potter may as well be some throwaway single-episode supporting character from an old Bonanza episode. Gretchen Mol is, as always, very beautiful, but her character is merely a Puritanical cliche.

This is a Western made by filmmakers who know very little about how the Western demands moral arguments, along the lines of The Ox-Bow Incident, Red River, and even Rio Bravo. What we get instead is a garden-variety tale of redemption. But if the cinematic Western is to make a resurgence, and I certainly hope that it will, then the films hoping to reinvent the form need to be something more than disposable entertainments.

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • Her Pinkness has the skinny on Saunders in Pittsburgh. I do not know if Bob Hoover was involved with all the madness, but it’s my feeling that he should have been.
  • His Markness (or perhaps His Sarvoir Faire) has the inside scoop on what it means to be a debut novelist. Being a rather silly person in Brooklyn, I do not know if I am “actually in a position to advance [his] interests,” but if it helps the galley to come here any faster, I can offer a few lacrosse lessons or some helpful tips on stamp collecting, assuming that his “interests” plan to expand in the forthcoming months.
  • Whether ’tis Nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous prognostication, I would argue ’tis not until the jury’s out. But his Scottness has the hots and bothers for those occupying their time with endless speculation.
  • Que sera Sarah! Happy fourth!
  • Friends! Romanos! Countrymen! Lend me your review space!
  • His Hitchness gets busy with Wilson squared. To which I beseech: O Library of America, how can I get on your list?
  • Just so you know, we’re ashamed the divine Ms. Jones is being pegged as a mere Dixie Chick! (By the way, ever notice that the early history of the Dixie Chicks, in which two older women — specifically, Laura Lynch and Robin Lynn Macy — were part of the band, but fired in favor of the younger and presumably more outspoken Natalie Marines, appears to be notably elided within certain accounts? And you thought the Dixie Chicks represented some populist version of female empowerment!)
  • Her Weinerness defends Her Kathaness, leading to a Noun Ness Monster within these bullets that I may have to abandon in favor of the more trenchant ammunition of one misperceived word.
  • Online censorship hurts us all. When you wake up with that bruise tomorrow, just remember to tell everybody you had “a fall,” even though everybody knows you’ve been censored online. Speaking of censorship, not that I care, but shall I cry J’Accuse! against Cory Doctorow for not linking to any of the informative interviews conducted with speculative fiction authors — some, his friends — that have appeared on this site? After all, I have criticized Boing Boing in the past. For that matter, why have certain comments that are critical of Boing Boing disappeared from the Boing Boing site? Hypocrite much, Cory?
  • A talking Dalek tie! This is great for those boardroom meetings when some overbearing suit is trying to lowball you into a deal. While you can’t say anything to this guy that might suggest that self-defenestration might be the best thing he could do for his career, the Dalek, by contrast, might be able to suggest a one-word command that fits the bill. This is a great gift for passive-aggressive types stuck in an oppressive office environment. (via Bookshelves of Doom)
  • It’s a tough life being a novelist. While others are condemned to work at a McDonald’s or work two soul-sucking full-time jobs to feed their families, the novelist sits on his ass and perspires! Not that Mr. Swift said any of these things. As is evident from the article, he’s paid his dues. But the headline of this article suggests that Mr. Swift is one of those types who has the effrontery to compare full-time writing with “backbreaking labor,” but have never once performed hard physical labor. (For the record, I have. A few years ago: Three days loading 100 pound boxes at the docks to pay my rent. That’s “backbreaking labor.”)
by Edward Champion

Next Thing You Know, These Atheists Want to Marry Each Other!

The Record: “‘Coming out’ as the first openly nontheist member of the United States Congress, Representative Fortney ‘Pete’ Stark (D-CA) quipped, “I’m pleased that I’m in Cambridge and not in Salem!’ On September 20, 2007, Congressman Stark spoke publicly for the first time about his atheism to an audience of approximately 300 members of the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard, the Harvard Law School Heathen Society, and various other atheist, agnostic, secular, humanist, and nonreligious groups.”

by Edward Champion

NBCC and Penguin: A Match Made in Loosey-Goosey Ethics

As reported by both Publishers Lunch’s Michael Cader and The New York Times‘s Motoko Rich this morning, Penguin Group is teaming up with Amazon and Hewlett Packard for a contest called The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Unpublished manuscripts will be first submitted to a group of Amazon’s top-rated reviewers (one suspects that all the manuscripts will pass Harriet Klausner’s loose standards with flying colors). From here, 100 finalists will be handed off to a panel consisting of Elizabeth Gilbert, agent Eric Simonoff, Penguin imprint founder Amy Einhorn, and NBCC President John Freeman.

The winner will receive a $25,000 advance and a publishing contract. But it is within these details that things start to get dicey. As Cader noted this morning:

The winner agrees to accept Penguin’s publishing contract “as is” and acknowledges it “is not negotiable…if he/she wishes to enter into the publishing contract being awarded.” But Penguin’s director of online sales & marketing Tim McCall says “it’s a good contract,” noting that “it is designed for someone who is getting their start in the business. That’s really what Penguin is looking for–a brand-new voice.”

In other words, the author, sidestepping the protective safeguards that an agent can ensure, has no leverage whatsoever in squaring away the contract details.

Likewise, since John Freeman is being billed in all publicity materials I can locate as “the president of the National Book Critics Circle” and has made no efforts to separate his personal participation from his association with the NBCC, I must therefore presume that, because Freeman is the head of the NBCC, the NBCC must, as a matter of course, endorse this contest, which represents authors abdicating all publishing rights, without discussion or compromise, to a single conglomerate. So is the NBCC now in the business of favoring one publisher above all others? That doesn’t seem like a sign of critical integrity to me. The NBCC’s support of this contest is no different from a critic who decides to throw his integrity to the wind and only review books by one publishing house.

While it is true that Freeman’s participation here is not an explicit “political activity” under the IRS code and Freeman is legally in the clear, it would make me feel more comfortable about the NBCC’s integrity if Freeman had lived up to the standards of what a “political activity” constitutes. Freeman’s alliance with Penguin is dangerously close to IRS requirements in which “organization leaders who speak or write in their individual capacity are encouraged to indicate clearly that their comments are personal and not intended to represent the views of the organization.”

It seems hypocritical for the NBCC to suggest a code of ethics for litbloggers when there remains not a single code of ethics for NBCC board members. (And why have the results for the NBCC ethics survey remained unannounced? Do ethics only apply to the online upstarts?) Shouldn’t a 501(c)3 organization of book critics stand for a variegated critical environment in which many publishers and critical voices are underneath one umbrella? And shouldn’t it stand for an environment in which organization leaders remain transparent about their activities and untainted from corporate influence?

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • Despite my best efforts, my sleeping schedule has gone to hell again. So here goes the roundup.
  • Rebecca Skloot — one of only four people on the NBCC Board of Directors who actually have a sense of humor — offers this interesting take on what David Halberstam’s untimely death means for the future of student escort drivers. Do we now have the author drive at all times because of one student’s incompetence?
  • Lionel Shriver on Ondaatje. Shriver’s apparently quite surprised that she didn’t have a strong opinion on Divisadero, and I suspect this assessment is telling on its own terms.
  • Even though I don’t possess the required estrogen, I nevertheless felt a microscopic but nonetheless discernible swoon upon listening to Alan Rickman read Sonnet 130. And that’s saying something. I’m now wondering if I should listen to audio files of Alan Rickman the next time I make muffins.
  • So how does the New Yorker fare with YouTube? (via OUP)
  • Sorry, folks, but Stephen King is right about the short story.
  • Is Laura Bush the “Reader in Chief?” I think it can be easily argued that there have been plenty of people who “has done more to dramatize the importance of reading, and libraries.” Then again, nobody said Dr. James Billington wasn’t a sycophant. In all fairnes, however, the First Lady’s reading tastes include The Brothers Karamazov, Gilead, and My Antoina. I’m wondering if Ms. Bush might readily identify with the moment in which Dimitri says, “I’m a Karamazov! When I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I’m even pleased that I’m falling in such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful. And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a hymn. Let me be cursed, let me be base and vile, but let me also kiss the hem of that garment in which my God is clothed; let me be following the devil at the same time, but still I am also your son, Lord, and I love you, and I feel a joy without which the world cannot stand and be.”
  • Are e-books being taken seriously now? Well, given that Sony’s Howard Stringer bears more than a passing resemblance here to Jimmy Swaggart in the accompanying photo, I suspect this is probably hype.
  • I’d just like to publicly declare that Sendhil Ramamurthy is the worst actor I’ve seen on dramatic television in a long while. In fact, he’s so bad that not even Adrian Pasdar or Hayden Panettiere can make him look good. And that’s saying somethign. Come on, Kring, kill off Mohinder already. Every time that one-note twerp appears, I want to send him to the hardest Lee Stasberg-style school in New York. (And, yes, I’m digging Heroes, particularly last season’s flashback episode written by Bryan Fuller. But the show still has serious problems.)
  • Now this is quite interesting. The L.A. Times may be launching a free tabloid newspaper for commuters.
  • Douglas Brinkley has been sued. Penguin wants him to pay back his $200,000 advance because he didn’t deliver his Kerouac bio in time for the 50th anniversary of On the Road. Brinkley, who was a bit busy writing the 736-page The Great Deluge for William Morrow, said that the delay came because he wanted to properly chronicle Kerouac’s life. I’m wondering if this is petty vengeance on Penguin’s part because Brinkley jumped to another publisher. Surely, something could have been settled or worked out and this is quite an extraordinary form of resolution. Kerouac interest has not, to my knowledge, abated. And it’s just possible that this lawsuit might attract interest in the book, which will now be published by HarperCollins after Brinkley finishes it in two years. (via Booklist Online)
  • Fangoria Comics is no more.
  • Is this necessary? Frankly, I can’t see Simon Le Bon and company topping this.
  • And congratulations to Terry Teachout and Hilary Dyson!
by Edward Champion

This Just In

Jonathan Franzen has disappeared from Facebook, presumably heading to that isolated edifice where Greta Garbo once resided. Oh well. It’s too bad J-Franz is no fun. But on the bright side, L’Affaire Franzen has resulted in a great outpouring of amicable and swell people contacting me via Facebook — some of them united by Mr. Franzen spurning them (including some old friends from Missouri) and others just looking for a friendly hello. So I really can’t complain. Perhaps this is a topic that the Two Franzens need to take up.

by Edward Champion

RIP Lois Maxwell

maxwell.jpgTo my great surprise, there are scant YouTube links to Lois Maxwell’s fourteen Bond film appearances as Miss Moneypenny. I’m sure this will be rectified in the days to come. But really, the true Bond film fan should accept no substitute. Caroline Bliss (who copped to a decidedly non-Moneypenny Barry Manilow collection!), Samantha Bond, Barbara Bouchet, and (if you count Never Say Never Again) Pamela Salem couldn’t hold a candle to the intelligence and warmth of Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny. The other Moneypennies were all bimbos by comparison. The character of Miss Moneypenny was undeniably a sexist archetype, whose flirtations were often stifled by the stern warnings of M. But somehow Maxwell brought a quiet dignity to the role, even when Bond treated her like dirt and Maxwell’s dialogue often involved pining for marriage and other now dated and desperate pronouncements. Had it been any other actress besides Maxwell, I don’t believe I would have developed a teenage crush on Miss Moneypenny, particularly the Moneypenny of the Sean Connery films. I watched all the Bond films multiple times and could never entirely understand why Bond rejected her for the floozies. But you have to understand something. I was a naive kid under the influence of Victorian literature and felt that Bond had abdicated on Moneypenny’s polite overtures to Bond. Oh, youthful naivete!