Month / June 2008

by Edward Champion

The Successful Writer

The successful writer knew he was a success because the checks kept coming in and everybody told him that he was a wunderkind. He knew he was a success and he wanted you to know it too. Because this was what successful writers did. He knew this, even if nobody has passed along a manual. The curious bubble, once so spacious during his great climb to the top, involuted. The little people became littler. He had less patience for half-formed opinions, in part because they reminded him of the half-formed opinions that he had kept away from publicists, journalists, and, in particular, other successful writers. He believed that the time for growing was not at an end exactly, but certainly going to occur on autopilot.

Only his family and closest friends knew the truth. They tolerated the successful writer, and they were obliged to keep printing the legend so that the successful writer would remain successful. His innovations became derivative. His stories became more commercial. Book tours permitted him to work on his persona, to hide the disguise. He didn’t need media training for this. The gestation came naturally.

He had stopped challenging himself after the third novel. He had merely banged out sentences after the fifth, relying upon the editor to massage his copy. And who would know really? They didn’t print the editor’s name anywhere in the book.

His advances had accrued enough for him to purchase a home in upstate New York. And by the time his wife had abandoned him, losing patience and shedding tears over what had become of the ambitious young man who had dared to go into the writing racket, he had enough left over from his better half to finance a bacchanalian midlife crisis.

There was additional lucre in the public appearances. The offers by universities to teach. The publishers put up more money for hotel rooms and other expenses that they could write off. These were fringe benefits. He was enough of a successful writer to live off his books. But he took these ancillary gigs anyway. Because a successful writer doesn’t stop being a success.

Some young readers weaned on the successful writer’s early work met the successful writer and were seduced by him. But they begin to see through his incurious and almost mandatory bonhomie. And the successful writer soon saw himself parodied in literary circles by not so successful writers who would, in a decade or so, find this kind of success if they kept down the avaricious path and valued the small pecuniary rewards over the words.

When the successful writer died, there was a big funeral and many newspaper articles. He was declared irreplaceable, a legend, other words and terms of art often confined to the obituary page. But in ten years, half of his books were out of print. Aside from an occasional reference in a review, the literati stopped mentioning his name. A few writers — mostly friends of the successful writer — tried to restore his reputation. But the successful writer could not find the same success during his lifetime. The smaller people he scorned, who had real talent and who had thrown it all away on booze and heartache, were now the successful writers. It was a pity that they had not lived to see this.

It is a cycle that repeats over and over. There are, of course, exceptions. But this is why success should remain a fickle measure always in the company of skepticism.

by Edward Champion

Newspaper Accountability

The Telegraph‘s Peter Robins has, to my great astonishment, followed up on my suggestion of asking book critics what they read for fun. Robins has queried his fellow staffers, even registering the response time and emotional reactions of his colleagues. This certainly sets a very important precedent, and I do hope that other newspapers follow Robins’s example. In the meantime, it seems a fine time to ask what you, dear readers, have read for fun these days. (For my own part, I have been wildly entertained by Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels and have enjoyed revisiting a number of stories for a book I’m currently reviewing.)

by Edward Champion

Bolaño, Oh Bolaño!

Roberto Bolaño! If you were still alive, I would perform fellatio upon your great member, bobbing up and down without break until I had attained the great literary spiritual condition known as chronic lockjaw. Do not fear, Great Literary Corpse of Bolaño! I do hope that you can hear me. I am not a necrophiliac, but I will still read every scrap you have ever written upon! If there is an obscure photograph of you, I will scan it and turn it into a screensaver. If there is an audio file of you flatulating into the great Chilean winds, I will link to it and declare it A Fart of Significance! For it came from your Great Literary Backside! If there is a 3,000 page first draft of a novel that you have written, I will read it and annotate it and do nothing else! I will sell all of my stocks and buy NOTHING BUT YOUR BOOKS! For you are Bolaño! And I am a mere literary peon! I cannot even think about your work without salivating or pissing my pants! You are Bolaño! A genius! Incapable of fault! To declare you a Great God is enough! With these hollow plaudits, I offer Significant Thoughts About Your Work that will be declared Significant because they evoke your Great Name!

I will name my first son Roberto and my second son Bolaño. I will name my next dog Tinajero. If he barks in objection, I will shoot him in the head and obtain another dog and name him Tinajero. And if the second dog objects, I will continue to shoot these dogs in the head over and over until I have found a mutt who answers to the great poet’s name! I will eat lima beans even though I know them to be unappetizing. For how else can I summon Ulises’s spirit than to invoke his name? How else might I find Tinajero?

I will have sex with any woman who will declare herself both a Bolaño lover and a Visceral Realist. I will obtain the clap because I know what it means to be both visceral and real. I will get into brawls with any literary acolyte who does not worship at your altar, who does not look to poetry as the solitary salvation of humankind, and I will be your pimp. I will start a cult and collect money for the Bolaño Foundation! The followers will then start harassing anyone who does not worship at your altar. We have learned lessons from Allende.

If others claim that my life is worthless, that I smoke too many bowls, that I do not write or take responsibility for my actions, then I will not listen. For your wisdom is final. I will wallpaper my room with your image. For you are Bolaño! And my collected output is worth worse than One Mighty Page of your oeuvre.

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • At 5:15 AM, the humidity in New York creeps onto your flesh like a warm and stubborn leech you can’t flick off with a sharp knife. All this is to say that one must get up early to get things done. But even then, one understands less within the clarity of a cooler room.
  • the next night we eat whale. I must say that I was considerably underwhelmed by Tao Lin’s latest collection, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, a book so slim and perfunctory that I finished it in twenty minutes, and I think this YouTube clip reveals why. Tao Lin now wants to play his crowd without putting the time into his work, rather than keep his crowd guessing with more elaborate and iconoclastic poetry. I do think Tao has talent, but the more that he surrounds himself with Tao imitators and people who will be amused by everything he writes and who feed his desire to please others, the lesser he becomes as a writer.
  • The Rake is back, with an alarming evocation of a writer’s corporate visage.
  • John Fox lists the top twelve online literary journals. (via Yen Cheong)
  • Black Oak Books on Irving Street wasn’t the greatest bookstore, but I am stunned to hear of its closing. There used to be another used bookstore across the street many years ago, and I’m sad that this stretch of Irving is now without a decent bookstore.
  • Brockman claims that he was in Prince’s house, and he has the pictures to prove it.
  • I missed reporting this when the desktop was down, but Jane Friedman is out. Leon Neyfakh observes that Friedman’s resignation was unexpectedly abrupt. More prognostication from Sara Nelson. Were desperate ideas such as Bob Miller’s profit sharing model last-minute factors that Friedman was putting into place to turn around HarperCollins (sales were up, operating profits were down) before Friedman’s contract expired in November? Motoko Rich has done some actual reporting here, pointing out that Friedman was squeezed out by Rupert Murdoch and that the timeline was changed. But it remains unclear just who leaked this to Gawker in the first place.
  • Jeanette Winterson, Will Self, and Alain de Botton on home. None name-checks Kansas. (via Sarah)
  • The Washington Post provides succor for Luc Sante and others on trying to get rid of books. But the article in question doesn’t account for the therapy costs that some sobbing bibliophiles are likely to accrue after days of sobbing. (via Bookslut)
  • The Onion interviews Harlan Ellison: Part One and Part Two. As usual, he gets a number of things very right and a number of things very wrong.
  • John Banville on Georges Simenon.
by Edward Champion

Edward Douglas, Hopeless Hack and Amental Film “Journalist” — Part One

New York hack “journalist” Edward Douglas, a creative typist employed by ComingSoon.net and an intellectual coprophiliac quite happy to scarf down the moist cloacal deposits offered by film publicists, recently left a comment. Mr. Douglas writes that telling the truth about Hollywood and the junket system is “the reason why blogs like [sic] shouldn’t be considered viable outlets to do these interviews.” Is that so?

In a moment, I’ll address the question of whether Mr. Douglas is a writer with enough credibility to make such a claim. But for now, there is a more pertinent question: What makes Mr. Douglas’s idiot tinkerings at ComingSoon.net any different from a blog? It appears that Mr. Douglas doesn’t write for newspapers. In fact, he writes exclusively online. Could it be that Mr. Douglas is merely a piss-poor journalist? Could it be that Mr. Douglas’s isn’t that good of a writer? Could it be that he is a small insect creeping his way up the dunghill of film journalism? A mere mite to be smashed with a robust and responsible Doc Marten?

In an effort to determine precisely why and how Mr. Douglas is a lazy and inept journalist, I’m initiating a weekly series that will examine Mr. Douglas’s work (if his scrabbling can be called that) as it appears on his site, ComingSoon.net. This is the first installment.

MR. DOUGLAS’S OFFENSES AGAINST JOURNALISM AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE — THE WEEK OF JUNE 1, 2008

On June 5th, Mr. Douglas interviewed Jon Favreau. Instead of using this time to investigate Iron Man 2 at length or ask Favreau about some of the interesting connections between his earlier and more “real” films (Swingers and Made) and these newer fantasy blockbusters, Mr. Douglas preferred to state the obvious to Mr. Favreau, asking him the vapid question, “So now you are back to being in front of the camera and goofing off?” Clearly, it is Mr. Douglas who is the one goofing off here with this slipshod inquiry. But, of course, since Mr. Douglas (and the other junketeers who were present for this interview) is a consummate ass-kisser, this early question was merely a setup to stroke Mr. Favreau’s ego with this scintillating observation concerning all potential superhero epics now in the planning stages: “I guess you will have to direct all of them.” Again, we see that Mr. Douglas and his unsearing peers prefer constant assuaging over journalism.

Also on that day, Mr. Douglas wrote this amazingly idiotic piece of hackery in relation to Anand Tucker. Marvel at this atrocious sentence!

It must have been a bittersweet departure, because it would have been a fantastic film under Tucker’s guidance and he was a big fan of the books, but leaving the film allowed the director to successfully dodge the bullet and the backlash when the movie bombed horribly, something that many felt greatly accelerated the decline and death of New Line in its previous guise.

Mix your metaphors much, Mr. Douglas? Split your infinitives much, Mr. Douglas? Separate your clauses at all, Mr. Douglas? Are you even aware of Strunk & White, Mr. Douglas? Does anybody edit your pieces, Mr. Douglas? Unable to deploy a figurative metaphor (“the bullet”) for his object, Mr. Douglas feels a strange need to introduce a literal one (“the backlash”). And who are the “many” who felt that The Golden Compass was responsible for New Line’s decline? Is this like the tribunal scene at the end of M? Mr. Douglas suggests by this cavalier item that he is an insider. But he is a dilettante. A proper journalist would offer a link or a specific authority for others to follow.

Let us also ponder the modifier “exclusive” — a word that Mr. Douglas seems peculiarly fixated upon. An exclusive interview suggests that Mr. Douglas is nabbing these interviews on his own, that he is obtaining bits of information that nobody else has. Mr. Douglas is not in the habit of confessing when he’s at a press conference or a sharing a roundtable interview with other journalists. So perhaps he has deluded himself into thinking that he’s getting an “exclusive.” Or this is what he tells the people who pay his checks. Either way, he is a liar. And further examinations into the “exclusive” nature of Mr. Douglas’s material are forthcoming.

But for now, I note that Mr. Douglas reported that he had “an exclusive” item involving Werner Herzog’s upcoming movie, Bad Lieutenant, with Herzog claiming that his film was not a remake of the Abel Ferrara film. But if Douglas had such an “exclusive,” why then did the same news (with a strikingly similar quote) crop up on Defamer one day before Douglas’s report? Could it be that Defamer’s S.T. VanAirsdale (who also blogs at The Reeler) was at the same junket/press conference? (VanAirsadle, to his credit, had the humility and the decency to avoid the word “exclusive,” pointing to “some minor miracle/apparent PR botch” that permitted this interview to happen.)

On June 3, the hopeless Mr. Douglas posted his conversation with documentary filmmaker Nina Davenport, where one can see Mr. Douglas’s considerable deficiencies as an interlocutor. Davenport was commissioned to film an Iraqi film student. The resulting film became an altogether different documentary named Operation Filmmaker. Sounds like an intriguing exposé into cultural transition, yes? Well, not for Mr. Douglas. He was not so tickled at putting forth remotely challenging questions on, say, how much Davenport and her camera might have been inadvertently responsible for the film student’s erratic behavior. In fact, since Mr. Douglas is apparently incapable of using his noggin (or unwilling to) for his questions, we get three questions from Mr. Douglas that rely upon the “It must have been hard”/”Was it difficult?” interviewing cliche.

Let us consider this hackeneyed phrase. In what world do you utter such a conversational banality and not get your ass kicked? You don’t ask a dentist if it’s “difficult” for him to fill in a cavity. You don’t tell a barista that “it must have been hard” to make that latte for the last customer. Why are amental hacks like Mr. Douglas so content to treat their interview subjects like children? (Answer: Because today’s junketeers aren’t interested in adult conversations. They remain inveterate assuagers.)

Douglas really thinks his readers are idiots. Why else would he write, in relation to a junket with Kung Fu Panda co-director John Stevenson, “A lot of what he had to say will certainly be of interest to anyone hoping to one day break into the animation or computer effects field.” Even discounting the fact that Douglas (or one of his fellow roundtable junketeers) foolishly compares the Head of Story position with ADing, is Douglas arrogant enough to believe that aspiring animation students will be going to ComingSoon.net to get technical information? Compare Mr. Douglas’s condescending flummery with Steve Fritz’s more comprehensive and informed interview of both Kung Fu Panda directors, where Fritz not only gets answers on how fight moves were animated and carried out, but even obtains a concise paragraph on key frame animation.

It will, of course, take some time to examine the spineless atavist known as Edward Douglas. I should observe that Mr. Douglas’s affronts to journalism are, as I have intimated with the comparisons above, by no means endemic to film journalism as a whole. I have my problems with David Poland, but at least Poland is attempting some basic ratiocination. One cannot say this of Mr. Douglas, whose execrable word spewing makes Poland look like F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is not just the ineluctable conclusion that Mr. Douglas writes with all the dependability and precocity of a malfunctioning dot matrix printer that should trouble us. He actually gets paid for this.

It is now my goal to inform those who pay Mr. Douglas for his services that they are getting a terrible deal. It is he who is the one not deserving of any credibility. It is he who is the one who should be confined to a go-nowhere office job without the benefit of air conditioning. Future dispatches will follow.

by Edward Champion

Candyman

Candyman, the 1992 film adapted by Bernard Rose from Clive Barker’s short story, “The Forbidden,” is perhaps one of the most underrated satirical horror films of the 1990s. Boasting crisp cinematography from Anthony B. Richmond, a haunting quasi-Koyaanisqatsi music score from Philip Glass (with Koyaanisqatsi-like aerial shots of Chicago housing projects reminding one of Pruitt-Igoe), and precise and intelligent direction from Rose, Candyman not only evolves Barker’s vicious take on white academic efforts to understand London slums, but dares to suggest that privileged efforts to understand life in the housing projects are indelibly linked to a more disturbing primordial journey that involves whether or not you’re willing to believe in an urban legend. Plunge into the unwashed lives if you dare. You will find yourself not only confronting the unexpected consequences of your empathy, but the hidden human costs of your interventions. I don’t think it’s an accident that Chicago is such an apposite location for Barker’s transplanted tale. Much as John Cusack and company effortlessly transplanted Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity to the Second City, Chicago, perhaps more than any other American city, evokes a misunderstood sector of society in a manner that is almost seamless.

And yet Candyman has escaped the kind of retrospective accolades one would assume that a complex film of its type would garner. It is not discussed with the same reverential susurrations that the knee-jerk film geek applies to Dario Argento, which is particularly surprising, given that this film is about as close to giallo as mainstream American film is likely to come. This was a film that Rose somehow managed to sneak through the studio system. The film’s racial subtext is unthinkable by today’s play-it-safe standards. Virginia Madsen’s academic colleague is African-American, but lighter-skinned than the residents in the housing project that Madsen’s character investigates. So is the kindly detective looking into the case, who turns hostile as events develop. It takes an assault on a white woman to get people investigating the grisly murders near the housing project. There are mirrors that likewise connote this double standard: a mirror is unsettled in Madsen’s apartment, but a gaping hole in a housing project’s bathroom permits Madsen to climb through a crevice into another graffiti-laden apartment. And it takes Madsen talking with African-American janitors to begin her investigations into the Candyman mystery. When Madsen is asked to remove her clothing by a by-the-book police officer, one is instantly reminded of Alex’s dressing down in A Clockwork Orange (a scene, incidentally, written by Kubrick that wasn’t in Anthony Burgess’s novel). And the film’s bitter finale is a wonderfully skeptical pisstake on how female martyrdom stacks up against upward mobility and class disparities. There is also something within Rose’s many false shock moments as Madsen probes further, as if to suggest that investigating beyond your class unfurls an entrenched fear.

It’s a shame that this highly revealing film has been forgotten, and it’s particularly egregious that there remains little room for a thinking horror film along these lines within today’s studio system.

by Edward Champion

Technical Difficulties

My desktop decided to crap out on me and I am currently in the process of resuscitating it. The problem’s either the power supply or the motherboard (and it looks likely to be the former). But between this and deadlines, I’ve become a frantic monkey. Bear with me.

[UPDATE: After a barebones cardboard boot, I’ve traced the problem. The mobo appears to be pretty much dead, in that the power is inconsistent, shutting on and off. I’m RMAing this bastard and grabbing a new one. I hope to be back in action tonight.]

[UPDATE 2: After many trips to Datavision and J&R, I’m desktopless for the time being, and going to give up for now so that I can beat these deadlines.]

[UPDATE 3: Just about back in business on the desktop. Turns out that it was a power supply/heating issue, remedied by a Zalman CNPS9500 LED fan (which I highly recommend over the shitty Cooler Master fans). Hope to respond to email I received in the last few days quite soon. As to the Mac acolytes who offered snarky comments, in the time it took for me to rectify my hardware problem, you’d likely be waiting for a reservation at the so-called Genius Bar. No thanks. I’m the kind of guy who likes to know what’s under the hood.]

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • While real gamers blow shit up in a first-person shooter that taps serious system resources or carjack hapless NPCs in Grand Theft Auto 4, Steven Spielberg has decided to offer the world a bunch of cutesy goddam animals for a video game he has “created,” which also appears to be something of a Jenga ripoff. If you ask me, this ridiculous game looks as fun as watching a Care Bears DVD through the shaky fog of a Saturday morning hangover. I’d beseech a dentist to perform a root canal on me rather than play a cowardly and ridiculous video game called Boom Blox.
  • I have not yet seen the Lost season finale because I cannot stream the damn episode through the ABC website through a wi-fi connection. Now this is something that I can do with NBC’s The Office website, which doesn’t have a ridiculous interface that loads within your browser window. And I can’t download a torrent until I have DSL. The moral of the story? Learn to design a website right. Also, don’t move while a “major television event” has aired and everybody and his mother wants to ask you what you thought about it.
  • Wendy Cope would like to take your poet laureate plaudit and stick it where the sun don’t shine. Never mind that this would make Cope the first female poet laureate in the UK. She don’t want it! Here is a list of honors that Wendy Cope does desire: professional dominatrix, leader of a world empire, short-order cook, and five-star general. But don’t make her a poet laureate! Just don’t! Cope will kick your ass if you even dare let loose the “luh” from your lips!
  • Here’s a helpful hint to publishing executives: if you say you’re “at the tipping point,” a term that very few outside of burnouts in the marketing department take seriously, then chances are that you don’t know what you’re talking about. What is a tipping point these days but a confession that you don’t really have a business plan and you never really had one to begin with?
  • So McSweeney’s is now applying its twee bullshit to poetry. I’m with Shane. I don’t give a damn either. But this stunt just makes them look silly.
  • Jeff VanderMeer has uncovered a science fiction tribute to the infamous game that comes with Windows. Or he has something of possible substance to say.
  • Now wait a minute. It’s Bill Clinton who’s calling other people “sleazy,” “dishonest,” “slimy” and a “scumbag?”
  • Paul DiFilippo on J.G. Ballard.
  • Another reason to love Peter Greenaway: the man wants to project genitalia onto “The Last Supper” in an effort to link “8,000 years of art and 112 years of cinema.” Greenaway also has plans to have cows take a dump upon the Mona Lisa in an effort to unite “8,000 years of art and two years of agriculture.”
  • Ian McEwan unveiled an excerpt of his unfinished novel at the Hay literary festival, only to discover that he had unintentionally taken a bit from Douglas Adams.
  • Who the hell do you think you are, Julie Buff? Waiting around for an editor? Yeah, it sucks. But you keep writing material and you keep sending things in. Do you know how many emails I’ve sent in the last month to editors that have gone unanswered? Probably around twenty. Do you think I let this stop me? So I feel your pain. But if you want to be a writer, you sit on your ass and write. You produce and you keep sending things out. If you don’t want to wait six months, then you send a note to the editor that you’re submitting the piece elsewhere. And you keep on doing this until you get published on a regular basis, or on some level that you feel is acceptable. And you don’t let anybody stop you. (via Slushpile)
  • And, sweet Jesus, Sissy Spacek recorded a song protesting John and Yoko’s Two Virgins cover. Really, celebrities, if you’re going to record any protest songs along these lines, direct your energies to vapid musicians like Sting and Michael Bolton. These are the people you should sing about. These are the people who should be banned from every known recording studio in the world. (via Hey Dullblog)
by Edward Champion

A Slightly More Pellucid Roundup

  • I have been apprised that the DSL man is coming tomorrow. The current roundup malaise, which is ever so slight, involves a great deal of my possessions in disarray. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to apply more wit, even though the shaky connection may very well result in an inadvertent capitulation of what I am trying to type.
  • I see that the Chicago Tribune has shown some good sense by employing one Lizzie Skurnick to limn S.E. Hinton’s oeuvre, sans Michiko’s ungainly verb, while another Lizzie, who answers to the title of books editor, interviews Ms. Hinton as well. However, one very important question has been elided from Ms. Taylor’s queries: What does Ms. Hinton think of Brian Atene’s performance?
  • A number of bloggers are now tackling Anne of Green Gables. I had no idea that an annotated version existed!
  • Pinky tempts with this picture of Michael Silverblatt. There are important questions here: Was there audio? What occurred during the inevitable conversation? I understand that there have been many run-ins between a certain Silverblatt impersonator by the name of Tod Goldberg and Mr. Silverblatt himself, but none have been memorialized in audio form. The least one demands from such a meeting of the minds is documentary evidence. Future scholars must know just how much the KCRW vernacular infringes upon the real-life Silverblatt. And if Ms. Kellogg reneged on this historical obligation (as did Mr. Fox with his BEA videos?), then a gross journalistic injustice has almost certainly been committed.
  • Are BBC stars being paid too much? In the interests of self-preservation, leave it to BBC News to set the record straight. “You recently got married. When did you get married?” “Do you think it’s better than the last series?” That’s right! Such penetrating journalistic insight can be yours for £6 million/year. For the price of Jonathan Ross’s three-year salary, you could feed a great number of homeless people. I would contend that if you were to remove Jonathan Ross from television, the chances are almost certain that very few would notice his absence. Six million sandwiches in one year would make a bigger impact on the landscape than a year’s worth of Jonathan Ross’s insipid questions.
  • Bob Hoover contends that there’s nothing to get excited about at BEA this year. He suggests that there isn’t a single buzz book — “no frontrunner for the eagerly anticipated novel or sensational memoir.” I must presume that Bob Hoover is no fan of Bolano.
  • Word has at long last leaked out about David Ulin’s clones. In fact, there are at least six Ulins that I know of. One was actually in Brooklyn over the weekend, helping me move. Another was at a Burbank studio, serving on the panel for the prospective reality television pilot “America’s Next Book Critic.” This leaves two more Ulins that have yet to be accounted for, although a few embarrassing photos have been uploaded to Flickr. What I do know is that Ronald D. Moore was so inspired by the many Ulins that a pivotal storyline in Battlestar Galactica‘s fourth season was drawn from these developments.
  • Writers suggest books to various presidential candidates. (via Maud)
  • YA authors are now demanding seven figure advances. There are even a few unreported requests for manservants, underground seraglios, helper monkeys, football stadium-sized swimming pools for the summer, and only the finest cocaine. These YA authors are not only determined to become very rich, but they hope to flaunt their avarice with all the eclat of a sportscar driving through Detroit. (via Gwenda)
by Edward Champion

Are Reports of the Banana’s Extinction Greatly Exaggerated?

The banana, as we know it, is not the banana that our grandparents knew and enjoyed. And this contemporary banana is in danger of extinction due to a new strain of Panama disease. Or so says The Scientist, which appears to be parroting alarmist reports debunked by Snopes a few years ago. The Vietnamese Cavendish banana is the one commonly exported to the United States. But it is, by no means, the only banana cultivar out there. What this may mean is that the Cavendish banana, a less lusher fruit than the Gros Michael banana decimated in the 1950s, will be replaced by an even more derivative and genetically mutated banana. Unless some pesticide is introduced which is able to decimate this latest Panama strain. The biggest regret amidst this hysteria is that there isn’t a single cultural figure who comes even close to Carmen Miranda who can put all this into perspective.

by Edward Champion

Satire

So a bunch of “activists” get together and create a hysterical video. These people claim that in 2012, a foreboding date that conveniently matches up with the Mayan calendar, the Internet as we know it will end. No more net neutrality. ISPs moving in for the big avaricious kill. Without citing a single shred of evidence to support their claim, the video that these “activists” post results in hysteria. It has, at the time of this posting, been Digged 7,170 times, and a strong majority of Diggers have swallowed this castor oil without stopping to question the specifics. Among the group: Tania Derveauax, who promised Belgian voters 40,000 blowjobs when running for political office, who promised to take the virginity of anyone who supported net neutrality, and who pledged online that she would kill herself in 90 days. What’s more, these “activists” created another video in May in which they used the same music cue and much of the same language justifying Ms. Derveaux’s suicide blog.

This latest stunt is fine satire and it’s certainly a masterful prank. And if the point made here involves demonstrating just how gullible people are when accepting such codswallop, then this group has certainly served its purpose. Nevertheless, I find myself a bit troubled by this video. Troubled by the manner in which so many people have easily accepted this. Troubled by the unseen joy that this group has had in witnessing these reactions. Troubled by a group who wishes to abdicate their sincerity and who believes, quite rightly as it turns out, that people are willing to believe nearly everything. One can certainly make the claim that this group is recused from guilt because they were only putting out prevarications that any reasonable person would resist, but these people knew what they were doing. And this video has now been circulated so widely that I’ve even received a few emails from people who seem to believe that it’s real. And while I respect the right of this group to declare nearly everything on a freedom of speech principle, I’ve always felt that if you’re going to execute a gag along these lines, there needs to be a few subtle clues in the details that alert others to the blatant fabrications.

These hangups are mine. I choose to believe, perhaps with solid dollops of naivete, that most people are good. That, in the grand scheme of humanity, the assholes and the solipsists are outweighed by those who are kind, amicable, and wish to help others out. NEE may very well be the living embodiment of the boy crying wolf, and the organization, if we can call it that, certainly has every right to challenge its audience. But I ponder the long-term view. Is life something in which you’re expected to mock every heartfelt gesture or concern? What is the value in being an inveterate cynic? I suspect these are the questions that nearly every satirist asks. But does not effective satire involve getting others to think about a subject? Lenny Bruce’s infamous “nigger” routine is, to my mind, a tremendous achievement. Bruce managed to get his audience to re-examine a loaded issue. The satire bristled against its audience, but it did get them to see another perspective running a bit counter to their own. The perspective practiced in this video doesn’t involve this level of thoughtfulness. It suggests a false expertise and a sense of self-importance (“If you don’t believe us, call your ISP”) on the part of the satirists. George Saunders got into trouble for suggesting a similar line of thought in relation to Borat. And while I disagreed with him, I can see his point. Even if people can ferret out on their own that this video is an outright lie, I find that the best satire is that which respects the audience’s intelligence.

And yet I find myself still justifying the right to shout “Fire” in a crowded theater. And I am willing, on some level, to defend this video and website for the way in which it pushed its audience. Those currently duped will indeed understand this at some point. So perhaps on this basis, NEE is no different from a satirist who chooses a more pellucid distinction. But should there comes a time in Ms. Derveauax’s life when she is suffering some genuine physical calamity, I wonder if others might consider it a gag. I wonder why there can’t be a balance between an elaborate joke and a true sense of being. When one lives exclusively in a satirical bubble, how can that real person or the real voice flourish?

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • What follows is a generic roundup. Elaborate roundups will follow once I have a reliable Internet connection. In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the banal descriptions!
  • HILLARY: PLEASE DROP OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH! NOBODY LIKES SORE LOSERS!
  • Nigel Beale podcasts Frank Wilson.
  • Hot tamale motherfucker! John Fox at BEA!
  • Greg Johnson on Iain M. Banks’s Matter.
  • OMG! Virtual bookshelf websitez! Wowzers! Who knews that theyz exizsted?
  • Christ, Choire, why are you wasting your time with bimbos? You heard it from me first: Choire Sicha 2008 is Rex Reed 1968.
  • Luc Sante’s got a library, motherfucker! (via Sarah)
  • [Insert link here.] [Insert smarmy bastard response here.]
  • Goddammit, where’s the DSL guy?
by Edward Champion

Coffee House Moving Sale

If you aren’t aware of some of the fine titles (and lovely book design) of Coffee House Press, I should point out that Coffee House is now having a moving sale. If you order titles through the website from now until June 30, you’ll get them off at 50%. So if you somehow missed Sam Savage’s Firmin or four titles from the late legend Gilbert Sorrentino, now you have a chance to pick these titles up for a good price.