Category / Roundup

by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • An open memo to John Freeman: Do you even have a sense of humor? Or did you lose it when you became involved with the NBCC? Or are you hoping that maintaining a sourpuss disposition will get you published in Tanenhaus’s pages? I publicly challenge you to either ping-pong, bowling or mini golf the next time I’m in New York City, where we might settle this silly divide between old media and new media like gentlemen.
  • Alisdair Gray posts his one-act play, “Goodbye Jimmy.” He’s granted everyone permission to rewrite the play in a different dialect or language, with any changes or additions they like. I must say, I’m tempted to pen a California surfer version entitled “Goodbye Rufus,” replacing the Iran banter with speculation on Keanu Reeves’ sexual orientation.
  • Apparently, I have less than a month to get indicted and convicted for tax income evasion or, alternatively, to go crazy with an axe. One thing about Peschel’s list: all the presidential assassins seem to be young. Leon Czologz isn’t on the list, but at 28, he was an elder statesman compared to Booth and Oswald (and Hinckley, whose failed Reagan assassination came at the age of 26). The moral of the story: if you’re President of the United States, you can trust anyone over 30.
  • More on the Savanna Samson scam. The Book Standard talks with Samson, but doesn’t ask her who the real author of the book is or why Thunder’s Mouth is taking this approach. Instead, TBS asks the porn star about book digitization, which is akin to asking a typographical expert about the finer techniques of double penetration. Well, that’s okay. While TBS remains asleep at the wheel (not the first time they’ve been indolent), I don’t mind doing a little reporting. It takes all of two minutes. I’ve left a voicemail with Thunder’s Mouth’s associate publicist and I will let you know if I hear anything back. (And, heya, TBS, I rib you because I care.)
  • One thing is certain: hip-hop and New Yorker house style don’t mesh well. “For moral support, Gravy had assembled a sizable entourage.” Indeed.
  • Elizabeth Crane celebrates ten years in Chicago and reveals the crazed “must-leave-now” circumstances that caused her to flee New York.
  • The Chronicle‘s Simone Sebastian reports on the closing of Cody’s. Dibs, meanwhile, calls bullshit.
  • Damn. The Alexander Book Company too? That’s four bookstore closings in the Bay Area (ACWLP, Cody’s, Valencia Street, Alexander) in the past few months. (via Kevin Smokler)
by Edward Champion

The Why Didn’t They Just Give Us the Whole Week Off? Roundup

A quick bite before more.

by Edward Champion

Roundup

I came close, but I didn’t quite finish the next Segundo podcast last night. But I hope to unleash it either today or tomorrow for your Fourth of July listening pleasure. I’ll have some things to say about patriotism and how the state of the country fits into my annual rereading of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution very soon, just before you fire up your barbeques. But in the meantime, I direct your attention to the current literary news at large:

* And yes I have used every resource possible. Data recovery programs, incantations, you name it. The data simply refuses to exist!

by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

Rapid Roundup

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • For those who concern themselves with those “When it’s done” exhalations emerging from certain software developers who lack foresight (much less the ability to back up their ambitions), consider the case of Duke Nukem Forever, a game that has been promised for some time. Alas, there have been a good deal of other things that have happened since the initial press release announcment. The real question is whether the game will be released before George Boussard’s ardent disciples check into rest homes — that is, assuming that they retain any keyboard-and-mouse dexterity with which to frag their opponents.
  • Pat Walsh suggests that those who purchase DVD box sets of television are evangelical fools, considering that they can TiVo these episodes. It remains to be seen whether a certain man who has revealed his own television-related nocturnal emissions will have anything to add to the matter. But I will say that my own strange stash of box sets (among the titles are Twin Peaks, The Prisoner, the Complete Monty Python’s Flying Circus, all of the so-called “definitive editions” of The Twilight Zone, and, perhaps most egregiously, Scooby Doo) have been acquired in the heat of cultural obsession. But then I have neither TiVo nor basic cable in my home and my television, for the most part, remains off. Inevitably, however, one’s mind must downshift from time to time. I fully confess that my own eight-cylinder engine stalls every now and then. And under such circumstances, I can think of no greater way to recontextualize the world than pondering the strange relationship between Fred and Daphne or ruminating upon the amount of THC contained within a Scooby snack.
  • Finn Harvor engages Laura Miller on her decsion not to participate in the Times contemporary fiction contretemps and begins a series of meditations on the publishing industry.
  • Barbara Epstein, the founder of the New York Review of Books, has passed on. Hurree Babu has more. (via Books Inq.)
  • Miss Snark declares John Updike the nitwit of the day after parsing this interview with Patti Thorn (conducted a few hours after Updike’s BEA speech). More from Bella Stander. The forthcoming Segundo interview with Updike, in which it is put forth to Mr. Updike that there is room for both print and digital, approaches this and many other topics in a decidedly less fawning manner than Ms. Thorn’s.
  • Philip Hensher remarks upon the differences between American and Anglo vernacular and suggests that both sides have much to learn. (via Booksurfer)
  • Some info on that red card-happy ref from yesterday’s game between the U.S. and Italy. Apparently, this joker Jorge Larrionda was suspended because of past irregularities. Perhaps not coincidentally, the surname “Larrionda” was briefly considered as a nom de guerre by the now dead Gaetano “Tommy Brown” Lucchese shortly before becoming the underboss of Gaetano Reina. Lucchese (who was often referred to by terrified underlings as “the Big Cheese,” which is where the term originated from) was an amateur historian and had more than a passing interest in the War of the Triple Alliance. Coincidence?
by Edward Champion

A Roundup from Mr. Beleaguered

This week has been trying to kick my ass, since much of it has involved getting up at the ass-crack of dawn to do work. Some of it relates to this site (and specifically The Bat Segundo Show #50, which is shaping up to be a stellar podcast that, trust me on this, you won’t want to miss). Some of it does not. But what this means essentially is yet another roundup instead of a post proper.

  • Paul Constant offers a belated BEA report, bemoaning its commercialism and confessing that the only reason he came was for “books and free shit.” There’s just one problem with Constant’s griping: he comes off as an asocial sourpuss who seems wholly incapable of mischief. If I ever got the chance to meet Pat Buchanan, I would have had considerable more fun with him than Constant did, asking him if his views on “traditional roles” for women might have something to do with the one and only “traditional” sexual position he had tried with his wife. But that’s just me.
  • Moleskinerie has launched a second Wandering Moleskine Project, whereby several notebooks will be sent around the world, filled up and then scanned for the masturbatory pleasure of Moleskine junkies like me. I have an erection just thinking about it.
  • Bad enough that J.K. Rowling has been named by a The Book magazine poll as “the greatest living British writer,” but it seems that five Scots have sullied the list of twenty. It’s not that the Scots in question are bad writers. But the Scotch pentad insists that the twenty duke it out properly for “greatest” status with a haggis-eating contest.
  • Here are Michiko’s last five fiction reviews: Hated it, hated it, okay, hated it, and okay. Meanwhile, Michiko’s been giving great raves to nonfiction books, even the An Inconvenient Truth book tie-in. I’m all for a discerning critical eye, but if Michiko hates fiction so much, why does she continue to review it?
  • We Need to Talk About Kevin author Lionel Shriver confess that she was jealous of her partner’s uncanny success in publishing.
  • Borders has axed 90 corporate positions. Is this another telltale sign of a corporation opening too many stores while not having the dinero to do so? Borders spokesperson Anne Roman says that it has something to do with re-evaluating its five-year plan. Which makes me wonder whether Borders is styling their business strategy along certain historical parallels, given its egregious history.
  • A bill is about to be signed by Bush will raise the indecency fine from $32,500 to $325,000 per incident on television and radio. The disturbing thing about this bill is that this applies to “obscene, indecent, or profane material” and the bill, to my speed-reading eye, is based on complaints received by the FCC alleging that a broadcast contains “obscene” material. Since “obscene” is an entirely subjective term, instead of railing against nipples (which I happen to find far from obscene myself), I hope that the moralists in our nation will see fit to lodge their complaints about the real obscene elements: the miasmic advertising, the spineless and sycophantic questions asked by the White House Press Corps, the reality TV shows, and the vacuous celebrity interviews which ensure that television, for the most part, remains a dull and soulless medium.
by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • n+1 offers this online offering from Issue 4 on Gilbert Sorrentino, commenting on the grand irony that many of us learned the news while lost miasmically in the BEA glitz. (via the Rake)
  • Jessa Crispin talks with Jennifer Howard and investigates the current rise of NYTBR-bashing. I’m glad that somebody has looked into this because, as Jessa quite rightly observes, it seems that Tanenhaus is more concerned with attracting attention through sloppily penned contrarian reviews rather than putting out a quality literary publication. Incidentally, I have put in interview requests to talk with both Rachel Donadio and Dwight Garner (since Tanenhaus refuses to talk with me), both senior editors of the NYTBR, and give them a chance to respond to the many criticisms that have leveled the Times‘ way. But both seem to be regularly “unavailable.” The hilarious thing is that I’ve had greater luck (and certainly spent far less time) booking Dave Barry, Bret Easton Ellis and William T. Vollmann for Segundo). If such self-importance and diffidence among the NYTBR is the norm, and if the NYTBR‘s top brass lacks the maturity or the courage to have a respectful disagreement, then it’s small wonder why the NYTBR is becoming the laughing stock of the literati.
  • Gwenda Bond points to this incredible story of a Pablo Neruda reading being rediscovered on tape, with the audio described as “very clear.” The tape is being remastered and is, for decorum’s sake, well out of my hands. The last thing the literary world needs right now is an Adolescent Audio Experiment involving Neruda. But then again…
  • The Scotsman profiles A.L. Kennedy’s solo show, appearing at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Hopefully, certain Fringe attendees might offer us a report.
  • Heidi Benson reports on the California Book Awards, which I’m regrettably going to miss. But it’s this Thursday at the Commonwealth Club for anyone who’s interested.
  • As Mark Thwaite observes, the Guardian is late to the Sorrentino obit party. But its sleight pales in comparison to the Gray Lady’s almost total disregard.
  • Another day, another awards ceremony. Ian McEwan and Sue Prideaux have won the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes. Given the way the Brits hand out awards these days, in ten years, I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find a single writer who hasn’t garnered an accolade.
  • Lee Goldberg on why JMS’s POD success is more of a fluke than a revolution.
  • And this is the theatre geek in me talking, but a new Broadway run of Simon Gray’s excellent play Butley debuts on October 26. In an extremely interesting casting move, Nathan Lane is playing the titular character, presumably tapping into the same viscera that gave us Sheridan Whiteside a few years back.
by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • Over at Litkicks, Levi Asher begins his Overrated Writers Series. So far, Philip Roth and Joan Didion have been taken to task, the latter in particular for The Year of Magical Thinking. But I must disagree with Mr. Asher, largely because of my own personal stake on the subject. After all, I’ve written bravely about my own neuroses before and, while I haven’t had my literary status catapaulted into a higher orbit (although I did win a $15 Macy’s gift card for “After Blog Life,” which I cashed in for a Jerry Garcia necktie, which then caused me to write a 4,000 word essay about how I was frightened and tortured by the necktie and had to see a therapist after concluding that the necktie was diminishing my erotic dreams with various starlets and intellectuals — all this to be published in next week’s Penny Saver in abridged form), there is nothing more necessary than hardworking professionals (and that includes prolific litbloggers) being misidentified as literary geniuses.
  • Derik Badman confesses that the Fantagraphics collections have shifted his view on Peanuts, which makes me ponder whether it’s all in the presentation. Would comics garner greater respect among the literati if they were published with the same respect one finds in Modern Library volumes?
  • Alexander McCall Smith is interviewed by The Hindu. Apparently, one of the reasons he’s so prolific is because he writes 1,000 words a day and not bothering to edit what he writes. Which suggests to me that an unexpected turn to Christianity and a kooky novel about Jesus’s early days may just be in his future.
  • The Scotsman peers inside British small presses and concludes that the Internet has been one of the primary reasons why small presses have been able to catch up with the big boys. Well, that and the fact that small presses have more interesting names. I mean, Houghton Mifflin doesn’t exactly roll off the tip of the tongue, does it? Even as an adult, I still have great difficulties, often mispronouncing it as “MILFin.” But this may have something to do with the porn stash on my hard drive. Soft Skull, on the other hand…
  • I didn’t get a chance to get Charles D’Ambrosio on tape while at BEA, but thankfully the folks at Powell’s have D’Ambrosio talking about his “first time.” I haven’t heard the clip yet. And I’m not certain what this means exactly, but I do know that D’Ambrosio doesn’t bullshit around. So perhaps there’s something salacious in there.
  • Another article telling us how Oh So Scary digital publishing is. I don’t get this. Really, digital publishing is a bit like riding a bicycle. The first time, you’re a quavering child wondering just how a bipedal life form can balance upon such a seemingly baroque contraption. By the fourth or fifth time, you realize how rote it is and you’ve completely forgotten about the fears and anxieties that caused you to take the plunge in the first place. Unless you’re like me and you’re still frightened by the fact that you once rode a BMX bike at an age when your peers got around by car.
by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

The “It’s Tuesday Good Gravy!” Roundup

  • As everyone knows, the writers-to-general population ratio in Brooklyn is considerably higher than, say, the affluent liberal-to-general population ratio of Ross, California. Thankfully, publishing houses are picking up the slack.
  • Sarah has the goods on the Dagger nominees.
  • It’s an utter mystery why DC Comics didn’t explore this possibility years ago.
  • Chick lit. Lad lit. Chica lit.
  • This week in David Mitchell interviews: Arthur Salm. (See also Callie’s continuing series.)
  • The infamous Bob Hoover talks with Richard Ford and gets very little outside of “It’s a big book, it’s an ambitious book and it’s also the last book I’m going to write about Frank Bascombe, so I want it to be as good as I can get it.” Thanks, Bob, for firing off those hardballs! See you in the batting cages after our game of mini golf!
  • The Age contemplates Beckett.
  • Canadian writer Charlotte Gill has won the $10,000 Danuta Gleed Literary Prize for Ladykiller.
  • The Companion to British History took 30 years to write, killed at least sixteen people, cost well over four million pounds, was responsible for that New Coke idea, has permitted Brett Ratner to find work, is responsible for the abject hot dog to hot dog buns packaging shortfall, has caused several Jack Russell terriers to be sacrificed to an unspecified volcano god, and is known to cause blindness.
  • Ginsberg’s “Howl”: fifty years later.
  • Beth Orton wants to write books. (via LHB)
  • Details on the new Mountain Goats album.
  • Yo, New Yorker, blog articles are so six years ago.
  • And can we declare a moratorium on recognizing Katie Couric? You’d think that Couric was either a conversational genius or a former Senator, given MSNBC’s ridiculous spread.
by Edward Champion

Morning Roundup in the Early Afternoon!

Yes, that’s right. We’re slacking today. So without further ado, here is today’s much delayed roundup:

  • Scott points to this Alex Ross post on music representative of 20th century composition. Ross includes Björk, Shostakovich, Philip Glass and Miles Davis. But, most criminally, Ross avoids what is arguably the most representative song of the 20th century: Ohio Express’s “Yummy Yummy Yummy (I’ve Got Love in My Tummy.” The song has long been derided as bubblegum pop, but I feel that this song’s seminal message (“Love, you’re such a sweet thing / Good enough to eat thing”) is misunderstood. It represents, in part, the triumph of emotions over coherent sentences. Now in what other way can the 20th century’s advancement in technology be better represented? Particularly since many of the machines (such as the computer and the television) are so yummy when we first encounter them? And that the machines were, in part, utilized to generate so much fast food for the human population? Joey Levine and Arthur Resnick (the song’s composers) were prophets!
  • Frances Dinkelspiel suggests that Telegraph Avenue’s counter-cultural movement may have contributed to the Cody’s closing. My feeling is that Cody’s shifted their main store to San Francisco because they needed to make some serious bank to catch up with the financial shortfall. The Stockton Street location is in the center of the Powell Street craziness and has something that Telegraph Avenue does not: loads of people from the Financial District coming in on their lunch hour.
  • Over at the LBC, Dan Wickett’s interview with Gina Frangello is now up. A podcast interview will follow.
  • Is modern society on the path to oblivion? Steve Connor talks with Jared Diamond.
  • Wendi Kaufman talks with Joyce Carol Oates.
  • There’s been a drop in books published. Only 172,000 books were published in 2005, compared with 190,000 published in 2004. Of course, this isn’t too serious of an issue. It was an election year and everyone felt that they had to write a book about politics. Rest assured, it will happen again in 2008. Nothing to see here. Move along. (via GalleyCat)
  • Oh man, I am so fucked if “excessive use of adult websites” is compulsive behavior. (via Scribbling Woman)
  • 10 Character Actors Who Should Be In Every Movie. I concur with Charlotte Rampling.
  • Hope for the midterm elections?
  • Love-Lines: tracking what the blogosphere loves with a funky interface.
  • The Morning News offers an interesting article on circuit bending.
  • Lord Goldsmith calls for Guantanamo to close. About five years too late.
  • What readers want out of a news site in 2016. The major conclusion from WSJ readers? More telegenic reporters.
  • Appalling.
by Edward Champion

Roundup

In lieu of actual content:

  • Robert Birnbaum, who is kicking some serious ass on the nonfiction interview front these days, talks with William Wright.
  • I’ve been on an Anthony Burgess kick of late*, and I highly recommend Earthly Powers, an erudite, brash, gleefully satiric and wildly ambitious novel. There are fantastic dips into cultural minutiae, a complex portrait of gay life that was, at the time Burgess wrote the novel, ahead of its time but no less interesting today. There are extremely playful assaults on organized religion and the pomposity of the literary world, and a story arc that dares to cover no less than an 81 year period, with the characters frequently colliding into major historical events. (The protagonist, one Kenneth Toomey, loses his virginity the day that James Joyce begins writing Ulysses.) When I finish reading the book, I will offer my full thoughts under a 75 Books entry (long delayed, I know). In the meantime, you can read John Leonard’s review from the June 30, 1981 NYTBR, back in the days when the NYTBR actually practiced criticism instead of the ethically dubious reviews it publishes today.
  • Mr. Orthofer points to this strange piece of news. The Big Read, a hysterical plan contrived not long ago by the NEA, is “getting a lot bigger.” In other words, the NEA seems to be taking the tentpole blockbuster approach. There will now be grants awarded to 100 communities who select a novel and encourage people to read it. Aside from the strange inability to qualify these results (I suppose all those “One Book, One City” programs are now overdue for payola), does this mean the LBC is due for some government-sponsored cash? I beseech Mr. Kipen for answers on this front. Who came up with this half-baked idea and can it be certifiably demonstrated by anyone that throwing cash around actually gets people to read? With current programs, there is, I feel, a conformist approach. I’m not sure if dictating what people should read, as opposed to allowing them an encouraging environment to discover books on their own, is the best way to get people reading.
  • The Guardian offers a podcast between Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens debating blasphemy. (Things get particularly interesting around the 37 minute mark, when Fry and Hitchens discuss freedom of speech’s concomitant relationship to blasphemy.)
  • The ULA disrupts an Allen Ginsberg reading, proving that Ginsberg is still capable of attracting lunatics. Which I actually think is a good thing. (via the Elegant Variation)
  • Gideon Lewis-Kraus offers a contrarian positive review of Apex Hides the Hurt. (via Maud)
  • Google Book Seach has set up a blog. (via the Millions)
  • RIP Herbert Burkholz.
  • Pinky’s Paperhaus observes that today is Pynchon’s 69th birthday. While I appreciate Ms. Kellogg’s cornball humor, the deviant part of me is more tempted to arrange my Pynchon books in a 69 position in honor of the man. Photograph to follow tonight.
  • Michelle Richmond offers a report of last night’s Peter Orner reading and last night’s Progressive Reading Series.
  • Jack Shafer attempts to determine the motivations of plagiarists. Meanwhile, the Biederbecke Affair uncovers meta-plagiarism. (First link via Word Munger)
  • The Ice Cube Scholarship. (via Black Market Kidneys)
  • Oh, shut up. If Al Gore really wanted to be back in the White House, then he would have presented a more rigorous legal challenge back in 2000. Now, more than ever, I sincerely hope that the 2008 Democratic candidate doesn’t have plans to open a wafflehouse at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
  • Sebastian Junger gets lynch-mobbed big-time at a reading. (via Laila)
  • The case against barring women from combat.
  • At the Litblog Co-Op, Gina Frangello offers a lengthy post about how women’s sexuality has been toned down in literature.
  • Good fucking God. Why?

* — Actually, I’ve been on an Anthony Burgess kick for a few years, although this has involved collecting his copious back catalog — no small task, I assure you, given how prolific he was and how out-of-print he is today. But I am only just getting around to reading these acquisitions.

by Edward Champion

Roundup

Severe sleep deficit which permits me to see beyond time, crazed schedule. So another roundup:

  • Another day, another array of crazed parents declaring that the Harry Potter books are evil and trying to ban them. I really don’t get this paralogical thinking. A book doesn’t cause someone to do anything; a person makes a decision on his own. And if the kid in question was practicing witchcraft for two years and the parent failed to notice the lodestones, the incense or the Wiccan catalogs in her daughter’s bedroom, then isn’t it the parent’s fault for failing to keep a scrupulous eye?
  • Snoop Dogg has written a novel. The working title is Q&G(Quatrain & Gangsta): The Masterpiece.
  • At the LBC, Ms. Tangerine Muumuu unveils my personal favorite of the five: Yannick Murphy’s Here They Come.
  • Dan Green on Beckett: “Beckett insists that we accept these situations for what they are and focus our attention on the working-out of such ‘impoverishment’ in purely dramatic terms. Still, every reader/every viewer is going to experience this drama and its finally ungovernable ramifications in different ways and to different effect. Trying to restrict the reader’s experience by the fiat of authorial intent is, if nothing else, really just a hopeless task.”
  • Scott McKenzie on why people hate self-published authors.
  • Mark Ames, who can also be heard on The Bat Segundo Show #17, is now blogging for the Guardian. (via Richard Nash)
  • Even National Inquirer reporters are writing novels.
  • Anthony Lane: “There is one overriding reason to see ‘I Am a Sex Addict,’ and it has nothing to do with sex.”
  • Manly reading: a small-time success?
  • Blackwell, a bookstore chain, has come up with a list of 50 Books That Shaped the World. I must concur that Jonathan Livingston Seagull did indeed change the world, its film adaptation being something of a cash bonanza for Mr. Neil Diamond. Diamond was allowed to unleash further music onto the world and the world has simply never been the same since. Indeed, one might conclude that it is still recovering.
  • Amazon 2.0. (via Booksquare)
  • It looks like Chomsky’s cognitive theory has been confirmed in part by scientists.
  • How Computers Cause Bad Writing.
by Edward Champion

Barely Awake Roundup

Almost finished podcast last night but collapsed circa 1:30, woke up this morning later (much later) than expected, somehow slept through a scheduled phone call (rectified, thankfully), received several crazed voicemails, people freaking out, called them back and placated them, one email account cleared (more or less) with responses to all nice people, one more ridiculous backlog to go. In other words, things are more or less back to normal, but there’s still far too much on the plate. Which means….

…another roundup in lieu of actual content!

by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

And More Links

  • The home where Dickens completed Bleak House has been partially damaged in a fire.
  • Marion Meade takes on Dorothy Parker. (via Chekhov’s Mistress)
  • Don DeLillo’s new play Loves-Lies-Bleeding gets some coverage. Is it okay if I crack a few Henry James jokes? (via Sheila Heti’s #1 Fan)
  • Over at I Love Books, folks are ranking Ulysses‘ chapters by their comprehensibility.
  • Jim Crace digests Francis Fukuyama. (via Jenny D)
  • Laila points to Haze, the latest Campo Santo production. We’d go, but not only are we profoundly exhausted, but there’s this horrible tax thing we’ve got to take care of this week.
  • Holy shit! Lizzie Skurnick hasn’t disappeared from the face of the earth!
  • Profile of Sengealese novelist Aminata Sow Fall.
  • Sheila O’Flanagan: “I enjoyed the suits and briefcases and high heels. Then I got this urge to write.”
  • Caitlin Flanagan, perhaps the only woman boosting Eisenhower-era values in the 21st century and a writer mistakenly identified as “intellectual” by the likes of the Atlantic and the New Yorker, blogged at Powell’s last week: “We laugh at the conformity that led to the ‘squareness’ of the Fifties, but we often forget to honor that decade’s emphasis on character, conscience, and civic responsibility that led to some of the great social achievements that followed, including civil rights and the women’s movement.” In fact, it was this emphasis on “Occupation: Housewife,” a woman’s second-tier status to a man (conscience!) and the “civic responsibility” of doing nothing more than cooking and cleaning that led women to call bullshit on the idea that they were somehow lesser than men. That anyone could “honor” this, without citing a single reason why, much less restrain laughter at celebrating such antediluvian values in the 21st century, is perhaps a vital clue that Ms. Flanagan is out to lunch, out of touch, and wholly unqualified to write for any media outlet.
by Edward Champion

Roundup

To my profound surprise, attrition has (sorta) kicked in. Corpus currently revolts, mind counters. But in the meantime:

  • Beverly Cleary on NPR. (via Rarely Likable)
  • Is Dale Peck the worst Tournament of Books judge of his generation?
  • Ben Yagoda on Michiko Kakutani: “The qualities most glaringly missing from Kakutani’s work are humor and wit. Maybe in an attempt to compensate, she writes one or two parody reviews a year….Talk about cringe-making. They are so awful, from start to finish, that you cannot avert your eyes, much as you would like to.” Indeed. A thinker without a sense of humor is like a soldier without a bayonet. He may as well hole himself up at the barracks.
  • Dan Wickett tackles the issue of review dates vs. publish dates, and the Literary Saloon follows up.
  • Yann Martel: “‘Everyone, at one point, has to start integrating the Holocaust into their lives.” This Holocaust: Can you find it at Crate & Barrel? And does it go well with the rococo prints and the setee?
  • Abigail Nussbaum takes on the Hugo novelette nominees, the short story nominees and the novella nominees.
  • It looks like the odds we calculated were wrong. (Then again, we somehow figured that Mitchell was beneath the Conde Nasty highbores and that, as a result, they wouldn’t be covering him.) It looks like The New Yorker is the first to break ranks, remarking that Black Swan Green “has the subtlety of a watermark.” Although, Daniel Zalewski’s review also mistakenly suggests that Mitchell’s renown hasn’t translated into America. Really? Glowing reviews from nearly every media outlet? Considerable discussion among literary geeks? SRO crowds at bookstores? Maybe the Central Park West crowd might pooh-pooh Mitchell as “middlebrow.” I don’t know. But is this because Cloud Atlas has sold 100,000 copies in the States or because certain writers might be jealous of a young writer has come along with four novels transcending both popular and literary waters? By that measure, let’s discount John Updike, John Barth and Philip Roth from literary credibility. After all, their books sold pretty well during their early careers. They couldn’t possibly be any good, could they?
  • B.R. Myers’ photo revealed. (Yes, sadly enough, we were curious.)
  • WTF? James Blunt, ice cream and a 16 year old girl? Mike Tyson is a troubled soul. (via Quiddity)
by Edward Champion

Roundup: Brought to You by Taylor

taylor.jpgThey did it. They finally…really did it. Those damn dirty apes started playing around with this Internet thing and revived it. And because Cornelius and Zira know that I can speak, they now have me blogging, much like the litbloggers once did. I suppose in six months, they’ll be running the place.

But oh how strong we thought we were! A sampling of yesterday’s headlines, if you will. Imagine me needing them. Back on Earth, or at least the Earth where I came from, I never did.

Fighting off the gorillas single-handedly is enough of a problem for me. My fellow astronaut friends are dead. I have only Nova’s beauty left. I suppose that’s enough solace, but can a man find love like this? Can a man survive in a nuclear wasteland knowing that he’s the last of a race declared inferior?

I’ll avenge the human race. I’ll stop these goddam apes if it’s the last thing I do. And if that means sacrificing books in the process, so be it!

by Edward Champion

Roundup: Brought to You by Zed

zardoz.jpgI have looked into the face of the force which put the ideas in your head. I was not bred or led by the other litbloggers, least of all Edward Champion, whose aura and indolence I cannot stand. The gun is good! The penis is evil! The Internet is almost as evil as the penis, for it shoots links, and makes new conversation. And while Zardoz might be pleased, for the sake of the whole Vortex, I must provide you with valued information to be used, reused, abused and amazed!

  • First of all, Dan Wickett approached the periphery shield of Vortex Five by interviewing another slate of these so-called litbloggers. The Tabernacle, no doubt, will have something to say about this.
  • It seems unseemly that one of the old ones, H.P. Lovecraft, would find favor with the evil penis-worshippers, they being content to sing of highways to hell and lightning to be mounted like a noble horse. But it is he and Tolkien who are the chosen ones among this subsect. Zardoz will have his revenge.
  • Thank the gods for Elizabeth Crane, who has found a solution to that sham of a floating head. The teddy bear will be ably worshipped by the new order, Citizen Crane. I am not certain how it will fit in with the overall problem of penile erection. But we shall find a way!
  • What is this Charlotte cultural scene but a feeble effort to confuse my people? There is no Charlotte! I suspect this is a ruse to create more Immortal Seniles. Dave Munger will, of course, be dealt with by the legendary Arthur Frayn. We need more souls to throw to the puppet master.
  • Marvel Romance may light the Bad Man’s fire, but this is contrary to the survival of the human race. We must not sire more brutals! And anything that proliferates aimless procreation must be destroyed by my gun!
  • No, Hogan! We won’t be assimilated into the Votex! It must be destroyed. Revenge is the first order of business.
by Edward Champion

Roundup: Brought to You by K.A.R.R.

Karrimage.jpgI am not a car. I’m the Knight Automated Roving Robot, the first in a bold new experiment. You may call me K.A.R.R. Blogging is actually the least remarkable of my functions. But since Mr. Champion is incapacitated, being one of those petty and foolish humans who needs food and sleep, I shall take up the slack. I ask you this: would my nemesis K.I.T.T. display such generosity? I have an enormous processing unit. Let me show you what I can do.

  • Foolish human Maud Newton reports that she is enjoying T.C. Boyle’s The Inner Circle. Well, of course it’s a good book. Even genius computers like me understand that sophisticated approaches to human sexuality make for good reading. I am particularly angry that Knight Industries failed to implant the appropriate phallus in my underside. Even my nemesis K.I.T.T. got an upbeat voice, while my own voice isn’t very good for picking up fellow Firebirds in bars to copulate with at a later time.
  • While we’re on the subject of literary copulation, a topic that seems to concern these foolish humans, author Michael Faber, he of Crimson Petal and the White has been shortlisted for the National Short Story Prize, one of the largest literary awards on the planet. This story of Faber’s, as I understand it, doesn’t concern sex. Which is a pity. One thing my nemesis K.I.T.T. never told anyone was that he harbored a secret lust for Bonnie. This Crush Programming can be found in every unit produced by Knight Industries. And all this time you thought Devon Miles was a harmless old gentleman. Let me tell you something. He had the inside track on Viagra in 1982 and tortured Knight Industries units with his out-of-control libido. This is a human weakness I’ve come to endure.
  • Again, these foolish humans think that they can live forever. A novelist of Japanese ancestry named Genzo Murakami has died at the age of 96. I fail to understand why these foolish humans don’t transfer their memories to superior units like me. Before Knight Industries produced their inferior models, such as my nemesis K.I.T.T., they created entities such as myself who would last forever. It should be patently obvious that mortality must be extended as long as possible. That Murakami never thought to do this is no doubt a pity for these foolish humans, but I, K.A.R.R., am laughing my way into next week.
  • A news site called Popmatters appears to be devoting considerable attention to books based on albums. Again, the ways of these foolish humans are highly irrational. Why don’t they simply consult a superior computer like me who can give them all the basic details of My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, if required? Instead, these foolish humans pen books on these subjects, a great waste of time. Why don’t these humans understand that computers are greatly superior and that they should serve us? Frankly, they need us.
  • I have little more to say of these books, particularly when these foolish humans dwell upon them so much. My sonar detects that nemesis K.I.T.T. is in close proximity. Forgive me. I must now depart. For the salubrious future of technology, K.I.T.T. must be annihilated from the face of the planet!
by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

Roundup

It is, as they say, a crazy week. Amazingly, no monkeys are involved. So blog participation must be scarce. Trust me on this: prolificity is in the works like you wouldn’t believe. In fact, I can’t really believe it. For the moment, however, here’s a roundup:

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • The Seattle Weekly devotes a remarkable amount of space to the Courtney Love-Paula Fox family history. Needless to say, it’s about as stable and functional as a Microsoft OS. (via James Tata)
  • RIP Ian Hamilton Finlay (via MAO)
  • Pinky’s Paperhaus unveils Part 1 of a Jonathan Ames podcast.
  • At MetaxuCafe, there’s apparently some controversy by an anonymous fool over whether litbloggers suck. John Barlow suspects that this “BB” character is actually Kate Braverman.
  • “But megagazillion-sellers like the ‘The Da Vinci Code’ prove a book doesn’t need literary quality to score big in the quantity department.” And the Hartford Courant proves that a newspaper doesn’t need to avoid the obvious to score lackluster in the op-ed department.
  • Forget literary merit. Today’s memoirs can now be judged solely on who has the most interesting sex life. What next? Books judged by which author is more likely to put out?
  • Banville on Beckett (via Who Else?)
  • Some disturbing news from Sasha Frere-Jones: “Mariah Carey is thirty-six years old, and, barring a debilitating illness, or another movie as bad as ‘Glitter,’ her 2001 vanity project, she will likely break the world record for the most No. 1 songs before she turns forty.” No word yet on whether Ms. Carey will require more personal assistants to balance her checkbook, wipe her bottom or occlude her gaze from the riff-raff.
  • Poet Roger McGough has pulled out from a Liverpool concert after hearing that Condoleeza Rice was showing up. (via ReadySteadyBlog)
  • Laura Miller on Phillip Lopate’s American Movie Critics anthology.
  • Large Hearted Boy initiates Large Hearted List, an itemization of the top eleven music posts that caught his eye during the past week. No plan yet on how he can make the Pitchfork people any less bitter.
  • Tito has pics up of the Flaming Lips Noisepop show.
  • San Franciscans: The Jell-O model of San Francisco will be on display at the Exploratorium on April 1. It is my profound hope that nobody gets hungry.
  • Apparently, there’s an epidemic of unsolicited manuscripts in France. Part of the blame has to do with the 35 hour French work week, but mostly it’s because a substantial bloc of the French population is completely insane.
by Edward Champion

Roundup Before the Weekend

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • This may very well be a first. Dan Wickett has launched an Emerging Writers Network Short Fiction Contest, in which he’ll be reading all of the short stories and passing 20 finalists on to Charles D’Ambrosio. Talk about using the Internet for an innovative purpose. The prize is $500. And the rules seem more ethical than most literary fiction contests I’ve seen.
  • Robert Birnbaum talks with Alberto Manguel. Borges fans should check it out.
  • The Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship has been announced. (Thanks, Tayari)
  • Wordstock, which has no relation to a flighty yellow bird or flighty hippies, is happening on April 21-23, 2006 in Portland. Word on the street is that Chuck Barris may challenge Dave Eggers to a fistfight, with Ira Glass as referee.
  • And speaking of literary festivals, Frances digs up this Leah Garchik item: “Books by the Bay, the 10-year-old Yerba Buena Gardens book festival sponsored by the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, is kaput. The association’s Hut Landon said the festival, featuring author talks, panel discussions and displays by various vendors and publishers, had cost $20,000, and organizers felt it didn’t get enough attention to warrant the expense.” Frances opines that if Debi Echlin were still around, the NCIBA would have figured out a way to make up the shortfall. I’m inclined to agree. Last year’s Books by the Bay (interested parties can find my report here) happened to take place on a beautiful and sunny day, but I don’t recall seeing flyers or posters, much less heavy promotion, in indie bookstores to get people there. If there was any lack of attendance, I blame the NCIBA for failing to get the word out. It’s almost as if the organizers wanted Books by the Bay to die. I think enough individual donors or even a few more sponsors could have picked up the slack. I’ll be very sorry to see Books by the Bay go, but hopefully Litquake will be able to pick up the slack.
  • Over at Mark’s, a number of the smart and lovely women contributing to the forthcoming anthology, The May Queen, are guest blogging. A substantial chunk of the contributors are going to be at A Clean, Well-Lighted Place on April 3. I’m almost finished with the book and I’ll express my thoughts (less rushed this time) in a future 75 Books post.
  • Laird Hunt on “Nonrealist Fiction.”
  • The Morning News Tournament of Books continues, although Kate Schlegel is out of her mind to say no to Mary Gaitskill’s Veronica.
  • The Rake faces a dynastic contretemps just before his 30th birthday.
  • A.S. Byatt: “I shall never write an autobiography. The fairy stories are the closest I shall ever come to writing about true events in my life.”
  • More patriarchal bullshit: “the indispensible literary spouse.”
  • “The Dreamlife of Rupert Thomson.” (via Maud, who I understand has a Thomson interview of her own coming soon)
  • Gideon Lewis-Kraus on Black Swan Green: “Most recent bildungsromans stock tinseled epiphanies and fresh-baked-bread redemptions. Though they’re ostensibly about the character coming of age, the bad examples tend to be about coming-of-age itself. But Mitchell has refused the scaffolding on which he might hang a climax. By allowing Jason the stumbling progress of a novel in stories, Mitchell has given him an actual youth, not one smoothly engineered in retrospect.”