Early this morning, a piece appeared on these pages that took to task Neely Tucker’s article in the Washington Post. I used a historical example from 1766, but neglected to point out one minor but pivotal detail — indeed, one that I had forgotten, until two readers pointed it out to me — that pretty much destroyed my thesis. Therefore, I have removed the piece from these pages and apologize for my error. I thank the readers for pointing out this indiscretion and I will endeavor to pay closer attention to prevent such mishaps in the future.

[UPDATE: Due to popular demand, I will find some time later today to rewrite and revive the post.]

[UPDATE 2: The article has been revived.]

This morning, my video card committed suicide, shooting out a very impressive burst of orange flame that I was thankfully able to extinguish. No other components were harmed during the making of this conflagration. The video card was not a suicide bomber. I suppose it had come to know the other components it shared the case with over the past three years, and had decided that it was too depressed to live. All this is a pity. But this explains the computer display problems I’ve experienced over the past few weeks. The video card has been replaced (and I have had a heart-to-heart with the new video card, persuading it that there are plenty of reasons to live and that there will be love for it guaranteed by me) and the display is much better. But between this unexpected technical snafu, and getting unexpectedly caught up in a very fun novel (of which more anon), the podcasts I had intended to complete this afternoon will have to be postponed another day. There are lessons to this story: Nurture the components in your computer or they may spontaneously combust. And be sure your computer case is not a bleak house!

For all future posts, whenever I make a claim, I plan on emboldening my efforts to get related individuals on the record.

Likewise, because there has been a slight uptick in comments left by people pretending to be other people, or people who cannot be bothered to leave real names (or, if they choose to remain anonymous, specific blogs, websites, or email addresses where they can be contacted), as of today, I shall enact a new policy.

All commenters must now leave a real name or, if they wish to remain anonymous, a website or an email address where they can be contacted. (I will, of course, keep your email address confidential. But if you can’t be bothered to return an email, or the email attached to your comment bounces, then your comment will not appear on this website.)

This does not mean that I am curtailing my satirical assaults. Nor am I attempting to enact censorship. My feeling is that everyone needs to be held accountable for what they say, and that goes for me too.

You can say anything you want about me or what I write, and I will continue to approve your comments, as I have in the past. But since I have put my name on everything I have ever written for this website, it seems only reasonable that commenters are held to the same standard. Getting into arguments with individuals who want nothing more than to fan the flames and who do not possess a set of virtues that they are simultaneously standing for is a waste of time, and it certainly doesn’t promote healthy and spirited discussion. So let’s all try to do better.

The LCD inverter board on my laptop is dead. I am in the middle of nowhere and cannot find a replacement. Not at Fry’s. Not anywhere. Efforts are still being made to find a replacement part, but I have learned that inverter boards are generally ordered through mail. What this means is that I’m more or less out of commission until Tuesday. So blog updates and emails replies will happen sometime next week. Bear with me.

Both computers are still down, but I should have at least one of them up by tomorrow. I’m also trying to meet deadlines under these crazed circumstances. Thus, this site’s going to be more or less dark in the next few days.

[UPDATE: One computer fixed, one to go.]

In light of the redesign, I’ve received a few emails from folks who are upset that I didn’t include them on my blogroll.

Let me explain the situation.

First off, the blogroll on the right hasn’t been touched in two years, meaning that it doesn’t really account for the sites I now read. Redesign-wise, the only thing I did in relation to the blogroll was remove sites that had not been updated in the past year. And I have every intention of one day going through the blogroll with a fine tooth comb. But this is the least of my priorities right now. Because such a task involves an entire day that I don’t have. And I’d rather spend this time meeting deadlines, generating content, turning out podcasts and otherwise being a verbal wiseacre. Sorry, but staring at code is about as appealing as suffering under a Nazi dentist’s chair. Which brings us to a corollary.

COROLLARY: Since I do not have the time to tweak the blogroll, I have attempted to atone for this by trying to link to any posts I find interesting. And, rest assured, I do read you, if I know about you. And if you have found a link that I find interesting, something that I have not found, I accredit.

I assure you that I am not consciously trying to hurt or exclude. In fact, I even accredit to sites that I don’t particularly care for. And has it ever occurred to you that I may not even be aware of you? Of course, if you want to make me aware, send me an email with an RSS link and I’ll happily add you to the hundreds (thousands?) of blogs I have in Bloglines and, if your stuff is interesting to me at some future point, link you accordingly.

I assure you there is no grand conspiracy. I am not interested in link exchanges or reciprocal links. I simply don’t have time for this. But I am interested in the exchange of information across multiple blogs, which I will happily track and link to.

If this makes me an asshole, so be it. I’m genuinely baffled that people pay attention to my prattle. I try to respond to emails. I try to be equitable about the breadth of my linkage. I’m doing the best that I can.

In testing mode.

[UPDATE: Okay, I’m going to play with this design for a while, seeing as how there hasn’t been a drastic overhaul in more than a year. If you have any specific requests, please let me know and I’ll do my best to accommodate.]

[UPDATE 2: As an experiment, I have added BlogAds and a donations button to this site. This was not an easy decision for me to make, because, despite turning down many offers from advertisers over the years, I have tried to keep this site ad-free. But if even small literary quarterlies can ask for advertisers or donors, I have begun to wonder if my own diligent labors constitute a service.

I realize that some of you might view this as “selling out,” but I would rather be perfectly transparent with you. When I revived this website in December 2003 in an effort to track literary news, I had no idea then that, years later, it would transform into a second full-time job. I had no idea that I would be producing podcasts.

Now granted, I greatly enjoy doing all this. And I’m perfectly happy to carry on doing this, whether you contribute or not. But with newspaper book review sections dying and the media ecology changing, I figured that the time had come to take a chance. If the newspapers lack the resources to cover literature, then the burden shifts to us.

I’ve been footing the bill now for over three years, paying for extensive bandwidth so that people can listen to the many podcasts without interruption, spending at least twenty hours per podcast arranging interviews, carefully reading books, doing my best to ask the best questions I can under the circumstances, tweaking audio to the best of my ability, often staying up to an ungodly hour so that these podcasts are turned out on a weekly schedule.

If any of this has been of value to you, then feel free to donate or display your ad. If not, or you don’t have the cash, that’s okay too. The site, as it exists, will continue to operate for free. The only difference will be the advertisements in the top right corner.

I can assure you that any advertisements will not hinder my muckraking proclivities nor will they prevent me from pursuing tough questions. I can also assure you that, should this experiment prove somewhat successful, with even meager monies flowing in, I will work my hump off to give you additional content and track down unexpected individuals for future podcasts. If anything, my work ethic on this point is strong.

However you decide, I’d like to once again thank you for reading and listening.]

[UPDATE 3: Okay, I’ve discovered the culprit for IE users. I’ve temporarily disabled the top graphic, so that IE users can peruse this site with the content at the top of the screen. More enhancements to come. Thank you for your patience while I sort out the snags here!]

This post has disappeared.

I meant to point to this last week, but Frank Wilson, editor of the Philly Inquirer, has provided an inside glimpse of what happens on the inside of a newspaper book review section. As Terry observed, stripping away the secrecy is beneficial for all parties: editors, readers, and reviewers. Of course, it will be a cold day in hell before we see such openness practiced by a certain book review editor in New York.

But to throw my own hat into the ring, I can tell you that I receive around ten books a week (sometimes as many as thirty) and that there is absolutely no way that I can read them all. I feel very bad about this, but I am only one man and I do the best I can to read far and wide, when I’m not reading other books for professional obligations.

The books that arrive are sequestered from the main library into a set of stacks in the hallway that I refer to as “the long-term TBR pile.” Books that I must read in the next month are placed in “the immediate TBR pile.” Right now, that immediate pile contains about twenty-five books. I’m halfway through about twelve of them.

Because this scenario is a nightmare for publicists, and I respect and appreciate their position, I try to make up for this by responding to all e-mail within a week (or two, if there’s something else brewing), particularly any pitch that is personally directed to me. (I often discard the others. One recent pitch invited me to some soiree in Southern California to interview an author. And they wanted me to do this in two days on a weekday. A cursory examination of the blog will tell you that I live in San Francisco. I’m not in the habit of throwing around airfare money for an author I haven’t heard of.)

I made a pledge two months ago to get better about the email backlog and, thankfully, my recent switch to Thunderbird has facilitated a meticulous organization of my email and the way I respond to the many readers of this site.

Like Frank Wilson, there are some books that I will read immediately — simply because there are major literary titles that I must read to have even a remote understanding of the literary world. Mark Z. Danielewski’s Only Revolutions and Richard Powers’ The Echo Maker are two that come to mind.

I subscribe to almost every literary news feed that I can find, provided the contents aren’t total rubbish. And I am committed to learning about fiction developments that I am unfamiliar with. I try to operate in a genre-blind atmosphere.

I have become more selective about who is interviewed on Bat Segundo, simply because each show takes anywhere from fifteen to twenty hours to produce and I do have a life. While there have been a few exceptions, I am disinclined to interview subjects when a publicist cannot get me the book at least a week before the interview. It is highly disrespectful to the author for the journalist to enter an interview without any knowledge of what she has written, much less a careful reading of the text.

While I can read in a close manner fairly fast, if you think that I am in any intelligent position to talk with an author when you’ve sent me the book a day before and if you think that I can set aside my life (of which literature is just one part), then you’re living in a dream world.

Publicists who do get their authors on the show are kind enough (and most of them have been a pleasure to work with) to send me a book weeks in advance, approach me with an author who is unique or fits my interests, and to check up on what’s happening in a non-intrusive manner.

Folks, I have officially burned out. Five days, four interviews. No sleep, bad dietary habits. Two more podcasts from me before some weekend R&R, but you’ll (likely) not hear from me until next Monday. Do check out the fine folks on the right.

In the meantime, Paul Koretz is my new favorite California Assemblyman.

One other thing: I had meant to say this last year, but the finest moment of Doves’ Some Cities, which I’m listening to right now, comes at 2:04 on “Sky Starts Flying.” But I suspect I’m the only one who feels this way.

Also: For those in the San Francisco area, one of my favorite bookstores, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books, has had its domain hijacked. I called the bookstore to find out what happened and they told me that they’re aware of the problem and that they’ve taken steps to remedy it. The new URL is http://www.acwlpforbooks.com. They should have a new website up and running eventually, but they have Edmund White, Gay Talese and many more people coming through in May. You can get the scoop by picking up a flyer at the bookstore.

One more thing before we depart: 120 Questions with George Saunders (via Mark). Okay, with the exception of an LBC podcast, I’m done. I’ll clean up any messes next week.

Forgive me if it’s been sucking here this week. But now you know why. Lots of podcasts to come.

Incidentally, for those who have written in, yes, that earlier post was satirical. Come on, people. Don’t make me use the BLINK tag on your ass.

Okay, I’ve updated to Word Press 2.0 (many thanks to Matt Mullenweg & Co. for extremely clear and detailed instructions; something I never really experienced from the Six Apart people) and the place hasn’t exploded.  If anyone experiences any additional problems, please let me know.  For those who have written in, I’m still working on the Segundo/iTunes issue and hope to get it resolved in a few days.

Ladies and gentlemen, the brain is thoroughly fricasseed, we can’t seem to sleep (hence 4:00 AM audio engineering jobs) and we’re on the verge of total collapse. We’ll see you on the other side once we’ve rested. Happy holidays.

One last thing (with a shift to first person singular):

As for this (yeah I know he wants attention with all the recent Maud-bashing but what the hell), the true nonsensism at work here lies with those who continue to believe that “you-are-with-us-you-are-against-us” dichotomies exist within literature. For the record, I read the New Yorker and enjoy a handful of the stories. But I am also a strong proponent of what Bill Buford has called “dirty realism.” However, the notion that reading an establishment story automatically makes you an establishment thinker (or, for that matter, “an intellectual liberal,” which I am, as Marxist as I can be at times, not always) is about as ridiculous as suggesting that because you immerse yourself in one perspective or world view, you are irrevocably attached to it. (And how fucking George W. Bushian is that, Mr. Lin?) I think it’s the duty of any serious reader to read as widely and as disparately as they can. The snobberies or reverse snobberies we attach to refusing to pick up something because it’s science fiction or because it’s popular or because it’s “chick lit” or because it’s too experimental or because it’s poetry or because it was published in The New Yorker or because it was endorsed by Dave Eggers or someone at n + 1 or because all the hipsters are reading it really pisses me off. It is nothing less than an extension of genre ghettoization. It is, let’s get right down to it, a kind of literary racism. A book is a book is a book, mothafuckahs. And if lazy thinkers are going to badmouth a title or a genre without reading it, why don’t some of these cretins so quick to condemn actually cite a few fucking examples from the text to back up their shit, yo? To do otherwise is to offer meaningless cocktail banter to make people feel smart and good about themselves but to essentially encourage their descent into the cerebral charnelhouse. To wallow in labels or dichotomies without actually delving into the text, providing examples and telling us why New Yorker fiction is bad, to not consider that sometimes a rose grows on the dunghill — in short, to imply on a regular basis that the whole expanse of literature is without a single grey area is to remain a clueless and inveterate moron.

• Finish the Naughty Reading Contest.
• Three Segundo podcasts.
• Reinstate the Tanenhaus Brownie Watch.
• Get Secret Project #24B started.
• At least six installments of The Neurotic Chronicles.

I have not forgotten about this stuff, but I wanted to address these failings publicly for all who have asked. Also, this gives you a great opportunity to publicly shame me. Go nuts, kids!

Since the categories were getting a bit out of hand, I have shifted them to the bottom right of the page.

This morning, I found myself in a madhouse. Nothing to worry about. I’ve been through this before. But the flying projectiles and frequent epithets have severely hindered any future posts. I hope to weigh in this afternoon with more. But in the meantime, do check out Haggis’ stomping grounds, where the redoubtable Tayari Jones is guest blogging.

Just for a while. Our posts haven’t been stellar, we can’t even answer our email, and life is too damned busy. Something is certainly wrong when Weezer lyrics suddenly start to make sense. Brother, can you spare a few hours? Visit the fine folks on the right, look at least one way before crossing the street, and avoid lima beans at all costs.

Meanwhile, this is some pretty funny shit (via Tito).

Here at Mabuse Cental, we are inunundated beyond compare. We’re sitting on four Segundo shows (yeah, we know, but we’re really trying to clean up some audio for the next show without it all sounding trebly sans midtones), we’re trying to create (read: steal) a feasible script for the Naughty Reading finalists so that you can all vote and the almighty Powell’s card can be awarded, we’re trying to finish up a lengthy post on The Rainbow Stories that we’ve been tinkering around on during sporadic moments, we’re trying to somehow squeeze in cogent thoughts for this week’s LBC dialogue, and we’re in the early stages of organizing a major regular addition to this site that should prove quite exciting and should solve the bookpile problem in one fell swoop. All this while we’re working on something major (read: MAJOR) that we seem to be kicking ass on but that we’re notoroiously retentive about.

Also, we’re terribly behind on our email backlog. We apologize.

Because of this, posting will be light, following by occasional showers and thunderstorms. Be sure to wear a porkpie hat and coat. Good stuff is in the works. We’re just not sure when we’ll be able to get to it.

In the meantime, please feel free to check out Sam and Gwenda‘s additions to the ol’ Auctorial Offerings motif. Perhaps as we push ourselves to brain rot, we’ll offer a few more installments ourselves.

Situation: There are more books here than I can possibly read. I would like to give all of these books a fair chance, given that the publishers have gone to great lengths to send them my way. But I am one person and, in order to exist in this world and have something of a life, it would be completely unrealistic for me to read them all. I can read three books a week, but not fifteen.

Now I am far from a trust fund kid, but here’s what I propose as a solution: If you would like to review these books that I cannot read, please drop me a line at ed @ edrants.com. Tell me a little bit about yourself and the authors you dig. And I will hook you up with a book that works within that template. I cannot pay you, but what I can do is offer my services as an editor and I can ship you the book. I’ll help you hone your voice and I’ll work with you to find a kickass tone. We can take a firm whack at these books that warrant coverage and, together, we can ensure that this heinous backlog is, to some small degree, abated. So what do you say?

…nothing is wrong, for all who have emailed.

We hope to get the Naughty Reading Photo finalists up and votable this week. There are also several Segundo shows in the works. Email backlog is damn near unanswerable, but we’re trying. Bear with us.

Thanks to the folks at Bloglines, who were kind enough to replace the old feed with the new feed. So for those of you who have subscribed to the old feed all along, wondering why there’s been all this silence (there hasn’t), that’s what happened. Anyway, didn’t mean to break the hiatus, but wanted to clarify the confusion.