• Cameraphone video showing trapped commuters.
• Raised alerts everywhere in U.S. but San Diego. Why?
• Sterling drops to 19-month low.
• American Communist Party issues statement condemning attacks.
• Queen in shock, Buckingham Palace sealed off.
• Eyewitness account from Marketwatch.
• Mayor Ken Livingstone calls attacks “mass murder.”
• David Plotz in Slate.
• Israel also holding economic conference near one of terror sites.

• Eyewitness reports from BBC.
• Wikipedia has an entry up on the attacks with some emergency numbers, if you need help. I understand that mobiles are down, but you can still text message.
• Numerology probably has nothing to do with this, but is there any significance to 7-7?
• The Guardian is now reporting 40 dead, 350 injured.
• London hotels are being overrun by commuters.
• Stocks take a dip on news of London bombings.
• Putin says attacks demonstrate that world is not united.
• G-8 talks postponed.
• Here in San Francisco, subways are delayed and many cops are patrolling the streets. I saw at least ten during my walk up Montgomery Street.
• CNN: “U.S. government sources told CNN that there was no specific or credible information indicating that there might be a threat to the United States.”
• Already, UPI is pinning this on al-Qaeda.

• IOC: London will still be home to 2012 Olympics.
• Blair says terrorists are behind attacks.
• Text of Scotland Yard statement.
• Flickr London
• US warns to be vigilant in subways.
• Australian narrowly escapes subway blast.
• There are apparently a total of four explosions: three on trains, one on a double-decker bus. First attack: 8:51, 7 people dead. Second attack: 8:56, 21 dead. Third explosion: 5 dead. Bus explosion: fatalities, unknown. This news report says 40.
• US to step up security on public transportation.
• Eyewitness account of paralyzed London.
• Is this a G8 protester or Al Qeada? Or someone else?
• By way of comparison, I should also point out that last year, there was a Moscow subway explosion that killed 39 people. But it didn’t receive nearly this amount of coverage.
• Warren Ellis updating. (via Bookslut)

Technorati Tags: London Underground, terrorism

Jesus Christ. Major explosions have rocked the London Underground. Numerous fatalities. More news as time permits and I can link to it today. My heart goes out to anyone who has lost loved ones.

St. Petersburg Time: “Richard Dinon saw the laptop’s muted glow through the rear window of the SUV parked outside his home. He walked closer and noticed a man inside.”

First off, if you can’t secure your own damn wireless network, you have no business bitching about people siphoning off your line. You ain’t a victim. You’re uninformed. Shut up and learn the basics, bitch.

Second, the menacing glow of a laptop makes for unintentionally hilarious “crime” reporting. Someone scare the bejesus out of St. Petersburg Times reporter Alex Leary so that he can write us a truly paranoid masterpiece.

Technorati Tags: dubious journalism, wireless, laptop, desperate lede

Holy Christ. Bob Balaban can be found over at the Old Hag’s.

Technorati Tags: Bob Balaban, funny lights, heckling, guest bloggers

Fans of poet Kenneth Koch (Koch’s Coffee House output was reported in the final installment of my BEA coverage) and David (Fraud) Rakoff might be interested to know that Rakoff can be heard reading Koch’s “To Jewishness” over at Nextbook.

Technorati Tags: Kenneth Koch, poetry, David Rakoff, poems

Due to other obligations, my daytime posting will have to be brief. But I wanted to briefly touch upon the strange legacy of Wallace Stegner. Stegner is a guy that I’ve never been all that crazy about as a novelist. This may be framing Stegner’s work too generally, but he seems to me someone who might be styled the Merchant-Ivory of literature (and I mean this in the insufferable sense of the comparison), meaning that with a Stegner novel, you’re going to get some tale of a crotchety old man, endless florid details about landscape and nature, and a storyline that is about as predictable as the perrennial constant of San Francisco weather. A Stegner novel is largely about the elegant prose and the way that humans are ensnared into a natural landscape. This is not to suggest that Stegner’s voice is without validity or his prose without grace. Right now, I’m reading The Specator Bird (it’s a book club selection) and am struck with how the novel takes something as banal as rustification and profiles it from multiple perspectives (it is honorable from the point of view of the main couple in their seventies; it is dishonorable from the perspective of a brash Italian novelist who comes to visit about a third of the way into the book). But simultaneously, the scenes with the countess (as profiled in the diary-within-the-novel) feature some of the stiffest dialogue one can endure. And unless Stegner is trying to make an internal point about the prosaic way that the retired protagonist Joe Allston is chronicling his life, I’m truly baffled why we are permitted such redundancies. (To contrast this with proper use of redundant dialogue, I refer to the cocktail party banter that proliferates William Gaddis’ The Recognitions. The banter itself is banal, but it almost serves almost as a time capsule portraying the intonations of a particular scene (affluent New York). One senses this, as one sifts through its preposterous questions and the conversational arcs that will not die. I wish I could say that I felt this same instinct in Stegner.)

To some degree, Stegner’s work strikes comparisons to that of Frederic Prokosch, another novelist who was criticized for prioritizing environment over the human spirit. But while I can accept this criticism to some degree, I nevertheless find Prokosch’s novels to be coruscating diamond mines that dare to portray a rather grim view of the human condition through metaphors and imagery. A Prokosch novel will frequently involve an American or Westerner (or a group of some sort, as in The Seven Who Fled) who is traveling around the world trying to find an identity, only to become acquainted with the seamy underbelly often left unmentioned and unexposed. Whereas a Stegner novel will essentially reveal what seems to me two obvious and less original truisms: (1) humans must come to terms with their past just before passing on; and (2) nature is strong and may consume humanity at a passing whim.

But it is Prokosch’s subtext that speaks to me more. And yet I wonder if this is a fair criticism because what I personally perceive as ambitious may be old hat to a literary traveler. So the rhetorical question I offer is this: Is a novelist worth less if he dares to deal with thematic dead horses? Further, if there are any Stegnerites in the peanut gallery (and there are certainly many in the Bay Area), do you have some hints and/or defenses for how and why to read Stegner?

Technorati Tags: Wallace Stegner, Frederic Prokosch, Gaddis, dead horse, books, literary, themes

Over at the LBC blog, the minority opinion for Case Histories has been unveiled. Unsurprisingly, there’s a good deal of controversy. You’d think that some of us were swing voters resigning from the Supreme Court at the last minute. But I’d like to address the main concern — chiefly, the “solo songs of appreciation and endorsement” that are allegedly sung by Mark Sarvas, Scott Esposito and myself.

Yes, it’s true that the three of us are now playing in an emopunk trio called the Banvilles (with Lizzie occasionally stepping in to provide sleazy lyrics while tying Scott up to the ride cymbal stand). You can catch us every other Tuesday at various nightclubs in Santa Monica. We even have a special performance set for August in Helsinki. But since the band itself has only been together for six months, I think it’s safe to say that nobody is polished enough to embark on a solo career. The problem, beyond the fact that individually and collectively we have very specific tastes that prevent us from performing with “appreciation and endorsement,” is that while we toss books at our audience, the performance highlights are hinged upon mock fistfights between Mark and I that are intended to evoke the animosity of the Gallgher brothers.

No one is injured in these staged battles, but it does get the crowd going. Because most of the audience understands that both the performance and the stage presence are intended to exude a certain informed passion for books and that everyone has different sensibilities. After the end of a performance, the trio gets together to watch a 16mm print of “Free to Be, You and Me” to get the adrenaline out of our system. Sometimes, we share small cartons of milk and give each other hugs that serve as surrogates to mantras of self-affirmation. Opinions are respected and informed dissent is reclaimed.

Really, at the end of the day, it’s the music that counts. And we sincerely hope that most people comprehend that our songs cut across a wide swath of feelings.

If this doesn’t clear anything up, I invite any and all readers to send clothespins (also known as C47s) to my P.O. Box, ideally with an explanatory note if you happen to remain perplexed. I will happily distribute these clothespins on to the appropriate parties so that they can affix these painful items to their nostrils. Hopefully, this will preclude any given LBC member’s nose from staying in the air too long.

Technorati Tags: LBC, clothespins, amateur emopunk, Santa Monica, controversy, explanation, nostrils, Case Histories, Helsinki, Marlo Thomas

• The gang Long Sunday talks with RotR fave China Miéville. Some of the topics discussed: genre, “voracious” narrative, the constraint of plot, and Jane Eyre. And what’s even crazier is that these two interviewers are just getting started. (via Mumpsimus)
• Indisputable proof that JSF is a younger J-Franz: “I remember, as a kid, I used to read the phone book and think that in 100 years, all these people would be dead.” Next thing you know, we’ll be reading a lengthy New Yorker essay about how Heathcliff saved JSF at a young age.
• And speaking of the New Yorker, there’s a lengthy profile of Roald Dahl this week. I’m not sure if I buy the idea that adults have always hated him, particularly when Margaret Talbot doesn’t cite a lot of examples to prove her thesis. If it’s controversy that Talbot is after, I would contend taht Dahl, like any original children’s author, has received no more and no less the amount complaints as Shel Silverstein.
• Blogging: good or bad for authors? The Times is so obsessed with these blogging articles that I’m awaiting the inevitable “Blogging: With Clothes or Without?” article, which should successfully merge their ridiculously genteel approach to the risque with its obsession with blogs as the new voice or the new something.
• And here’s yet another inconsequential Gray Lady correction: “An article on June 10 about criticism of Howard Dean, the Democratic Party chairman, over several derogatory remarks he made about Republicans paraphrased incorrectly from his comment during an appearance in San Francisco. He said that the Republican Party was ‘pretty much a white, Christian party’ – not that it was made up ‘only’ of white Christian conservatives.” You see? Big difference.
• In Korea, blogs are being taken seriously by publishers.
• Bruce Campbell is big on the Dayton, Ohio bestsellers list.
• Another reason to hate Microsoft: they’re spoonfeeding your kids. A new Office add-on, MS Student, offers book summaries of literature and a time management program for homework. It also features a Bill Gates-led instructional video on how to not pay attention and stare vapidly into space, associating the blackboard with the “evil of Apple.”
• There’s a new development in the “chick lit” debate: Christian women.
• H.L. Mencken in defense of the Enoch Pratt Library.
• Proving once again that the Book Babes are advancing culture better than any journalists of our time, we now find them rating the “top 10 fictional hunks.” You know, if you’re going to go down that silly route, why stop there? Why not rate the top 10 fictional penises? My vote goes for Portnoy.
• If litbloggers aren’t havens for kinky librarians, then clearly the wild orgy I had with five librarians over the weekend (which involved being tied up while three of them read excerpts of David Mitchell and the other two serviced me) means I’m doing something wrong.
• And I’d be seriously remiss if I didn’t mention the free download of Kelly Link’s Stranger Things Happen to tie in with the release of Magic for Beginners. To read more on Link, you can check out Gwenda Bond’s interview with her on these pages back in September.

Technorati Tags: Roald Dahl, Kelly Link, China Mieville, JSF, New York Times, Bruce Campbell, chicklit, Mencken, Book Babes, kinky librarians, litbloggers, Howard Dean.

M.J. Rose has put up a list of ten things not to do when publicizing your book. Beyond Rose’s troubling Miss Manners-style tone, as a man who tries to attend several readings a month, there are a few reality alerts that need to be addressed.

1. Most of the people who attend readings are probably not going to be familiar with your book, much less you. They are, as Stanley Elkin repeatedly suggested in George Mills, more likely to be there for the free food and wine. This in itself is not as ignoble as it sounds. Because this understandable impulse is walking hand in hand with some love or curiosity for literature. So it is possible for an author to win potential readers and book buyers over. However, reading your excerpt in a dry somnambulistic tone is not going to do the trick. It is essential for the aspiring author to not just entertain (in a manner that she is comfortable with), but to win potential readers and buyers over to her side. An author may have penned the best novel of the year, but if the author reads without feeling or enthusiasm, if the author doesn’t, say, find her voice within the dialogue of the characters, what then is the point of a reading? That means actually enjoying the book tour process (as much as it detracts you from your writing) or breaking out of the troubled template of reading followed by questions. Why not pick five people out of the crowd to enact certain characters from a book? Or reverse the questioning process. Ask the audience how often they write. Bring strange props or offer to do something nutty if a customer buys a book.

2. With rare exceptions, all press is good press. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. If you are concerned with losing readers because of what you do or because of the tone of your book, then you probably shouldn’t be in this business. The minute that a book is published, it has already lost and found readers. Some folks (like me) may not want to read another self-absorbed memoir written by a middle-aged Caucasian going through a midlife crisis. Some folks may be averse to genre fiction. Some folks simply want to read a Dan Brown novel. If you’re concerned that some people aren’t going to be interested in you, then fuck ’em. Cater to the people who are going to be interested in your type of book. Your goal as an author is to locate the people who will be attracted to your voice and appeal directly to them without compromising who you are.

3. Some people are going to be annoyed with you no matter what you do. I’m not suggesting that authors become outright assholes, but I should point out that if you smile artificially towards someone (or offer passive-aggressive advice lists that reek of inexplicable and unvoiced fury), most humans will know that you’re putting on some kind of act. Find a genuine way to enjoy other people, even the ones you’re uneasy about. Because enthusiasm is infectious and there is always a common ground somewhere. Learn to be curious, courteous, yet remain true to yourself. If there’s some heckler in the crowd (and there will be at some point), responding in a calm, detatched, NPR-sounding way isn’t going to win you respect from yourself or from your reading audience. Find out where the guy’s coming from and don’t take it so personally.

4. For Christ’s sake, go to the trouble of talking with and thanking the booksellers. I’ve heard absolute horror stories from booksellers of certain authors (who shall remain unnamed) who treat the people behind the counter with utter disdain. As if they were dumbass baristas. Newsflash: Booksellers actually fucking read and they determine placement of your book. Besides, most of these folks are very nice. Talk to them, find out what these folks are reading and (here is where I agree with Rose) buy a book or three.

5. To a great degee, it is about you. You penned the book, you showed up, people are there for you. But this doesn’t mean it has be exclusively about you — far from it. So make it a conversation rather than an exposition.

Like the Rake, I’m mystified why no one in Denver has put this smug bastard in his place. Perhaps the concept of “When in Denver, do as the Denverites do” only applies if you get less press than Tom and Katie. But then I like omelets and I also realize that 99% of Jeep drivers aren’t thinking about Nick at Nite every minute they drive. I think it’s safe to say that now there is no way in hell that I’m reading this memoir, even if the book is placed squarely into my hands.

Patricia Storms strikes again. This time, it’s the publishing industry. Even the LBC “controversy” gets sent up. (via Bookdwarf)

• Cory Doctorow’s Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, a very nutty-looking novel about Alan, the son of a mountain and a washing machine, is, like Cory’s other books, available for download under a Creative Commons license.
• Well beyond the war over “chick lit” (a term that, as far as I’m concerned, refers to those tasty square blocks of gum rather than books) is the more visible war over “women’s fiction.” Elizabeth Berg is the latest to complain.
• In an unfortunate scenario straight out of Nicholson Baker’s Double Fold, Matthew J. Bruccoli has put out a $1,000 reward for missing volumes of the Pottsville Journal between 1924 and 1926. On those microfilms are John O’Hara’s early newspaper work. Bruccoli believes that Gibbsville, O’Hara’s infamous town modeled after Pottsville, was formed in this early journalism.
• An NYU academic claims to have figured out how “The Waste Land” was written. Even stranger, it involves the FBI.

Three strikes against Nick Hornby: Stephen Metcalf, TMFTML and Laura Demanski.

We gave up on the man after How to Be Good and suggest you do the same. Let’s put it this way: he’s the Moby of literature.

The two-day weekend, as we know it, is a mere sixty-five years old. More at Ask Yahoo.

Ayelet Waldman: “Every popped light bulb is a catastrophe, every leaky faucet spells if not the end of the world then surely the beginning of months of crack-assed plumbers hunched over my sinks and toilets, flushing my hard-earned dollars down their mysterious drains.”

Will someone get her a good therapist? Save the Chabon family!

Maud pointed out the Neal Pollack/Dave Eggers fracas this morning and made a case for honest criticism.

I don’t have any self-serving magazine manifesto or “woe is me” Eggers-style panegyric to contribute to this argument, but there are two additional misleading statements in the Pollack article that should be pointed out. The first needs to be corroborated, but if it is true, then I will update this post with the rather interesting results. If true, Pollack doesn’t have nearly the sense of humor or “thick skin” that he claims he does.

The second involves Pollack’s misleading statement that he “had a five-figure credit card debt.” As reported here last November, the film rights for Never Mind the Pollacks were sold to Warner Brothers’ Bill Gerber for a mid six-figure sum, somewhere between $250,000 and $500,000 — enough to take out a five-figure credit card debt and more. (This news was, as I recall, originally reported in Publisher’s Lunch. But the deal was also reported in Variety and at Done Deal.)

I don’t care if Pollack is writing under a persona or not. I’ll only say that I’ve enjoyed Pollack’s satire in the past, but find his recent non-satirical work stiff, humorless and far from genuine. If Lenny Bruce or Andy Kaufman came up to you and told you that what they did was an act, would you have as much respect for them in the morning? That’s like telling a four year old kid that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.

Pollack, by his own admission, has settled into yuppified complacency. That’s a shame. Because he’s become about as lively as a tired Catskills comic waiting for the septuagenerians to laugh. This isn’t a “hateful” statement. It’s an honest criticism for a writer who has, to my great sadness, turned chicken.

William S. Morricone-Goldsmith; Joaquin Stick; Enrique Insalada Suavo; “Little” Nell Carter-Mondale; Henrietta Hi-Fi Tapa; Georgia Savannah Cargostygian; Gilbert Fishernie Scale; Christian Muslim Disciple; Patricia Pedunda Removal; Abigail Winslow Flexbreeze; Gershwin Girthloss Waverley; Zachary Payne Lastoo; Faith B. Initiative; Octavia Gregoria Calendar; Jesse James Cleaner; Freddie Friday Freedom; Vernice Itralia Carnal; Ryan Whiskian the Fifth; Huey Louie Dewey; Stephanie Stair Io; Debbie Does Dallas; Ami Amy Amyself; Abby Road Listener; Milford Paperchevy Treedodge; Gino Effyes Emaybee; Connie Artis Tree; Quinten Common Divider; Buster Chops; Carl S. McDonald, Jr.; Dusty Bowler; Jay Kline Mien; Flo Eventia Absentee

Everywhere I go these days, from swank parties to low-key affairs, I see people — charming and intelligent people who should know better — gripping their red plastic cups (and sometimes actual wine glasses) with this godawful ruddy swill called two buck chuck. The whole point of this ghastly red liquid is to get as drunk as fucking possible using as little money as possible. (In this case, two measly dollars.) Which makes it another part of this goddam lofty American ideal: Get there as fast as you can in the cheapest manner possible. To hell with quality, to hell with life, to hell with savoring the moment.

These people have the audacity to call this shit “wine.” As in “Can I pour you some more wine, Ed?”

No, motherfucker. You can pour me a half-decent glass of something with actual taste and texture that I can nurse for an hour while you and the boys get blitzed in minutes. All because this crap is named after a motherfucker named Charles Shaw, whose name sounds suspiciously like a vicious investment banker who takes every dollar in your savings account and leaves in a cloud of dust before he can hand you a receipt.

I have to ask this all-important question: Does it feel good to drink a “wine” whose only real achievement is underpricing cheap Gallo?

I’m no vintner and I’m hardly a wine connoisseur. And the last thing I want to do is advocate that Sideways wine snob bullshit that shows no signs of dying among the hipsters. But I’ve learned over the years that wine isn’t meant to be guzzled. When I taste this shit, it conjures up the unsavory notion of fermented Kool-Aid. And the last thing I need when I’m relaxing is to be reminded of that shifty pitcher-sized son of a bitch with the permanent smile on that bulbous and untrustworthy face.

What makes two buck chuck any difference from grabbing a forty ouncer? If you’re going to inhabit a alcohol paradigm this low, why not drink two buck chuck in a paper bag? While you’re at it, have a glass of this junk to wash down with your crappy Big Mac meal.

If this is about getting trashed (and by the way that people slam their two buck chuck, that’s certainly the ostensible goal), why not bourbon? Hell, why not ether? Drinking two buck chuck feeds into the blotto impulse but it tastes like a poorly mixed girly drink. And the sad thing is that the bartender’s not there to fix it right. It’s the drinking equivalent to a pup staying on the porch while the big dogs play.

Plus, two buck chuck rhymes with “fuck.” Outside of Orangina (as pronounced ni New Jersey), I can’t think of a single successful beverage that rhymed so bluntly with copulative terminology. It’s a wonder that no one has suggested “two buck chuck and a fuck.” That honesty (get trashed, get fucked, wake up with a hangover wondering who the hell this stranger is) would make me feel so much better about the deceit of it all.

So fuck two buck chuck. Fuck it hard.

Me? I’ll be drinking my Kendall Jackson pinot. It’s eight bucks more, but it lasts a whole evening. And when you compare the dollar-to-drinking rate of each (a bottle of two buck chuck in an hour versus a ten dollar bottle of Kendall over five hours), the balance evens out.

“No woman is worth dating, much less talking to, if she can’t name the three major oceans. And if she names the fourth (established a few years ago) or the fifth, then she’s more than okay in my book.” — Me, in email to friend.

I’m currently reading Stanley Elkin’s George Mills, an ambitious and resiliently inventive novel about a family line doomed to failure (all of them are named “George Mills” and extend back a thousand years) and susceptible to the throngs of losers, charlatans and fakes that exploit humanity with kooky get-rich-quick schemes and use the various Millses as lackeys and novitiates. Elkin has a considerable bone to pick with astrologers, con men, and even telethon hucksters like Jerry Lewis. What makes George Mills such an interesting read is that the various George Millses are, not unlike Marquand’s George Apley, satirical characters that are written with a quiet sympathy. One hopes that these characters will see the blinding obstacles which prevent them from taking control of their lives. And yet because the reader knows this type so well, they are almost always doomed to failure or a late recognition of their problems.

I’m fascinated by this type of protagonist, because it doesn’t exactly involve a clear hero or an antihero. (For purposes of clarification, I’ll call this character type a “psuedo-hero.”) The interesting thing about Marquand and Elkin is that, by hanging their novels around psuedo-heroes, they both tapped into a wide reception (Marquand with postwar middle-class readers, Elkin with the critical community), only to drop rapidly out of public consciousness. (Most of Marquand’s work is out of print. Avon put out a series of Elkin trade paperbacks in the mid-nineties, most of which I was able to find years ago in remainder piles.)

Fortunately, Dalkey Archive Press has kept all of Elkin’s work in print. They also have an essay by Rick Moody about Elkin.

• As reported several places, Jonathan Coe has won the Samuel Johnson nonfiction prize for Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson.
• Edward Jones has won this year’s IMPAC award.
• The Blog Story thing is making the rounds. Sarah and Gwenda have offerings.
• In Congo, 1,000 die per day: why isn’t it a news story?
• To hell with Michael Jackson. Apparently, Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde, who is a big fan of Martin Amis, got drunk and attacked him at a book signing. The moral of the story? Celebrities are scarier than regular Joes.
• Ellen Feldman’s new novel speculates on what happened to Peter van Pels, the boy that Anne Frank had a crush on.
• Haruki Murakami still contends that he’s not part of the literary establishment. There’s also some stuff in the article about writing routines and the like.
• It looks like the Village Voice might be taken a cue from the litblogosphere. Not only has their books section included readings, but they’re now sending Ed Park to cover book signings.
• Online dating services are doing big box office in Australia. We’re talking $15 million a year. What’s interesting is that the people who use this dating services (at least in Australia) seem terrified by the idea of meeting someone at a pub. There are some 1,700 services that exist which cater to specific crowds. And now there’s a consumer’s guide available purporting to explain whether these services actually work.
• Tiffany Murray lists her top ten dark comedies.
• Bono on Bono: Must we feed this man’s ego any further by printing a book on this?
• Birnbaum dances with Alma Guillermoprieto.
• And Galleycat gets to the bottom of this whole eBay ARC-selling bidness.

The London Times: “They may look like lovable pets but Britain’s estimated 9m domestic cats are being blamed by scientists for infecting up to half the population with a parasite that can alter people’s personalities….Infected men, suggests one new study, tend to become more aggressive, scruffy, antisocial and are less attractive. Women, on the other hand, appear to exhibit the “sex kitten” effect, becoming less trustworthy, more desirable, fun- loving and possibly more promiscuous.”

Two words: cat ladies.

Enough said.

Roger Waters and Pink Floyd are reuniting. (via Ghost in the Machine)