I’ve sent close to 150 emails tonight and I’m still backed up. If you sent me an email before May 5 about something, give me a buzz and I’ll respond. My profuse apologies for the delay. It’s been busy. But hopefully I’ll make up for it this week.

Pop Matters has kicked off a new column entitled “Bad Librarian.” The column is written by Erik Wennermark, a man who may or may not bite the heads off of small animals. (It all depends on your political persuasion, although, in light of the Patriot Act, we forgive Mr. Wennermark’s paranoia.) In his inaugural column, Wennermark prides himself on being a fake librarian, meaning that he’s man enough to confess that he doesn’t have the full MLS credentials, while pointing out a secret library dogma: don’t rag on the poor bastard’s unreadable take-home load. The Bad Librarian may be bitter, but he hasn’t lost his heart. We’ll be seeing how his column develops.

A blogger, merely worrying about his Japanese report, posted an eerie entry just before he was murdered. Police MeFi)

Neil Gaiman provides the link for a Paypal fund for the noted science fiction satirist Robert Sheckley. Sheckley, as reported here not too long ago, is currently recovering in Kiev from respiratory failure. According to this press release, Sheckley’s condition has improved. His lungs are now clear from infection. But upon his return to the United States, Sheckley will require hospitalization. This is where you come in.

Alternatively, checks to Mr. Sheckley can also be sent to P.O. Box 656, Pine Plains, NY 12567.

(Additional details are available at Sheckley’s website.)

To whit:

• Phil at Collected Miscellany asks whether reading choices are related to the season.
• Anthony Miller

looks into the “summer reading” semantics.

• The Columbus Telegram takes the tone of a schoolmarm, perhaps losing potential summer readers in the process.
• And there are lifelong cognitive advantages to reading during the summer.

To address all of this, I should start by saying from the offset that I view “summer reading” as a load of poppycock. This may have something to do with living in a city where the weather remains fairly consistent year round. But I suspect too that my reading habits stemmed from spending my teenage years living in Sacramento holing myself up with books and films in the coolest indoor environs available. (Because of my pallor, I was known to roast into ruddiness and sometimes burst into flames, thus precluding me from completely enjoying movies where vampires exploded with pyrotechnic splendor along these lines.) So the notion of reading a thick Doestoevsky novel keeping me in a cool place was infinitely more rewarding than hours-long exposure to the sun (although friends, respective of how little effect the strongest sunblock had on me, were kind enough to drag me away).

The real question then is whether climate has any bearing on reading habits. If we are to understand the definitions posited, nice sunshine and wearing little clothing is conducive in some sense towards one reaching for a “beach book,” generally described as a book with little substance, little in the way of grit, and much in the way of lobe-flabbing sensationalism.

I’m not necessarily badmouthing trashy reading or relaxing. Sometimes, it’s necessary to aid a rebound from a synapse-bursting bout with Ulysses. I’m just curious why we’re all intended to, framing the image in literary terms, turn into margarita-sipping idiots for three months.

I suspect the term “beach book” arose from the “summer movie” concept, when seasonal distribution results in Hollywood bombast being deployed in every multiplex from here to Tripoli. But a movie involves a two-hour experience. A 300-page book, at 30 pages or so an hour, might involve an experience that lasts around ten. So if one is submerging one’s self into a book for such a lengthy period of time, why then would one reach for nothing more than comfort reads during a three-month period? Would not instant gratification (or chill time) be better served through the film conduit?

Conversely, if readers are supposed to dumb themselves down for three months, what then is the purpose? Anyone who has ever been in a library for hours at a time knows that, with their far-from-lavish budgets and their malfunctioning heaters, they are just as sweltering as a summer day without a breeze. The temperatures are comparable, but in the library’s case, the results are insufferable. The beach, by contrast, is intended as a comfortable spot to perch up and laze away with a potboiler.

I would ask those who champion the beach book why they are content to champion a dull novel in a comfortable environment. Surely, if a reader is placed in a comfortable clime, he will be more relaxed and perhaps more willing to exert his mind into a William Gaddis novel.

Does it not then make sense to champion robust and multi-layered epics as beach book candidates?

Said Laurie Anderson: “She tells a story about asking Thomas Pynchon whether she could turn his novel Gravity’s Rainbow into an opera. He said yes, but only if it was played on one instrument: the banjo. ‘Some people have the nicest ways of saying no.'”

[RELATED NEWS: Holy cow! The new Bookforum will be a special issue on Pynchon. Hat tip: Rake and Derik.]

If you’re like me, you avoid CliffsNotes with a passion and go out of your way to remember pedantic book details that the slackers salivating over those by-chapter summaries in those hideous yellow pamphlets will never possibly account for. (For example, I still remember almost two decades after I read Animal Farm that Napoleon was a Berkshire boar.) If you’re also like me, you’re probably curious about who this Cliff character was, the man who opened Pandora’s box back in the day.

Fortunately, Ask Yahoo! has some of the details. It seems that the Cliff in question is one Cliff Hillegass. Mr. Hillegass, who died a few years ago at the age of 83, was a disciple of the “self-starter” school of thought. That’s all fine and dandy, until one considers that being a “self-starter” extends into the unfortunate realm of Dale Carnegie.

But no matter. Hillegass, it seems, was a grad student in geology and physics working as a college representative for Long’s College Bookstore. Cliff cultivated contacts, like many a successful businessman. But here’s the interesting thing: the CliffNotes summary idea was actually pilfered from Canadians!

In the golden days before 1958, when one could walk into an American bookstore without being tempted and when one was forced to discern meaning on text alone, it was a man named Jack Cole (not to be confused with the creator of Plastic Man) who had offered Cole’s Notes for Canadian consumption. And it was Cole who planted the seed during a fateful conversation with Cliff that provided the yellow-backed lifeblood, the idea that was unapologetically cribbed, for many an intellectual deviant during the next fifty years.

Hillegass tried to sell the Nebraska Book Company on the idea. They passed. So Cliff borrowed $4,000 from the bank and began unleashing the beasties from his basement in Lincoln. He started with 16 Shakespearian titles, made a bit of money, and the rest is history. Eventually, in 1998, Hillegass sold his enterprise to IDG for more than $14 million.

To be fair to the original Cliff, he did repeatedly point out that his notes “are not a substitute for the text itself…and students who attempt to use them in this way are denying themselves the very education that they are presumably giving their most vital years to achieve.” Cliff did genuinely love literature, gave $250,000 to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for an English chair and was really into rare lamps and sculpture gardens. But despite Cliff’s quirkiness and generosity, his statement is a bit like telling a pyromaniac with a lighter that he should probably use the disposable Bic in a judicious manner.

Of Jack Cole’s fate, I can find no trace. But I plan to find out what happened to the Cliff before the Cliff. For if he is the true originator and Cliff the mere opportunitist, then we now have another equitable reason to blame Canada.

It’s a sad time for San Francisco cinema. The Roxie is at death’s door. But unlike the bailout in 2002, this time, it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, unless some enterprising person gives Bill Banning $140,000 in the next 45 days.

This comes not long after the Coronet, the finest single-screen theatre for blockbusters, died a few months ago.

So what’s left? Well, I’ve never given the Castro a dime ever since the owners fired programmer Anita Monga last year and replaced the calendar with safe repertory programming. If the Roxie goes, the only decent single-screen theatres left will be the Balboa and the Red Vic.

Three single-screen theatres compromised in one year alone speaks ill of the future.

• Paul Collins has unearthed a new scandal. It seems that author Misha Defonseca was denied royalties for her Holocaust memoir, Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years. A state appeals court upheld a $22.5 million award to Defonseca and her ghostwriter, Vera Lee of Newton. The specific publisher was Mount Ivy Press, founded by Jane Daniel. The court docket for the case can be found here. While Judge Kantrowitz’s opinion is not yet posted, it appears that the judgment amount may have been amended. The question here is whether $22.5 million was genuinely withheld from the two writers or whether the damages might be punitive. (via Moby Lives)
• Scott Esposito talks with Richard McCann.
• If Bill Clinton’s memoir wasn’t plodding enough, the paperback version will have additional pages. But get this: the extra pages are being added to acknowledge the criticisms about length. Isn’t that a bit like lighting up a cigarette in front of a cancer patient after you’ve been repeatedly asked to put it out?
• Apparently, David Cronenberg wasn’t even in the running for the Palme d’Or for his new film, A History of Violence. As a Cronenberg fan, I blame Toni Morrison.
• The University of Texas, now in the business of withholding books and volumes from undergraduates, will be getting Norman Mailer’s archives. The archives will be shipped with a full-scale reproduction of Mailer’s ego for articulate Third Wave feminists to whittle down in a nanosecond.
• The “dead white male” reading list debate has been revived on the East Coast. But it appears that some teachers may be playing the multicultural card because Great Expectations is too hard for some students to read and because dense books like Heart of Darkness can’t be taught by teachers, even after playing the film Apocalypse Now in class. One reading list replacement is John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Irving is inarguably white and male and some might argue that he is dead on page.
• A $53,609 check was awarded to Claire Tomkin, a 21 year old fiction writer. The Sophie Kerr Award is the largest undergraduate literary award in the nation.

A new adaptation of Macbeth is in the works. But this one has some interesting casting. Jennifer Connelly, whose beauty and talent often causes me to curl up into a fetal position, will play Lady Macbeth and Philip Seymour Hoffmann will play the infamous murderer. Todd Luiso is attached to direct. The film promises to be “a different kind of Shakespeare”. But whether this means Baz Luhrmann bombast or West Side Story, it’s difficult to say. However, Luiso might be just the guy to do this, given that he previously directed a film adaptation of Tom Stoppard’s short play, The Fifteen Minute Hamlet. (via Romancing the Tome)

1. The person (or persons) who passed the baton to you.

The trusty Tito Perez — whom I wish I had run into while at Coachella.

2. Total volume of music files on your computer.

Somewhere in the area of 40 Gigs, although it could be quite more than that. I have a horrible tendency to put everything in one place, which includes music I buy, music I — *ahem* — try out, and music that slips into my hands at gunpoint.

3. The title and artist of the last CD you bought.

This Perfect Day, C-60. As some regular readers know, I’m madly addicted to Swedish rock. (The Shout Out Louds, for example, was one of Coachella’s highlights. And I sung along to almost every song!) For whatever reason, Swedish rock contains a sense of purity that really needs to be explored and understood more. And in the Shout Out Louds’ case, I can’t think of anyone else willing to use xylophone so unapologetically in a live set. My guess is that it has something to do with Systembolaget, which I’ve yet to try. But I’d hazard a guess that drinking the stuff would probably make me pick up my guitar again and write cheery goofball songs.

4. Song playing at the moment of writing.

Doves, “Ambition” (a supremely sad song from a very good album, Some Cities)

5. Five songs you have been listening to of late (or all-time favorites, or particularly personally meaningful songs)

I’ll stick with the songs in my head at the moment:

M.I.A., “Bucky Down Gun” (Really, how can anyone resist this track? Old school hip-hop mixed with crazed banshee-like rapping, a clarion call that is deliberately artificial and lyrics that demand a call to revolution, which seems particularly apposite in our current political clime.)

Nine Inch Nails, “You Know What You Are?” (Look, I’ll confess that With Teeth is a spotty album and that even a cursory examination of this song’s lyrics shows that Reznor makes little sense. But I still contend that Trent Reznor shrieks “fuck” perhaps better than most. And somehow, I’ve really come to appreciate that crazy-as-fuck percussion.)

Of Montreal, “Oslo in the Summertime” (Thank you, Kevin Barnes, for yet another addictive album, The Sunlandic Twins, that sneaks up on you after several weeks of listening. What’s particularly striking about this track is the semi-electro tone mixed with the languorous Ray Davies feel to the lyrics. The first time I heard this song, I was mildly annoyed by the buzzy timbre. The third time, I had a goofy grin on my face. And now the song just won’t go away.)

Doves, “Almost Forgot Myself” (I don’t think I’ll ever hear a track this year as uncoditionally directional as this one is this year. This may be the best use of a percussive clang in a pop song since the Beatles’ “Everyone’s Got Something to Hide Except For Me and My Monkey.” Plus, it sums up what’s so fantastic about the Doves: a moribund tune in a minor key driven by a defiant snare and a guitar fuzz that involves carrying on in the face of existential chaos.)

Royksopp, “Eple” (What is it about Nordic pop exactly? I’ve been relistening to Melody A.M. for the first time in about two years, and hoping that these folks might get me crazy about electronica again. This track, in particular, which offers a goofy downbeat drive just this short of mellow without coming across as yet another pretentious ambient nightmare designed for the New Age, Air-listening crowd.)

6. The five people to whom you will ‘pass the musical baton’

Maud Newton, who I hope will remind me about the importance of guitars
The Old Hag, because I’m damn curious about what she’s listening to these days
Mark Sarvas, because I know there’s more than meets the eye to his audio palette than certain CM-lead bands that get too much airplay
Speedy Snail, because he’s been considerably silent on the musical question (and I blame his insane devotion to Neal Stephenson)
Scott Esposito, because he’s younger than me and probably has a better set of ears than I do

If you’re coming here from James Callan’s Telegraph article (not yet available online), welcome. I’m not certain how accurate he was about calling this place “an addictive mix of urbane musings and taut riffs against the pack mentality of the traditional book-reviewing press,” but I’m honored nonetheless.

Callan is absolutely right about the panties, however. Callan got the info out of me only because he was an affable gent who asked a lot of interesting questions. I never announced the panties here, because I feared that this would invite more packages of panties to the P.O. Box. (Frankly, I’m more interested in panties that are worn on ladies and, if the mood is right, slid down sinuous legs, ideally with a soul attached. All this is the aftermath of a remarkably repressed upbringing, in which the very mention of sex was enough to cause melodramatic pronouncements of surprise, if not flames to spontaneously burn onyx sppors through my bedroom. The many Victorian novels I read growing up certainly didn’t help things.) But perhaps one day, I’ll offer a rundown of the odder packages I’ve received over the past year.

If you thought that Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident, brother, have I got a serious wakeup call for you.

Read this. Then come back here.

The people in charge are letting inhuman monsters perform acts that fly in the face of decency. Ask yourself if you would treat your worst enemy this way. And ask again if you would let such a corrupt gang of goons eke out such vile and despicable acts on other humans. But the key part of the article, the thing that goes far and beyond simple hatred for the enemy is this paragraph:

It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

This is not a matter of being red state or blue state. This is not a matter of being liberal or conservative. This is a matter of being American and standing up for what’s right. And that sure as hell doesn’t involve denying a manacled man water or humiliating a man far beyond the call of mere Saddam underwear pictures or letting a man die because he was a cab driver who happened to be wandering around in the wrong area.

I got the link from this Metafilter thread. It was suggested by the posters that this article and that this information be distributed to churches. Churches, as most people know, are the congregation points for many who live in the heartland. They are instrumental in disseminating information to ordinary people and promoting decency. And I think that anyone reading that article would be hard-pressed to argue that what we have here is something that speaks beyond the realm of what is decent and germane.

Inspired by the thread, this afternoon, I sent a group fax of the article to ten churches in Alabama, thinking that a state that had a history of bombing a church and killing four little girls back in 1963 because of the color of their skin might be more receptive to the current plight, which involves torturing and letting people die because of the color of their skin.

But within this idea lies the potential to take back this country. I urge anyone reading this blog to send a copy of this article by fax or by mail (keep in mind that hard copies offer a physical quality which cannot be easily deleted and that not everyone in this nation is hooked to the Net) to churches of varying stripes and distinctions.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of churches in this country. Even if we were to reach just one, we would plant a seed demanding greater accountability for our government’s actions.

Apologies for being down and out for the count. Back in the day, we made the mistake of registering our domain with Network Solutions and it took several angry words to explain to the unhelpful little bastard on the phone that we had been screwed over by his company and that the company itself hadn’t bothered to send us any notice that we hadn’t renewed this domain. So if you emailed us lately, we didn’t get it. (Of course, our backlog and response rate is so embarassing that we apologize for this too.)

And while we’re at it, we’ve got to stop using first person plural. Last we heard, we hadn’t been coronated by anyone. And in fact, the last time we played checkers, we recall very clearly never being crowned once.

All this is to say that we apologize for the delay and we offer a return to ferreting out the finest literary news of our time.

Apparently, your blog can now be turned into a PDF book.

Guy mails camera through postal service, guy instructs USPS workers to take pictures. To guy’s surprise, postal workers fulfill their end of a nutty Faustian bargain. There’s even a cameramail schematic to boot if you’d like to try this experiment yourself.

A Private Shack
A Soul Apart
A Ryder Rental
Plimpton’s Enigma
Won’t Sell Out
George is Holding on Line Five
Revue Review
Lit My Fire
Lit Me Darkly
Lit Me Beer Me Seduce Me
Literary Merlot
Tales for George
Tower of Richard Powers
Surrender, Dorothy Parker
Bridgid’s Bitchin’ New Mag
Hughes & Plimpton: Together Again
The Peoria Review
The Paris Review Review
Melt My Tallow
The Disbeliever
The Atlantic’s Remains
Kiss Me, Short Story
Do What You Like
Do Like You Do
Mr. Do’s Literary Castle
Slush Puppy Pile
Form Acceptance Letter
We Put the Ink in Slink
SweecMeeney’s
Quarterly Schmarterly
A Public Bus Shelter
A Public Telephone
A Public Television Pledge Drive
We Pay Writers, They Don’t
Playstory
A Private Cache
A Private Privacy
A Public Privacy
A Public Space

• Scott wants to know: What is the literary mainstream?
• In Seattle, the Tiny Ninja Theatre has concocted a plastic toy version of Hamlet.
• Viggo and Cronenberg sitting in a tree.
• Jim Fergus has had enough of personal details about authors. The Rake (and others) have their own thoughts on this question.
• Tod Goldberg takes Writer’s Digest‘s 101 Best Websites for Writers to task.
• What’s your favorite word not in the dictionary? (via Book Ninja)
• And be careful where you order those Amazon used books. A Los Angeles woman found the words “Death to all Muslims” on the inside cover when she received her shipment. (via Moby Lives)

Former Paris Review editor Brigid Hughes (Plimpton’s short-lived successor) will be launching a new magazine. What’s particularly cool is that she’s enlisted Richard Powers (one of my favorite living novelists) and Yiyun Li as contributing editors. Hughes is also reportedly luring away Paris Review contributors for the new venture, which will be called A Public Space. This reporter is certainly curious to see how this will all turn out.

1. Amazing as this may seem, in Revenge of the Sith, George Lucas does recapture the Saturday matinee cliffhanger feel of the IV-VI trilogy. (In fact, characters hang from ledges fairly frequently in this film.)

2. George Lucas has no business writing love scenes. Mr. Lucas grasps intimacy about as well as I grasp Fermat’s theorems. And while said scenes are in short supply in Sith, they are about as egregious as it comes.

3. Obi-Wan rides one of the coolest Star Wars creatures since the Tauntaun.

4. So what the hell, George? What’s with the despicable gender gap in the Star Wars universe? The only chicks we have are Padme (quite literally, a barefoot and pregnant Ophelia archetype) and one token Jedi chick who gets eviscerated in seconds. Further, all the younglings are white and male, supporting my theory that the Republic/Empire represents a strange eugenics-inspired confluence of Nazi Germany and late 20th Century America. (Factor in the Germanic-sounding Vader and it all becomes self-evident.)

5. Jar Jar appears, but does not speak. But he is not flayed alive, as he rightfully should be, during one pivotal massacre.

6. The transformation of Anakin into Vader is very cool and very Return of the King-inspired.

7. I actually enjoyed the gradual black eye shadow applied to Hayden Christensen as the film went on. But while Christensen delivered a less cringe-worthy performance than the last film, he was again very silly and over-the-top near the end. Fortunately, through Ewan McGregor’s sneaky underplaying, the film’s denouement wasn’t completely demolished by Christensen’s histrionics.

8. Believe it or not, there was a minimum of Lucas’ environmental clutter. It was a relief to finally watch a film in which I didn’t have to pay attention to 6,000 CGI elements at once.

9. The traditional Star Wars dissolves weren’t nearly as intrusive as they were in the last two films.

10. The so-called “darkness” wasn’t nearly as “dark” as Lucas made it out to be. Certainly not Empire Strikes Back-dark and certainly not worth a PG-13 rating.

11. I have to ask: Does the Jedi Council just cavalierly sit by as one of its members kills an unarmed man? I mean, call me crazy, but if I were a member of the Jedi Council and some snotty little kid did that on my watch, I’d box his ears. It doesn’t take “the Force” to second-guess an asshole.

12. I’m not sure who was the genius who casually suggested to George that people often use contractions in their speech, but thank fucking god. Contractions go a long way to improving Lucas’ wooden dialogue. (ANAKIN: “I sense Count Dooku.” OBI-WAN: “I sense a trap.”)

13. Wookie Planet! Yes!

14. Yoda’s Jedi moves have improved considerably. He no longer resembles Sonic the Hedgehog, largely because Lucas is wise to keep Yoda’s back flips in long shot.

15. When lightsabers don’t have the allure they once had, what do you do? You have a cool fight scene where one character wields four of them.

16. R2D2 finally has character again! He beeps, he’s active, and he zaps people. I had completely forgotten R2D2’s charm, which hasn’t been seen since the first trilogy.

17. Jimmy Smits, are you going to fall asleep? Jimmy Smits, are you going to fall asleep?

18. Inconsistent is Yoda’s grammar, yes? Put to rest, the tired green guy.

19. Despite wars, revolutions and political upheaval, traffic apparently does not stop in the Star Wars universe. Just another day on the flying car bypass. Move along.

20. Finally, a compelling scene in the Senate chamber! Who knew that the place would be more interesting once the talking stopped?

Three stars. Mabuse says check it out.

The short answer: Good, not great. Far superior to Episodes I and II. Fun, far more imaginative than I expected. A more detailed report to follow. Now: To bed.

British MP George Galloway demonstrated what a politician can and should be doing in response to the shoddy ad decidedly undemocratic groupthink that passes for political discourse in this nation. By comparison, the Donkeys continue to come across as weak-kneed cowards. Nancy Pelosi’s ethical standards is a nice idea, but it still won’t demonstrate to the blank-eyed Little Orphan Annies who voted last November what political action is all about. Galloway is an inspiring yet sad reminder that there was a time when conviction not only meant something, but was absolutely essential to the political process. By my calculations, we are now less than eighteen months from midterm elections. Yet where is the mobilization? Where are the grassroots campaigns? What is the strategy to at least get a house or two back come November 2006?

I see nothing in the cards. Nothing in the way of commitment, nothing in the way of thinking forward, nothing in the way of divergent viewpoints. It’s a sad time indeed to be a principled progressive. Paul Robeson, a ghost playing through my speakers, bellows on repeat.

Roger Ebert has been offering some good coverage of Cannes, butin this entry, Ebert reveals something quite interesting:

…it reminded him that Stanley Kubrick sometimes drove up in front of the houses of his friends, talked to them on his cell phone, and then drove away “without seeing a single person.” I was not sure about the purpose of this anecdote, but I was happy to hear it.

This may be a colossal mistake, but somehow I’ve been roped into the 12:01 AM Revenge of the Sith show.

Regular readers of Return of the Relutant know that while I have fond childhood memories of Episodes IV-VI, if I had to choose between one of the two bloated mainstream sci-fi Hollywood franchises (as all Americans must do), I would lean towards Star Trek (discounting anything beyond Deep Space Nine, because that hot Tasha person was right you see when she said it NEVER happened!).

Yet I’m heading into this bastard, no doubt contributing my hard-earned ten bucks for another rumpus room on George Lucas’ palatial estate (the evil bastard is laughing at us!), because (a) I sat through the other two crappy movies and if I’m to be disappointed by a trilogy, I may as well go the distance and (b) if I get through this movie, whose climax and outcome is as predictable as a bad prix fixe menu, I will have the grand consolation of never having to experience Star Wars in any form again.

So look to these pages at some point on Thursday morning and you’ll get a no-holds-barred assessment on Sith from Dr. Mabuse. Will it be another steaming piece of turd (“That is the sound of a lot of bad cash coming our way!”) or will it be, as some reviews have indicated, an unexpected point of redemption? Will that Jar Jar bastard die? Will Anakin and Padme get it on with all the explicitness of a Bollywood movie? Probably, to the last question. But your humble reporter hopes to answer these hard questions (and many more).