Since I’ve received a few emails on the subject, the rumors are indeed true. I’ll be at BookExpo America this year, where I’ll be covering the event and the panels with gusto. If you’re interested in hooking up sometime while I’m in New York, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

As noted by Ron, the LBC will also be having a party on Thursday night at the Slipper Room on Thursday, June 2nd between 6-8 PM. Several of your favorite bloggers (including me) will be there. So do feel free to say hello.

If you’re wondering about the LBC nominations, at the main site, I’ve given some clues to folks who are wondering about the titles.

• Ian Rankin describes a week in his life, and it’s about as routine as Rebus.
• The rights to Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down have been sold. Hornby has earned enough to add a west wing to his home. Will he remember the little people?
• Ms. Chicha deconstructs the strange trend of legs and shoes on current covers.
• Forget historical integrity. There’s a plan in Salem to erect a Bewitched statue at the busiest intersection. Residents are understandably miffed. After all, the least this statue can offer is a twitching nose.
• Maybe this is the literary video game folks are championing: Sony has one in the works based on The Tale of Genji.
• Librarians are employing comics to get kids to read. It was either that or free ice cream.
• John Updike reviews Mo Yan’s Big Breast & Wide Hips. We’re positive the title had nothing to do with his selection.
• Search Engine Watch compares the current book search engines.
• Ed Levine scarfed down 1,000 slices of pizza to research his book. He also filed a petition to change his last name to Pepperoni.
• More on Wasserman: He’s heading back to publishing. The gang at LA Observed also has the memo issued.

Mitch Albom has apologized for fabricating his column. Where other columnists would be sacked on the spot, Albom, by contrast, has been permitted to continue his career. What’s particularly interesting are the parallels between Albom’s apologetic column and Richard Nixon’s famous “Checkers” speech from 1952:

STEP ONE: Repeat An Adjective Three Times for Emphasis

NIXON: “I say that it was morally wrong if any of that $18,000 went to Senator Nixon for my personal use. I say that it was morally wrong if it was secretly given and secretly handled. And I say that it was morally wrong if any of the contributors got special favors for the contributions that they made.”
ALBOM: “I felt terrible for the mistake, terrible that my newspaper had to take heat, terrible that my editors were besieged.”

STEP TWO: Acknowledge Yourself as a Public Servant With a Clipped Sentence

NIXON: “I come before you tonight.”
ALBOM: “I write for you.”

STEP THREE: Declare That the Battle Isn’t Over With a Stunning Statement of Personal Strength

NIXON: “But let me just say this last word. Regardless of what happens I’m going to continue this fight.”
ALBOM: “And know this: Just as you can’t assume the future, you can’t always assume human nature.”

STEP FOUR: Underplay the Sin

NIXON: “Every penny of it was used to pay for political expenses that I did not think should be charged to the taxpayers of the United States. It was not a secret fund.”
ALBOM: “I made a careless mistake in a column. It wasn’t malicious. It didn’t harm the subjects. But it was factually incorrect in four paragraphs.”

STEP FIVE: Refer to Past as “Dark”

NIXON: “I remember in the dark days of the Hiss case…”
ALBOM: “The last three weeks have been the darkest yet most enlightening of my professional life. The dark part is obvious.”

STEP SIX: Respond with Subtle Libertarian Ethical Statement

NIXON: “Every penny of it was used to pay for political expenses that I did not think should be charged to the taxpayers of the United States.”
ALBOM: “Besides, in 20 years of doing this column, I have never written for those people.”

Laila notes that Michael Standaert’s book-length examination of the Left Behind series will be published by the good folks at Soft Skull.

It was too hot to handle for Tanenhaus, but Maud has the goods on a Chris Lehmann essay on Houghton-Mifflin’s “best of” collections.

We haven’t performed our Tanenhaus Brownie Watch yet, but since we’ve discovered that Tanenhaus isn’t interested in critical essays that offer clear arguments and bare a few teeth, we apply a Brownie Bitchslap Factor of -.5 points towards the next test.

Steve Wasserman has resigned from the Los Angeles Times. Wasserman edited the weekly book review section.

The Times staff was informed on Friday. Apparently, Wasserman was upset about not being able to flex his independence and issued an ultimatum. He was particularly concerned with the scrutiny being applied by top brass. His last day is reported to be May 13.

But the question here, given Wasserman’s temperament, is whether this was a fait accompli, albeit a slow one. What’s amazing is that Wasserman has remained something of an outspoken rabble-rouser over the years and yet until Mark started holding Wasserman’s feet to the fire on a weekly basis, I don’t think any of us outside of Los Angeles really had a sense of how little of Wasserman’s fire ended up on the Times‘ pages. If it really was an internecine battle that Wasserman couldn’t win, then the big question was why Wasserman stayed on board like some masochist? And the bigger question is whether Wasserman’s replacement will be able to have a less tempestuous relationship with the managing editors.

Is the Los Angeles Times‘ book section a lost cause? The time has come for Mr. Sarvas weigh in on this question.

RELATED LINKS:

• The Elegant Variation: Home of the LATBR Thumbnail.
• 1996 interview with Wasserman during happier times: just before he landed the LATBR gig.
• Wasserman two years in: facing criticism from many sides.
• Wasserman on the LATBR bestsellers list.

(lead via Sarah)

• The Seoul International Forum of Literature begins this week. Among the dignitaries attending are Kenzaburo Oe, Orhan Pamuk and Margaret Drabble.
• A local movie theatre in Australia seats just 22 people and is well in the running for the world’s smallest cinema. If I had to be an usher, I wouldn’t mind cleaning the minor mess. If I had to be a movie theatre manager, I’d welcome the easy challenge of selling out a show. But if I had to be a moviegoer here, I’d hope there was enough legroom.
• The Shusters, a new comic book award handed out to Canadians, were handed out on Saturday. There’s just one problem: it’s not too difficult to be a Canadian under the rules. Joe Matt, for example, is Canadian because he lived there for 12 years. Next thing we know, anyone who’s ever ordered spaghetti at Mrs. Vanellis will be considered one of Canada’s own.
• Carson McCullers is still being appreciated in Ohio Georgia. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Gag removed, as idiot editor mixed up Ohio with Georgia. Thanks, Matt!]
• I’m all for free expression, but I have to ask: Video games have literary value? If there’s a metaphor in getting repeatedly fragged by a fifteen year old, I’d like to know. Better arguments, folks.
• Can a name shape a child’s destiny? Why, yes. Just ask anyone with a twenty syllable first name.

I’m operating on about eight hours of sleep over the past seventy-two. The Brownie Watch will have to wait. What I can offer right now is a brief rundown of Coachella on Sunday.

It was an insane plan by just about any assessment. But sometimes when the cosmos are aligned (the concert I was planning on seeing Sunday night got canceled, as did my book club on Saturday afternoon, and by some miracle, we obtained tickets for Coachella), you have to roll with the unexpected pulse of life.

The plan was this: Fly down to see my sister and company, see my good buddy’s band on Satuday night, get home at some unknown twilight hour and then head to Coachella the next morning. What we didn’t count on was getting back at 12:30 AM, which left me catching about three and a half hours of sleep, boarding a plane at an ungodly hour on Monday morning (which involved an unexpectedly long security line and sprinting to the other end of the airport with a heavy book-laden bag to catch my fight a mere three minutes before takeoff), and then getting back in the City just in time for the day job. On time, natch.

I highly recommend this mode of life to anyone. In hindsight, I’m now pondering how I was able to rationalize such a precarious schedule. But it was the music, dammit. I’m now firmly convinced that I will do almost anything for art.

Right now, there are fantastic aches in my body from dancing like a twenty-two year old for around twelve hours. But it was worth it. And I’d do it again in a second. You’ll find me camping at Coachella next year.

I managed to get in about ten bands while I was there. I was unable to take any notes because the security goons confiscated my pen (and yet didn’t confiscate the card game I brought for us, go figure). So I’m relying entirely on memory.

Shout Out Louds: I’m convinced that Swedish rock these days is among the purest pop music being produced. And the Shout Out Louds demonstrated that they were every bit an adorable band live. I’ve loved this guys ever since I heard their EP. And yet they never seem to tour Northern California — that whole Atlantic Ocean thing probably being something of an obstacle for them. Of course, the one time they did make it to San Francisco, I was foolish enough to miss them at Slim’s. But no matter. Imagine a Smiths/Replacements sort of sound headed by a quavering vocalist with a deliberately loose command of English (and, no, Pop Matters, you’re missing the point inviting comparisons to Robert Smith; it’s the sunny uncertainty that’s endearing) and a xylophonist puncutating the rocking beat. The Shout Out Louds were plagued by tuning problems and they were a bit nervous, but that didn’t stop them from putting on an energetic show. They’re a tight band who clearly love what they’re doing. Plus, wearing suspenders on stage is always a good thing in my book.

There may be a certain kitsch factor that the Shout Out Louds are employing as a crutch. But I don’t see how anyone with a heart can resist “My Friend and the Ink on His Fingers,” which concerns a guy concerned about the potentially poisonous ink on his fellow friend’s fingers.

Donavon Frankenreiter: Having heard some of Frankenreiter’s chillout tunes in advance, I was expecting an unfortunate Josh Rouse sort of band. But while I didn’t get to see much Frankenreiter (the sun was too nice and the ground too comfortable), I can definitely say that his band offered a decidedly 1970s groove and that the drummer, in particular, knew how to bang out a solo. The best part of Frankereiter’s set was the last twenty minutes, where Frankenreiter decided to groove continuously in a way that too many indie pop bands are afraid of — which is to say, with a relaxed improvisational feel and carefree gusto. These were guys to fire up a joint to. And many folks did. My aforementioned buddy (the drummer for Deep Haze) was transfixed as these guys played. I can offer no better review. Joe Sleep Deficit says check ’em out.

Matthew Dear: At this point, we decided that a little electronica and dancing were in order (or rather I clandestinely suggested Matthew Dear as an option). Dear’s stuff is house-based, but with an emphasis on crisp high-pitched synths and unapologetic noise. It isn’t entirely revolutionary. (And, indeed, I would suspect that Dear came a little late to the electronica scene than he should have.) But it represented yet another subgenre of electronica that I couldn’t categorize and had me dancing like a clueless suburban white boy.

M.I.A.: Take trip-hop beats and merge them with a capella reggae. And you get some remote sense of who M.I.A. is all about. Frankly, I could have heard these ladies sing for hours. The way they end their “Hellos” and clip their vowels and then transmute these into some exotic banshee cry from Madagascar had me absolutely hypnotized. This is not your MoKenStef girly girl crap, dig? Must buy album.

The Futureheads: I only caught about four songs, largely because the gang wanted to see Tegan and Sara (the Canadian answer to Sixpence None the Richer, though not as one-note). They were tight, but came across as an engaging Franz Ferdinand knockoff, though without the quirk. “Meantime,” in particular, was a rollicking track. But their efforts to get the audiene involved with a game fell flat. I much preferred Dogs Die in Hot Cars, who I saw a few weeks ago at the Great American Music Hall. The lesson to be learned here is that if you’re going to ape the current trend, at least have a dangerous sense of humor.

Tegan and Sara: I thought this was a Doctor Who tribute band. But it was yet another folky duo. To their credit, they weren’t as treacly as I thought they’d be. And they were fighting the glare of the setting sun. Their gossipy stage banter and adenoid voices had me wondering if I was at a sock hop. What I can say is that they’re better than Sixpene None the Richer, but not as good as No Doubt.

The Arcade Fire: Fuck me, these guys are great live. Band members constantly change instruments. Percussionists climb the rafters and bang their sticks on metal. Band members are chased through emotionally poignant songs, to remind some of the stiffs that humor hasn’t escaped them. And you’d be hard-pressed to argue that any set ending with the bassist attacked by a cloak, lying seemingly dead on the stage at song’s end, is a bad thing.

The Arcade Fire was accompanied by two violinists who made “Crown of Love” sound bigger than I expected it to be live. They played “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” at about time and a half the tempo. I said it last year and I’ll say it this year: these guys are the next Radiohead and an extremely exciting band to watch. If they show up in your town, see them while they still play mid-sized venues. And if the Aracade Fire is too “mellow” to be classified as indie pop, then fuck you, fuck you sir very much. You can have your crappy, moribund Fiery Furances live act any night of the week. What counts these days is a band that is good in the studio and live. And it doesn’t matter how “comfortable” or “mellow” the music is. Besides, they’ve only put out one album and they’re Canadian. Which probably explains things.

New Order: I can say without a doubt that Coachella is the last big show that New Order is likely to play. Let’s say you’re a has-been 1980s band and you want to make a comeback. Do you (a) embrace the old material for a few songs, winning the audience into your favor so that you can unleash the new stuff on them or (b) mope around on stage like a bitter old man and complain about video cameras “getting my tits off” when you’re in front of about 30,000 people waiting for Nine Inch Nails?

Well, if I were New Order, I’d choose (a). If you’re a band trying to make a comeback and you haven’t had a hit in at least ten years, then my feeling is that you sure as hell better resort to canon if you hope to keep the aging remains of your fan base.

But if you’re an idiot like singer Bernard Summer, you choose (b) and blow your shot. You perform lifelessly and have an utterly bitter expression on your face when you have to perform “Blue Monday” for the umpteenth time.

I wish I can say I felt sorry for New Order. The only member of the group who put something into his show was the bassist. Was it Peter Hook? If so, that would explain a lot.

But it was clear that New Order was there expecting to be loved. And they made a tragic mistake putting all the new material up front. The songs were crap and it was only when the old stuff played that they received staggering applause. It was as automatic a reaction as the autopilot these has-beens were riding on. The funny thing was that New Order didn’t really want their fame enough to have it.

Nine Inch Nails: See previous entry. See Trent live. Pretty much the same set, except he performed the title track from With Teeth this time around, helping me in large part to better appreciate the song.

[UPDATE: Word on the street is that Tito has video of the Arcade Fire.]

Back from Coachella. Sleep deprived, relaxed, NYTBR unread. More later.

Moby Lives‘ latest column features an interview with Paul Maliszewski. Maliszewski reveals that he didn’t talk to NYT reporter Alex Mindlin because “something wasn’t right” and clarifies his motivations behind the Bookforum article, pointing out that his interest was more in exposing the exploitation of Chabon’s fabricated tale.

N+1 also weighs in, taking an in-depth look at the effect of Chabon’s lecture.

Steven Johnson says that television makes you smarter:

During its 44 minutes — a real-time hour, minus 16 minutes for commercials — the episode connects the lives of 21 distinct characters, each with a clearly defined ”story arc,” as the Hollywood jargon has it: a defined personality with motivations and obstacles and specific relationships with other characters. Nine primary narrative threads wind their way through those 44 minutes, each drawing extensively upon events and information revealed in earlier episodes. Draw a map of all those intersecting plots and personalities, and you get structure that — where formal complexity is concerned — more closely resembles ”Middlemarch” than a hit TV drama of years past like ”Bonanza.”

The important distinction is that Mary Anne Evans didn’t have anyone as obnoxious as Kiefer Sutherland in mind when penning her tale. Nor did she throw in absurd subplots involving explosions, torture and the obligatory Kiefer scowl. If Jack Bauer is a “personality,” then Best of the Best 2 is last century’s answer to Thackeray’s The History of Henry Esmond.

Dear Oprah:

Some writers have kneeled down in front of you and asked you to kiss their rings. They have implored you to revive the Oprah Book Club that many book lovers grew to tolerate in much the same way that a seven year old contends with lima beans. That is to say with obscene crying, childish temper tantrums, and an order from flatmates to go to their rooms without supper. Clearly, a woman of your intelligence can understand that this is not how grown adults should react to books.

A cursory examination of the signatures reveals that nearly all of these writers are midlisters hoping for a big break.

That’s certainly their right. The publishing industry is often a ruthless and backbreaking milieu. And many of these talented writers should be granted ample compensation and greater sales for the work they put out.

But with nearly every selection you picked, your book club championed safe middlebrow titles that avoided the realities of life and were largely devoid of literary experimentation. They soothed rather than provoked. They spoon-fed readers instead of challenging them. While that might go down well over coffee and pastries in a New Hampshire suburban home, if people are going to throw down their hard-earned money for a book they’ll never read, certainly their money should be siphoned off to people like David Markson, Kazuo Ishiguro, William T. Vollman, Stephen Dixon, Jeanette Winterson, A.L. Kennedy or Gilbert Sorrentino.

So I beg you, if you have any sense of decency at all, not to revive your book club.

While your intentions were certainly noble, let’s face the facts. You gave idiot novelists like Wally Lamb careers. You gave exposure to the likes of Jonathan Franzen. While I don’t hate Franzen’s novels as strenuously as some, it is now impossible for any eager reader to open up an issue of the New Yorker without stumbling upon one of Franzen’s whiny male menopause essays. Likewise, Barbara Kingsolver might never have been allowed to put out a book of essays laden with generalizations, had not The Poisonwood Bible been named an OBC book choice. In fact, it might just be possible that you’ve turned more novelists into essayists because of your book club. Which seems a contrary notion to the purpose of promoting fiction.

Without your imprimatur, I think it’s safe to say that White Oleander wouldn’t have been turned into a silly movie. And Toni Morrison, Oprah? Morrison won a Nobel in 1993. She didn’t need your help. Where were you for Octavia Butler? Or Sheneska Jackson? Or Ann Petry? Or Dorothy West, who was the last surviving Harlem Renaissance writer?

While I realize that you have a lovable and tightly controlled image to promulgate to your viewers, has it ever occurred to you to shake things up by suggesting a book that might challenge them? I think we can both agree that not even you, Oprah, would go that far.

So please stick with these cute little classics (Anna Karenina, One Hundred Years of Solitude, et al.) that anyone even remotely familiar with literature has read already. If Americans want to have their books, their life choices and their day-to-day life programmed by you and that smug Dr. Phil guy, then clearly they need you to help them grope along the hard passageway of life.

Besides, dull Oprah-style books like The Kite Runner and The Red Tent seem to be selling like hotcakes and being selected for book clubs regardless of your input. Is it possible, Oprah, that your services are no longer requried?

Very truly yours,

Edward Champion

[UPDATE: More responses from Alex Good, Scott Esposito, Frances Dinkelspiel, Bud Parr, M.J. Rose, and Wendi Kaufman.]

The Secretions, a long-time punk staple of Sacramento (and part of the Q Street Scene that I was acquainted with back in the day), will be playing at Bottom of the Hill on May 4. Tickets are only $7. Other shows are planned for Fresno, Ventura, Tuscon, New Mexico, Texas, Las Vegas and Reno. Mickie Rat’s a good guy. Dr. Mabuse says check him out.

Charles endures IKEA:

The website, the catalogue, and the floor model were all carefully labelled “King.” They most definitely did NOT say “King if you MacGyver two together with some sort of ghetto-ass connector.” I’m literally turning red as I give the Socialist bastard the all-American one-finger salute, walking back to the checkstand, muttering under my breath that I will never, ever buy another Ericsson product again, on principle.

“It’s exactly the same,” he says with perfect confidence. “Why would we change anything?” — Rolling Stone

Mellow soulless pop has a new name to add to its limitless ledger. If my predictions are correct, within eighteen months, Josh Rouse will smear every Pottery Barn bedroom with his treacly ballads (too many of which reference a television blaring in the background) and have every tone-deaf yuppie tapping their toes to Rouse’s distinctive vacuity. Bad enough that there’s barely any edge to this guy. Try seeing this guy live.

On the basis of critical praise, a handful of low-key tracks, a reported “influence by the Cure and the Smiths,” and accidentally getting Rouse mixed up with somebody else, I scored nonrefundable tickets for the MSS and me. This was all part of a strange plan that involved seeing five live shows in two weeks.

But as I listened to Rouse’s catalog to prep myself for the concert, I realized that I had made a colossal mistake.

Consider Rouse’s latest album, Nashville. The lyrics and title of “Winter in the Hamptons” might mean something if you have expendable income. But its ba-ba-bas and its throwaway arpeggios make it an endurance test for anyone who enjoys being tousled around a tad. “Middle School Frown” is poetic only if you consider repetitive assaults on the counterculture and banal memories of 1983 the mark of a genius.

Rouse has no stage presence to speak of. He performs his songs exactly as they sound on his albums, which is a piss-poor reason to see anybody live. During one moment, he tried to get the audience to bray along with him, but only succeeded in drawing up a whispery and uninvolved response. And these were fans of his music, no less. In fact, Rouse is so rigid and formulaic that he’s even outlined the stage plot on his site. Presumably to aid some real estate broker in the Marina talking about her concertgoing experience the next morning, so she’ll have something to refer to just before she heads off to the cafe and orders an overpriced cafe au lait.

Rouse’s music was so soporific that I was grateful to be awakened by the sound of a motorcycle outside. Thank goodness the Fiery Furnaces are coming into town next week. After experiencing this dull singer live, I almost want to get into a bloody brawl just to remind myself that life is more than whining about some girl you didn’t have the guts to ask out.

Aliens invade London, there’s a military presence around the United Kingdom, but there’s no UNIT commander (where’s the Brigadier?). Downing Street is easily infiltrated by aliens despite stern security measure after 9/11? This isn’t Doctor Who. This is bad science fiction. If I wanted another crude monster flick, I’d watch a Jack Arnold movie.

When you’re thirty, the wiggle room for live shows narrows — even if you’ve devoted enough to hit the gym and keep a svelte figure. If you’re like me, sometimes when attending a show, you end up discovering that you’re the oldest guy on the floor. Case in point: When Tom and I went to go catch Less Than Jake a few years ago, the age disparity was so great that we felt that we needed to join the AARP. I won’t mention our humiliating efforts in the mosh pit, the subsequent huffing and puffing and unexpected aches, and the “We’re too old!”/”We’re outta shape!” sentiments which followed. Mabuse’s Special Squeeze (hereinafter “MSS”) reports that she once joined a mosh pit and the pit of young ‘uns actually moved three feet away from her!

Never has the silent pressure to get a Botox injection at the ripe young age of thirty been so rigidly enforced then at a live show. The stares of youth are perversely fascinating. They seem to think that we old ‘uns are somehow encroaching upon their turf. When in fact, it’s likelier that we old ‘uns have been following the career trajectory of a band since these young whipper-snappers were in diapers.

Despite all this, I haven’t completely given up live music. At least not yet. Because beyond the bands in question, concerts offer fantastic venues for people watching. You get your 35/17s (a bald man of 35 trying desperately to pad out his manhood by going out with someone who is not yet of drinking age, probably because he can’t find a woman within his age bracket to go see the show with and standing in the will-call line alone to collect two tickets is too humiliating). You have the couples who are often perplexed: the late twentysomething who has brought along a heavy coat and a bag, while her date is both too clueless or cocky to point her to the coat check or make her feel comfortable. And it amazes me to see what a 19 year old kid whips up from the images he conjures from the 1980s. And believe me, they’re the wrong images altogether. Last night, while catching Dogs Die In Hot Cars, the MSS and I were amazed to see that neon socks and big hair had made such a comeback. These kids were probably spermatoza when this nonsense came around the first time.

Then there are the iconoclasts: people who watch these shows alone and prefer nothing in the way of human involvement. Say hello or buy them a drink and they’ll give you a scowl. In my experience, the more mellow the band, the more extreme the iconoclast’s reaction.

But the folks I really dig are the fiftysomethings who rock out with the music regardless of the chronological chasm. I once saw a couple in their sixties dancing to Super Diamond on the second floor of the Great American Music Hall and it seemed to me a fantastic way to spend one’s autumn years.

Moby Lives has additional leads on the “blasphemous emails” that Dave Eggers was complaining about. In a thread on Radosh, excerpts from The Pearl Files have been posted. Scott McLemee has more.

Tonight, at the Booksmith, Scott, Tito and I will be there to check out William T. Vollman. The event is at 7PM. This is the same place that Vollman once fired a starter pistol. I’ll be taking notes and so will the other boys. But if you can make it, please feel free to say hello.

• Anne Rice has put up several homes for sale. If this is a sign that Rice is hard up for cash, I sure as hell hope that she doesn’t end up tripling her output.
• Apparently, there are substantial dangers in recommending books. Geotectonic plates have been known to shift. Tsunamis have spontaneously erupted in Middle America shortly after someone recommended The Kite Runner for the 892nd time in one day. Remember, kids, don’t recommend books while driving.
• One more reason to love Alice Munro: she’s behind some eco-friendly publishing. That’s great, but I have to ask. Wouldn’t she have better results if she stopped writing stories altogether?
• A Vietnam vet spit tobacco juice at Jane Fonda during a book signing, calling it a “debt of honor.” I’d have something to say about how little courage can be gauged when spitting in the face of a 68 year old woman, but I’m a little too creeped out that there are guys out there who use tobacco juice as currency.
• Book sales are out of control for the new pope. Publishers have been quietly urging the Holy See to elect a “second-string pope” so that they can double their sales.
• This week is Robert Penn Warren’s 100th birthday.
• The LBC gets more momentum from the Book Babes? Huh?
• Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has been named the new Pulitzer Chair.
• And a hearty congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Hogan!

Local writer Michelle Richmond has a new blog. Welcome to the blogosphere, Michelle!

We’ve just heard from an anonymous reader concerning “The Pearl Report,” the email newsletter that was apparently written by Paul Maliszewski. Again, if anyone has any additional leads on what content was featured within “The Pearl Report,” then we will certainly post them.

The reader writes:

Forgive the nom de plume but I’m avoiding the Wrath of Dave. In late 2001 I (and apparently a number of people whose names were culled from the McSweeney’s e list) began receiving, about two or three times a month, emails with the subject heading “The Pearl Report,” signed Allan Pearl. (This is the name of Eugene Levy’s character in “Waiting For Guffman” but I don’t know if that was the reference intended by “Pearl.”) The epistles purported to relate various gossipy tidbits, mostly about Tom Beller and the three Jonathans – Ames, Franzen, Lethem. (Though I think Chabon and maybe even Eggers figured in a few items.)

To give you an example – one item, as memory serves, alleged that J Lethem, tiring of the effort involved in signing a ltd edition in the late ’90s, rounded up a young, unknown friend of his named Colson Whitehead to forge his signature on the books, and that these forgeries could be identified by Whitehead’s having written a microscopic “CW” in the corner of each leaf in which he wrote Lethem’s name. (The joke may not be obvious to Dave but I can see it – such a book, thanks to its Whitehead connection, would be worth more than the usual ltd Lethem. But I suppose Lethem would have been unhappy about the allegation – since he’s the former rare-books specialist at Moe’s in Berkeley, this would indeed be rather a slur.) But more often the items were of the Tom-was-seen-with-Parker-the-other-night kind, rather harmless.

After several months of such hijinks, circa the spring of 2002, a young lady came up to Ames at a reading in darkest Brooklyn, informed him that she was “Pearl’s” ex-girlfriend, and spilled the beans. Ames told Dave. At which point Dave did the stuff that makes him so eminently qualified to replace the ‘zinger-man at the Holy Office, now that the dude’s moved on up.

After this all went down, I did some Googling for a while to see what turned up online, but there never was a thing. Such was life in the dim, dark days before litblogs. As to where the Pearl Reports could be found now – maybe the deepest, darkest recesses of the cast-aside laptops of the Jonathans could yield some answers.

Jonathan Safran Foer, in a post that is likely fake unless Mr. Foer would like to corroborate it, has responded to Steve Almond’s takedown:

Me and you should hang out, really. With my ironic-ironic-ironic-ironic pretentiousness and profound postmodern invulnerability and your high-school / freshman-year-in-college ironic, I’m-not-pretentiousness-because-I-am-aware-that-I-might-be-pretentious-and-also-because-when-I-feel-that-I’m-being-pretentious-I-go-ahead-and-say-that-I’m-being-pretentious (and I use a lot of cliches in my language, just like on TV and in Hollywood movies) we can be really profound and postmodern and probably we can achieve true art really quickly, in like two minutes, and then after we can eat hot dogs. We can eat nuts from those profoundly sorrowful Nuts 4 Nuts people.

(Thanks, Chelsea!)

As Maud has noted, the 1970s archive of the Paris Review DNA of Literature Archive is up. While Maud’s dancing over Didion, I’m sinking my teeth into the conversations with Anthony Burgess, who talks about Joyce at length, and Stanley Elkin, who notes that he had “a year of study in bed,” reading continuously for a year and staying in bed, only getting up to teach his classes.

And speaking of interviews, Birnbaum is back, this time talking with Jonathan Safran Foer.

While it’s very nice to see coverage of the book world online, the Village Voice does raise an interesting point about Kevin Smokler‘s Virtual Book Tour.

Smokler charges $1,500 for a one-day tour, allowing an author to make the rounds on several other blogs. (A three-day intensive will set you back about $3,000.) Smokler pockets the money from the publisher, and doesn’t distribute any of it among the blogs who essentially turn themselves into uncritical advertisers of an author. Instead, he offers a free copy of the book for each participating site, something that any legitimate litblog can obtain for free from a publisher (and from the publisher’s end, a comp book actually costs much less as a publicity item than the supplemental income that lands in Smokler’s lap).

“Paying them would open up an ethical hornet’s nest,” says Smokler, “since there’s no way we can expect bloggers to be impartial if we’re paying them.” (Emphasis added.)

I have to question the ethics of this. If you sublet an apartment to someone, you expect the tenant to pay. If you sell magazine space to an advertiser, you expect the advertiser to pay for the column inches. So if Smokler wants to turn blogs into a PR machine, why then should the bloggers who let their spaces not be entitled to collect?

Beyond the troubling notion that those who participate in the Virtual Book Tour are no different from the people who walk around the beach in a Nike T-shirt, because they are apparently precluded from commenting on the weaknesses of a particular book (partiality or impartiality, I’ve yet to see anything critical on the various VBTs), there’s the seedy notion that Smokler is running a small-time sweatshop. Surely, the bloggers who put in the time to read the book and who style content to a particular author are entitled to earn money for their labor. An advertisement is an advertisement is an advertisement, even if it’s for a book that happens to enjoyable.

That’s why I’m proud to be part of the Litblog Co-Op. You see, if certain members don’t enjoy a book, they won’t be nearly as hindered from voicing their thoughts and opinions. The LBC exists for the love, not the money.

And, no, you couldn’t pay this site any amount of money to shift our content to an advertiser. The coverage here remains independent and unsullied. And that includes not littering our posts with Amazon links and actually attributing the original bloggers who cover a story. Anything less than this strikes me as downright parasitical.

[UPDATE: Scott and Bud have more thoughts on how “parasitical” the litblogosphere can be. And I should point out that not a single contributor to Bookslut (including me) has received a cash payment for their work. Not that I mind, but if that isn’t being parasitical, I don’t know what is.]

[UPDATE 2: Jessa has emailed me to tell me that Bookslut does pay for features.]

As Beatrice has pointed out, there’s more to the Michael Chabon hoax (profiled in the current issue of Bookforum) then meets the eye. It seems that He Who Shall Not Be Named fired Paul Maliszewski from McSweeeney’s for sending out a fabricated email containing lies about various writers. E—– claims that it wasn’t funny. I’ve tried Googling around for the particular email, but I’ve had no luck. Later today, I’m going to pick up the latest issue of Bookforum to see if I can get more answers from the complete Maliszewski article. But if any of the “hundreds of people around New York” (perhaps regular Reluctant readers?) have the email in question, I’d certainly be curious if the newsletter was a funny Kaufmanesque exercise that went over E—–‘ oversensitive head or a genuine atrocity.

[UPDATE: I’ve emailed Maliszewski and if he has any thoughts on this article, I’ll post them with his consent. I should point out that NYT reporter Alex Mindlin tried getting in touch with Maliszewski by email and phone, but couldn’t get through. So presumably Maliszewski is either deliberately remaining silent or has sequestered himself from humanity. Whatever the case, these pages remain open to him.]

[UPDATE 2: Maliszewski says he has no specific comment on the Eggers comments and directs all curious individuals to his Bookforum article. He writes that it’s “a serious investigation and a fair piece of journalism and is based on my extensive interviews with Chabon, two people at Nextbook, and several members of the audience. It would have been nice to let all that work do the talking, but that doesn’t seem to be possible.” Maliszewski has talked with Dennis Loy Johnson about the Chabon scam and, as soon Dennis has his column finished, I’ll link to it.]

Activist Marla Ruzicka has died. She was only 28. Had it not been for Ruzicka’s efforts, Iraqi families who lost relatives courtesy of U.S. bombs might not have been compensated.