I want to clarify something about the pledge drive, because I feel that it’s important. It hasn’t come up yet, but, if you are an author or a publisher who wishes to submit to the fund, please know that if I decide to interview you or review your book, I will pay you back your money if we end up setting up an interview. I’m doing this so that I can maintain the same journalistic integrity that I do for all of the interviews, and I do not wish for there to be a conflict of interest, or the perception of such.
Category / Uncategorized
Why I Like Buskers
Who Gawks Gawker?
If you are interested in reading an article that will have you clamoring for one cold shower, followed by three more, followed by a week-long regimen of healthy food and abstaining from alcohol, and followed then by some dim yet vociferous hope for a legion of Jimmy Breslins to infiltrate the New York media world, then this longass article is for you. It’s amazing that these folks are so miserable that they would offer such revealing quotes — oh, more revealing than they know! — to a journalist.
An Open Apology to Ursula K. Le Guin
In July, I posted an excerpt from a small Ursula K. Le Guin piece. I never had any intention of reproducing Le Guin’s piece in full, because I recognized that it was a short piece. But I now realize that I was wrong to reproduce as much as I did, and I have since reduced my excerpt to one sentence, which I feel constitutes fair use. Cory Doctorow, on the other hand, seems to feel that reproducing an author’s piece in whole is “fair use.” And his disingenuous citation of 17 USC, which entailed reproducing a “single paragraph” of a single paragraph piece strikes me as a dubious interpretation to say the least. His apology is nothing more than self-serving adulation. Whatever one’s thoughts on “information wanting to be free,” when one reproduces the whole of a piece, one knowingly commits copyright infringement. Thus, Doctorow indisputably committed piracy here and should really be careful if he wishes to continue dunning his nose into his idols’ posteriors. Le Guin’s thoughts on the matter can be found here.
All Bells Are Ringing
Her Hagness, apparently closing up shop on the blog front, makes her LATBR debut.
New Review
My review of Kate Christensen’s The Great Man appears in today’s Philly Inquirer.
Causal Friday
Deadlines, interviews, and other obligations keep me away from Reluctant today. In the meantime, stay tuned for the exciting prospect of seeing no new posts for the next two and a half days! That’s right. I promise you no new content until Monday. Where others might promise you several blog posts today, I take comfort in honoring my pledge of nothing. Because aside from work, there is, of course, some living to do.
And speaking of which, if you aren’t listening to Dr. Dog right now, you’re missing out. Have fun, folks.
East Coast Weather
The pattering pelts now hitting my window remind me of long rainy days as a teenager getting lost in mammoth books that nobody else I knew read. I never cared much for the rain in San Francisco. That city was more the natural domain of fog and inconsistent sunshine trickling through ever-shifting clouds. But on the East Coast, rain, thunder, and lightning makes as much sense as it did during those rare days in Sacramento. The five boroughs collectively represent a milieu designed for such weather. That it comes crashing down with such Hollywood gusto during both the summer thunderstorms and the autumn list from the heat is a tribute to its beauty and its fortitude. Alas, this rainy day romanticism comes at a great cost. I am now contending with the worst ceiling link I’ve ever experienced.
When Was the Last Time You Received Boilerplate?
There isn’t a day that goes by in which your name doesn’t escape my lips, even if I don’t quite know who you are exactly. Although I’m sure they’ll work out the kinks before they send you this message. Humor me. This is boilerplate. And it sustains the illusion that you and I know each other or are capable of having a conversation beyond the almighty books that separate us or serve, in their rightful way, as a kind of surrogate restraining order.
When I immerse my smooth legs into the sudsy veneer of my bubble bath, I wonder why you can’t be there with me traversing the soapy filament. You rock my bathroom environment, [insert first name here], because maybe you are those bubbles. If you have five o’clock shadow, your stubble might bristle against my goosebumped flesh at the end of the day. Not unlike the bubbles. I know you slide your hard-earned money across the smooth surface of the bookstore counter to purchase my books, and I can confidently divine that you would exercise the same fastidiousness in sliding your way across my counterpane. Assuming, of course, that you can pass the intelligence test.
I should warn you, [insert first name here], that I am a married woman. But my four ventricles will beat hot and heavy for you if you do not cower at my great intellect and if you can willfully abdicate your masculinity, your pride, and your thoughts on the mortgage you are now paying in an aggressive game of tennis. You’ve read Double Fault, yes? Well, let us quadruple fault and find folly in two universes. Let us not talk about Kevin, unless your name is Kevin. [Note to editor: Remove last sentence if recipient is named Kevin.] I am sure you come from a perfectly good family, but, like Peggy Atwood, I do not suffer fools gladly. So please come prepared.
Love,
Lionel
(via Bookninja)
New Fiction
I’m concentrating most of my fiction energies on the novel, but Garth Hallberg somehow thought I was an apposite fellow to write a story set around this photo. You can find the result here, along with short shorts from other contributors.
Is This the Beginning of the Planet of the Apes?
A spam email I received:
To: ed@edrants.com
Subject: Dogs Are Dying In 6 Hours
Friends, especially dog lovers,
There’s an epidemic that has been extremely prevalent in these states:AR, AZ, CA, CO, FL, GA, IN, KS, MS, OH, NC, PA, SC, TN, and TX; however, many other states and some countries such as Australia, Canada, England and others are experiencing a marked increase in the number of Canine Parvovirus cases.
Parvo is normally an aggressive virus that attacks the gastro-intestinal lining in dogs and if left untreated can kill a dog in 24 to 72 hours more than 80% of the time.
However, there’s a new much more virulent mutation that is killing dogs in as little as six (6) hours after symptoms (i.e. yellow frothy vomit, diarrhea/bloody diarrhea, dehydration, lethargy, loss of appetite, etc.) first show.
Instead of symptoms taking days, with this new version the symptoms only take a few hours to fully develop. This newer mutation is like Parvo on crack.This is why dogs dehydrate and die in as little as six (6) hours.
This Parvo killing machine is called 2c (aka F-Strain).There has been a staggering increase in the number of Parvo cases this year with the 2c Strain because: VACCINATED dogs (both puppies and adults) are still becoming infected.Many of the current Parvo vaccinations cannot counter
2c.
And if your dog does become infected, you must be prepared and know all of your options.The typical cost to treat your dog at the vet’s clinic will be anywhere from $500 to over $6000 per dog and your vet will probably give you only a 50:50 chance at a full recovery.
The everyday common things you do with your dog could get him infected: if you take your dog for a walk, go to the park, visit a neighbor’s house, etc. because all he needs to do is step in contaminated feces, vomit, saliva (yes even nose-to-nose contact) can spread the Parvo virus.
Another Blogger Hits the LATBR
Today, Maud makes her LATBR debut, reviewing Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader. I believe that now makes six bloggers who have appeared in the LATBR, rivaled only by the Philly Inquirer.
Write-In Candidate
Tod Goldberg as Parade Editor-in-Chief? Well, Mr. Goldberg is certainly the dark horse candidate. But if it means more “fucktards” in Parade, as opposed to garden-variety fucktards writing for the magazine, then what will it take to make this happen?
When In Doubt, Dismiss the Naysayers as Crazies and Dope Them Up
Seattle Weekly: “But for the moment, Susan Lindauer’s strange story remains incomplete. She is confined to a federal mental facility in Texas, perhaps never to get her day in court, according to friends, officials, and public records. Mostly unnoticed, a New York federal judge has found her incompetent to stand trial and ordered further evaluation. She is being held past her scheduled release date, which had been sometime early this month, and, she tells friends, might be forcibly medicated as part of her treatment.”
New Review
My review of Ann Patchett’s Run appears in today’s Philly Inquirer.
NBCC and Penguin: A Match Made in Loosey-Goosey Ethics
As reported by both Publishers Lunch’s Michael Cader and The New York Times‘s Motoko Rich this morning, Penguin Group is teaming up with Amazon and Hewlett Packard for a contest called The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Unpublished manuscripts will be first submitted to a group of Amazon’s top-rated reviewers (one suspects that all the manuscripts will pass Harriet Klausner’s loose standards with flying colors). From here, 100 finalists will be handed off to a panel consisting of Elizabeth Gilbert, agent Eric Simonoff, Penguin imprint founder Amy Einhorn, and NBCC President John Freeman.
The winner will receive a $25,000 advance and a publishing contract. But it is within these details that things start to get dicey. As Cader noted this morning:
The winner agrees to accept Penguin’s publishing contract “as is” and acknowledges it “is not negotiable…if he/she wishes to enter into the publishing contract being awarded.” But Penguin’s director of online sales & marketing Tim McCall says “it’s a good contract,” noting that “it is designed for someone who is getting their start in the business. That’s really what Penguin is looking for–a brand-new voice.”
In other words, the author, sidestepping the protective safeguards that an agent can ensure, has no leverage whatsoever in squaring away the contract details.
Likewise, since John Freeman is being billed in all publicity materials I can locate as “the president of the National Book Critics Circle” and has made no efforts to separate his personal participation from his association with the NBCC, I must therefore presume that, because Freeman is the head of the NBCC, the NBCC must, as a matter of course, endorse this contest, which represents authors abdicating all publishing rights, without discussion or compromise, to a single conglomerate. So is the NBCC now in the business of favoring one publisher above all others? That doesn’t seem like a sign of critical integrity to me. The NBCC’s support of this contest is no different from a critic who decides to throw his integrity to the wind and only review books by one publishing house.
While it is true that Freeman’s participation here is not an explicit “political activity” under the IRS code and Freeman is legally in the clear, it would make me feel more comfortable about the NBCC’s integrity if Freeman had lived up to the standards of what a “political activity” constitutes. Freeman’s alliance with Penguin is dangerously close to IRS requirements in which “organization leaders who speak or write in their individual capacity are encouraged to indicate clearly that their comments are personal and not intended to represent the views of the organization.”
It seems hypocritical for the NBCC to suggest a code of ethics for litbloggers when there remains not a single code of ethics for NBCC board members. (And why have the results for the NBCC ethics survey remained unannounced? Do ethics only apply to the online upstarts?) Shouldn’t a 501(c)3 organization of book critics stand for a variegated critical environment in which many publishers and critical voices are underneath one umbrella? And shouldn’t it stand for an environment in which organization leaders remain transparent about their activities and untainted from corporate influence?
Who Needs an Independent Mind When There’s Google?
If one must have an “opinion on Ed Champion,” a phrase that places me in an extremely bizarre position of importance, I’d hope that one would go to the trouble of forming an original opinion about me, yay or nay, rather than consulting Google.
Over the Hump
Okay, after considerable coffee, a crazed ten-hour reading session, and several additional hours of research for one of two crazy deadlines, I’ve managed to grab four hours of sleep. And I’m now over the hump. Bear with me while I recalibrate to human time in the next day or so. If my emails have been terse or hallucinogenic of late, you now have your reason why.
A Most Formidable Intellectual Organization
I received a mysterious text message earlier in the week from a British phone number. I was confused. I thought they all hated me in the United Kingdom. The message involved an event at The Drawing Center, a venue that I knew nothing about. Presumably, it was a safe place for lonely people to sketch on their pads or for reenactments of Shirley Jackson’s famous story. No drawing, not even of the lottery variety, was to be had on Tuesday night. (Honestly, if one must be stoned by a crowd, I can’t think of a better evening than Tuesday.)
Instead, about seventy-five artsy people were treated to a formal lecture, styled “Inauthenticity: The International Necronautical Society Reveals the Comic Secret of Literature, Art and Philosophy,” delivered by INS General Secretary Tom McCarthy and INS Chief Philosopher Simon Critchley — two men who were quite serious about their topic. No sherry was served. After inquiring about this with a few trusted sources, I was assured that the INS was a bona-fide credentialed world organization — of what authority, none of them could say. When I later asked the two INS representatives for appropriate accreditation, they ran away, suggesting that I was bifurcating the Hegelian ideal of dichotomous discourse. They may have had a point. I should have taken better notes.
After persuading the person in front that I was “a friend of the INS,” I was then greeted by a gentleman in a crisp dark suit and sunglasses who asked me if I was a member of the press.
“That depends upon how you define press,” I replied.
There weren’t many literary people in the crowd, except some guy I knew who was obsessed with Mr. Critchley’s furrows. And what impressive furrows they were. Mr. Critchley, it should be noted, was quite bald and very serious. Perhaps more serious than Mr. McCarthy. In fact, if I had to trust one of the two INS representatives to kill someone, it would probably be Mr. Critchley. I was not close enough to see if Mr. Critchley had assassin hands, but it seemed pretty clear he was a carnivore in some sense.
The two men sat at a table, covered with the finest white tablecloth that a desperate run to Costco could get you if you were a particularly careless philosopher with a spending habit you were trying to control. Behind them were six framed photos of the Earth, as seen from space.
The crowd then settled down and McCarthy announced that this was “the first beachhead in the Americas.” Agents, sleepers, and moles, along with agencies, subcommittees and transmission centers were prepared to be unfurled in the United States, presumably under the employ of the INS.
“We’re in your house,” said McCarthy. And the gist I got was that this was some sort of intellectual terrorist organization to be feared or reckoned with.
Critchley promised a history of the beginning, a declaration about the INS, and a summation of what the INS could do.
McCarthy mentioned Queequeg’s tattoos and how Melville’s character represented a layout of the heavens which imputed a mystical treatise that Melville had openly pondered. I wondered how far we were from Melville’s place of employment.
Captain Ahab, Critchley noted, was, by contrast, a narcissist. Queequeg and Ahab were locked in a struggle representing “that of Western man in general.”
It didn’t seem evident to me at the time, perhaps because I was getting lost in the references to Aristotle and Baudelaire. But I started to get the sense that McCarthy and Critchley were switching off, perhaps because neither of them could speak about these important precepts for more than five minutes. The crowd stared in intellectual rapture, stunned by the almighty ideas and inauthentic import.
As I said, I took poor notes, in large part because my writing implement was inauthentic, parched of ink, and otherwise pining for the rubbish bin. But here is a quick overview of some of the thirty-nine points laid down by the two gentlemen:
- Failed transcendence was the first and possibly most important point of the INS dogma. Novels were not the plenitude of one, but ellipses, absence, incompleteness, and the experience of disappointment were the foundation upon all knowledge claims.
- The art of consequence of failed transcendence followed the first point. An icon, not being original, was thereby a copy of the icon and a repetition of the copy.
- The experience of failed transcendence represented the classical opposition of form vs. matter. As Plato had observed, knowledge is form (eidos) and, as Aristotle had observed, knowledge came from essence (fusio).
- The highest knowledge is of God, the most real thing.
- If form is perfect, then how does one explain imperfection? Matter then was our undoing.
- How do we let matter matter? This was in the spirit of Maurice Blanchet, presuming that the spirit could be spirited.
- Interestingly, the only subpoints came from Point 7. Point 7.1 expressed that separation involved importing all of reality into a single thought, the single goal shared by Hegel and De Sade. Point 7.2 represented the other option: Let things thing. Let flowers flower. Let oranges orange. Point 7.3 was “sponge.” Point 7.4 was “sponge.” It is helpful to know that a porous kitchen item might possibly be philosophical salvation.
- The Necronauts are poets who reflect the antithesis of poetry.
- How do we navigate? Inauthenticity. After a failure of metaphysical transcendence, the unified people will abandon the idea of people. Therefore, the Necronauts will be divided. (A person in this state can likewise be referred to as a “dividual.”)
- Inauthenticity is the constant of self.
- More positive, less heroic — this is comic advancement.
- The key aesthetic is not the tragic, but the comic, which represents a mechanical splitting of self.
- The sense of the comic can be represented in a person simultaneously tripping and watching himself trip.
- Comedy is the temporal realism of death.
- In referencing the facets of authentic death, the Necronaut does not die.
- Freud pondered the prisoner condemned to be hanged, representing the self being hanged.
- Ergo: “I am but I do not have myself. I find myself.”
- How does one die properly? Wile E. Coyote faced an endless repetition of deaths, comparable to Vladimir and Estragon facing repetition in Waiting for Godot, with the possibility of a hard-on curtailing this repetition.
- In death and dying, dying is something we cannot control. This is the paradox of suicide.
- Tragedy is second-hand. It is the limiting of existence. Addie Bundren in As I Lay Dying is not presented with a scene in which she is permitted to die proper. Thereby, her self is denied.
- Thinking begins with disaster.
- In relation to trauma, the subservient life does not feel real.
- Trauma bequeaths prosperity to repeat. All art from Aeschylus to Tristram Shandy is interconnected in this respect.
- There are three Rs paramount to these precepts: repetition, repetition, repetition.
- As McLuhan observed, the true content of each medium is the previous medium.
- An ant’s dirty secret is inauthenticity. Everything must lose some mark, some accident of which we remember.
- “Listen, the world is a sign of restless divisibility no greater than six.”
- “Going once.”
- SAFA — Taxes May Apply. Other Taxes May Apply.
- Cities, countries and continents. We are going to crash.
- How does one become a Necronaut? I’m afraid that I can’t reveal the precise details here.
- Illusion is a revolutionary weapon.
As I said, my notes were wholly insufficient and perhaps, to some degree, inauthentic. One night later, I am left with the definitive empty vessel, sometimes a mug and sometimes a stein, scooping from a salty sea of ambiguity where the trauma is large, inconsolable, and predicated upon the blood, sweat, and tears of an undeniable bedrock of precepts.
Maybe It Was the Overwhelming Red-Orange Motif That Infuriated Him More Than the Newspaper
You know, Coach Gundy, from my angle, you look very much like a kid.
Come Out to D-Block. We’ll Get Together, Have a Few Laughs
Associated Press: “A federal judge sentenced Hollywood director John McTiernan to four months in prison Monday after refusing to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea to charges of lying to the FBI about his association with disgraced private eye Anthony Pellicano.”
A Helpful Shortcut If You’re Pressed for Time on a Friday Night
Self-Pity’s a Great Justification for Passive Behavior
Rachel Kramer Bussel: “Garnering publicity for your book should not be the ‘wait and see’ situation Sacks seems to paint it as. There is always something you can do to raise your profile, and connect with readers. Search for blogs and sites related to your subject matter, and offer to send a review copy of the book. Create a contest, give away an excerpt, run a serial. Keep talking and trying new things; the beauty of the Internet is that you can keep trying and finessing your promotional efforts for free. Amazon lets authors blog directly on their site, so Sacks could be posting about issues in the news and follow-up research into the topic he explores in his book, the class divide in education, so anyone reading about him on Amazon would see this information as well.”
A Current Glimpse Inside My Head
Silverblatt’s Stats
Here is the point in each installment of KCRW’s Bookworm, in which Michael Silverblatt finally permits the author to speak. (It is also worth noting that Bookworm is a twenty-eight minute show.)
Marianne Wiggins: 2:11
Miranda July: 1:59
Nathan Englander: 1:45 (only because Englander interrupted him)
Naeem Murr: 2:34
Michael Ondaatje: 1:30 (!)
Helena Maria Viramontes: 1:50
Kurt Vonnegut: 1:38
Richard Flanagan: 1:30
Jim Crace: 2:19
Jonathan Lethem: 2:07
Marxist Mice
Annalee Newitz: “Dear reader, there is really nothing worse than a leftist with anthropomorphizing tendencies. This is exactly why people join PETA instead of unions and protest animal experimentation instead of how humans are treated in jail.”
Greenspan Applies William Goldman Rule to Economics
Good Granny, Bad Granny, I’m the Granny With the Gun
Booklust: “Ok, folks – sharpen your writing utensils and let the fun begin! It’s what you’ve all been waiting for, I’m sure – The Good Granny/Bad Granny Contest, where you send me your best Good Granny and/or Bad Granny stories.”
Because Literature is All About That Soft, Clingy Feeling
Black Garterbelt: “In short, Nick Hornby suffered through The Road. So much so that he slipped the surly bonds of the first-person to touch the face of You.”
We Control the Distribution, We Control the Thought
With projects like this, we’ll no doubt be seeing plenty of critical or dissenting reviews. It appears that Penguin would rather bribe you with books, so that you can write about the books on their blog, rather than your blog. What makes this any different than a horde of Coca-Cola executives standing around watching you every time that you drink a soda?