Ben Jelloun has won the world’s richest fiction prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Nothing more to report today except utter depression about world events and those duplicitious deviants in Washington. Real hiatus again. As usual, check out the fine folks on the left.
It’s a sure bet that we were informed, but we’re so behind on email that we learned it only just recently from Maud. Tingle Alley, Carrie AA Frye’s fantastic new blog, goes live tomorrow. We remain sensitive, of course, to Ms. Frye’s hue and garb contretemps, but we’ll let forth a color and cry if she does not find a suitable sub for the tangerine muumuu. This may or may not explain our obsession. And did we mention that Halloween is our favorite holiday?
I don’t know how I missed it in the May Atlantic, but Martha Spaulding continues the ongoing fight to reinstate satirist John P. Marquand into the American pantheon. Regular Reluctant readers may know that I am nothing less than crazy about Marquand.
If you can find any of his books in used bookstores, I recommend starting with The Late George Apley or Sincerely, Willis Wayde, which are my two favorites out of the seven or so I’ve read (not counting the Mr. Moto books). Right now, I’m reading So Little Time, which transplants Marquand’s obsession with social stratas to America, circa World War II. Much as David Lodge would later incorporate mythological subtext within the popular novel, Marquand has inserted the narrative framework for War and Peace into this fairly meaty work, which is bristling with pre-Gaddis cocktail party banter, isolationist cluelessness, and, perhaps more than many novels I’ve read, a depiction of how ordinary people in typical upper-class and middle-class atmospheres might have talked about America’s ineluctable involvement with the War in 1940. Fascinating stuff, and timely, given the current helplessness I hear expressed over the Iraq contretemps.
Anna Funder’s Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall has won the Samuel Johnson Prize, the world’s richest non-fiction award.
The third Madonna children’s book has been declared “better” by the Canadian Press. Other reviewers have insisted that the reported increase in quality has been an orchestrated ploy to keep Madonna from writing further books after her five-book series.
A North Carolina theatre is offering an abridged version of the complete works of William Shakespeare (in less than 90 minutes, in fact). The comedy has apparently been making the rounds since 1987.
“Crime expert” John L. Stanley was arrested in Kansas City minutes after robbing a bank. What’s even more surprising was the amount of incriminating evidence on his possession.
Ron Rosenbaum has nabbed the new Philip Roth novel, the alternate history novel in which Charles Lindbergh beats FDR in 1940, and devoted some 4,000 words to it. The precis: the article reveals key plot elements, and Rosenbaum is as ecstatic as an aging Marin County New Ager slipping into his Birkenstocks. The more specific quibble: Ron, did we really need to know about the Lakers-Piston game?
David Kipen: “That’s the Joyce I recognize. Not the mandarin classicist who finds slang and pidgin “frightful,” but the omnivore who knew dirty jokes in 30 languages. My Joyce knows that the punchiest remedies are mixtures: of high and low, of songs and of tongues. Just you try it on.”
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Rejection letters from various literary magazines, as collected by Deb Schwartz. (via Moorish Girl)
A desperate baker in Portland, Maine has tried to woo low-carb obsessives back to bread with an Atkins alternative culled from The Da Vinci Code.
Recent NYT refugee Elvis Mitchell is writing a book about Richard Pryor. Meanwhile, Walter Mosley is writing the liner notes to a forthcoming 9-CD boxed set. And Pryor himself is writing a sequel to Pryor Convictions.
Botheration is blogging a page of Ulysses a day, courtesy of the 100th anniversary. (via MadInkBeard)
The Globe and Mail: “Martel shrugs when asked whether he’s become downright smug because of his recent success. But he follows this shoulder roll with diabolical laughter, sticking his tongue out before answering the question.
“‘You know what? You get used to anything,’ he said. ‘You can get used to being kicked repeatedly in the crotch and you can get used to getting random blowjobs from bookstore groupies. I know about these things because I’m Yann Martel and you’re not. Do you want me to show you the two tattoos on my ass? There’s one for YANN and one for MARTEL. Perfect symmetry! Of course, if that’s not appropriate for a Canadian newspaper, then I’ll be more than happy to offer a tasteless comparison to the Holocaust. Anything to sell more books!'”
Superhero Comics as Literature: “It was precisely this pathos that made the potential literary quality of superhero comics almost impossible. Before Starman, comics like the aforementioned Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns took the “reality principal” found in the early Marvel Comics, (Spiderman is really a nerdy shy high-schooler that can’t get a date) and gave it an edge that infused the comics with a real relevance. But quickly this “reality principal” itself became formulaic: Marriage (Superman!), divorce, death, alcoholism (Iron Man!), violence, are certainly things that people experience, but when they happen in a cape it is almost impossible to control. You end up with worse caricatures than before, as when the superheroes only had secret identities so they could pay their rent.”
A New Frame for Comic Books: “It saddens me that, by and large, Americans still don’t know the literary value of comic books. Much of the world and certain domestic pockets already know that the cultural stereotypes on comic books is long past over and a new generation of exceptional works awaits our discovery.”
Are Comic Books Literature? “I, for one, am not ashamed to say that comic books are a form of entertainment no different than any other form of popular entertainment. As such, there’s about as much crap and as much good stuff in it as in any other entertainment medium. Comics can be clever, well-written, involving popular entertainment, but they’re pop entertainment nonetheless. That’s as should be. Comics aren’t meant to be literature, appealing only to those with cobwebs in their brains. Comics are meant to be enjoyed by all.”
Eddies in the Mainstream: “Clearly, repeating the past is a poor strategy to rejuvenate an art form. Nevertheless, the alternative that is most often offered, that comics adopt the subject matter and techniques of High Art, runs into a problem that is equally obvious at this point. ”
The Difference Between Comics and Literature: “The BOE claims that comics produced by Mavrides and other artists are not literature, but camera-ready commercial art, which is taxable. “
Rasputin gets to the heart of the matter: “What it comes down to is this: Comics began as a populist artform. They belong to the uneducated lower classes. No self-appointed defender of literature is going to let some underdressed raggamuffin into his club house — good lord, what would the neighbors think? Artistic writing got its start during a time when only the wealthy and the clergy could actually read. It’s a high-class artform that has never purged itself of its utter contempt for the common man, even when advances in public education began to allow the masses to crawl their way out of illiteracy. Comics, on the other hand, have always belonged to groups at whom the upper-crust have traditionally pinched their noses — immigrants and adolescents.”
[UPDATE: Brian offers his candidates for the Ulysses and Canterbury Tales of comic books, among many other thoughts.]
Deborah Solomon & Rebecca Walker: You’re the daughter of the novelist Alice Walker. Why did you decide to take her name instead of your father’s, who is a lawyer?
“It’s not that important for me right now. Can we talk about something else?”
Three Possibilities:
1. Using her mother’s name had nothing to do with capitalizing on nepotism, but everything to do with rejuvenating the career of Jimmie “Dy-No-Mite” Walker.
2. The Dreaded Lawyer Incident of 1998. While walking one afternoon under the bright cherry trees of entitlement, Ms. Walker accidentally collided into a young law student with a bad case of eczema. The student’s blotched skin reminded her of Jell-O, which she hadn’t been particularly fond of as a young humorless girl. But there was one horrible side effect. Any time anyone would mention the word “lawyer,” Ms. Walker would demand all parties to cease conversation. So serious is Ms. Walker’s affliction that you might be having an amazing conversation with her about the influence of dadaism upon current advertising, finally coming up with a few angles that the bright young things at Brown hadn’t tossed around, only to have the dialogue halted midway. It should be noted that earlier responses were more extreme. Two years ago, Ms. Walker used to scream on cue whenever anyone mentioned the word “lawyer.” But with the help of a therapist, Ms. Walker now calmly replies, “Can we talk about something else?” Not only does this phrasing carry the illusion of sangfroid, but it is also an homage to Joan Rivers’ infamous catchphrase (now forgotten by those nimble NYT Magazine readers who’ve never left upstate New York).
3. An appeal to those suffering from speech impediments. It’s not very widely reported, but one of Ms. Walker’s high school friends had a speech impediment. It took years of linguistical therapy for this friend to stop confusing her Ws with her Rs. Consequentially, Ms. Walker figures that the name Rebecca Walker may possess a special alliterative quality when pronounced “WEBECCA WALKER.”
As can be gathered from the slipshod updates, and my firm resistance to the idea of giving up blogging during this quasi-hiatus period, current life has reached levels beyond hectic. But I did want to weigh in on a couple of pieces of news floating through the rivulets before morphing momentarily into driftwood.
[UPDATE: Since a certain someone apparently seems to think that everything I write on my blog is about her (when I merely alluded to the “comics as literature” crowd, bandied about for several years pre-certain someones and before McCloud), and since this certain someone would like to use enigmatic argot like “certain someone” rather than get involved with an adult and civil discussion on a very interesting issue, I only wish to add that the wholesale subscription to an argument without examples, initiated only by how a particular article enrages, is balderdash. It deadens the discussion and gives ammunition to detractors. It’s no better than a Green Party supporter hassling you at the Haight Street Fair without citing a single reason why. (“Because we’re the Green Party, man!”) What better way to nip these issues in the bud, so to speak, than an all-encompassing response that stands as sui generis? Something which takes McCloud and Ware’s points and hits the ground running. This is the kind of interesting issue that literary blogs can look into. (For example, I’d love to see Mr. Green’s thoughts on the matter.) Fortunately, Maud has looked at this issue from reverse, citing a Rani Dharker article that compares pomo novels with comic book technique. ]
[UPDATE 2: Also, Mr. Sarvas has interviewed Swink Editor Leelia Strogov.]
Patricia Harrington of Nashville, TN: “He was an honest man — very honest — and a real man.”
John Morton of Cumming, GA: “That’s what impressed me, that he was a real person.”
F. Lyman Simpkins, Mayor of Pemberton Borough, NJ: “As farm [sic] as I’m concerned, he was a real man to look up to as I went through the political end of it.”
Katie Heideman of Littleton, CO: “He was a real person.”
Gary Mervis of Rochester, NY: “[H]e was just a real person, a very nice person.”
Donny Lingle of Manheim, PA: “He was just a real person.”
My feelings towards Mayor Gavin Newsom are mixed, but I think we can all agree you’d be hard pressed to find a sillier way of showing concern when standing in front of a housing project.
Too many balls in the air. The content here sucks isn’t as grand as I’d like it to be. I’m pulling the plug for a few weeks.
One more thing: Post offices and federal courts closing Friday because of Reagan? The funeral turned into a partisan event? Even Nixon didn’t get this kind of treatment. And I will never eat a JellyBelly ever again. Never.
The Mercury offers a first look at Dave Eggers’ play, Sacrament (adapted from You Will Know Our Velocity), concluding that “the playwright and director have not yet found a way to tether the show’s considerable emotional impact, its wry humor and acute sense of loss, to the concept of giving and receiving sacraments.” But Robert Hurwitt gives it a rave.
Among several award winners, Christopher Bram has won the Gay Men’s Fiction Award a Lamda for Lives of the Circus Animals, a comedy set in the New York theatre world. Nina Revoyr’s Southland took home the Lesbian Fiction Award.
Apologies for corrupting Return of the Reluctant business with the play business. We will have a separation between church and state firmly in place next month.
But if you are an actor in the San Francisco area, and you’re looking to be involved with a nutty Beckettesque kind of play (with bad puns and unapologetic jokes about Preparation H), then please note that we will be holding auditions for Wrestling an Alligator on July 17 and July 18, with callbacks to be held on July 24. We have four roles, two male and two female. (To the Demolishing Crew: Yes, that’s right, a character’s gender has changed over the last couple of days, along with several other things, thanks in part to your valuable input. But please keep the feedback coming.) Feel free to email me at ed@edrants.com for details.
Also, we will be looking for crew volunteers for the months of August and September. More details to come.
Under Tanenhaus’s firms hands, it appears that the NYTBR has begun issuing corrections. The corrections, as usual, are laced with the kind of minutiae that will prevent merely a handful of fulminating fanboys from slashing their wrists. However, given the pedantic obsessions, we here at Return of the Reluctant encourage Tanenhaus & Friends to continue. Here are a few that we suggest:
“A review by Michael Kinsley suggested that David Brooks be bitch-slapped three times. Mr. Kinsley actually intended for Brooks to be bitch-slapped four times, not three. In addition, Kinsley would like to kick Brooks’ ass while he is being simultaneously humiliated by a Girl Scouts troop.”
“When pressed by editor Sam Tanenhaus for an ‘innovative’ idea for her column, Laura Miller referred to ‘lingering headaches’ and turned out a silly column about spy stories. She followed this up with an epileptic fit and demanded a Ritalin prescription. The Times regrets any misinterpretations caused by Miller’s histrionics.”
“Lizzie Skurnick intended to use ‘fuck’ in her review, but it was gently suggested to Ms. Skurnick that the Times was a family newspaper. The Gray Lady hopes to let down her guard, however, in the event that Mr. Bush is re-elected in November.”
Andrea Levy has won for Small Island.
