Move over, David Mitchell. The Literary Saloon has gone gaga over Lars Saabye Christensen’s The Half Brother. And they’re not the only ones. Paul Binding says it’s “a deeply felt, intricately worked and intellectually searching work of absolutely international importance.” Anna Peterson calls it “a great river of a book.” And Boyd Tonkin calls it “a total knock-out of a novel ” Norman Mailer, however, remains convinced that he wrote it first, writing longhand in 1972 in Norwegian.

Ian Samson offers an unapologetically scathing assault on John Fowles:

The chronology of John Fowles’s friendless and hallowed experience is as follows: he gets born, goes to prep school, boarding-school, Oxford, then goes to teach at the international school on the Greek island of Spetsai, returns to London with the wife of a colleague, teaches at various unsuitable colleges, enjoys enormous success with his first book, The Collector (1963), and buys a big house in Lyme Regis where he writes very long books, such as The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), Daniel Martin (1977) and A Maggot (1985), which sometimes get made into films and make him a lot of money (large parts of the Journal are filled with his totting-up of income and expenditure). It may have taken him a while to achieve the success he feels he deserves, but he hit his stride straight off in his journal, setting the tone in the first entry, on 24 September 1949: ‘A curious thing. About to throw a piece of screwed-up paper into the yellow jug which serves as waste-paper basket, I said to myself, “As much chance as you have of being a genius.” It fell into the jug without a murmur, a 20 to 1 chance, at the least.’

Of course, given how Fowles goes after Scrabble players (“‘The poverty of minds that can spend such evenings playing such rubbish”), the apparently joyless and smug scribe has it coming. Personally, I keep a daily journal (in addition to this weblog and everything else), but I would never deign to show anyone my prattle, let alone profit off of it when I couldn’t write a new novel.

(via Rake)

Toni Morrison’s next project is very intriguing. USA Today reports that her next book, Remember: The Journey to Story Integration, is framed around early black-and-white photos of school integration, with Morrison writing the hypothetical dialogue and emotions of the children. The book has 52 photographs, and marks the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

The Independent reports that Michael Moore knew that Disney wasn’t going to distribute Fahrenheit 9/11 a year ago. Here’s the CNN interview in question. The full quote is this:

Almost a year ago after we’d started making the film, the chairman of Disney, Michael Eisner, told my agent that he was upset that Miramax had made the film — Disney owns Miramax — and he will not distribute this film.

Miramax said don’t worry about that, keep making the film, we’ll keep funding it. The Disney money kept flowing to us for the last year. We finished the film last week, and we take it to the Cannes film festival next week.

On Monday of this week we got final word from Disney that they will not distribute the film. They told my agent they did not want to upset the Bush family, particularly Gov. Bush of Florida because Disney was up for a number of tax incentives, abatements … whatever. The risk of losing this — we’re talking about tens of millions of dollars — they didn’t want to risk it over a little documentary.

So the big question here is whether this is a trumped up publicity stunt or a legitimate case of Moore defiantly raging against the machine. Granted, the semantics don’t help Moore’s case. But in light of the deflating Disney image, part of me wonders if this was a ploy by Miramax to stir up a Pixar-like shakeup.

As if Nerve weren’t cool enough already, Neal Pollack now has a column there called “Bad Sex.” Huge bonus points for getting “priapically” in there as a deplorable Tom Swifty.

James Patterson, author of Kiss the Girls and other novels that have sold quicker than airplane parts during the Blitz, intends to write a children’s book. Patterson, known for fulminating at book critics, hopes to demonstrate with “SantaKid” that there’s a kinder, gentler James Patterson behind all the fury. Return of the Reluctant has obtained an early excerpt of his story. We leave readers to decide if there are, in fact, two James Pattersons co-existing in this universe.

Beautiful pearly teeth filled her mouth. She was ready. Really ready. Everything was good, really damn good, about this smile.

Kimberly the Elf was a North Pole trainee. It was her first day.

“It’s a good smile,” Rufus the Elf whispered. “I wouldn’t change a single thing about it.”

They had come to the toy factory to work and to smile. They had three hundred gifts to wrap and send out. Three hundred gifts, and if they were feeling really good, maybe they’d have three hundred and one.

Rufus the Elf had to smile. He had already smiled twice that morning, and he knew he would smile again.

“Tough business,” Kimberly admitted. “But we’ll make it through.”

“Just keep smiling,” he said to her. “It’s the right thing to do.”

Kimberly had imagined this moment, this tremendous new life, so many times. It became easier to smile as the toys poured out the chute like coins flying from a Vegas jackpot. God, she loved smiling and wrapping toys.

Rufus looked at Kimberly. Kimberly looked at Rufus.

There was work to do, and it was good work. As good as the smiles they rode in on.

Customer service. The very term implies a soft-spoken, clean-cut Babbitt man from the Eisenhower era, a teetotaler who votes Republican but never discusses politics, a necktie who calls you “sir” or “ma’am” and exudes an ineluctable folksy charisma, a guy who spends his Thursday evenings at the bingo parlor and who will pomade his hair well into his autumn years. A man prepared to listen to the customer’s needs, who might have attended a Dale Carnegie course, maybe donning a daring fashion accouterment like a purple polka-dot bowtie. Chances are his name is Harold or Orville.

“Dork” is probably the word here, but in a good way. I remember guys like this growing up. You could find them hunkered over a merchandise list in an appliance store or sometimes knocking on your door. They knew their products. They had a quiet and unobtrusive way of making a sale and finding out what you wanted. They were adamant, but never pushy. They offered to undersell the competition. They worked hard, but they always sauntered along with a relaxed gait.

But after spending a half hour dealing with outsourced customer service from a faraway nation the other day, I’m convinced that today’s definition of customer service involves nothing less than bad dialogue and circlejerks.

It was bad enough with the voice-activated customer service systems that denied you the use of the touchtone phone. Of course, with those, you could generally recite the first lines of “Jabberwocky.” Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem still stands the test of time, fooling the human ear as well as its crude computerized counterpart. The computer translates the polite sentence, “I want to speak to a fucking human being” into “I want to seek a fucking by your company, along with the loss of my time and the handover of half my savings.” And that’s when you get a live human being on the other end, because the company’s ultimate goal is to fleece the customer through an overlooked clause in an agreement.

But now that companies have outsourced their support to faraway nations, you get conversations like this:

OUTSOURCED CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE IN SOME FARAWAY NATION: I completely understand your concerns. But if you fax us the form, we will get you the information in two hours.

ED: This is the third time I’ve called you. The first time, we did what you asked. We faxed you the form and you promised the info in two hours. That was two weeks ago.

OUTSOURCED CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE IN SOME FARAWAY NATION: Yes. [pause, as if to imply somehow that, despite boiler-plate repetition, the result will be different] I completely understand your concerns. But if you fax us the form, we will get you the information in two hours.

ED: See, that’s the problem. We’ve already done that. The second time I called in, which was last week, you promised us the info in two hours. We have done everything you have asked and we still don’t have the info.

OUTSOURCED CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE IN SOME FARAWAY NATION: Yes, yes. [pause] I completely understand. But if you fax us the form, we will get you the information in two hours.

ED: No, you don’t understand. We’ve had these promises before and you’ve failed to live up to them. I need the info now. Can I speak to your supervisor?

OUTSOURCED CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE IN SOME FARAWAY NATION: Yes, but he will say the same thing.

[Time passes. ED repeats explanation of previous info dilemma to SUPERVISOR OF OUTSOURCED CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE IN SOME FARAWAY NATION.]

ED: [arch and serious] Do you realize the severity of this? If you don’t get us the info, then we may have to consider doing business elsewhere.

SUPERVISOR OF OUTSOURCED CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE IN SOME FARAWAY NATION: Yes. [pause] I completely understand. But if you fax us the form, we will get you the information in two hours.

ED: Stop reading from the script!

SUPERVISOR OF OUTSOURCED CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE IN SOME FARAWAY NATION: I’m not reading from the script.

ED: And I have a third nostril! Is there anyone there who can actually get me the info?

SUPERVISOR OF OUTSOURCED CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE IN SOME FARAWAY NATION: No. [pause] But if you fax us the form, we will get you the information in two hours.

ED: [contemplating another hour of “If you fax us the form, we will get you the information in two hours.”] Okay, what’s the fax number?

Some info from Fantastic Fiction on China Miéville’s third New Crobuzon novel, Iron Council (set to hit stores on July 27, 2004): “It is a time of revolts and revolutions, conflict and intrigue. New Crobuzon is being ripped apart from without and within. War with the shadowy city-state of Tesh and rioting on the streets at home are pushing the teeming metropolis to the brink. In the midst of this turmoil, a mysterious masked figure spurs strange rebellion, while treachery and violence incubate in unexpected places. In desperation, a small group of renegades escapes from the city and crosses strange and alien continents in the search for a lost hope, an undying legend. In the blood and violence of New Crobuzon’s most dangerous hour, there are whispers. It is the time of the Iron Council.”

John Derbyshire proclaims An African in Greenland, a first-person account of West African Tété-Michel Kpomassie meeting Eskimos, as the strangest travel book ever written. An audio interview with Kpomassie can be found here.

Also worth investigating: Troll: A Love Story, featuring what appears to be a Terry Pratchett-like skewering of fantasy conventions, gay consorts, and a baby troll being beaten up by street thugs.

Taking up Stephany’s challenge:

In this condition: stirred by the twain into a soupçon of solicitude; by pinching pennies and damning dollars; by sending purty li’l packages for a pittance; by denying lucre and limning love; by considering clauses to clear in two months and deposits and Type A tyros; by maintaining a half-true smile and sending a courteous note when they offer declarations that seal a sunny door shut; by pounding on these doors and feeling the bruised impact of brick walls; by not giving up and planning pirouettes in one fell swoop, the dim light of a borderline fall from grace dappling upon my shoulders, the nutty Kenny Rogers sixties song in the back; by anything which upgrades current beta test into something rosy and spurting; by anything darn tootin’, notwithstanding the frigid fingers icing my warmth, fools unwielding muzzles and cashing blood in at the bank; saying no to anything that cuts down my soul, dodging rash motions of machetes, the jaws of crocodiles; saying no even when they hear yes, clearing the brine and chastity belt, keeping spry; anything warm and equal, any hinterland where no one gives a dam, allowing rivulets to burst and grand dreams to happen.

Tom and I have concluded that the saddest bachelor meal is this:

An open, leftover can of Spaghetti-Os, unheated and eaten out of the can with a dirty fork, eaten alone and washed down with a bottle of white Zinfiandel (or perhaps one of those boxed versions) that’s been in the fridge for at least a week.

Neither of us would ever stoop this low. But someone in this universe has probably consumed just this.

The real question is: Can anyone top this? I urge readers to offer their thoughts on this very pressing matter. Failing that, what’s the worst meal you’ve ever served yourself at home?

The Guardian: “Actor John C Reilly has reportedly quit Lars Von Trier’s Manderlay in protest over the killing of a donkey.” (via Liz Penn)

In one of the silliest articles I’ve ever seen at the Guardian, Natasha Walter claims that sex and porn are difficult to write about. But I would suspect that this is one of those first person confessionals secretly disguised as a generalization-laden argument. For one thing, there’s nary a mention of the following words in Walter’s article: “penis,” “bukkake,” “vagina,” “ass,” “naughty bits,” “sperm” and “condom.” The article also makes the following claims:

“Pornography may not quite be part of mainstream culture, but it certainly makes its presence felt.” Hey, Natasha, stayed at a Ramada Inn lately? Beyond the grand selection of porn on the teevee, you can always count on the couple banging away in the next room. If that isn’t a sign that sex is inseparable from mainstream culture, I don’t know what is.

“But many people still feel a deep unease about the growth of pornography – about the way people within the business are exploited, and about the ways in which consumers find their imaginations colonised by a very particular and very narrow view of invulnerable sexuality.” Many people, eh? Care to name some names? Care to cite some examples? Come on, Natasha. I dare you to stand by your generalization.

“Yet most writers who take on the subject of pornography are men, and for them it is usual to adopt a pretty breezy, often humorous view of the way that pornography works.” I don’t know, Susie Bright’s pretty breezy and takes erotica seriously.

“these male writers”: You’ve only quoted Adam Thirwell! He speaks for all men and all erotica?

“But [men] shy away from communicating any moral outrage about the subject.” I don’t know. Steve Almond seems pretty outraged about human urges and what is represented beneath the sexuality.

“Perhaps that is the most important thing that we can ask of a novelist, that they should be emotionally alive as they respond to the emotionless world that is pornography.” Better to be emotionally dead when making jejune arguments about the evils of porn found in…literary novels? Huh?

British libraries are failing, but there’s a plan in the works.

Congratulations, Maud.

Now you can go home again.

Nadine Gordimer has been honored by Cuba.

And here’s my nomination for the cheesiest book of 2004: The Bastard on the Couch: 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain Their Feelings About Love, Loss, Fatherhood and Freedom. There’s even an excerpt available.

Courtney Love: “She grabs a suitcase and drags it doggedly to the center of the room. She turns to me and barks, ‘Go through my lyrics. They’re great. I’m the best writer of this generation. And if you don’t believe me, fine. But I dare you to find a bad one in there.'”

The whiff of self-delusion’s overwhelming. And there’s more. Hypodermic needles, mammary scars, the works. Hope Strauss got paid extra for writing the piece. (via Syntax)

SUGAR LAND, Tex. — This is the home of Britton Stein — oh, not this sentence, but Sugar Land itself. Stein describes George W. Bush as “a man’s man’s man’s man’s man, a manly man, manning the men manning the best man’s man,” and Al Gore (not a man’s man and not a 2004 presidential candidate) as a “ranting and raving and roving and reeming little chihuahua who needs an Elizabethan collar.”

Forty-nine years old, Stein is a man subject to interesting, yet extremely odd Post reporting. He is a husband, a father, a man, a man’s man, a man’s manly man, and a Republican. He lives in a house that was built by a man and is run by a man, and if you’re not a man or a man’s man, then you’ll get your hair cut by a woman. His three daughters aren’t embarassed by the fact that they aren’t men, even though Stein is a man. But sometimes Stein isn’t a man or a man’s man, because he blows kisses to his wife and daughter (again, members of the Stein family unit who aren’t men’s men). He loves his family, even when there aren’t enough men’s men. But if you’re a member of the Stein clan, it’s possible to be a woman who eats, drinks, talks and spits out tobacco like a man’s man, dammit. Stein’s personal hero, George W. Bush, no longer drinks or spits out tobacco. But, by golly, he runs like a man’s man and sometimes looks like a cowboy, and that’s the ultimate qualifier. Stein believes that being the President is not about your political record, but about comparing size much as Fitzgerald and Hemingway (one not-so-man’s man and one man’s man) did privately once.

Is Stein real? Only Post reporter David Finkel (a quasi man’s man) knows for sure.

I don’t know what sort of power struggle is going over at the Hag’s, but it really must be seen to be believed. First off, Beck is back. And finishing up a project seems to have thrown Lizzie over the edge, to the point where she can no longer spell “falafel.” Beyond that, it’s about as coherent as an athletic piglet leaving an unauthorized orgy, and I couldn’t describe it in any reasonable terms. Go check the frenetic duo out. Also, Rake‘s been written into the will.

THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: You better work your stuff. Deadline’s quick and coming.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: I’ve got it!
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: We’re in this together, kid, I know.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: No, no, this illiterate tendency of yours, with regards to the whole Faust thing.
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: Careful there. Sounds as if you might be groping.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: You deny the new books under your arm?
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: I deny them until I have read them. Then I will acknowledge that they exist.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: I’ve got it. Taking a cue…
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: As I’ve said, careful. Timing is everything, and to grope onto my sum of experience, whether it be that fabulous lady we were talking with on Saturday night, who let us bank that side pocket shot.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: Yes, she was cute. But, no, it’s all valid.
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: Valid at the risk of turning into some egregious self-chronicler. Some autobiographical humdrum.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: We’re doing this already. The blog, the journal, the stories that sometimes drift close to the bone, and now…
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: CAREFUL! Jesus, just because I have these magical musty books underneath my arm doesn’t mean you should pilfer from them too. For instance, this prologue involving a manager, merryman, and poet.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: Yes!
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: No. Invention. The necessary skills, bro.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: Yes, but Picasso and great artists! I’m losing pages paring it down.
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: I know.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: And the temptation to latch onto anything.
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: Your aim is to keep things moving.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: Ice floe!
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: Down the stream, and your plot will freeze should you pilfer yet again. They don’t buy these pomo tricks anymore.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: They do!
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: Is your aim to persuade me? Because you’re doing a crummy job.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: Please understand. I’m resorting to jokes involving cleansing products.
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: Well, the choice is yours. Then again, good stuff doesn’t happen without a little bit of risk.

Jen Chung reminded me that today is Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day.

Apparently, everybody’s been hopping about for the Bill Clinton memoir. 1.5 million copies will be printed in June. The release is timed to avoid competing with John Kerry. But I have to ask: What’s to get excited about? Here are some reasons why I probably won’t read the Clinton memoir:

A LAMEASS TITLE: My Life? Jesus, Bill, why not call it What I Did Last Summer (And A Few Things I Did During My Eight Years in the White House)?

CLINTON DOESN’T SUFFER FROM HYPERGRAPHIA: Apparently, Clinton now works “late in the evening,” leaving rep Robert Barnett to cover his ass. This suggests a rushed work, one almost immediately schlepped from the word processor to the printing press. Will we see long, clause-laden sentences that will put us to sleep or something anticlimactic like Hilary’s “shocked” moment from Living History?

THE $10 MILLION ADVANCE: If you’re getting $10 million to spill your soul, you better dish some dirt. I don’t think we’ll ever get a solid explanation for the presidential cigar. (Remember that?) Nor will Bill confess to us why he’s fond of big-haired women. Since he owes us at least that much, and won’t deliver, no quid pro quo here, Bubba.

CLINTON ON A BOOK TOUR: Orating to a handful of people in a Barnes & Noble in Peoria seems a sad step down from a man who once packed halls for a few thousand a pop.

Like Mark, I can’t pass a plug, particularly one that involves a bad pun. If you’re in New York City tonight, go hear Maud read.

From Publisher’s Lunch:

Though he stepped carefully around specifics, Tannenhaus confirmed that the process of changing the review has already begun and will build to a full “relaunch” and redesign this fall. He confidently declared, “You’ll see a much different book review.”

Most potential changes were positioned as things “we are looking at,” but the roster included turning more full-page 1,400-word reviews into more 600 to 700-word reviews, pushing reviewers to do their work more quickly, finding new and regular ways of covering commercial fiction (by “taking it own its own merits and trying to find what it is that readers are responding to”) and tweaking the “in brief” reviews in a way “that we hope will spotlight them a little bit more.” Tannenhaus made it clear that he will start reviewing authors who have “consistently been on the bestseller list” but not generally gotten reviewed in the newspaper. In the reviews he would “like a little stronger opinion as well.” Plus, authors with a “legitimate grievance” about how they are reviewed should find their letters getting printed more frequently. “If an author think he hasn’t gotten a fair shake, then the letter runs and the reviewer gets the chance to respond.”

So, Mr. Tanenhaus, can we expect some sidebars on how many times Zadie Smith upsets her neighbors? And that quick-on-the-draw approach will work great with heavier novels like Cloud Atlas or The Confusion.

What’s the greatest problem of our age? The stripping of civil liberties? No. The troubling situation in Iraq? No again. The unilateral atmosphere? No, no, no! No kewpie doll for you! You ain’t connected, babe. The heavy issue, which involves the writing of 1,000 word essays for the Voice, is book signing, dammit! To which one can only reply, if you don’t want to put out, don’t spread ’em!

audio post powered by audblog

Dammit.

From Scibbling Woman (via The Little Professor), and at the risk of revealing how illiterate I am, bold the titles you’ve read. Nope, I’ve never read Beowulf, Dante, or Goethe. Been meaning to. Really. 71 out of 100. That’s a C-, right?
Continue reading →