The morning — indeed, a good part of the day — is filled up, but I’m hoping to offer a few posts this afternoon. Also, many podcasts, containing quite a few provocative conversations with a few possibly unexpected figures, will be released in a matter of days. Bear with me.

If you are in any way a literary person, you must read Tom McCarthy’s Remainder. Throw everything down. Forget that passable novel you’re reading. This is the real deal.

I will have considerably more to say about this extraordinary book later.

An anonymous comment at the National Book Critics Circle blog:

Has book coverage started on Truthdig? If it has, it’s very invisible on the home page. Second, those of us who are interested in literature and literary culture wish all you folks would stop talking about yourselves for a few minutes and start reviewing some more books. Most of you work from assignment, so you can’t necessarily be blamed, but since we can read any book review we want these days, why do we have to read so many reviews of the same twenty books every week. That this “campaign” to save book reviewing takes up so much of your attention is only further evidence of how important you all think you are. It’s actually the books that are important and so many of them–books that are often far more interesting than the few that you sheep are all getting your two cents in about every week–just disappear without a bit of attention. If literature is to survive, it has to do something that movies don’t do, it has to move forward, it has to grow. This hammering away at Delillo, Chabon, Díaz by all of you at once is downright boring. Folks who read are looking for a disovery, not the same old same old. Your homogeneity spells the death of culture in this country. If, indeed, we ever had one.

It will be Thursday at 6:30 PM at the Bowery Poetry Club! A two-man tribute to Gregory Corso that was rehearsed with some finesse by both parties less than 24 hours ago!

Current inboxes: 136 on one, 389 on the other. Bear with me. This is a significant improvement from yesterday.

New York Times: “What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.”

I just sent an Add Friend request to Jonathan Franzen. Whether he will be my friend or not, who can say? But if Franzen is on Facebook, is it safe to say that Facebook has jumped the shark?

(And if Rick Moody can be my Facebook friend, then surely Jonathan Franzen can!)

[UPDATE: This just in. Leonard Cohen is on Facebook. What the fuck?]

• Jonathan Safran Foer ran away from me.
• Richard Nash hid from everybody because he is a Steelers fan. (Who knew?)
• Jonathan Lethem wore a crazy T-shirt. So did I. He was good enough not to run away from me.
• Dennis Loy Johnson resembled a badass from a Sam Peckinpah film. He could not run away, because he was running the Melville House booth.
• George Saunders is a very kind man.
• Gavin Grant is also a very kind man.
• We gave Francine Prose directions. She ran away, but she was polite about it.
• Tao Lin is still a very shy young man.
• Paul Slovak ran away from me, but only because our group was accosted by a rather idiosyncratic self-published individual.
• I learned from Molly at Coffee House Press that not even Minneapolis is immune from the Apple Store.
• I am offering these superficial notes, because I was in no condition to report on the event. There is yet another deadline. But it was a pleasant diversion. And if you ran into me and did not run away, apologies for my momentary discombobulated mind.
• It is officially autumn in New York.

Due to a crazy deadline (now beat!), I was unable to make last night’s NBCC panel, despite a few kind reminders from fellow litbloggers. But Mr. Orthofer has provided a fantastic “you are there” report (as does the excellent Richard Grayson). One of the most salient revelations:

[Name redacted to avoid yet another round of silly charges suggesting that I want to blow the man] suggested that, unlike someone writing a novel or poetry and finding satisfaction in creating something like that, even if it was never published, no one writes book reviews just for their own pleasure and satisfaction, but I don’t think that’s correct: there are an enormous amount of readers’ diaries out there, or sites where readers just seem to want to sum up (and/or share) their thoughts on their reading, whether as semi-formal ‘book-reviews’ or looser notes.

It certainly isn’t correct. When I was seventeen, I was having difficulty writing an essay. I openly confessed this to a teacher, a man who I am perpetually grateful to, and this teacher suggested to me that I should have fun with the essay instead of worrying about it. A giant lightbulb appeared above my head. Since then, I’ve done this for almost everything I’ve written. It has remained a long-standing principle to write in an entertaining manner and therefore find some kind of pleasure and satisfaction that is, I hope, transmittable to a readership. After all, why should writing be dull? If the things I wrote weren’t fun or engaging in some manner, then why would I be doing it? What would be the point? I would willfully recuse myself from writing about some topic if it became a drag. Thankfully, there will always be plenty of things to write about that do tempt my inner and ever-curious imp.

I think this is one the main differences between litbloggers and some (but, to be very clear on this, by no means all!) print reviewers. The issue certainly isn’t one of “being rejected by the print powers.” Frankly, there really isn’t much of a disparity between the authors who appear on The Bat Segundo Show and the authors who are profiled in The Hartford Courant. So why constantly wag fingers?

The tone here is not so much anti-establishment, as it is anti-bullshit. And my own tendency to question individuals, including myself, is that of a healthy and playful skeptic. It does not arise from being excluded (although, judging from the hate mail I often get, some people would be happy to see me go away), but because nobody else is willing to question these sacred cows. If the original definition of journalism involves “writing that reflects superficial thought and research, a popular slant, and hurried composition,” then perhaps print and online mediums aren’t so different. And maybe the purported print mavens are only fooling themselves when they compare blogs to hot dog stands and newspapers to restaurants. Sometimes, you pay more at a restaurant that fails to live up to its purported reputation when you can sometimes get a better meal at a diner without the bullshit. And sometimes, well, a Gray’s Papaya hot dog ain’t exactly the right meal to get you through the day. In the end, it all amounts to the the best options that will serve you at the requisite time. To carry on a series of castigations or generalizations against one medium or the other is to willfully succumb to a lifelong diet of bologna sandwiches. And that’s certainly no fun.

Booksquare and Medialoper have entered into the podcasting fray with a print-on-demand discussion with author Timothy Sykes.

Richard Grayson has a report from last night’s “Literary Magazines Go Electronic: Where’s the Print Edition in the Library?” panel.

It is a day of deadlines and madness. But I will try to offer some posts later.

In other news, my 62 minute self-help presentation, “Cooking an Omelette for Breakfast, Cooking an Omelette for Life” is now ready for the professional lecturing circuit. Interested parties may inquire directly, as the Steven Barclay Agency has recently affixed a large poster in their office with the words “DO NOT HIRE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES” just underneath a grainy Kodachrome photograph of me.

If you’re feeling despondent about the lack of responses, check out Susannah Breslin’s freelancing stats.

It is especially heartening to know that some ostensible writers, scribbling in blog-like form for their columns, confuse their shaky Fleet Street sinecures and their indolent journalistic dispositions with “educated comment” and proceed to make absurd generalizations as egregious as these apparent “axe-grinding amateurs.” (Sorry, Mr. Sanderson, but not even a Red Dwarf reference cannot inure your ass after writing such nonsense.)

The Book Standard: “John Tesh, the radio and television personality, has joined with Thomas Nelson to release his upcoming book, A Passionate Life. The book, which will be published March 11, 2008, will reveal Tesh’s own personal story of how he ‘has applied certain principles to live a complete and passionate life,’ according to the publisher.”

The Times: “France’s cultural heritage is in peril because students are shunning literature in favour of more practical courses that they believe will help them to secure well-paid jobs, the Education Minister said….’We need literary people, pupils who can master speech and reason,’ he said. ‘They are always in demand.'”

The Independent: “Online bookseller Amazon has plans to unveil a wireless electronic book reader, a kind of literary iPod, which already has UK publishers scrambling to digitise their entire range of titles. The device, which sources claim could be launched as early as next month, would follow the recent US launch of the Sony eBook Reader, a machine the size of a hardback that stores digital copies of up to 80 books and lasts 7,500 pages on a single charge.”

So when’s JVC going to jump into the fray?

Contrary to previous reports, it appears that redheads will not — repeat, NOT — be going extinct. You can go back to schtupping blondes and brunettes with egalitarian rapacity.

I didn’t get this nonsense in my email (although this doesn’t necessarily mean that I didn’t get it, if you know what I mean). Out of general principle, I refuse to publicize this piece of news. I am not your puppet. I am not your tool. I am not your dancing little monkey. What Orthofer said.

If you send me a tip, I’ll be damned if I’m going to subscribe to your unilateral way of conducting journalism. (Can I keep confidential information? You bet. But that isn’t necessarily going to stop me from confirming something with another source.) I’ll report (or not) in the manner that I find appropriate. And if that means taking two hours or two months or two years to investigate or think about something (what, you didn’t actually think that I had stopped investigating subjects broached on these pages from years ago, did you?), so be it. If this isn’t the way that the New York Times does business, then it certainly isn’t the way that I conduct business.

This is what I suggest: a united stand. If you received the information, don’t report it. Let them know that bullshit embargoes are not the way to build a positive and lasting relationship.

I won’t be able to make either of these fine literary offerings, I’m afraid. But as Maud notes, you really can’t go wrong here in New York tonight. At Barnes & Noble on 33 East 17th Street, Junot Diaz reads at 7:00 PM. And at McNally Robinson (52 Prince Street), Edward Jones, Joshua Ferris, and Andrea Threatt discuss New Stories from the South at 7:00 PM.

Meghan,

Because it’s hard for me to summon any more “critical distance” towards The Guinness Book of World Records, now celebrating its fifty-third anniversary, than I can toward the beard of bees I wish were stinging my angular face or the smell of my skin burning that I missed out on because I was too chicken to enter a tattoo parlor so that I might rival the world’s most tattooed man, Lucky Diamond Rich, I can’t imagine what it must have been like to read the book for the first time as a desperate, alert grown-up who now understands that he will never be as tall as Robert Wadlow and who understands, after holing up with many reference books over the years, that this is the only one that matters. I suppose there’s still some hope, should I live long and should some kind Chippendale’s owner employ me in my autumn years, to beat out 66-year-old Bernie Barker as the world’s oldest male stripper.

What I’m saying, I guess, is that I’ll never be as corpulent as those twin motorcyclists. All I can do is describe how Guinness affects me neurologically, intellectually, spiritually, sexually, violently, adverbially — every year a new edition comes out. By this, I don’t mean each time I reread it, for there are often new records to study and new humilities to endure. As I’ve said, I’ll never make Guinness. I know my limitations. The Guinness people are ambitious enough to make me feel far from special. Remember the time I told you about my efforts to stuff my mouth with more kazoos than anybody else? I sent in my dutiful application, but Guinness sent me a rejection letter that I now have framed on my wall. They said, “Kazoos are out. They aren’t that special. Physical dismemberment is in.” Long have I stared at the three-paragraph letter behind the glass. Long have I cried. Long have I laughed. Long have I talked about this letter with my therapist.

Where others can content themselves with having the most powerful lungs or the most fingers and toes out of all living people, I, Walter Kirn, have no physical embodiments or talents that will cut the Guinness mustard. All I can do is drink Guinness. And even then, there’s simply no connection between Guinness the records organization and Guinness the stout maker.

First, I mourn.

I mourn for the whole doomed enterprise and for the ideas, which never seem to date and always seem to sell. I’m convinced Guinness will carry on with its world records volumes through the end of my physical life, and I will mourn again, and I will try to convince someone to inscribe WALTER KIRN: MOST KAZOOS IN MOUTH on my tombstone. Perhaps I can sidestep the Guinness denial by filming myself with kazoos and uploading it to YouTube. That’s the way to make it these days, isn’t it?

I mourn the idea that there isn’t even a United States-only version of Guinness where I might be able to squeeze myself in. Where the Guinness people won’t send me a letter and they will realize that there is some merits in kazoo mouth-stuffing.

I mourn that this matters to me more than Kerouac.

Forgive me, Meghan. It’s been a difficult year and a long time since I put a kazoo in my mouth.

Maybe we might be able to get a Slate Book Club email volley out of this. Some extra cash for me to buy more kazoos. What do you think?

Yours,

Walter Kirn

• So sorry that it’s been nuggets and roundups of late. Some podcasts and more substantive posts will be unfurled soon. Bear with me.
• Leave it to the Rake to tell the truth about James Wood. Yes, indeed, let’s praise weirdness, shall we? It seems to me that only a dull and incurious mind would rally against the fabulous possibilities of literature. But James Wood ain’t a dummy. And yet…and yet….
• Mark Thwaite on the Sony Reader.
• Business 2.0: Dead.
• Richard Dawkins on Hitch. (via the hard-working Jenny D!)
• Nathan Englander: I call you out! Just because I can. You’re getting too much press these days, you curly-haired Hungarian Pastry Shop-frequenting writer, you! And I demand that you do something silly! Name the time and place, and I will destroy you in a game of Connect Four!*
• Gavin Grant makes a cameo appearance at Jacket Copy.
• If you care to draw a correlation between the NYT mouse problem and Sam Tanenhaus’s far from cuddly disposition, your crazed speculations are welcome.
• Erin O’Brien on corn chowder!
• So what the hell does USA Today mean twenty-five years later? A four section daily newspaper that drastically underestimates the American capacity for force-fed news? An enduring homage to 1982? A considerable improvement upon FOX News? Incidentally, Rupert Murdoch’s interested in buying it.
• Katie Couric, you’ve had your time.
• I have seen the future and it does not involve John Sutherland.
• And what of Anne Hathaway?
• Terry Teachout on video.
• And John Cleese clarifies the anti-Semitic nature of Monty Python.

* — Yes, Daniel Mendelsohn was also challenged to a game of Connect Four on these pages. But he refused to take up the offer. The time has come to expand the board game testosterone to writers with needlessly curly hair.

From Publisher’s Lunch:

Dale Peck’s BODY SURFING, a dark literary thriller about a race of demons who possess their prey, moving from body to body via sexual release, and the female hunter bent on destroying them, to Peter Borland at Atria, by Richard Abate at Endeavor (NA).

Richard Dooling writes in to report that he authored an op-ed piece pertaining to L’Affaire Lamott. The piece appeared in the Omaha World-Herald, but is not available online. But Dooling has it up on his website.

Publishers Weekly: “Random House reported a 8% decline in worldwide earnings for the first half of 2007, to 44 million euros ($60 million) while parent company Bertelsmann posted first-half losses primarily due to Napster legal difficulties.”

Thanks to Julia Prosser, here is what I’ve been able to find out about Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke. There is not yet a subtitle to this 800 page opus, but the book is described as “a meticulously researched, astonishingly new perspective of the political, social, religious, and economic events throughout the world in the years preceding World War II—an invaluable work of nonfiction and an impassioned, persuasive call for pacifism.”

The book’s editor is Sarah Hochman, who has also edited the German writer Maxim Biller.

The release that I have also describes it as “a unique, deeply moving indictment of the treasured myths that have romanticized much of the 1930s and ‘40s—and a testament to non-violence and pacifism that applies as much to our own age as to any other.”

It also describes Human Smoke as “weav[ing] together the events and individuals that unnecessarily enabled or prolonged the irreparable damages of the war, including hundreds of often-overlooked facts, quotes, and articles that were frequently published in The New York Times, TIME, and countless other sources, which have been easily accessible to readers for generations.”

So yeah, I’d say that we might be seeing a good deal of that Baker-like precision here. The big question is just what specific elements Baker will be looking into to support his thesis for pacifism.

A new edition of The Quarterly Conversation is up, and it includes Garth Hallberg on James Wood (which features a handy flowchart of literary conflicts over the past decade), Scott on prison writing, Antoine Wilson on Remainder, among many other things. Check it out.