Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant

Items

• Dan Wickett serves up another panel -- this time, one involving novelists Quinn Dalton and Tayari Jones talking with Ms. Tangerine Muumuu and Gwenda Bond.
• If you haven't checked out Fourteen Hills, you're missing out on a very fine literary biannual. The biannual is produced by the San Francisco State University Creative Writing Department. The latest issue (Winter/Sprnig 2005) features contributions from Michelle Tea and Sam Hurwitt, a very strange letter story from Mat Snapp, a lengthy tale from Nona Caspers, and even an epigraph from Walter Benjamin.
• The gang at Gigantic Graphic Novels have compiled the first eight issues of Rick Spears and Rob G's Teenagers from Mars into a trade paperback. It hit the stands in February. I'm not sure if these two have been inspired by the Misfits song or not, but I'd describe the comic as an odd cross between Derek Kirk Kim and Fight Club. In a world close to ours, teenagers get pummeled by superstore goons, grave robbing runs rampant, and there's a strange Moral Majority-style crackdown on comic books. The book has a punkish manga feel, existing in a parallel universe that perhaps has more parallels to this one than we realize.
• You have to hand it to the London Times for class: "Biker chick and lecturer join race for Orange Prize." I guess if you're a woman who bikes, you're a "chick." But if you're a lecturer, there's no need to single someone out by their gender for a gender-based award.
• Demonstrating once again that lucidity is not his strong suit, Michael Crichton thinks that people concerned with global warming are comparable to Nazi eugenicists. Sure, Mikey. Just about every environmentalist I know is planning to throw Republicans into the crematorium.
• China has banned a novel by Yan Lianke because it satirizes Mao's slogan, "Serve the People."
• Rich slackers can be found all over New York.