Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant

Edwards Delivers Stump Speech At Auction; Blows Campaign Funds on Ming Vase

Quick Juice

Dennis Quaid thanks Crowe for humiliating him. (via Amy)

The scoop behind Churchill's Nobel Lit Prize win (via Moorish).

And Lizzie has convinced me to wear a thong. Maybe just after pre-op, I'll take the camisole too.

Ad Hom to Ad Hom

Dale Peck isn't just a bitch, but he's an hubric mofo who compares his Moody blues to both Edmund Wilson and Virginia Woolf. (And, of course, the standard Coleridge line.)

Judy Blume is on the defensive. Her book, Deenie, deals in part with masturbation. But Hernando County elementary schools are pulling the book from their shelves.

Chica has a nice roundup of author photos. Me? I'm still squirming over Max Barry's photo on Jennifer Government (see right). The book, which was so bad that I gave up on it (and I rarely do this), is terrible enough with its amateurish prose and failure to live up its central idea. But Barry himself looks instinctively like a new fraternity pledge who barely made it into the house. And I'd say the photo has helped me to hate the book more. Which isn't good. Because I'd prefer to just erase the book out of my mind and reclaim the time I invested.

NYT vs. Blogs

Wired: "So Withers decided to start the Wilgoren Watch, dedicated to deconstructing The New York Times' coverage of Howard Dean's campaign. Within weeks, the site had a prominent visitor: Wilgoren herself. The reporter has mixed feelings about the site. "

Slate: "For his labors, Radosh earned an ugly set of threats from Landesman. And though apologies were eventually extended to Radosh by Landesman and the Times Magazine for Landesman's behavior, the writer still reserves the right to punish the blogger in court for what he wrote."

OpEdNews.com: "David Brooks, who joined the New York Times op-ed page with a reputation as one of the few neocons with intellectual integrity, has seen his reputation dwindle rapidly under the scrutiny of the blogosphere."

7% of My Thoughts on January 30, 2004

1. I had a terrifying dream in which I lost all of my teeth. It should be stated for the record that this was not a nightmare. Nightmares have the consolation of being terrifying in a way that allows one to distinguish between consciousness and unconsciousness. Dreams, by contrast, involve a consummate mindfuck. They masquerade under the illusion that all is well, when in fact they give credence to paranoia and anxiety. Case in point: In this dream, my mouth was a congealed morass of blood, and I was unable to consume anything other than Jamba Juice smoothies. Why my mind fixated on this franchise choice, I cannot say. I've deferred my smoothie needs to a not-bad independent Haight Street joint. It is also worth noting that, in the dream, no one around me commented upon my lack of teeth. And this perhaps terrified me the most. Because I had not realized up till now how important my teeth were. I awoke to find my teeth perfectly intact, though I wondered if this dream was an insinuation that I needed to visit a dentist. Women.com, apparently a media outlet of some note, reports that, "Dreams of losing teeth are often dreams of embarrassment or potentially embarrassing situations. The parallel waking experience could be summed up in the phrase 'losing face' publicly." This means nothing to me. I am a man. When I think of a man losing his teeth, I remember Walter Brennan in Red River, who gambled away his teeth and thought that it was nothing more than a slightly embarrassing inconvenience. Ultimately, shame guided Brennan. And shame guided me within the dreamscape. But my anxieties may have had something to do with Point 2.

2. I submitted my application for Wrestling an Alligator to the Fringe Fest today. Alligators, of course, have teeth. I will know on February 11 whether or not my play gets in. The chances, as I understand, are quite random. I tried to come up with a better title, but for whatever reason, Wrestling an Alligator took. I tested this title amongst peers. They seemed to like it.

3. At a restaurant, I ordered an alcoholic beverage known as "007." The beverage was composed of Bacardi rum, orange juice and 7-Up. I hadn't tried this concoction before. So I thought I'd give it a shot. It cost six bucks, and yet the drink didn't include an umbrella. The waitress (or server, if you're into that PC sort of thing) approached me and asked if "it was strong enough." The drink, it should be noted, was served in a tall, thin glass, doomed to a predictably orange hue. I implored the waitress to inform me what an orange beverage, let alone an amalgam of orange juice and 7-Up, had to do with James Bond. I told her that Bond liked martinis "shaken not stirred" and that perhaps the 007 association might have been a misnomer. She told me she didn't know. I asked for the manager, hoping for an explanation. The manager arrived, a short man with a receding hairline and a scowl. He informed me that I had no business asking such questions. I told the manager I wasn't looking for any trouble, but that I was just curious. What was the 007 drink all about? It should also be noted that the drink had no effect upon me. The rum was diluted, the taste was muted. As a drink, I think we can all agree that it failed. So given the waitress's query, it seemed to me that the drink was a dud. Really, I told the manager, I was disappointed by the exotic attempt. Why not something vaguely related to Ian Fleming's creation? "Eat your Pad Thai and get out," he said. "Is this really a way to draw repeat customers?" I asked. I ordered the drink, only because half the menu was devoted to beverages of this nature. "I don't care," he said. And I wondered if the chef had spit in my food. I ate the pad thai anyway, and it's safe to say that I won't be revisiting this particular establishment.

4. I met up with a friend and caught Nick Broomfield's new documentary, Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer. I was considerably impressed. Broomfield offered his standard Robin Leach approach, with a few good gags and his usual slow but sharp everyday observations. But this seemed to me the most revealing film of his ouevre. On one hand, he was willing to dwell on Aileen Wuornos in unapologetic closeup, deferring the scathing power of this film to the serial killer whose intentions were not entirely clear. But he was willing to reveal his hypocrisy. For all of his criticisms of capital punishment and the media coverage, this was a man who misled Wuornos, by proclaiming that he wasn't taping her conversations when he really was, an attempt to confess that she had committed her murders in self-defense. And yet I could somehow get behind Broomfield and despise Jeb Bush and his wholly unqualified psychiatric tests. The film functioned almost as a response to Capturing the Friedmans, and I was captivated. Friend wasn't as crazy about the film as I was, but this somehow touched a nerve with me. Are documentaries now about revealing process? If so, how long will this trend last?

5. I sent too many emails today. For those who received them, I apologize. I wanted to atone for last week's abandonment. The emails ranged from pithy observations to throwaway responses. But all were fun to write. Which begs the question of whether email, as a format, is something that encourages both the best and the worst out of us.

To Hell with the Democrats, Here's a Real Race to Get Behind

Maslin: Pop Lit Ghetto 'Ho

Janet Maslin is a good critic, but any doubts that she's been ghettoized by the Times as the "pop lit gal" should be removed. In fact, considered with this unfortunate headline, part of me suspects an anti-Maslin conspiracy.

Students now spend an average of $828 per year on academic books. A new study reports that the average textbook costs over $100, and that the cost has risen from $650 in 1996-1997. In related news, sales of Top Ramen have risen along the same exponential curve.

And you thought the David Denby coverage was bad? When I think about who to ask about sex, Steven Bochco is probably the last guy in line.

The lower your testosterone, the greater your chance of developing Alzheimer's. Scientific proof that Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston were never men's men.

Donald Trump has a new book out in April, How to Be Rich. Random House will be paying Trump close "a lot more than a million dollars" with sizable royalties. Guess the folks at Random House didn't learn from the book, did they?

The Sunday Times claims that Pete Dexter is the most injury-prone writer in the world and then, because the writer of the article doesn't believe his own thesis, he offers a long expose of Dexter's physical condition. What next? A 2,000 word essay on Saul Bellow's hair?

Pay no attention to the title. Vintage Didion is not a Slouching/White repackage, but represents Didion's work in the Reagan era.

Norman Mailer turns 81 on Saturday and the Scotsman tries to examine why he isn't considered "America's greatest living writer." Without, of course, asking anyone here why.

Is the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette appropriating Crooked Timber's Books I Did Not Read This Year idea?

Sarah compares the TMFTML imbroglio with Moonlighting.

And cool enough that Yardley champions A.J. Liebling, a guy I've been meaning to read, but Teachout's there too.

Unilateral Typography, Motherfucker

The U.S. State Department has banned the courier font from all diplomatic correspondence. "That'll show 'em," said a State Department official, who hoped that Times New Roman would be next. "Who the hell do they think we are? Screenwriters? Typists? We're diplomats first and foremost. And we'll fuck your shit up without using Courier." (via Six Different)

Okay, So I'm About Four Months Behind on This, But...

Naomi Wolf: "But the effect [of porn] is not making men into raving beasts. On the contrary: The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as 'porn-worthy.' Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention."

Tracking Sensations Is A Tough Racket

"If you reject absolutely any single sensation without stopping to distinguish between opinion about things awaiting confirmation and that which is already confirmed to be present, whether in sensation or in feelings or in any application of intellect to the presentations, you will confuse the rest of your sensations by your groundless opinion and so you will reject every standard of truth. If in your ideas based upon opinion you hastily affirm as true all that awaits confirmation as well as that which does not, you will not avoid error, as you will be maintaining the entire basis for doubt in every judgment between correct and incorrect opinion." -- Epicurus

Kucinich for 2004

November really boils down to one choice: Anybody But Bush. But since we're in the primary stage, why not have a little bit of fun?

Kucinich doesn't stand a chance in hell, but he's got my vote in the primary. Despite what scaredy-cats decry as a wacko platform, Kucinich hasn't managed his campaign with incompetence. Kucinich has never wavered from his stance. Kucinich has never had to clarify a comment or sleep with the Gore 2000 boys to save his bacon. Because Kucinich has a bigger pair of balls than Dean. He's against the Patriot Act (unlike Dean). He's audacious enough to end Star Wars and NAFTA. Kucinich has stayed in the race and remained true to his convictions.

I had problems with Dean's position on the death penalty and his loose stance on civil liberties, as well as his intricate health care plan (compared to, say, a clear-cut Canadian style one). But I had contemplated voting for Dean because he had what I perceived to be courage. Now it turns out that Dean has been flying by the seat of his pants in nearly every capacity. And that's no way to run a campaign or a country.

So while I'll vote Anybody But Bush in November, I'm voting with my conscience in the primary. Do any of you lefties have the balls to do the same?

Dean's Dead in the Water

New York Times: "Tricia Enright, the campaign's communications director, said Dr. Dean was forming 'a new creative team' to overhaul its television advertisements. She said the campaign was not firing its media firm, in which Mr. Trippi is a partner. Many Dean supporters have been critical of the ad campaign, particularly in Iowa. Some questioned the arrangements by which Mr. Trippi forfeited a salary as a campaign manager but collected commissions — said to be as high as 15 percent in some cases — based on advertising buys.

Forget the Iowa yell. The Dean campaign's financial incompetence stinks of cronyism and irresponsibility. And Trippi's profiteering comes on the heels of the depleted war chest and Dean telling his 500 staffers to skip their paychecks for two weeks.

I'd say at this point that Dean's goose was cooked. If Dean can't manage the finances of his own campaign, then how can he manage the budget? Stacked against Bush's deficit, Dean certainly comes across as fiscally conservative.

Clarifying the Conspiracy

There's something which needs to be stated for the record. I am TMFTML. Neal Pollack is too. (And here you all are wondering why Pollack's been quiet. Well, I assure you, the crazy bastard's been a workhorse.) And sometimes the Hag and Moby (curiously absent too -- with purpose, I assure you) get their say in. I've tried to throw you folks off, what with riffs against the first person plural. However, in the case of TMFTML, the entity that speaks is not unlike the one depicted in Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human, which is why "we" is sometimes invoked.

So you can stop pestering the purported singular author. We're all laughing our asses off over the fact that you care and that you think that we're one individual. When, in fact, we're several people who cooked this idea up back in 1999, when we were drunk and wondering if all the computers were going to collapse because of Y2K.

The fact that you've believe us for so long has us chortling with laughter. The fact that you believe we have a day job and that we're actually in New York has us reaching for the bottle. Because the gambit's funnier with liquor.

The other great revelation, that has smething to do with all this, is that BOOG is actually Bill Keller. The Times has been paying cash installments to much of the blog cabal in an effort to increase its subscription base.

Terry Teachout and OGIC, however, have nothing to do with this.

Dean Consults Alt-Weekly Advice Column to Recharge Campaign

Can Houghton Mifflin Handle the Truth?

Some distressing news from Publisher's Lunch. The ironically named Committee for Truth in Psychiatry has sued Houghton Mifflin and writer Daniel Smith for $20 million in punitive damages. The suit comes about because Smith's investigative piece on electroshock treatment appeared in The Best Science and Nature Writing, 2002.

Even if this suit is settled or dismissed, there's still the larger issue of whether hard-hitting exposes will appear in Houghton Mifflin's compilations. Will Houghton Mifflin backpedal on future selected essays? Even if the author were to prove all of the facts were on his side, my fear here is that tomorrow's compilations will be fluff that maintains the status quo.

Whoops! Sorry About Spilling the Coor's On the White Suit, Dude

Tom Wolfe's new novel, about "contemporary college life as seen through the eyes of students," is due out this fall. Wolfe's been kicking around frat houses to do his research. (via TEV)

Tainted by Influence?

Iowablog: "I think everything I learned at Iowa is wrong."

These are good, honest words to hear from a young whipper-snapper who wants to write. If there's a positive spin to this, it's the fact that Concho is willing to question the lessons she's learned. I've never been in a nuts-and-bolts creative writing class (screenwriting, nonfiction and journalism classes don't count) and I have only a second-hand idea of what goes down in Iowa, but I do know the merciless world of rejection notices weighed against the ocassional acceptance and/or check. If anything, the pivotal lesson that any writing class or seminar should include concerns the world not giving two fucks about the writer's circumstances, and a publishing industry that is worse than Cthulhu in its callousness. Any writer hoping to break in must have the thickest hide. Anything less than an iron carapace, a firm resolve and a dedication to the work will send out "AMATEUR" in bright neon lights.

Some folks may recall last July's Clarion-Wolfe debacle, where an extremely sensitive gentleman mistakenly informed Gene Wolfe that the class disagreed with his hard criticisms. Wolfe bolted. An imbroglio ensued. And there was some controversy over whether Wolfe's perceived ruthlessness was good or bad for the students. The authoritarian impulse that had gone unquestioned before was replaced by a general sense that workshopping should involve a back-patting atmosphere to foster encouragement.

Well, I cry foul. Constructive criticism is one thing. But personally, I could never trust anyone who would do nothing but praise every element of a lengthy piece I've written. Something I've observed of so-called "writer's groups" is that their formation involves stroking egos rather than improving writers and preparing them for the harsh battlefields of Manhattan and beyond. Some of the finest criticisms I've received were from people who were honest enough to eviscerate every nicety that was slightly off. To do anything less is a betrayal, a celebration of monkey-clapping amateurism that's as hypocritical as The New York Times running some bullshit story on sexual fetishes and failing to include the word "fuck."

The rise of books about writing (and, to a similar degree, screenwriting) has unleashed a Pandora's box where hope is more prominent than it should be. An "I can do it too!" spirit has emerged, but the hard truth is that writing is difficult work, that even if you manage to finish something, it can be torn to pieces in a New York minute. Even if you get your book published, you will face savage reviews and emerge from the fracas to convince frugal folks to lay down the twenty-five clams to buy the sucker on a book tour.

So why the contentment? Why the entitlement? Why the anti-snark movements?

The answer lies somewhere within the atavistic feel-good jungles that have permeated almost every facet of the liberal arts. The air stinks of softness. Nurture is certainly necessary, but there comes a point when the writer must understand that it's a tough racket. If a writing instructor doesn't have the effrontery to call a piece of shit by its true name, then he has no business instructing.

(Iowa lead via Maud)

Noir City #6

The Locket (1944): Normally, I frown upon the flashback structure. Unless you have a solid justification for it (like Memento), it comes across as gimmicky. There's no reason to move backwards, particularly when the flashback does nothing to resolve the problems set up in a film's early moments. But The Locket is a different kettle altogether. Not only does it have a flashback-within-a-flashback, but it has a flashback-within-a-flashback-wthin-a-flashback. Indeed, there were so many flashbacks in this movie that I feared writer Sheridan Gibney and director John Brahm would lead me to the moment in which sperm fertilized egg and Laraine Day's character was born. Fortunately, the flashbacks stopped when the Day character was nine.

But the flashbacks in The Locket work. Because they tell how Laraine Day's psychosis came to be. They also echo the perspectives of the characters surrounding Day. The film's methodology runs something like this: A flashback is initiated when a previously screwed over s.o. of Day tells the story to an about-to-be-screwed over s.o. of Day. And we begin to see common patterns of how Day is in denial about her condition. We also learn how the men are foolish enough to play into her sympathies. Even as they tell their stories to the next guy, there is still a part of them that believes that Day is benign.

And if that weren't enough, we get a silly middle-aged, upper-class Englishwoman singing and dancing a really terrible jig, to the unjustified pleasure of her audience. ("The Germans couldn't stop her from dancing during the blitz," we're informed.) We get crude psychoanalysis with overgeneralized theories. We get Robert Mitchum cast as a cocky painter (and since this is a young Mitchum, it's fascinating to watch the Mitchum stare in early development). We get the most ridiculous pretext for Day and psychiatrist Brian Aherne hooking up. (One bicycle, moving slower than a treadmill at its lowest setting, runs into the other and both fall down. Either people cycled slower in those days or the filmmakers were on crystal meth and failed to compensate.)

Plenty of the films programmed had better dialogue, better visuals and better performances, but this was one of my favorite films of the festival. I think it had something to do with the dancing Englishwoman.

Decoy (1946): The phrase "consummate trash" comes to mind. Nedrick Young's script is implausible, the sets are more wobbly than an episode of Doctor Who, the production design is flat and uninspired (to the point where even walls and tables are largely unadorned). This movie looks and feels like the cheapest B-movie possible.

But nobody seems to have informed director Jack Bernhard that he's propping up pulp. Benhard approaches this movie as if he's David Lean. He dollies the camera across sparse prison sets that look as if they were put together under a WPA project. He goes for the arty shot, despite the fact that it will reveal the set's limitations. He adorns the audio with an overbearing symphony, almost as if he expected the audience to rise from their seats and stand for the Queen. Bernhard's remarkable tenacity reminded me of Don Edmonds' work on the Ilsa films, whereby Edmonds raised the worst material possible to something oddly endearing.

The film has extremely baffling moments, such as the guy in the morgue who flips through the dictionary and howls with laughter over what the words mean. (And on top of that, he pronounces dichotomy "DI-SHAW-TA-ME.") Or the philanthropic doctor in the skids somehow convinced to abandon his practice on the flimsiest of reasons.

And then there's Jean Gillie, who gives Faye Dunaway a run for her money on sheer camp alone. Gillie's idea of commitment is running over her partners and grabbing hold of a suitcase, shouting, "Mine! All mine!" It's safe to say that Gillie wouldn't last long in a job interview.

My only real quibble with the film was that I wasn't tipsy when I saw it. If ever a movie was made to befuddle humanity, it's Decoy. And I say this with the best of intentions.

Okay, Howard Dean is Almost Finished

To call Dean's second place finish in New Hampshire "close" is to approach a cliff face, jump off, and attempt to land on the ground without so much as a bruise. But apparently it's worse than that. Howard Dean is now down to $5 million. Barring a Missouri win next Tuesday, it looks like we may stuck with Kerry. Unless Dean musters up Robert Kennedy-like support in California and many of the big states, and reenergizes his campaign. Kennedy, however, was more of an idealist than Dean is. And it ain't exactly 1968.

However, while I woefully miscalculated the percentage points, I was dead-on in my place predictions.

[UPDATE: Dan Spencer has compiled all blog NH predictions with success and failure rates.]

Models Attacked by Desargues' Involutions While on Catwalk

NYTBR Smackdown

The Observer leaks the shortlist for Chip McGrath's replacement.

SARAH CRICHTON: Former publisher of Little, Brown, fired, with charges of commercialism and fights with Warner publisher Maureen Egan. Accused by Joe McGinniss of not promoting books. [Working glimpse of Little, Brown.] Before that, editor at Newsweek. Recently worked with Liebermans and collaborated on A Mighty Heart, Marianne Pearl's book on her husband Daniel.

The Upshot: She was a champion of popularizing literary fiction at Little, Brown. And her journalism background and brief stint as an insider is a plus. Strong personality will be either problematic or embracing.

ANN HULBERT: Slate contributor. Wrote Interior Castle: The Art and Life of Jean Stafford and child development book. Acknowledged as "baby expert" by Boston radio.

The Upshot: Varied journalism background, including books, but emphasis of late has been outside the fray. Non-fiction edge?

BENJAMIN SCHWARZ: Literary editor of The Atlantic Monthly. On the National Book Critics Circle Board until 2006. Delivered clear manifesto in last Atlantic on why certain books are reviewed.

The Upshot: Schwarz embraces obscure work and is clear about his intentions. Although I'm not convinced that the Caitlin Flanagan Dr. Laura review represents the pop-to-literary balance that Keller is hoping for.

JUDITH SHULEVITZ: Writer of the Close Reader column in the NYTBR, which stopped last year. Ex-New York editor of Slate. Made so-so attempt to understand blogs. Might be counted upon to profile juicy disputes. Attacked Dave Eggers.

The Upshot: For those looking for some good fights, Shulevitz might be the one to do it. However, given her power couple status and connections, it's likely that the bluster may be more talk than action.

RETURN OF THE RELUCTANT PICK: Benjamin Schwarz.

[UPDATE: It's Schwarz, not Schwartz. Blame really bad Mel Brooks movies for the problematic spelling.]

The Link, The Whole Link and Nothing But the Link

Rittenhouse: "If you link to 'Wonkette' through your blogroll you cannot and will not enjoy, for what that might be worth, a link from The Rittenhouse Review."

He claims he's not serious. But given the focus on ad hominen and his failure to offer a single reasonable argument, I suspect he's saving face. Allow me to clarify the linkage process.

Wonkette (and The Antic Muse) is linked on the left because the site meets the goods. I link 'em because I like 'em. There is no quid pro quo. That's not the point.

The beef I have with James Martin Capozzola is that he seems to view the basic process of linking as somehow exclusionary, when, in fact, it's more inclusive than anything else. While Sturgeon's Law can certainly apply to blogs, there are so many of them out there that, even if 10% of them were excellent, the list would be long and unmanageable. To include everyone would require a time commitment that well beyond the realms of healthy human commitment.

There is no Machiavellian scheming or Oliver Stone conspiracy theory. There is no secret society, whereby one person links to another, and another person does not. A link on the left is based solely on merit or friendship or both. A non-linked blog is probably one I'm not aware of.

Inside A Young Genius

While walking along Valencia St. a few nights ago, I came across a crumpled piece of paper on the sidewalk. I didn't have any reading material on me, and, seeing that the paper was heavy bond stock, I somehow knew that this wasn't your standard stray bit of trash. I unfolded the paper and began reading a story entitled "The Unforbidden is Compulsory, Forgotten and Altogether Tied Up in Importance Or, I Am Christ in the Literary Community." Several paragraphs into the story, I detected a style that was familiar, recognizable in its aggravating repetitions and endless paragraphs. I couldn't immediately place it. But, yesterday, when Salon posted the first installment of a political "satire" authored by Dave Eggers, I realized what I had in my hands.

I thought I'd post the pages I found here so that future scholars can appraise one of our finest authors. It should be noted that the partial manuscript was laser printed, and it included several handwritten remarks, which I have bolded and bracketed.

"Fuckers! Bastards!" said Dimitri [No, too Strangelove.] Sergei.

"What do you mean by that?" asked [Character Named After Adam Sandler Movie].

[Beef up dialogue -- that is, if you can come up with anything. Jesus, can't believe Talbot's asking me to write political satire. Mine from Didion.]

They could do anything, everything and everything, everything and nothing. In a race like this, that, and everything in between, this race, this ongoing battle which you must understand, which you must feel between your toes and your fingers and your nostrils, you see, because it pulsates like many other races, an important race, a pivotal race, a race that destroys careers, there was no oversight. [Do I really understand politics? Pollack's better at this. Well, who cares? Go with it, workhorse.] There was no feeling of outrage, no general sense that people were willing to screw each other, which was strange because most political races are corrupt in an easily understood way. And thank [insert Judeo-Chistian reference here for kids] for that. Sergei [good, keep name, funny] and [Should I go with Happy Gilmore or Little Nicky?], manager and head of special products for the Stuart Craspenmonstrodacousticolostomy campaign [Consider shortening funny name. Name should be long but not too long. Vendela tells me that Americans don't elect people with long names, but she really doesn't understand humor. Add to shopping list: buy shampoo for VV.], wouldn't want any oversight or general sense of the limits of taste and smell. It was important that Craspenmonstrodacousticolostomy smell nice, that every voter who shook his hand knew that he smelled nice when they shook his hand. This was a filthy contest already, and most of the other candidates did not smell nice, even when they were shaking hands, and most of the filth was theirs but it could sometimes be picked up from other people and other candidates and other filthmongers [Chabon has stopped taking showers this week. Research for his new book. But will he see himself in this piece? Must not offend him or anyone else important. Consider revising.] and today would be no different, for today, this day, different from yesterday, but also a holiday -- the Fourth of July, Independence Day, the time when they tossed out the firecrackers and threw burgers on a barbeque designed for barbecuing burgers, big burgers, the day the nation had been founded forgotten, bereft of its origins [Getting too political there, padre. Must keep it goofy and about nothing too important.] -- was a day too crucial for cleansing, showering, basting, and perhaps ignoring deodorant. Today, at the Independence Day Walk Long and Tall and Arts Fair [Does this fly? Again, keep names goofy but vaguely discernible.], the Craspenmonstrodacousticolostomy campaign had to achieve nothing less than Total Absolute Ultimate Visual Dominance [Heidi hates this, says I should cut down. Maybe I can get one of those 826 V volunteers to salivate over this and come up with something.]. If, through the relentless creation and placement of Craspenmonstrodacousticolostomy balloons [Now I know the name's bad. Consider shortening], posters, buttons, flyers, pom-poms, kites, banners, [Keep calling ANSWER and Greenpeace and find out what they use. If not, resort to high school rally memories.] and giant, tremendous Styrofoam hands [Keep this. Not sure why, but keep.], they could achieve ___________________ [Rework TAUVD concept.]

[Motherfucker. That scruffy intern didn't get me my latte in two minutes. Note to self: Breathe, lots of soy and yoga, exercise in Marin, non-negative thinking, no snark. These masses cannot help themselves. They'll join the ULA and bitch, but I'll be the Pulitzer finalist. Reminder: add more names to my list.]

[Maybe start again from scratch.]

At this point, the writing becomes illegible. There is one additional comment at the bottom of the page, but it resembles more of a jagged line that trails up the right margin and forms into a crude picture of a penis at the top of a page.

I have no idea what any of this means, but perhaps some of you scholars who know Eggers' work better than I do can offer a proper assessment.

Naked Dentists Dog Markson & Marquez's Potential Movies?

Nudity in Science Fiction Books (via Quiddity)

Only in John Updike's universe could a person be prim about dental procedure:

“Let’s have lunch,” he begged. “Or is your mouth too full of Novocain?”

“He didn’t use Novocain today,” she primly told him. “It was just the fitting of a crown, with temporary cement.”

Mark reviews The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. And he also points out that David Markson has a new book coming out.

Perry Anderson tackles Living to Tell the Tale, comparing Garcia Marquez's life against Mario Vargas Llosas.

David Edelstein and A.O. Scott square off over the Biskind book, comparing it against J. Hoberman's The Dream Life.

Noir City #5

Noir attrition has kicked in. And it's not just me. I had to assure a fellow film buff that Sydney Greenstreet did indeed appear in Casablanca. And neither of us could remember Leon Ames' name a mere 24 hours after viewing his fantastic performance in The Velvet Touch. We only knew that he was also in Postman. Even Eddie Mueller was susceptible on Monday night, going crazy about The Velvet Touch right before Crime of Passion. The hard lesson is that the more films you watch, the more you realize that nobody's perfect.

Of course, this means nothing for those who are attending Noir City in piecemeal. But for the truly devoted film freaks, for the people who are either going every night or most nights, it's fascinating to watch people who were once so lucid degenerate into atavistic carnivores whose only duty is to wander in for more. I blame Mueller for this. The guy programmed four extra nights this year. And he knew that we film freaks would keep coming. Even with our day jobs and other obligations.

But no matter. With two nights left, I've already wistful about my nightly dose of noir soon coming at an end.

Crime of Passion (1957): If Crime of Passion demonstrates anything, it's that a fifty year old Barbara Stanwyck could probably have Gwyneth Paltrow's kidney for a midnight snack and still remain hungry. Stanwyck plays an advice columnist who falls for and marries a cop played by (who else?) Sterling Hayden. Hayden, perhaps the actor to play by-the-book characters, is extremely sensitive to Stanwyck's needs -- that is, when he's not demanding ham and eggs (though not the Desert Fury variety), working long hours, growing stubble, and roughing other cops up shortly after spitting out a freshly lit cigarette. Shortly before marrying Hayden, Stanwyck quits her job and finds herself not only bored, but a tad febrile about her husband getting ahead. To the point where she's even willing to do the horizontal tango with Raymond Burr, among other things.

The implausibility of this setup is helped in large part by the solid acting. Stanwyck delivers lines like a firecracker, with just the right amount of innuendo. Hayden is every bit her match. And their scenes together display solid chemistry (what Hayden does with his hands and Stanwyck with her eyes is nothing less than amazing), particularly when juxtaposed against drab parties of husbands hanging with husbands drinking beer and wives hanging with wives getting excited about social developments. There's a dark undercurrent in this film that attracted me, but left me ultimately unfulfilled. I'm all for pre-Friedan examination of the housewife's predicament, but why should the problem that has no name have its filmmakers intimidated? The ending, which cried out for a Lina Wurtmuller-like explosion, was too neat and anticlimactic. But it's passable fare, though more Ladies' Home Journal than noir.

The Velvet Touch (1948): Imagine The Sweet Smell of Success crossed with a good murder mystery and you have The Velvet Touch, an overlooked little gem bristling with wit and heartache. Whether it's contemplating the secret meanings of chess or directly invoking Oscar Wilde, the dialogue is so crisp that I was astonished to learn that this was Walter Reilly's only film script (the IMDB listed his only other writing credit as an episode of Climax!). Rosalind Russell propels this noir with class, playing an aristocratic actress locked up with a sleazy producer played marvelously by Leon Ames (think a low-rent William Holden type oozing with sleaze). Russell inadvertently kills Ames in the opening moment and, as is the custom of noir, we flashback to learn how it all happened. She's wooed by an Englishman (Leo Genn) who orders her meals for her. And she's trying to break out of her typecasting in painfully unfunny farces by appearing in Hedda Gabler. But then there's the murder and the efforts to cover up.

The film is guided more by its dialogue and performances, than its predictable story arcs. Velvet features a spectacular theatre (that Mueller reports was constructed entirely on an RKO soundstage) and, if the lovely friction between Russell and Ames wasn't enough, it throws in Sydney Greenstreet -- this time, as a good guy, a detective that's a cross between Columbo and Nero Wolfe.

More films seen and to be seen, all to cover later.

Why I Am Avoiding DBC Pierre

Not one motherfucker in the States says "fucken." What was the point in spelling it this way? If we are to look at this from a phonetical standpoint, it comes across as "PHUCK-EN" (not to be confused with "PHUCK-IN," aka "PHUCK-EEN," often used in tandem with the first letter of the alphabet in expressing surprise and very good in a sentence like "I was fuckin' Joaquin Phoenix").

If DBC Pierre had substituted "fuck me," "fuck you" or "motherfucker" instead of "fucken," then there'd be no problem. There would instead be verisimilitude. But the conundrum stands: Pierre/Finlay/Whatever the Fuck Pseudonym That Booker Winner is Using Today seems to think that we Yanks say "fucken 'ell" a lot, or some truncated version thereof, which is a very Brit thing to say in terms of phrasing and pronunciation.

And besides, when it comes to intransitive verbs, Americans are inclined to shorten "ing" to "in." We just hate those fucking Gs. Plus, the idea of following a great word like "fuck" with something as dour as "en" just doesn't mesh with the American character. And, as such, the "en" thing is about as American as pronouncing the last letter of the alphabet "zed." Perhaps because deep down inside, we Yanks want to "fuck in," implying a desire for indoor copulation. Whereas "fuck en" implies entropy, sex begrudgingly begun to appease the s.o. and get through the night, the obligatory task.

Well, fuck that. And fuck fuckin' Vernon God Little.

Pope John Paul II Refuses to Play Chess with Dick Cheney

Anne Tyler: Unwavering Instigator of Irritation

Michiko on Joe Ezterhas: "As for the rest of this ridiculously padded, absurdly self-indulgent book, the reader can only cry: T.M.I.! Too Much Information! And: Get an editor A.S.A.P.!" What the F.U.C.K. is up with the A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.S.?

A new book will explain the seven most important unsolved math problems. One of them involves working out the probability ratio for the Democrats in November.

How the hell did the Washington Times snag a review copy of the $3,000 Ali book? Did the reviewer have to fill out a loan application and submit a credit report?

The new issue of the resurrected Argosy is out. It's the first issue since 1943, with work by Jeffrey Ford, Michael Moorcock, Ann Cummins and Benjamin Rosenbaum. Each issue will be packaged in two volumes: one the main magazine, the other a novella. The magazine is printed bimonthly and has an affordable subsciption rate. The Moorcock story is the return of metatemporal detective Sir Seaton Begg.

The Age weighs in on the legacy of long novels, but cites Tolkien and Patrick O'Brian instead of David Foster Wallace and Rising Up and Rising Down.

Bookslut has posted the standard response the Times is issuing.

Christopher Paolini: the next J.W. Rowling?

A.S. Bryatt weighs in on the Grossman translation.

The Globe and Mail reports that Tyler "hasn't a boring or irritating word in her vocabulary." Of course. You can find the boredom and the irritation in the Caucasian malaise and the treacle.

And Radosh and Slate are looking into the reliability of that Times sex slave story.

And the Nominees Are...

The nominees have been announced.

1. Spellbound was ignored in the Best Documentary category.
2. Granted, he was fun. But Johnny Depp for Pirates of the Caribbean?
3. The Triplets of Belleville doesn't stand a chance against Finding Nemo.
4. City of God was a surprise. It's up for cinematography, directing, film editing and writing. It's also a Miramax film. So it was probably pushed like gangbusters.
5. A surprise Pollack win a few years ago and now a Mystic River nomination. The Academy really loves Marcia Gay Harden, don't they?
6. Keisha Castle-Hughes for Best Actress in Whale Rider. She may be the youngest lead nominee ever. The kids are moving from the Best Supporting nominees (i.e., Anna Paguin for The Piano) to the lead roles.
7. Typically, the Best Writing category is the sympathy Oscar. So no surprise to see American Splendor, Dirty Pretty Things and The Barbarian Invasions ghettoized there (although the latter also scored a foreign film nomination).
8. Alec Baldwin in The Cooler -- another surprise.
9. I feel sorry for any film up against Return of the King in the technical categories. It's clear they don't stand a chance.
10. A Mighty Wind up for Best Song!

NYTBR & Keller Update

I'm stunned by the sudden influx of email I've had concerning my call to action re: Keller and the New York Times Book Review (thanks in no small part to the Mighty Book Blog Cabal kind enough to link it). Apparently, a lot of people care about literary fiction. (If I don't get back to you all immediately, please bear with me. I'll do my best.) Since I see the makings of a multilateral coalition, I've started outlining a plan. More details later.

New Hampshire Predictions

Well, hell, if Oliver's going to do it, then so am I. Here's my New Hampshire prediction. And I'll even throw up percentage points.

1. Kerry 30%
2. Dean 29%
3. Clark 16%
4. Edwards 13%
5. Lieberman 8%
6. Kucinich 2%
7. Sharpton 1%

More Serials! More! Newspapers, Are You Listening?

Alexander McCall Smith's new one, 44 Scotland Street, will be serialized in the Scotsman. (via Publisher's Lunch)

Monday Morning Boiler Plate Blog Entry

We [drank too much]/[had too many personal fiascos]/[raped a small poodle] over the weekend. It was an experience that [left us intellectually lacking]/[has us pondering __________]/[pairing our argyles]. [Not that you would know anything about that]/[I'm sure you understand our pain]. Expect our return [next week]/[tomorrow]/[at some unspecified time]/[never], when we've [fully recovered]/[possessed of less self-loathing]/[prepared to eviscerate another Laura Miller column] and [visit some of the other fine folks on the [left]/[right]]/[get out of the house yourself]/[email us naked photos of yourself]. [Or not.]

Not that we're [giving blood]/[holing up in a motel room with a .44 and a smile]/[raping another small poodle] ourselves.

Comfort Books

Terry and OGIC have fessed their comfort reading. I thought I'd add to the hue and cry, hoping that other swell folks would do the same. "Comfort reading" has been defined by our dynamic duo as anything that cools down an overheated mind. I'd stretch it a little further and define it as "anything that restores the mind back to its necessary default factory settings." The following list is by no means a summation of my favorite writers, just the stuff that keeps me personally focused.

1. The Oz books -- to restore imaginative settings.
2. Rex Stout -- to restore careful balance between wiseass and logic.
3. James M. Cain -- to cut the crap and get to the point.
4. Just about anything by Asimov, fiction or nonfiction (his history and science books worked wonders for me as a kid) -- to describe things as clearly as possible.
5. Donald Westlake/Richard Stark -- to get prose clean and subtextual.
6. Charles Dickens -- to replenish color and description.
7. Terry Southern -- to restore anti-establishment impulses and ballsiness.
8. John P. Marquand -- to remind mind that satire comes in shades and can be accessible.
9. David Lodge -- to encourage joie de vivre.
10. Ian McEwan -- to respawn impulse to drown babies and revise brutally.

Tom Cruise: All-American Bacon

Quickies

Primer: Winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and the Alfred P. Sloan Prize. The film was made for $7,000, doesn't appear to have a distribution deal yet, but somehow manages to involve time travel and ethics in its plot. The intricate story has also caused a lot of people to scratch their heads, which has resulted in several unclaimed ski caps left at theatres.

As if the Whitbread isn't enough, Mark Haddon has walked away with another award -- this time, from the South Bank Show. The British literary community is up in arms about this, trying to convince committees that "enough is enough." An anonymous Important Literary Person has made calls, noting that, while The Curious Dog is a great book, Haddon has simply won too much praise and that there won't be enough praise for the rest of the books.

Alexandra Ripley, author of Scarlett, has died. Several publishers, upon hearing the news, have been trying to determine which great Ripley book they can pilfer a sequel out of. Unfortunately, Ripley was no Margaret Mitchell. And no publisher wants to be reminded of how much they backed Ripley's attempt to cash in, let alone the other stuff she wrote.

Prima facie that the New Yorker is overinfluenced by vapid McSweeney's-like pop cultural riffs: "Boswell's Life of Jackson". (And Menudo is referenced in the first sentence. Oh no.)

James Fallows annotates the State of the Union address.

The Boston Globe interviews Tibor Fischer and Fischer comes across, no surprise, as a smug son of a bitch. Not only does he compare himself to Shakespeare, but he lauds cheapshots: "I'm with Amis, and so although in 'Voyage' I do have laughs at the expense of foreigners -- so did Shakespeare -- I also allow characters for whom English is not their first language to express dismay when someone British doesn't know an arcane piece of English vocabulary: 'It's your language,' they say."

And to hell with the Golden Globes. How about a real award? Best Lead In A Rising Up and Rising Down Review: "For the past decade, it seemed Sacramento-based novelist William T. Vollmann was neck and neck in a war of prolificacy with Richard Powers, David Foster Wallace, and anyone else who would take him on. With 'Rising Up and Rising Down,' he has put the issue to rest." And I truly feel sorry for John Freeman, who, like all reviewers, read all 3,500 pages from a CD-ROM.

Lizzie Grubman (not to be confused with this Lizzie) is returning to the social scene. This may be the first time in New York history that first-hand accounts of road rage are discussed over caviar.

At long last, a New York Times I want to see. (via Old Hag, courtesy of Pullquote)

Pynchon's voice on The Simpsons. He sounds like an angrier Harvey Pekar. (via Chica)

Francis Ford Coppola quotes Wodehouse! (via At Large)

Well, Goddam

I'm embarassed to confess this, but the end of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time brought tears to my eyes. Everything that Everything is Illuminated tried to be (to somewhat satisfying effect), Dog sure as hell is. The novel appears inspired by the skewered perspectives of Paul Auster, Eric Kraft's postmodern scrapbook approach, and W.G. Sebald's penchant for contextual insets. Or not. Only Haddon really knows. But where Auster is content to bullshit with annoying asides, Haddon incorporates his cant into a universe that matters.

If the book was judged solely as a bravura performance of perspective, this would be enough. The narrator's solipsism, the attempts by tertiary characters to reach out to Christopher, and the fact that the story is written in such an uncompromising way are all laudable. But the novel's linear approaach matches its protagonist's scientific mind. The story wends its ways through unexpected twists and a determination to solve a mystery, the great irony being that the mystery is much larger than even Christopher realizes. Christopher's attempts to apply order, often when surrounded by elements of the world he doesn't entirely understand, show off his blind spots. The book can be read as a dialectic between the real and the intellectual worlds. But Dog is a brave enough novel to voice the triumphs and weaknesses in prioritizing one world over the other. I came away from the book thinking about how little we accommodate those who are special or off-kilter, and how this willing ignorance often causes these minds to develop in unhealthy, emotional ways.

And that's why anyone interested in literature should read this book immediately. That is, if they haven't already.

Edwards Develops Rictus Mouth to Gain Slight Edge in Polls

More 1992 v. 2004 Primary Comparisons

Delaware: February 3, 2004 Primary

1992
Tsongas 30.2%
Uncommitted: 29.6%
Clinton: 20.8%
Brown: 19.5%

Missouri: February 3, 2004 Primary

1992
Clinton: 45.1%
Tsongas: 10.2%
Brown: 5.7%
Uncommitted: 39%

South Carolina: February 3, 2004 Primary

1992
Clinton: 62.9%
Tsongas: 18.3%
Harkin: 6.6%
Brown: 6.0%

Arizona: February 3, 2004 Primary

1992
Tsongas: 34.4%
Clinton: 29.2%
Brown: 27.5%
Harkin: 7.6%

New Mexico: February 3, 2004 Caucus

1992
Clinton: 52.9%
Brown: 16.9%
Tsongas: 6.2%
Harkin: 1.8%

North Dakota: February 3, 2004 Caucus

1992
Clinton: 46.0%
Tsongas: 10.3%
Brown: 7.5%
Harkin: 6.8%

Oklahoma: February 3, 2004 Primary

1992
Clinton: 70.5%
Brown: 16.7%
Harkin: 3.4%

So, if Dean loses New Hampshire on Tuesday to Kerry (giving Kerry a double win and putting Dean behind in the game), the big question here is how, or if, Dean will carry these seven states.

And here are some more Iowa-New Hampshire results:

1992 Iowa: Harkin (64.3%), Uncommitted (11.0%), Tsongas (10.7%)
1992 New Hampshire: Tsongas (33%), Clinton (24.8%), Kerrey (11.1%)
1992 Front-Runner: Clinton

1988 Iowa: Simon (34.3%), Jackson (21.9%), Dukakis (20.8%), Babbitt (15.5%)
1988 New Hampshire: Dukakis (36.4%), Gephardt (20.3%), Simon (17.4%), Jackson (8.0%)
1988 Front-Runner: Dukakis

1984 Iowa: Mondale (48.9%), Hart (16.5%), McGovern (10.3%)
1984 New Hampshire: Hart (37.3%), Mondale (27.9%), Glenn (12.0%)
1984 Front-Runner: Mondale

1976 Iowa: Uncommitted (37.2%), Carter (27.6%), Bayh (13.2%)
1976 New Hampshire: Carter (28.4%), Udall (22.7%), Bayh (15.2%)
1976 Front-Runner: Carter

1972 Iowa: Muskie (35.5%), McGovern (22.6%), Humphrey (1.6%)
1972 New Hampshire: Muskie (46.4%), McGovern (37.1%), Yorty (6.1%)
1972 Front-Runner: McGovern

So outside of Gore in 2000, who won both New Hampshire and Iowa, and incumbents, not a single Democratic presidential front-runner has won both New Hampshire and Iowa in the last thirty years. The only primary candidate to win both was Ed Muksie.

The interesting thing is that with Dean trying to emerge from the Iowa rant incident, we're seeing something of a Muskie-McGovern reversal. In 1972, Muskie's campiagn collapsed when he reacted to newspaper articles attacking him. He cried, lost his lead and was perceived as weak. But according to the latest polls, Dean doesn't look as if he'll win New Hampshire. And with the press nipping on his tails, Dean's now trying to atone for the Iowa rant, which may very well go down in political history. Ironically, the Internet, the very medium that propelled him, may end up killing him.

The campaign isn't over yet. The Dean campaign will have to do some serious work in the seven states. But barring a major Kerry revelation, it's looking a bit grim.

Dean Isn't Finished...Yet

CNN reports the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows Kerry ahead with 35%, with Dean following at 23%. If Dean loses Tuesday, it won't be the first time an eventual front-runner lost both Iowa and New Hampshire. Here are the results for the 1992 New Hampshire primary:

Tsongas: 55,663 (33%)
Clinton: 41,540 (24.8%)
Kerrey: 18,584 (11.1%)
Harkin: 17,063 (10.2%)
Brown: 13,659 (8.0%)

The precentages look familiar, don't they?

But if Dean starts losing beyond this, then he's in real trouble.

J-Franz Gets a Phone-In

A new tell-all book on the Kennedys is coming out. But this time, it's from the inside. The book is authored by Christopher Kennedy Lawford, and will include an essay by Ted Kennedy entitled "Mary Jo and Me: A Politiican's Guide to Avoiding Entanglement."

Shelsey Sybrandts, a 9 year old Coloradan, has become the youngest author of valentine verse. Harvey Winstein has optioned the eight-line poem for a future Miramax film, noting, "The little fucker's a motherfucking genius. But if she tries to cross me, she better watch out. The fat man always wins."

Ahmed Bouzfour won't be taking home Morocco's Literary Creation Prize. Bouzfour rejected the award, protesting Morocco's low level of literacy. He also protested Morocco's continuing promotion of the casbah dance.

In The Guardian, Richard Holmes examines Percy Shelley's premature drowning.

Filmjerk uncovers an early draft of the Corrections film adaptation. David Hare wrote the script but, despite his solid credentials, to summarize their findings, the screenplay sucks. Big time.

Noir City #4

Thursday and Friday's screenings made ten movies in five days. This was drastic media input by all reasonable standards, particularly given the four hours of sleep I was getting, the writing I was trying to get in, and the day job. By the end of Friday, I actually believed John Garfield and Liz Scott were inviting me to dinner to discuss a few double-cross angles over poisoned cabarnet -- in today's world, their schemings would probably be articulated in a marketing plan. Fortunately, a few friends stepped in at the right moment, delineating the differences between film and reality. They threatened never to speak to me again if I kept spending so much time at the Castro Theatre, whether solo or with other folks. Every obsession has its price. I learned this from film noir.

Movie blurred into movie. It was getting more difficult to judge each film on its own merits or lack thereof. Titles, directors, and actors were thrown into a mental cistern and memory required careful auditing. But now with sleep and time away from the screen, it is, at last, possible to dwell upon what I saw.

The Accused (1949): I'm not quite sure how much Jonathan Kaplan's 1988 movie, an overrated piece of tripe that seemed to revel in its depiction of rape, had to do with this forerunner. The Kaplan version doesn't have a source. What I do know is that both movies involve a woman who gets raped, an attorney who attempts to defend them, and some Hester Prynne-like stigma felt internally by the victims. Despite its intentions, beneath the surface, the Kaplan film went with Jodie Foster as the blue-collar pottymouth type who had it coming, "sexing up" the rape through an unnecessary flashback masquerading under the imprimatur of docudrama. But the 1949 version turned out to be smarter and more fascinating, even if it culminated in a disappointing finale that betrayed its intentions.

Loretta Young plays a psychology professor (in a 1949 film, no less!) who gets a ride from a student hoping to get into her pants. The student, fond of suggestively chomping down on pencils in the classroom, takes her on an extended ride, strips down to swimming trunks, and then tries to assault Young over a cliff face. Young beats him to death in self-defense and spends most of the movie dodging the scientific-minded detectives (who also toss around rough gender role generalizations) looking into the case, while rearranging her appearance when necessary.

The film's first hour is its most fascinating. We see Young trying to convince an exchange student that college is a waste of money if a lady goes there solely to snag a husband. There's the suggestion in this moment, which isn't particularly didactic, that the film will be about the crumbling of a woman's image. There's a running undercurrent in the film's dialogue and visuals on how people are judged by their looks. There's a shot of Young looking into a compact as a man who may be able to identify her can be seen in the reflection. It's a canny bon mot which implies that Young may also a victim of how society judges men and women in the smallest of ways. This is also reflected by the smoking gun pinning the case to Young: a blown-up display of a slide sample in a dark room.

Unfortunately, the film abandons this angle and turns Young into yet another hopeless spinster who needs a man. She swoons over Robert "We'll win this war if the cows come home" Cummings, and apologizes for "a spinster's kiss."

It should be noted that The Accused was written by a woman, Ketti Frings. I couldn't help but wonder whether Frings had to settle for the sickening transition into "woe is me" histrionics (or, for that matter, Young's lame first-person voiceover, reinforcing the fearful woman racket) to get the early points across. I was very disappointed by the end. But for a 1949 film, it still managed to sneak in a few interesting assaults on gender relations.

The Reckless Moment (1949): The film, one of only two movies that the great Max Ophuls made in Hollywood, is based on the same source material as 2001's The Deep End. I'd seen that film, which was propelled more by Tilda Swinton's extraordinary performance than its passable script. But I didn't realize how much directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel had appropriated Ophuls' imagery. The 1949 version has the great Joan Bennett in the role of the mother doing whatever it takes to keep a murder on the q.t. Bennett has an altogether different desperation than Swinton. Where Swinton is the independent type, Bennett covers up the crime with a good deal of help from servants. While both ladies are competent protectors and not to be messed with, Bennett comes across better as the indomitable commander. But that's largely because The Reckless Moment's script is better.

Other than this, the narrative distinctions between the two films stop. James Mason attempts an Irish dialect, but, alas, his is the voice of James Mason. Before you can say Humbert Humbert or Bigger than Life, he's simpering on all fours in the way he does so well.

If I had to pick one movie or the other, I'd base my choice on one simple criterion. The Reckless Moment is 82 minutes long. The Deep End is 101 minutes. The Reckless Moment wins by way of its breeziness.

Desert Fury (1947): Desert Fury was one of two Technicolor noirs Mueller programmed. And, oh, what wonderful subtext in the Robert Rossen script.

The film stars Liz Scott, who, not long ago, I confessed my relentless devotion to (and, apparently, I'm not alone). Desert Fury is worth it just to see the lovely Ms. Scott filmed in beautiful Technicolor. I found myself blushing throughout the film. My able viewership was helped by the art department. If I had to offer a conservative estimate on the number of costume changes for Ms. Scott, it would stand somewhere around 204.

I confess these details not to run a film freak's Vespa into a brick wall, but because, in light of the subtext, it's necessary to point out that Liz Scott is nothing less than stunning, beautiful, sharp, a young lady who declares early on that she has no problem "playing with matches," a woman who any man would go to jail over. And not the way you're thinking.

Now the subtext: John Hodiak plays a gangster who has arrived at a Nevada desert town with his, uh, special male companion Wendell Corey. Corey has apparently been everywhere with Hodiak for quite some time. As Hodiak himself confesses, Corey bought him "ham and eggs" when they first met. And we all know what that means.

Hodiak is in a bit of denial about his, uh, relationship with Corey. He hopes to go off with Scott. But he tried the same thing earlier with Scott's mother (played with snap and grace by Mary Astor). And Corey came along to the picnic then.

Now, as established above, any man would run off with Scott in a minute. And this is where Scott's casting is crucial. She encourages Hodiak to run off with her. And he still can't shake Corey. To the point where Hodiak's conflicted through the film and snaps with a cruel act towards a local (and much more after) in a diner.

And then there's Burt Lancaster, the deputy whose tousled hair looks gayer than Hodiak and Corey combnied. He has his eyes on Scott too. But Scott isn't quite convinced he's the rugged man who will take her away.

It is to the immense credit of Rossen and director Lewis Allen that they got away with so much mangled manhood at the time that this was made. Where The Accused abandoned its subtext early on, Rossen is a gifted enough writer to stay with it until the bitter end. I came down a bit hard on Rossen with The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, but where the dialogue of that film appeared dictated by a writer's efforts to prove he was one with the atmosphere dammit and that he's lived, Rossen is able to pull off a stylized Nevada vernacular here that, along with the subtext, makes Desert Fury a juicy, overlooked gem.

Leave Her to Heaven (1945): Like the 1948 version of The Postman Always Rings Twice, I was underwhelmed by this purpoted classic. Perhaps I was distracted by Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde's preternaturally perfect eyebrows. Or maybe I was hoping for more motivation into Tierney's character. Or maybe I was just damned annoyed by director John M. Stahl's stilted framings, the blocking of which resembled a really bad community theatre production. Or maybe I was vexed by the dimebag courtroom finale with the over-the-top prosecutor and the endless yeses. Or maybe I simply wanted to slap Wilde around because he had all the thespic range of a Mylar board.

With the exception of nice perspective shots during one murder sequence, I just couldn't believe in this movie. But this was, after all, Number 10.

R.I.P. Helmut

Walter Kirn is David Denby's Bitch

And while we're on the subject of the rich, I couldn't help but notice Walter Kirn's review of American Sucker. Kirn writes, "Instead, like countless other Americans who had their own reasons for adding their hot breath to the mammoth bubble in equities whose bursting still echoes in the nation's ears even as the market is puffing up again, Denby fell short," and, just after painting the Denby-Schine marriage as "a model of bright metropolitan domesticity," Kirn goes on to give Denby streetcred with the limolib crowd: "Denby, when young and living in California, had been something of a radical, dancing to the Grateful Dead and defiantly pitting culture against commerce, but he'd mellowed into a propertied intellectual who sneakily admired the system for its ability to supply the good life even to those who held it in partial contempt."

Beyond the first quoted sentence (truncated here), which has more clauses than fleas on a mutt, is this really a book review? It seems more like biographical apologia than anything else. How can anyone "mellow" into a property owner, much less intellectualize about laying down escrow? Do you plop onto the beanbag one day, listening to Yo La Tengo, only to wake up with a deed of trust in your hands? Writing out a check ain't exactly tantamount to riffing on Baudelaire. It is a thoughtless process used to keep creditors at bay for another month.

And who the fuck dances to the Dead? That's a bit like trying to mosh to the Velvet Underground.

Eat the Rich

He's noticed that the heft of money makes the bodies of the wealthy more dense, more boldly angled and thus threatening, even when suited, dressed, coated -- and wrapped in the soundlessness of their immense, padded, and luxuriously ventilated office spaces. The rich are underpinned by ignorance, he's noticed. They know nothing of the authentic scent of dust and dowdiness. They never knew a time when people bought winter tomatoes in little cardboard cartons, four of them lined up beneath a cellophane roof, twenty-nine cents, and how thrifty housewives -- like Larry's mother, for instance -- used only half a tomato for the family salad each night, so that the box lasted eight days, just over a week. The rich -- except for the self-made rich -- believe they're biting at the apple of life just because they know enough to appreciate pre-Columbian art and handpieced quilts. They're out of touch, they're out to lunch, they breath the dead air of their family privilege.

-- Carol Shields, Larry's Party

LiveJournal RSS Feed

I don't know what in sam hill this will do for you, but Susan has been nice enough to create a LiveJournal RSS feed for this place. Me? I feed on the blood of live bats.

Weblog Antics

Ana Marie Cox + Gawker = Wonkette. Nice move. I take back everything bad I ever said about Nick Denton. However, "Wonkette" sounds like a love child between Chewbacca and a drum majorette.

If You See This Man in the Streets, Hassle Him Mercilessly

The Times: What Is To Be Done

Folks, folks, folks, folks, folks, folks.

It's terrible news, yes. But it hasn't happened. It ain't a fait accompli. Here is what we must do. In order to prevent this horrible thing from happening, we must take action. We cannot just sit back and allow Bill Keller and his puppet NTYBR editor to have their way. We must let the Times know that such a move will destroy the Sunday Times reading experience. We must flood Keller with letters, with phone calls, tell this bonehead that he is eviscerating an institution and that he will face hard consequences if he tampers with something that ain't that broke to begin with.

For one thing, I'm sure you all have subscriptions that the Times counts upon for revenue. I can tell Keller for a fact that if literary fiction reviews are removed from the Book Review, then I will cancel my subscription, and not even the allure of the crossword or Randy Cohen's smug columns will bring me back. And I will encourage all of my book-reading friends to do the same.

So let's hit this Philistine fucker where it hurts. Let's pick a day and deluge the Times not with emails, but letters, phone calls, faxes, hard things to lodge into their mailboxes, a tangible protest to spell out just why this is a bad idea. Let's take a stand right now and stop the Times from killing a vital hub for tomorrow's writers. Nip the fuckers off at the bud and stop giving them any kind of revenue. If it goes down, cancel your subscriptions. Refuse to buy the paper. If fiction is to go, then I'm bolting over to the Post or the L.A. Times for my Sunday newspaper experience.

The Internet was used to give Howard Dean a sizable war chest. It's been used to draw attention to things that otherwise would have remain ignored. It is a medium that's been used to polarize. So I'm suggesting that the book blogs, and the journalists, and anyone who cares put their passion where their mouths are.

We can't allow this to go down without a fight. And even if Keller kills the NYTBR, at least we can say we didn't try to stop the gorgon.

So who's with me?

Clark Confuses New Hampshire Primary Debate With Jujitsu Match

Remarks from the President

The crazed Dean speech was one thing, but I'm starting to have grave concerns about the President. Here's a partial transcript:

Remarks by the President to the Press Pool
Plenty O' Ribs Cafe
Area 51, Roswell, New Mexico

11:25 A.M. MST

THE PRESIDENT: I need some ribs, goddammit.

Q: Mr. President, how are you?

THE PRESIDENT: Shut the fuck up, you gadfly. I'm hungry and I'm going to order some ribs, Laura be damned. I ran six miles today and eviscerated the Bill of Rights a little more. I earned my ribs, don't you think?

Q: What would you like?

THE PRESIDENT: What do you think I'd like? Ribs. What does a man do in a cafe but order ribs? Do you have any real questions?

Q: Sir, on homeland security, critics say you simply haven't spent enough to keep this country secure.

THE PRESIDENT: My job is to dry hump this nation. I'm riding bareback, my friend. Who cares about jobs? Who cares about the economy? Who gives a flying fuck about the deficit? We need a space program resembling a really bad Brian De Palma film. But right now I'm here to take somebody's order. That would be you, Rubber Band Man -- what would you like? Stop pestering me with questions and start eating, son. You're looking a bit thin. Have you been drinking? I drank once, but then daddy bailed me out. Put some of that meager money on the table like a man. This is all about consumer confidence. I don't care how little they pay you over at the State-Ledger. This is how the economy grows. Max out your credit cards, jeopardize the state budgets. It drives the economy forward. And, no, don't quote Paul Krugman, you twerp. I've had enough of that whiny little bitch. So what would you like to eat?

Q: Right behind you, whatever you order.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm ordering ribs, goddammit. Do you know about unilateral decisions? Well, this is how it works, David, I'm going to order a rib for you and you're going to eat it. And I'm not going to leave until you nibble that sucker down to the bone.

Q: But, Mr. President --

THE PRESIDENT: No buts, David. This isn't a press conference. This is about understanding how ribs work. It's a bad metaphor, but I'm not leaving until you understand it, son. Do you hear?

Who Needs Those Two-Page DeLillo Reviews When You've Got John Grisham?

Horrible news about the NYTBR's change in direction:

Well, if you write non-fiction, review non-fiction, or prefer to read non-fiction, break out the champagne. "The most compelling ideas tend to be in the non-fiction world," Keller says. "Because we are a newspaper, we should be more skewed toward non-fiction."

What's more, if you're perplexed or simply bored with what passes for smart fiction these days, the Times feels your pain. More attention will be paid to the potboilers, we're told. After all, says Keller, somebody's got to tell you what book to choose at the airport.

Personally, I'd rather suffer through Laura Miller's columns every once in a while than see the Gray Lady cave like this.

(via Old Hag)

Noir City #3

Last night, Eddie Mueller paired two movies based on W. Somerset Maugham material. Maugham, who was the highest paid author in the world during the 1930s, had a good deal of his material produced for the screen -- primarily because he was the kind prolific and popular writer to have four new plays running on the London West End at the same time. My own two-volume set of Somerset Maugham's short stories alone runs several thousand pages. Often the long stories set in the tropics blur into each other, with Maugham recycling plots and characters without apology.

But that's not to suggest that we should discount Maugham's gift as a storyteller. He was a plot-heavy writer, who read every story of Guy de Maupassant in French at an early age. He worked the literary angle with Of Human Bondage but kept it real with his Ashenden tales. The Ashenden stories are considered by many to be the prototype for the modern spy story. Drawn from Maugham's own experience in espionage, they were to prove so successful that Hitchcock used two of the stories as the basis for his film The Secret Agent. Fleming and Le Carre could not have existed without Maugham, much as Doyle could not have existed without Poe.

But Maugham was also concerned with intimacy, keen on domineeering figures in a family (he considered his happiest days to be his early ones with his mother). And it was two selections along these lines that Mueller presented last night.

Christmas Holiday (1944): Despite the presence of the great Herman J. Mankiewicz, this adaptation is bogged down by a flashback-within-flashback structure. It takes forever to get to the crux of the story. The camera ogles endlessly over Deanna Durbin -- here, in her first adult role, cast against type as a browbeaten nightclub singer. After breaking down at Xmas mass, Durbin tells her story to army officer Dean Harens (the Matt Damon of his time, thankfully without the star status) and it is here that we are eventually introduced to her husband, Gene Kelly, who has just murdered an associate. Unfortunately, it takes so long to get to the film's real goodies, best epitomized in a split-diopter shot of Kelly and Durbin hunkered over a piano while Kelly's controlling mother (played by Gale Sondergaard) rocks in the background. It's a pity, because there's some nice lighting by Woody Bredell, and some magnificent shots of a concert hall. And the Durbin-described "pathological" relationship between Kelly and his mother, with the Durbin dynamic, is something special to behold.

But the problem with this movie is that it's too much of a blatant vehicle for Durbin. At the time this movie was made, Durbin was desperate to break out of her wholesome teen singer image. It was she who read Maugham's novel and she who convinced Universal to make the film. And while she does a commendable yeoman's job, the camera cannot stop shoving itself up Durbin's nostrils, a one-two punch with soft-light, as if to hammer home the point that we are seeing a wholly different Durbin.

The results are an underwhelming film directed by an underrated director (Robert Sidomak, the man behind The Killers and Criss Cross), with a few sparks. But it could have been much better.

The Letter (1940): Over the past few years, a friend and I have had an on-again, off-again dialogue over William Wyler. He claims that Wyler is overrated -- the worst director of the studio system. I claim he's hit-or-miss, but that you can't discount The Ox-Bow Incident, Roman Holiday, Jezebel, or Ben-Hur. Whatever Wyler's problems, I maintain, he's still great with actors and knows how to deliver when he has a script in his hand. No, my friend says, Wyler couldn't come up with a decent visual to save his overinflated pecs. Watch your back, he says. I'll stab it in the morning. Sometimes.

The subject is so heated among film geeks that even a documentary was made in 1986 called Directed by William Wyler in an attempt to put Wyler alongside directors such as John Ford and Howard Hawks.

Up until now, I've had to agree with my friend's stance on visuals. Wyler always struck me as a guy who was riding on Gregg Toland's coattails, leaving Toland to frame that magnificent supermarket shot in The Best Years of Our Lives or make Bette Davis look nothing less than sensational in The Little Foxes.

But The Letter not only predates The Maltese Falcon as a potential missing link between German Expressionism and film noir by one year, but it may very well be a visual example I can use in the Wyler debate. This film is pure eye candy. It is a film I must see again. From the opening tracking shot, in which a murder is committed in a tropical wilderness, the photography offers endless semiotics to sift through, at one point even aping the movement of Bette Davis as she's describing how she shoots a man to death. There's one sequence that takes place wholly in a living room, in which three characters are sitting. Wyler and Toland frame them high to low. The man who has committed a highly unethical act is visually tainted in a gray suit. The pure character who had no idea of this act is in white. And the person who caused all this is dressed in black, seated on a striped soda that suggests a jail cell.

The blocking in this picture is exquisite. Characters arch their backs over to match the Venetian blind shadows on the wall. I'm almost certain that Bertolucci had The Letter in mind when he went off to make The Conformist.

Unfortunately, The Letter is hard to track down. Ironic, given that it might be the solitary film to restore Wyler's status.

For Those of You Wondering

I owe emails to a lot of people. You will get them tomorrow. Even if I die without food or water in a locked room, I am determined to answer them all. Or come close.

Ribbed for Spot's Pleasure

In Washington, the Folger Shakespeare Library has the coffee table book prototype on display. The book, recently restored and some 400 years old, contains an illustrated history of the world and is reported to have been "flipped over by bored visitors in 16th century living rooms."

Don Paterson walked away with the £10,000 T.S. Eliot Prize, but he says it's tough living being a poet. It takes Paterson a year to come up with a whole poem. While declaring poetry an "amateur pursuit," Paterson's still shocked that poetry is as much work as any other form of writing.

Today's obscenity racket: Passion Panties, a Tupperware-style sex toy company, has had one of its representatives arrested in Texas. The representative had even joined the local Chambers of Commerce. But that didn't stop authorities from citing a state law prohibiting the sale of obscene devices, which are legally defined as items "designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs." What's interesting is that, like the "entertainment purposes" rap in Alabama, commerce is not addressed. So I'm sensing a common theme here. You can sell, sell, sell just about anything under the sun. But heaven forbid that you design, market, or entertain. The Texas law is so nebulous that one can make the case that maxi-pads or ribbed rubbers are "obscene items" by way of stimulating gentials. But since the law stipulates "human genital organs," presumably a vibrator deisgned and marketed for cocker spaniels is peachy keen, right?

Nothing Personal, Nautilus, It's Just Business

From Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures:

Undoubtedly urged on by Eve, [Harvey Weinstein] hired a personal trainer. At the outset, so the story goes, he told the trainer, "You better be here every day. Here's a $1,000, I'm giving you in advance, don't pay any attention to what I say, make me work out." The trainer duly appeared at the appointed hour. Harvey, on the phone, made him wait, and wait. Finally the trainer gained entry to the inner sanctum, and said, "Let's start." Harvey replied, "I don't have time now, here's a fifty, get the fuck outta my office, come back tomorrow." The trainer returned the next day, same thing. He came back day after day, week after week. Until he gave up.

Noir City #2

Last night was Round 2 of Joan Crawford vs. Barbara Stanwyck. I wasn't there for Round 1, largely because I had seen both films (Mildred Pierce and Double Indemnity) dozens of times. But what was curious about this bout was that the two leading ladies weren't nearly as prominent as their top on-screen billing suggested. So it was difficult for any reasonable person to judge which lady was more noir.

Flamingo Road (1949): Flamingo Road was a last-minute swap for Possessed. Eddie Mueller informed the audience that the print had been pulled at the last minute. Sadly, the negative is in bad shape. Flamingo Road wasn't really a noir picture, more of a passable political drama. The film was weakened by Ted McCord's photography, which drew needless attention to itself with deliberately arty angles, but it may very well have been director Michael Curtiz's odd, quasi-Expressionist positioning of actors.

Joan Crawford plays a carny dancer who comes to a small town and falls in love with aw-shucks deputy Zachary Scott, who wears a preposterous hat and is more wholesome than the collective insides of an apple pie truck. Scott is an actor who looks like something you might get if you threw Joel McCrea and Tony Curtis into a blender, punched in both eyes while playing lacrosse with the cheekbones, and forced the ectoplasmic concoction to drink about a half gallon of bourbon in one sitting -- in other words, the perfect rolled over hicktown look.

Enter Sydney Greenstreet as the sheriff who controls the town's political workings. Greenstreet, as you might expect, remains sedentary throughout most of the film. When he does move, it's with all the effort of an overloaded locomotive trundling up the hill. He is a painful and imposing sight, and yet Greenstreet makes for a fascinating heavy. He wants Scott in the State Senate. So he frames Crawford and gets Scott coupled up with a superficial rich gal. Crawford gets out, and meets up with politico David Brian. Brian, whose face, believe it or not, is more hickory-cut than John Kerry's, is suave as fuck -- so suave that he kisses Crawford and then asks her what her last name is.

The film's best moments are the scenes between Crawford and Greenstreet, an antipodal smackdown that is nothing less than brilliant. Crawford's hard face and harsh words versus Greenstreet's corpulence and highfalutin mumblings. But the unfortunate thing about Flamingo Road is that too much time is devoted to the corrupt yet chipper Brian and the sad-sack Scott. The real interest lies not with the unfettered angles, the smoky political backrooms or the dimebag caricatures, but with Crawford and Greenstreet.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946): About half the audience bolted after Flamingo Road. Whether it was out of disappointment over Possessed being nixed or a need for a nightcap, I cannot say. It may very well have been the 16mm print. But whatever the case, they missed a good one. You'll probably be able to find Strange Love easily, given that it's in the public domain.

A number of talented people are involved on this. A young Robert Aldrich assistant directed. Kirk Douglas appears in his first film role. And if that weren't enough, you've got Barbara Stanwyck, the goregous Lizabeth Scott, the underrated Van Heflin, and a script by Robert Rossen. Rossen wrote this shortly after helming All the King's Men. The story is well-plotted, balancing its characters with a chess master's assurance, weighing childhood against adulthood. The story concerns the truth of the streets, a theme Rossen would later pursue again with The Hustler. There are fascinating undercurrents involving trust, the true nature of people, and the sum of our actions and convictions. But the script also bears the mark of a young writer going out of his way to prove his streetcred. The dialogue, with its clipped poetics, is aggravating for its actors. Stanwyck, for one, has difficulty with it. Kirk Douglas disguises the awkward pauses by delivering slow cadences, but he offers a hell of a debut. But it is Van Heflin who makes the dialogue stick, spinning fluidity and poise with each line. Even when Rossen demands banter along the lines of "You spend a lot of time reading Gideons in hotels."

The film is solid, offering a great melodramatic ending. But there is a larger concern.

I am now madly in love with Liz Scott. Whatever her thespic limitations, whatever the silly motivations of her character, I don't care. Liz Scott now haunts my dreams and distracts me from my writing. All Liz Scott need do is turn her head and I will happily swoon. If God does not exist, it would be necessary to invent Liz Scott. Liz Scott is still alive. I will happily give blood for her. I will take a bullet for her. It is time for a cold shower. Film noir is dangerous.

Quickies

Thanks to computers, professor Floyd Horowitz has uncovered 24 stories likely to have been authored by Henry James. Using common phrases, themes and pen names (the same methodology used to track down Joe Klein as the author of Primary Colors), Horowitz was able to track down tales published anonymously or under pen names during James' lifetime.

Oprah picks One Hundred Years of Solitude for the New Year's first book choice.

Amy's Robot offers The History of Thomas Pynchon on TV. Personally, my favorite Pynchon reference is in the movie Miracle Mile, where Denise Crosby is reading the Cliff's Notes for Gravity's Rainbow. (via Chica)

And Disney has lost a goldmine. The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has denied Disney's appeal to grab the rights to Winnie the Pooh, said to be worth between $3 billion and $6 billion in annual revenue.

Two additional notes: hire Jessa and tell Maud she rawks.

Bush Invokes 1970s Glen A. Larson Television Aesthetic to Declare Prosperity Just Around the Corner

Did the Van Man Wear Ray Bans?

Ronald Jordan, known as the White Van Man, stole tens of thousands of Lonely Planet guides and hawked them on the street with help of a few shadowy vendors. But he's now been caught. London police have described the case as "a flashback to Victorian London," though when pressed on whether Jordan wore gaiters and a silk cravat, they were unable to offer clear answers. The internal affairs unit has unearthed several "large Thackeray and Dickens collections" behind police lockers. "The lads aren't taking drugs," said London Police spokesman Peter Thorin. "They were overworked and were getting bored with the tedious work. So they read a lot on their spare time and started seeing associations that didn't exist."

A Books-A-Million in Alabama has removed Playboy and Playgirl from its shelves. The decision came because Alabama has one of the toughest anti-obscenity laws on the books. Apparently, display of human genitalia, buttocks or female breasts "for entertainment purposes" is verboeten. I'm surprised that the bookstore didn't counter this. It's clear to me they were selling the magazines "for commercial purposes."

If you're wondering what happened to Freaky Friday author Mary Rodgers, she's still around. (Yes, I read all those books when I was a lad too, including A Billion for Boris and Summer Switch.) She's 73, and her 1959 musical Once Upon A Mattress is being staged for a comeback.

Big surprise of the day: McSweeney's puts up something funny.

The Rise of the Creative Class author Richard Florida suggests that current economic trends may be discouraging vital creativity.

And The New York Times reports that Bonslav Pekic is staging a comeback from the grave. Purportedly one of the finest writers in the Serbian language, Northwestern University Press has announced that a translation How to Quiet a Vampire will be released in the spring.

It's All in the Corn

On Kerry winning the Iowa Caucus, I have only this to say.

1992 RESULTS:

Harkin 76.4%
Tsongas 4.1%
Clinton 2.8%
Kerrey 2.4%
Brown 1.6%

1988 RESULTS:

Gephardt 31.3%
Simon 26.7%
Dukakis 22.2%
Jackson 8.8%
Babbitt 6.1%
Hart 0.3%
Gore 0.1%

Iowa means nothing. The eventual Democratic front-runners placed third in both caucuses. And so did Dean this year. Really, this could go anywhere.

An Apology

There are numerous spelling mistakes on these pages -- all of them inexcusable, all of them correctable. Just not now. Because time to care for an outside project does not exist in a workplace environment. For those who have been sullied, and the frequency is apparently substantial, not quite as bad as that Knowles guy, but still enough for some of you to plot my demise, the management apologizes. Just be grateful this wasn't put into print, the way McSweeney's books are with slipshod proofing. This is what happens when you type at a rapid rate, generally trying to get something off before being disrupted by something else, and all this without a single revision. Several small children will die because of these mistakes. I am prepared to stand trial in a bulletproof chamber for my sins against humanity.

Quick

Stephen Hawking is under round-the-clock suveillance. Apparently, his family fears that someone is planning to sabotage the stuff that keeps Hawking alive.

John Barth writes about university readings. (via Maud)

Just after Fahrenheit 451 was selected for an "Everyone Reads" library program, Ray Bradbury says that "the people have lost control" and that "bigger and stupider" entertainment has deadened intellectual curiosity.

The National Book Critics Circle Awards have been announced. The big surprises: Richard Powers' The Time of Our Singing and William T. Vollman's Rising Up and Rising Down. Both are very long books (and in Vollman's case, we're talking seven volumes). How many critics honestly read all of the nominees?

And Jack Kerouac's On the Road manuscript, composed on an endless sheet of paper, is touring the States for the next three years. (via Moorish Girl)

Noir City #1

Book news is going to be slight the next week. Or not. Or somewhere in between. I mention this for people who come to this site for this reason.

For all those stomping their boots on the shag, you can thank Eddie Mueller for this. Mueller's the man behind Noir City, a local film festival dedicated to the greatest cinematic genre that humanity may have produced: film noir.

A few words on noir, and why I love it, and why I am devoting a sizable chunk of my spare time covering it: noir takes no prisoners. It profiles people who are down on their luck, people who I've always been able to relate to better than those flawless paragons of virtue we've become so accustomed to in film. You won't find Tom Cruise or Jennifer Lopez here, no sir. We're talking gravel-voiced thugs like Lawrence Tierney or endearing sycophants like Elisha Cook, Jr. or ladies who have what it takes like Barbara Stanwyck. These people are ugly and they will screw you over in a New York minute. Some of them are overweight, or ugly, or downright frightening like Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death or Ann Savage in Detour. Noir has guts, whatever its trappings (and they can get quite melodramatic indeed). Only in noir will you have Widmark push a handicapped person ruthlessly down the stairs and think nothing of it. Only in noir will people make significant life choices based off of lust, or the big score, or some problematic decision that sensible people avoid, or not. Only in noir will you have ordinary people fuck up and face the consequences of their actions in a timely way. People with more problems than you could ever hope to accumulate in a single day.

And this is why it is all compelling. Film noir has more twists and turns than your typical Hollywood movie. It relies upon action, yes, but also character. It profiles working people or characters trying to operate under desperate conditions, or people hoping to escape something they can't avoid. Often, the photography and the acting is fantastic. Since the budgets for many of these films were so miniscule, the filmmakers behind these magnificent films were forced to find creative solutions. And so we get Joseph Losey's remarkable Gun Crazy, in which a man is trumped by a woman who can shoot better than he can, and the competitive battle between the sexes is waived by ability. The common misconception about noir is that women are either scheming femme fatales or plain Janes who go along for the ride. As if to combat this, Mueller has programmed a festival in which women are more prominent -- specifically, dwelling upon female characters who are extraordinary in their own right.

Because of other commitments, I missed out on the first three days of the festival. And, besides, Mueller was showing films I had seen dozens of times. But, today, I got around to seeing two. As the festival continues, I hope to chronicle the little-seen gems that have been laid down and offer my thoughts as time carries on.

Tomorrow is Another Day (1951): The arc of this film is Steve Cochran. Film snobs might know Cochran as the man who wandered around Italy in Il Grido, who holed up at a gas station for a while, but who ultimately succombed to the standard Antonioni malaise. Here, Cochran plays a guy right out of prison. The reasons behind his imprisonment are abstract, but the gist is that he ended up in the joint at thirteen. Eighteen years later, he's out. And the warden is lecturing him about the hopeless life he's doomed to live. But Cochran will have none of this. As he says to the warden, "You're on my time now."

Since Cochran has spent most of his formative years in prison, he's playing catchup. And this is where the film (and Cochran's performance) succeeds. Cochran conveys this with incredible desperation. You can see it in his eyes. Cochran's so good that we see the remnants of 13-year-old Cochran at every turn. And Felix E. Feist is a skillful enough director to permit Cochran to act solely with his back during one later scene in the film. But early on, Cochran's hoping he can get laid, or at least adapt to this newfound life. He's lonely. He's perplexed by the features of the convertible. And he's so relieved to be out of the tombs that he orders three different slices of pie, befudding the denizens of a local diner.

He gets into a scuffle with a journalist, who capitalizes upon Cochran's recent release, and, to avoid the effects of subsequent opportunism, he ends up in New York, where he meets Ruth Roman at a dime-dancing hall. Basically, the way a dime-dancing hall works is this: you buy a series of tickets and each ticket gets you a minute dancing with a lady. After a minute, a loud buzzing sound emanates. And the lonely male is then forced to either tear off another ticket to dance for another minute, or buy another one. This is, to say the least, a disturbing concept, but apparently a legitimate one in the fifties. Anyway, Cochran is so fixated upon Roman that he follows her home and somehow convinces her to show him New York. But the two of them end up getting involved in a manslaughter self-defense deal, in which Cochran doesn't really know the facts because he's so disturbed by holding a gun in his hand again after so long. There's a spectacular scene involving the unlikely duo sneaking into one of those trucks that carries multiple cars.

The two escape this predicament. And the film deals with the blossoming relationship between Cochran and Roman, which is carried out within a Grapes of Wrath aesthetic. But Cochran is a bit paranoid, given the earlier rumble. And Roman is doing her best to convince Cochran that all is okay. But she's not your standard nuturer stereotype. Because she's willing to tell Cochran that his paranoia is getting in the way of his rehabilitation. Indeed, we eventually learn that she's willing to do anything necessary to keep Cochran in check. The two of them work well with each other.

But I'll say no more, except that this film really had me floored. I was fascinated with the photography, with its low angles and daring panoramas through windows in the migrant trailer park. I was completely entranced by the characters. While the film felt the need to compensate with some over-the-top narrative components towards the end, Tomorrow's success was steeped in its ambitious explorations into rehabilitation, and how humanity at large takes for granted the efforts of recently released prisoners to commingle the real world with the imprisoned one.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946): I'll confess right now that, dated notions of gender roles or no, James M. Cain's novel is one of the finest examples of to-the-point prose I know. I've read the novel four times. I'll also admit that, despite having seen nearly every other Cain film adaptation (including Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity, Wife, Husband and Friend and the disappointing Serenade), the 1946 Tay Garnett version eluded me. I had seen the Mamet-Rafelson version of 1981 and was, quite frankly, disappointed. Mamet had taken great care to captue the spirit of the novel. But I'd like to think that what worked in the novel was meant to be confined to the novel. For whatever reason, Cain's prose couldn't quite make the cut. And certainly, in 1946, the subject matter was verboten, given the cinematic limitations involving primal lust.

Needless to say, aside from Hume Cronyn's amusing portrayal of attorney Arthur Keats ("I can handle it"), I was disappointed. John Garfield, for one, was too clean-cut and all-American to be that scuzzy guy from the streets so glorified in Cain's novel. It was as if Tom Hanks was called upon to be the guy who had hopped around on trains. You couldn't believe him. Instinctively, I could not trust him. It didn't help that Garfield's facial expressions were limited to a slight facial tic on his right side and an otherwise blank expression (with endless cutaways during a courtroom scene). Of Lana Turner, little can be said, except that drag queens have plenty of deliberate artifices to pilfer from. Turner was so unconvincing as Cora (not Greek at all here; Papadakis has been diluted to Smith), that I couldn't imagine any heterosexual male finding anything worthwhile to be attracted to. Her Cora has been dumbed down from the Cora we know in the book. It doesn't help that anytime Turner and Garfield kiss, the orchestra rises. And we're left an auditory clue signaling indecent couplings.

The highway dive looks and feels like a soundstage. There wasn't a whit of dirt or grime, and you couldn't see dirty dishes. I have to say that, for all of its flaws, I prefer the 1981 version. But even that is not enough. Cain, it would seem, works best on the page. Garnett would go on to direct episodes of Wagon Train and Rawhide. Screenwriter Niven Busch would write the silly Jennifer Jones vehicle Duel in the Sun. Really, you're better off with Double Indemnity. But then Wilder and Chandler were smart enough to understand what made Cain stick on the screen.

Blogger's Surprise Revelations Cause Unexpected Shock and Awe

BALTIMORE (AP) -- Blogger Elizabeth Skurnick, better known to the world as the Old Hag, shocked the blogosphere on Monday when she revealed herself to be much smarter, cuter, and wittier than her readers expected. Since her surprise announcement, she has received three dozen marriage proposals and several emails from men begging her to kiss their hands, annoint them with holy water, and send them underwear. In one notable case, a mariachi band was sent out to belt out continuous praise on Ms. Skurnick's doorstep. Ms. Skurnick was forced to reluctantly call the police. In yet another extraordinary incident, one man asked to be whipped continuously over a 24 hour period.

Ms. Skurnick, who had previously kept up a quasi-anonymous profile on the Net, claims to be as perplexed as anyone by the sudden attention. "Just a bunch of crazy motherfuckers, really," she said. "I mean, all I did was write a review for The New York Times, and suddenly everybody wants to be my love slave."

A few bloggers who had previously corresponded with Ms. Skurnick have suddenly stopped sending her emails. Learning of her Yale and John Hopkins background, one blogger, who preferred to remain anonymous when speaking to this reporter, deleted all his posts. "I can't compete with the Hag's fine words. I mean, the lady uses 'fuck' in ways I've never considered."

Ms. Skurnick's decision has not been without controversy. "It's tacky and in bad taste," said Jessa Crispin, who maintains the Bookslut blog. "I mean, I've been blogging about books a lot longer than she has. And I've had Austin Chronicle writers stalking me. Kenan has had to kick a few asses, but we've kept this on the q.t. You'd think Lizzie would have the decency to do the same."

Sarah Weinman, who maintains a blog called Confessions of an Idiosynchratic Mind, had planned to reveal more about herself later this year, but feared that she didn't have the same credentials that Ms. Skurnick did. "Let's face it. Lizzie's brighter than the rest of us. But I'm not bothered by it," said Ms. Weinman. "I still trump her in the mystery department."

"A little revealing does everyone some good," said Terry Teachout. Teachout, author of The Skeptic and compulsive blogger of About Last Night, isn't concerned with the attention. He reports that he's pretty busy with a girl from Chicago.

"What the hell do I know?" said Cup of Chica. "I just got back home!"

"She should just get married," said Maud Newton. "I did, and I've never had to worry about groupies."

Even so, this hasn't stopped Choire Sicha, editor of Gawker, from sending Ms. Skurnick a dozen roses every hour, on the hour, since the announcement.

"I sympathize," says Elegant Variation's Mark Sarvas. "If I wasn't a married man, I'd be drooling over Lizzie like the rest of them."

Unfortunately, Ms. Skurnick is already smitten with a man whom she refers to only as "BOOG" (an acronym for "Boyfriend of Old Hag"). Attempts to uncover the BOOG's real identiy have not yielded any fruit. However, a source has informed this reporter that Ms. Skurnick has hired several security guards to deflect potential stalkers. Along with the marriage proposals have come very specific death threats against the BOOG. The language and the specific nature of the intentions have alarmed Ms. Skurnick. "If you thought the Margaret Cho hate mail was bad," said Skurnick, "try being queen for a day."

"I don't understand why she doesn't just remain anonymous," said TMFTML, an anonymous blogger who was recently nominated for Best New York Blog by New York Magazine. "Keep the lid on and you can blog in relative peace."

MLK III Defers Dad's Legacy to Tall White Chick, Photographers Oblige

Quickies

A Muslim cleric in India has offered a sizable reward to anyone who blackens the face of the exiled author Taslima Nasreen. The cleric reportedly has "seen The Jazz Singer too many times."

Walter Mosley is interviewed about film adaptations.

Kenneth Pollack cannot deal with being wrong. So opines The Arizona Republic, of all outlets. I'd just like to say that I'm wrong on a regular basis, and that you might be too. But then you and I aren't war hawks whose books and essays read like Rod Steiger on crystal meth.

Virgil Cross has published his first book. He's also 97, making him the oldest literary debut in U.S. history.

The British government has abandoned its "dumbed down" Shakespeare test. The examination was criticized for being too easy. One sample question: "Who wrote Twelth Night? A. William Shakespeare. B. Zoe Trope. C. 50 Cent. D. Billy Barty."

Bill Clinton on self-deprecating humor.

Not That the Blogosphere is Biased or Anything

This is perhaps the best review I've ever read in the New York Times. So What Do You Do, Laura Miller? That I'd like to see.

M&B

Nearing thirty, the body has incurred a modest gorbelly. This hasn't gone unnoticed by the mind. Under current federal health standards, the body is teetering on the edge of "overweight." Such was the case several months ago, and such is the case now.

The mind has reacted to this development with predictable results: utter panic. While the waistline has remained stable over the past two years, a strange form of guilt occupies the mind, a tough-talking drill instructor (generally applied to writing on a daily basis) often vetoed by fuck-it sentiments and other well-intentioned impulses of acceptance. But the conundrum remains. The mind, in some small way, has been seduced by the Western image models: the svelte, good-looking types capable of contorting their abdominal muscles much like a belly dancer. Or so the mind opines. The mind notes that Edward Norton looks damn silly with the developed chest. There's also the receding hairline, but that's another can of worms.

Clearly, much of the mind's concerns involve a magical realism that the mind finds detestable at large. At the same time, if the abdominal muscles were tightened, then perhaps there wouldn't be so much of a problem.

The potential, seen in John Stone's fascinating and frightening animated documentations, has caused the mind to ponder a daily workout. The mind would like the body to lose weight, but does not want the body to resemble California's current governor. The body, it should be noted, tries to walk to destinations whenever possible. It goes out of its way to avoid saturated fat, but a Brutus complex exists when the body's visual unit spots bread and cheese. Both are foods to which the body is addicted. Both are bad for it, natch. Catch-22.

There are several possibilities: (1) The body can forego the cheese and the bread (and as a corollary, beer), though this would make for a life that reflects the Puritanical nature of the current political clime, and that seems counter to the mind's contrarian instincts. (2) The body can exercise more, which would involve a lot of pain that the body would have to become accustomed to and would have the mind transmuting into an austere, nagging natterer to the body. (3) The mind can try out one of the many kooky exercise alternatives propounded by other unique minds. (4) Some combination of these points.

Regardless of these items, there remains the larger concern of where the body is heading. The mind is quite lovely, thank you very much. It is happy. It develops at an acceptable pace, commendable given the day job and the increased reading and writing and socializing. But the body has an altogether different concern. If weight has been gained, does it stand to reason that more weight will be gained? If so, then the question of how the body fights the onset of fat is one of great importance. When the mind considers the body's receding hairline, there are two projected body types that the mind sees at the age of 40 or so. The mind, well aware of the sex appeal of Sean Connery and Patrick Stewart, recalling the sparks that attracted Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie, has no problem with the body's head going bald and will not wear a toupee or toy with hair extensions. But should the body allow itself to go, the body runs the risk of transforming into a Jon Polito or Allen Garfield type. This may work wonders at an Elks Lodge meeting, where such body types run rampant, but then the mind does not anticipate the body wandering into congregations of this nature.

It should also be noted that a fellow mind and body unit (hereinafter referred to as "M&B(Friend)") suggested to the mind and body (hereinafter referred to as "M&B(Prime)") in his early twenties that there would come a time where desirable mind and body units (hereinafter referred to as "M&B(Potential S.O.)") would start noticing M&B(Prime)'s redeeming qualities. M&B(Friend) indicated that this would happen unexpectedly. And he was right. After what seemed an existential tundra of false alarms and failures and misunderstandings, M&B(Prime) has charmed a few M&B(Potential S.O.)s of late, flirting, engaging them in dialogues in which M&B(Prime) is able to bluff his way through thoughtful conversations with greater success than before, and is having a good time. Other M&B(Friend)s have suggested that M&B(Prime) is developing concerns that are unwarranted and unnecessary, and that the body is not nearly the portly carapace that the mind has framed it as. The gist is that the body is, while not the hottest stuff, pretty darn nifty when considered with the mind.

Nevertheless, there is the larger issue of the body's potential corpulence, which can be expressed as follows:

Body(Corpulence)(Current) + Corpulence(Additional) = Body(Coruplence)(Redoubled)

Body(Corpulence)(Redoubled) = Mind(Panicked)

Mind(Panicked) = B&M(Prime)(Stressed Over Silly Reasons)

The mind, as has been suggested above, has wondered why this should matter so much. But then the mind sometimes jumps to conclusions.

At this point, B&M(Prime) likes who he is. But it is with these projected concerns that B&M(Prime) plans on joining a gym next month, possibly to run on a regular basis, if only to negate silly stress levels(potential).

Even so, the mind wonders if these things are overkill. An Abs of Steel DVD would look silly next to his Criterion Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, knowledge is always welcome.

The Un-Ethicist #3

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Miguel Cohen has returned. He confesses that he was mistaken about the mad cow disease. All he was suffering from was a bad hangover.]

So let me get this straight, David. You have no problem when an investment firm loses property, but when it comes to images of the Robinsons sobbing under the shadow of a white picket fence, your heart bleeds? Who do you think you are? Some sort of hippie?

It's not really about people at all, is it, David? It's about your own personal prioritizing. Family over the individual, people over the investment firm. The individual who dares to live alone doesn't gnaw at your conscience. Through lack of success (though not without effort) or out of choice, the individual who can't get laid or find a soulmate and dares to own a home gets your goat. But the family -- oh, I can see that tugs at your heartstrings. The greater the numbers (i.e., family unit of three or more over one individual), the more likely you will respond to entities getting screwed over in a deal.

What I don't think you realize that we have afforded so many rights to partnerships and corporations that they have practically the same unalienable rights as the individual. They become families in their own way. Hypothetically, an "individual" entity can hook up with another entity at a bar and form a partnership. The paperwork and process is just that simple.

While an investment firm's goal is to buy residential property and rent it out to people -- sometimes roasting the renter alive, sometimes not -- the overall purpose is to make money. Likewise, any "individual" or "family" is pining for the same. Buy low, sell high. Let the property value accumulate over the years. And then let out a husky laugh in your autumn years when you're fat, bloated, wrinkled, and rolling naked in a bed of bills. The American Dream in a nutshell.

But what is the family but a closet corporation? A family may not get the same tax breaks as the richest 1%. Nonetheless, a case could be made that the current tax system is prejudicial against single people (and in fact many libertarians living in gated communities have made these arguments). If you look at the family as a business partnership, if you modify the language in a wedding announcement from "Mary Jane Wilson and Henry Stillman were married" to "Mary Jane Wilson and Henry Stillman announced their creative partnership," does this help your conscience?

I worked my way through a prestigious university but, because of economic circumstances, never graduated, something that still leaves me ashamed. When colleagues ask, ''When did you graduate?'' I often answer, ''I finished in 19xx,'' creating the impression that I graduated. I don't have to disclose my every failure, but I regret being deceptive. Should I make it clear that I did not graduate from Prestigious U.? D.A., REDWOOD CITY, CALIF.

First off, D.A., why even answer the question at all? If your colleagues truly respect you, and you're sleeping with them, then they'll respect you for who you are in the morning. If you're not sleeping with them, then they'll sniff your identity out, which is basically a needlessly diffident dude who can't offer precise answers to the simplest questions. Your colleagues are hearing this "I finished" racket and, if they are smart, they are probably seeing a not so skillful toe-tapper.

If it means so much to you, then why not go back and get the degree? Better yet, if you feel it's too late in life for you to do this, then join the ranks of great humans who never set foot in a college: George Bernard Shaw, William Shakespeare, G.K. Chesterton, too many to list.

AudBlog #4 -- On Not Looking Back

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German Minister of Defense Peter Struck Declares That He's More Menacing than Rumsfield, Demands Mud Wrestling Match with Rummy in Washington

Woof Woof

Taking a cue from Hilary Clinton, Cherie Blair is set to write a memoir. In an effort to upstage Hilary's infamous response-to-Monica in Living History and spawn sales, Blair will depict husband Tony as "a wild stallion who isn't bad in bed, I'll have you know. You should see the way he undulates." Unfortunately, the memoir won't attempt to explain why Tony Blair transforms into a lapdog whenever he visits Kennebunkport.

Something to ponder over on Monday, unless you're an Evan Machem fan: A new study reports that schools are almost as segregated today as they were back in 1969. A new study by the Harvard Civil Rights Project reports that the percentage of blacks attending predominantly white schools has fallen to 30%.

An article from Gould's Book of Fish author Richard Flanagan has helped to spawn a letter writing campaign to save the Tasmanian forests.

Sad news for anyone who's ever collected twelve inches. The CD single's to be phased out in three years. The hunt for quirky tracks and strange mixes will go the way of the dodo. Or possibly Dido.

Conversation with a Fellow Customer

"Security. Does wonders for the mind."

He set down his bottle, which he paid with a twenty.

"Really?" I asked. "How so?"

"Well, for starters, there's the discipline."

"Discipline?"

"Yeah. Ain't no job try your patience. I be doing this seven years."

"What do you do on the job?"

"Stand round, lookin' wise. Not much trouble. See, they hires us 'cause they thinks they got something. But they don't. Nothing important. Nothing I see. Nothing no one, no man steal. Know what I'm sayin'?"

"Yeah."

"Just 'bout any one get this kinda work. Show up. Stick around, few weeks they make you supervisor. All in the attitude."

He collected his change.

"And this is good for the mind?"

"Oh yeah. Real good. Keepin' it real. Keeps you tight."

"Doesn't it get boring?"

"Sometimes. Yeah. But it's good for the mind, wonders, see. I see most folks cut out quick. Real quick. They the ones got small minds. The real ones hang in. Damn easy. If the mind keeps going, shit, you get supervisor pay. Twelve dollars an hour."

"So your mind's in this for the money."

"Hell yeah. Who ain't? Gets me cab fare sometimes. Some folks don't know pay when they hang in there."

The New Twilight Zone on DVD

TV Shows on DVD reports that The New Twilight Zone (the edgy 1985 version, not its recent incarnation) may be hitting DVD in July 2004. I've contacted Image Entertainment. Nick, in the Public Relations department, says that he's "heard about this." But it remains unconfirmed. I've left a voicemail with Cindy Barrow, the attorney who handles the legal contracts, to see if I can get confirmation on this. If I hear anything back from her, I will report it here.

Paul Bremer Tells Journalist Questioning U.S. Presence in Iraq to Go to His Room

Hustle Cussler Outta There

Clive Cussler has sued a production company over an unauthorized script. My hope is that he wins. Not because of the suit's merits (or lack thereof), mind you, but a quiet $10 million payoff may stop Cussler from writing novels. That would be a truly philanthropic act.

More on Rushdie. He's got a movie deal lined up. The Firebird's Nest is a romance between an older man and a younger gal (even starring Rushdie's girlfriend, a younger gal), but this is not -- repeat, not -- based on Rushdie's life. (via Bookslut)

Ken Kesey's 1967 jail journal will be published. It includes "two dozen color plates of collages Kesey made from ink drawings entwined with his handwritten reflections laid down in notebooks smuggled out by a buddy who got busted with him."

The Elegant Variation demolishes the 2 Blowhards' movie/book people argument (in fine satirical form, natch): "By the way, do you notice that (at least based on the movie people we know), he hasn’t really described your average movie person, but rather your average video store geek? And I’m willing to bet that if he’d been seated beside Tarantino at a dinner party before he’d made it big, he’d have found him an annoying little pest."

Nell Freudenberger has compelling words of wisdom: "But then, ignorance is no excuse. It’s obvious to me now that you can do a terrible thing by accident." Yes indeed. There are lots of things you can do by accident. Such as turning in a silly Yank-centric piece to Granta without so much as a major observation on Laotian culture, history or behavior. The essay, ironically enough, is part of Granta's "Over There: How Americans See the World" theme. But I'll take J. Robert Lennon's goofy piece over Freudenberger's any day. Paula Fox has a essay up too, but you'll have to pony up the clamshells for the hard copy.

And Rachel Greenwald believes that you can snag a husband with a push-up bra. But she fails to account for the fact that some men (myself included) assess the goods (if they can be called that or given a pronoun) naked and in private, conditions when said boobies are unhindered by faux, painful support, and that boobies, while spiffy, are a fringe benefit, rather than the chief draw. (via Sarah)

Olivia Goldsmith -- Gone

Olivia Goldsmith has passed away. And I'm angry. This did not have to happen. Goldsmith was only 54. Fifty-four. One of the first female partners at Booz Allen Hamilton. And then a not-too-shabby fiction career. But the circumstances of her death were this: she was about to undergo plastic surgery. But she felt (or was it her editors or her agent?) that she had to live up to some pinnacle of perfection. She needed a flawless face, a mug devoid of wrinkles for the photographers, an image devoid of any signs that, hey, she was 54. The great irony was that she had skewered this kind of thinking in her novel, The First Wives Club. But to hell with the merits of her writing, to hell with the fact that she had no problem savaging mid-lifers in her books. No, the important thing was the plastic surgery. There was the real world and the world within her fiction. And for Goldsmith, the real world was far crueler.

Just as she was about to go under, she had a violent reaction to the anesthesia, which incapacitated her. And now she's dead.

All because of an image, all because of a stinkin' author photo, all because we still judge books by their back covers rather than their innards, and all because civilization cannot stop pestering, whether deliberately or subconsiously, the older, the fatter, the more wrinkled, the more infirm, the non-Caucasian, and anybody else who doesn't fall into the harsh physical virtues dictated by Vanity Fair and People. Olivia Goldsmith's death isn't just a terribly premature end for a writer who was fun. It also shows that ideals have spiraled completely out of control. Or perhaps it just confirms them.

Goldsmith's death did not have to happen. And yet it did. And the publishing industry, with concerns of gloss and glamour, won't stop perpetuating these shameful conditions. It will continue defaulting to the purty lil gals (Nell Freudenberger) or the hot young things (Zoe Trope), rather than the magic of the offerings. This is nothing less than a goddam tragedy. Because we lose authors like Goldsmith in the process.

[UPDATE: There's been some speculation on this entry. And I feel it's important to clarify the following: (1) Lest the reader waltz into grassy knoll territory, I didn't intend to suggest that the publishing industry was the smoking gun, but that there may be extant environmental factors within that contributed to Goldsmith's decision -- a decision, it should be noted, that she alone made. Goldsmith was an author who sold well. And, as such, she had a profile to maintain. Said factors can be seen on book covers that dwell upon anatomical merits over ability, responded to in high kitsch by Susan Orlean on the cover of The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup. These elements, which pressure women to look and remain young and beautiful, can be observed during a casual stroll in the Western world. (2) No one knows enough about Goldsmith's motivations to make a final judgment call as to cause. This was idle speculation, but I'll let it stand unmodified for the record.]

The Case Against First Person Plural

I've been very annoyed by the rise of first person plural. The use of "we" is an unfortunate component of McSweeney's house style that shows no signs of waning. Several sharp, witty people use it -- indeed, cannot refrain from stopping -- and I shake my head in sorrow. Unless you're a schizophrenic or you're writing on behalf of a group of people (academics, a committee, or some giddy ensemble of lunatics), or you're relaying an anecdote with another person in the room, there just isn't a damn compelling reason to use "we" in place of "I." "We" implies one of two possibilities: either that the reader and the writer are one (a legitimate use in small doses), or the writer is duking it out with several voices inside her head. But what sane mind can relate to the latter in a tete-a-tete?

"We" implies familiarity, but then it's a bit like some server killing a good restaurant conversation by announcing, "So how we doing?" The server is likely hustling for tips, but in the worst possible way. The "we" label, accentuated by a perky smile that only digs the blade in deeper, is enough to transform highly rational people into near-barbarians. No one appreciates this stroke of familiarity before even so much as a "Hello," but this doesn't stop marketing zealots from communicating this way at conferences and seminars.

And yet the same concerns don't apply on page.

Here's the opening pargraph to James M. Cain's The Postman Always Ring Twice -- in my view, one of the finest examples of first-person clarity:

They threw me off the hay truck about noon. I had swung on the night before, down at the border, and as soon as I got up there under the canvas, I went to sleep. I needed plenty of that, after three weeks in Tia Juana, and I was still getting it when they pulled off to one side to let the engine cool. Then they saw a foot sticking out and threw me off. I tried some comical stuff, but all I got was a dead pan, so that gag was out. They gave me a cigarette, though, and I hiked down the road to find something to eat.

Great clean stuff, ain't it? You're immediately hooked into Frank's world. You know that he's a drifter, that he has some experience on the road, and that he's rumbled a bit.

Now let's see how the same passage plays out in first person plural:

They threw us off the hay truck about noon. We had swung on the night before, down at the border, and as soon as we got up there under the canvas, we went to sleep. We needed plenty of that, after three weeks in Tia Juana, and we were still getting it when they pulled off to one side to let the engine cool. Then they saw our feet sticking out and threw us off. We tried some comical stuff, but all we got was a dead pan, so that gag was out. They gave us a cigarette, though, and we hiked down the road to find something to eat.

Infuriating from the first sentence, no? It comes across as consummate bullshit, rather than the authenticity we saw in first person singular. From the get-go, the reader has nothing to relate to. Because the narrator feels the need to be a pushy wiseacre. The passage fails because the reader isn't invited to become part of an adventure. He's forced.

So I implore all people who use first person plural: Since when the hell are you Queen Fucking Victoria? I double-dare all columnists, writers, storytellers, hack journalists, essayists, bloggers and related parties to make the hard choice of sticking with first person singular. Resist the temptation the same way that you avoid telling a story in second person. The output will be clearer and more interesting. And readers will learn to love you more.

Tough Talking

Move over, Madonna. James Carville's entered the kid lit business. The tough-as-nails politico is co-authoring a picture book inspired by his mother Lucille. Early reports indicate that several children have fainted while reading the book. Editors are quietly encouraging Mr. Carville to tone down his prose.

Ursula K. Le Guin's just nabbed a lifetime achievement award from the ALA. This is actually her fourth lifetime achievement award in the past three years, suggesting that either Le Guin has achieved enough for four lifetimes, or that there are four Ursula K. Le Guins running about.

Randy VanWarmer, singer of the Bread-like ballad "Just When I Needed You Most," has passed away at 48.

Matthew Pearl lists ten books that have kept the spirit of Dante alive. Notably absent is the 1970s New Age bestseller, Getting in Touch with Your Inner Dante: Avoiding Infernos with Smiles and Sideburns.

Salon has an excerpt from Chalmers Johnson's The Sorrows of Empire.

The Christian Science Monitor interviews Edith Grossman on the new Quixote translation: "The differences: modern technology, especially in communications, has changed the world drastically; in the industrialized world at least, the majority of people are literate. As a consequence, the oral tradition at Sancho's disposal is becoming -- or already may be -- extinct."

Elmore Leonard's Rules of Writing (via Good Reports) And, in fact, here's the complete "Writers on Writing" series (now compiled in a book), which includes Donald E. Westlake on psuedonyms, E.L. Doctorow on the effects of film upon lit, Louise Erdrich on language, Richard Ford on not writing, Ed McBain on mystery archetypes, and Kurt Vonnegut on writing classes (among many more).

Helen Oyeyemi signed a two-book deal for £400,000 and didn't tell her parents. She also forgot to take out the garbage. (via Maud)

The Handmaid's Tale is being turned into an opera! (via Elegant Variation)

To Check Out Later: The Orange Word has an impressive of writer and screenwriter interviews archive up. (via Crooked Timber)

Pop Matters asks: Does South Africa have it in for Coetzee?

Sean Penn writes about his Iraq trip.

And Braun's out.

Dean to Iowa: My Forefinger Is Longer Than Clark's -- But You Know What I Really Mean

Harbingers of Horrific Plans

Bad reviews? Shoddy placement? Nope. Bruce Stockler says the biggest obstacle to publicizing a book is obituaries

The University of Michigan has launched a 20,000 volume digital collection. It uses a system similar to Amazon's Search Inside the Book feature (minus the page limitation) and you can search through the entire collection for a specific word or phrase. But, unfortunately, there isn't an author search. Some of the gems I've found include Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Rienzi, The Last of the Roman Tribunes (with such sterling prose as "Rienzi made no reply; he did not heed or hear him -- dark and stern thoughts, thoughts in which were the germ of a mighty revolution, were at his heart."), Seward Hilter's Sex Ethics and the Kinsey Reports ("The females of the lower educational levels, Kinsey notes, had more often been afraid that masturbation would mean physical harm and also that it was abnormal and unnatural. We should note, however, that the women of the lower educational levels tend to marry at earlier ages, and that more of them might masturbate eventually if they postponed marriage to later ages." Oh really?), the complete works of Coleridge, Guizot's The History of Civilization, and some Thackeray.

De Niro and Scorsese are set to write a joint memoir. The director and star report that they have a unique writing approach. Before they begin each chapter, the two of them duke it out over who gets to sit in front of the computer. So far, Scorsese reports that he's only lost one ear and three fingers.

Slightly old news, but the FBI reports to be on the lookout for almanac carriers. Anyone carrying an Information Please may very well be plotting terrorist activities, especially if the books are "annotated in suspicious ways."

I Am Not Spalding

Concerning these little AudBlogs you may or may not be listening to -- I want to assure the small audience here that I am not a drone, that I stutter on a regular basis, that just this week I forgot in conversation the first name of a good friend's great love from 1997, that I was flogged by said friend over the strains of some Yardbirds track, and that I often do not know where in hell these anti-lucidities are going. Spalding Gray remains missing and these audio things, uttered on a cell phone near odd palazzos, adjacent to coiffed, besuitted, beautiful and not so beautiful people who remain hopeless perplexed by any talk outside brokering a deal, only serves as cheap surrogate and handy experiment until Mr. Gray's hopeful return to crazed modern life. This has been a disclaimer.

AudBlog #3 -- Lunch Hour Musings on Protection

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American Suckers

Close to the centenary, all is not well in Dali world. Robert Deschames, author of a Dali biography, has been fighting the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation for some time. He claims that Dali gave him the commercial rights to his work during their friendship. The Foundation says no. The battle has waged in court for some time. Attorneys have profited. Deschames' attorney claims that his client is ruined. This wouldn't be the first time that money got in the way of one of Dali's friendships, but it does mark the first time that it's happened beyond the pale.

Putin is pissed. A history book suggested that he was a dictator running a police state. The great irony is that he's now ordered a review of all history books.

Proving once again that Viagra conquers all, Julio Iglesias (that would be Dr. Julio, father of the Julio we know) has fathered a child at 87. This beats out Saul Bellow, who became a dad again at 84, and whose illegitimate grandson has recently taken over Playboy. Bellow responded, "That bastard! Does he know how much work it took?"

Here are several reasons why I will probably never read David Denby's American Sucker:

1. He finds spiritual redemption in 8 Mile.

2. The Washington Post: "This warmed-over Horatio Alger rhetoric is very hard to stomach coming from a man cushioned in a handsomely paid magazine job, trying to stake himself to a stock market windfall in order to keep control of a $1.4 million apartment financed largely by his own family inheritance -- someone who spent not one but two tours of duty at an Ivy League university, subsidized the second time via the good graces of a book contract. Bleary-eyed community college night classes, indeed."

3. The Boston Globe channels John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash, noting, "When those same [economic] leaders are led off in handcuffs, it is a pretty good sign the boom has turned into a bust." Denby, of course, stayed in after the NASDAQ dropped in March 2000.

4. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "At times, Denby's obsessions become tiring - if he had a deeper navel, he would have written a longer book."

The Twin East Coast Monthly

For all of The Atlantic's candor, it still doesn't explain why the current double issue would include not one, but two takes on high-profile translations (the former a swell introspective look on Don Quixote, the latter another smug collection of Christopher Hitchens intonations), while saving the remaining lengthy slot for Dr. Laura's new book. While influential polemicists certainly do warrant a serious look, we can't help but wonder if The Atlantic is preaching to the converted or contemplate why The Atlantic would dwell upon a polemicist that has, it would seem to us, had her day. Despite the long, long, long (did we mention long?), blustery essays on Iraq, one involving hawkish apologia, both of which hurt our heads to varying degrees, we believe The Atlantic's readers are not likely to find solace in a hateful crank. Nor do we believe that hi/lo dichotomies are necessarily the order of the day. The current object, it would seem to us, is guided more by mitosis. To the point where it has us now using that dreaded first person plural, which use we reserve only when drunk, half-awake, or otherwise devoid of our ten senses.

And Here I Was Remembering My Top Ramen Days

There are hard sacrifices to becoming a novelist. For Elizabeth Robinson, they were even harder. "She was down to cutting out the luxury of household mineral water," reports the Chicago Tribune. (via Moorish Girl)

The Crimson Reader and the White

I'm a little late to the party, but I'll concur that The Crimson Petal and the White is a darn good read. If, like me, you were jaded by Quicksilver or underwhelmed by The Wolves of the Calla, and if, like me, you're obsessed with reading longass novels, then you may want to give it a shot. A sizable chunk was serialized in The Guardian, so beta testers are advised to bolt there. Hostlers are waiting.

Funny, Because Their Idea of Foundation is Skin-Based (In More Ways Than One)

Dong Resin's Letter to the Middle Class: "Did I ever mention that the foundation of a society is it's lowliest workers? Probably not such a great idea to let that crumble like you have, but then there's lots of cool cheap shit at Wal Mart, so it balances out. You'll see! It's not so bad. Did you know you can get a DVD player for $40?! You can't get medicine for $40, but you can damn sure get motherfucking DVD players, which are almost as good."

Bright Lights, Big Menu

I was going to pull some second-person take on Jay McInerey as New York Times restaurant critic. But, dammit, Liz Spiers beat me to it.

Kate DiCamillo has won the Newberry this year for The Tale of Despereaux. The book concerns a mouse who falls in love with a princess, which is a story that (in all seriousness) I'm likely to get behind. In her early days, DiCamillo collected more than 470 rejection letters, which shows not only that persistence pays off, but that it probably kills a lot of trees in the process.

Monotori Kishi's Misshitsu, a comic book depicting gonads and, well, a lot of sex, has been ruled obscene in Japan. The obscenity precedent was laid down in 1957 with a Japanese translation of Lady Chatterley's Lover.

Meanwhile, here at home, the Supreme Court has said no to an appeal in the Tony Twist/McFarlane battle.

Marginalia and Other Crimes shows library book damages in all their sad glory. (via Maud, who's now back from her trip in Florida).

And, damn, Spalding Gray is missing. (via Bookslut)

Entertainment, Not Literature

Two Blowhards has a very interesting post up about the differences between book people and movie people. The book world's inability to appreciate or understand the craftsmanship of writing a popular novel is what continues to keep John P. Marquand's name (for one) from being celebrated as a great writer. As I've said more than once, Marquand, winner of the Pulitzer in 1937, is , for the most part, out-of-print today. His books, which offered a grand mix of satire and entertainment, were extremely popular during his time and still hold up well today in their careful observations of middle-class life.

But because Marquand could not find universal acceptance among critics who were quick to condemn him because he was a solid storyteller, because he dared to put his name on the popular Mr. Moto books rather than hide behind a Starkian non de plume, if you find his paperbacks at all, you'll find them housed within trashy covers that make Marquand come off as a sensationalist ("One woman's climb to the top!"), which undervalue his abilities as a stylist or a satirist. Or you'll find the covers for the later books, which desperately try to plug Marquand as the greatest American novelist since Sinclair Lewis. And who wants to fall prey to that kind of marketing? For later generations who know nothing of Marquand, this paperback cover Lamarckism has pretty much killed Marquand's shot at surviving the fray or being remembered. It was only the Pulitzer and the resultant curiosity about The Late George Apley's narrative structure that drew me to the book and allowed me to discover him. Otherwise, I might never have heard of the guy. And yet how often are we attracted to a ribald movie poster or a DVD cover that isn't too far removed from Harlequin romances?

How many of us are willing to enjoy a well-made monster movie like The Thing from Another World or even a not-so-well-made monster movie like The Blob? We have no problem intellectualizing Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines or even the three Matrices, which are, let's face it, enjoyable crap. But confess that you like even a handful of Stephen Kings (full confession: I like King) or that you liked Elmore Leonard's novels more than Salman Rushdie's post-Satanic Verses work to a roomful of literary snobs and you'll either be led to the door or dismissed as a hopeless case. John Updike declared Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full as "entertainment, not literature." But as far as I'm concerned, A Man in Full or Bonfire of the Vanities are gripping reads laced with honed prose and careful observations. I would kill to have had the skills to write either of these. But I have known intelligent people to put these labels aside and enjoy half-baked crap like Zoolander or the last two Austin Powers movies.

Where Howard Hawks can be extolled beyond measure as a consummate artist of grand entertainment, years after Rio Bravo was panned on its release, by the same measure, Marquand still falls by the wayside in the book world. While the auteur theory can be applied across the board to an artist like Stanley Kubrick and an entertainment-oriented director like Michael Curtiz, in the medium guided more explicitly by "one voice," the auteur is doomed upon even a casual embrace of the page-turner.

AudBlog #2 -- Rambling About Skyscrapers

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AudBlog #1 -- The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Bagels

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The Reader's Last Sigh

The Associated Press reports that Rushdie's new novel will "have a lot more India in it" than Midnight's Children. That's great. But it still doesn't change the fact that Rushdie hasn't written a single compelling novel since Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

Who says they aren't crazy about libraries in the sticks? In Modesto, 100 volunteers are trying to maintain a small sales tax to ensure that their libraries stay open.

Geologists are trying to stop a creationist book from being sold at the Grand Canyon. The book, Grand Canyon: A Different View, suggests that the Canyon came into being not by the erosion of the Colorado River over millions of years, but because of a wager between Jesus and Peter. Peter lost the bet. And instead of turning water into wine, as Peter hoped, Jesus created the Grand Canyon. But not without starting a few side projects like lime jello and double-entry bookkeeping.

And Pete Rose has the best marketing gimmick around: "Read my book before judging me."

A New Kind of Pragmatism

The New Yorker on Howard Dean: "Last summer, Joe Trippi told U.S. News & World Report that he had given Dean a curious piece of advice: 'I tell him the only way he can win is to believe in his heart he cannot win. We’ve got to act like we have nothing to lose.' That, as they say, was then. When I asked Dean, in mid-October, whether he still subscribed to the Trippi wisdom, he replied, 'In part. I think the problem with the Democratic Party in general is that they’ve been so afraid to lose they’re willing to say whatever it takes it to win. And once you’re willing to say whatever it takes to win, you lose—because the American people are much smarter than folks in Washington think they are. Do I still believe it? I think you have to be ready to move forward and not just try to hold on to what you’ve got. I truly believe that if you’re not moving forward you’re moving backwards in life. There’s no such thing as neutral.'"

The Kookysolo Manifesto

Sasha Cagen's book, Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics, is now ranked 436 at Amazon. But I must take umbrage with Ms. Cagen's success. I fear that Ms. Cagen has plagiarized me. Back in April 1997, I wrote a piece for Motherfuckin' Angry Motherfucker, a zine assembled by a staff of one at Kinko's with a modest circulation of 42. I've contacted my attorney about this and he's informed me that a little bit of public exposure may help my case. I've also obtained permission from the editors of Motherfuckin' Angry Motherfucker to reprint my piece, "The Kookysolo Manifesto," in full on this website. There are, of course, certain similarities between the two catchphrases "quirkyalone" and "kookysolo." However, I wish to assure my readers that this was simply an essay whipped up in the course of a drunken evening. If I had known that "kookysolo" had appeal, I would have cashed in the same way that Ms. Cagen has. Of course, there are also subtle differences between our respective philosophies. But I leave the readers to judge the results (and Ms. Cagen's possible theft) for themselves.

People Like Us: The Kookysolos
by Edward Champion

I am, perhaps, what you may call a man who masturbates frequently. Relationships are like nectar from the gods. They happen, but perhaps only once in a blue moon. For years, I've wondered if I should check into a clinic or get a liposuction. But, of course, that would be a betrayal. Why would I desire to be one of those ironies that grace the magazine covers? The Meg Ryan type cast in repeated roles that involve a concept as believable as a government that never lies: the absolutely gorgeous young woman who can't seem to find Mr. Right or so much as a date with a fine young stallion.

The morning after New Year's Eve (another hangover in bed alone, another year minus a good afterglow) I was standing in the San Francisco air when I realized that I needed one of two things: a good lay or a cup of coffee. I settled for the coffee, since getting the good lay involved an endeavor more intricate and demanding than getting a Ph.D. At least if I wanted something immediate. I drank three double lattes, just to be sure that I was awake, and began rambling incohrently to the guy behind the counter, who was also suffering from a hangover. "I've got it!" I exclaimed. "Kookysolo." Needless to say, I was 86ed from the cafe. My picture hangs on the wall.

But I knew that I had something with this kookysolo thing. It was clear to me that not only was this a term that could stick with the socially inert, but that it could be used as an excuse for those people who are afraid to introduce themselves or to give their fellow humans the benefit of the doubt. Gravitating towards the kookysolo label would allow people a justification for their own self-pity, those people who watch Love Connection or Blind Date in the dark.

We are the puzzle pieces who never actually throw themselves into the box. We inhabit singledom as our natural capitulating state. In a world where most people have no problem living up to John Donne's idea that no man is an island, we are, by force of our convictions, our abrasive personalities, and our failure to remember first names, hopelessly antisocial.

Yet make no mistake: We are no less concerned with making an effort to ask someone out on a date, whether we be male or female. We do not have the courage to voice our interests in someone. Secretly, we are romantics, but romantics who are terrified of putting ourselves out there or giving a stranger a chance. We want a miracle. We want someone to somehow perceive our terrifying inability to interact and do the work for us. And in this quest, which is no different from plopping onto the couch with the remote control rather than getting out into the world, we are our own worst enemies.

For the kookysolo, the world is a terrifying place of axe-murderers and rapists behind every corner. We cannot conceive of the possibility of failure and when it does happen, as it does all too frequently, we remain convinced that the world is out to get us. Thus, we go home and watch television and drown ourselves in a bottle of wine rather than pick ourselves up and accept that, yes, one day, a nifty soulmate will be there, so long as we keep plugging away. We kookysolos have become so hopelessly placated by our 57 channels of cable and the number of beverages in a convenience store that we're surprised that the same principles cannot be applied to relationships.

By the same token, being alone is understood as a way to reinforce these terrible impulses, to be considerably more hindered by our fears. Our weekends are full of intricate rituals. Lots of potato chips and television and vodka. Even if we do find the fortitude to go on a date, we're terrified by the prospect of wrapping our arms around our date just to see how it feels. Because we go into the thing assuming the worst.

And so, a community of kookysolos is essential.

Since people like us eventually hit a point where we're willing to throw in the towel, it becomes essential to get together with other kookysolos and have pity parties. Support groups are just the tip of the iceberg. We need manifestos. We need self-help books that are modeled exclusively on half-baked theories rather than science. We are a demographic that will always buy these books. Because, dammit, it's something we can reach for in the hermetically sealed comfort of our own home. It's something that confirms what's destructive to us.

But if this is what it means to live, then you can count me out. Because probably the worst thing that can happen is when one kookysolo hooks up with another kookysolo, and the two of them kvetch endlessly about their own fears and limitations. Bonding based on crippling negativity is a recipe for chaos. If the relationship survives, it will be quilted in emotionally clingy fabric, which is healthy for neither party. But chances are more likely that it will end badly, and it will further terrify both kookysolos into avoiding relationships.

The earth will quake if anyone, en masse, actually believes that being kookysolo is a good idea.

Quick Quickies

Since it is book-related, Paul O'Neill fesses up that the Iraq plan was in place well before 9/11. The first major blow from an insider.

Updike's first short story: "The moment his car touched the boulevard heading home, Ace flicked on the radio."

Anybody have any clues on the Key West Literary Seminar fracas? Moorish Girl (and all of us) wants to know.

Six Bay Area ladies talk mystery writing.

A big Blair-like blowup at USA Today. Jack Kelley has resigned.

The Times gives a lot of space to the image.

And an engineer attempts to deconstruct postmodern literary criticism.

A Special Column by Laura Miller

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Miguel Cohen is unwell this week. He reports that he Super-Sized his McDonalds meal by mistake. He believes he's suffering from mad cow disease. I asked Miguel what increasing the size of his fries and drink had to do with beef. He replied, "You just don't know, man." While the doctors investigate Miguel's condition, Laura Miller has agreed to fill Miguel's shoes with a special exclusive.]

Columnist's block, like a bad heroin habit, is a subject of lackluster interest to those who are capable of filing a column that actually includes a few nifty ideas and a great annoyance to me personally. It differs somewhat from writer's block in that the columnist is faced with the prospect of sounding important, because the columnist must keep her job, even when she really doesn't know the audience she's writing for. "To hell with filing the article," once said Jayson Blair to a friend, "let's go get sushi and not pay. I'll make the shit up as it comes along." Well, we all know what happened to him. At least the writer has talent, whereas the lofty book columnist is often a windbag who cannot grasp so much as a whit of the typical book enthusiast's mind. The columnist does not understand that most people do not give a damn when she writes in a smug, highfalutin tone and that, if they do, they're generally reading the New York Times Book Review with their pants draped around their ankles while on the john and have every intention of using the back page as a clever substitute for something I cannot mention in a family newspaper. Either that or they're a unique form of starfucker, pining for a Salon gig, or they're wise enough to keep their trap shut. If you complain of not being able to write a column, you might be openly mocked in the book community (though never to the columnist's face) or even satirized on a blog.

Marilyn T. Chambers, star of Behind the Green Door, wouldn't dare to write a book column unless she had some inkling of what she was talking about. Nevertheless, you can see how important I sound because I referenced a figure whom you may or may not have heard of. The brilliance of including Chambers in this paragraph is that I can spell out her credentials (i.e., Chambers starred in a piece of smut called Behind the Green Door, in case you didn't catch that fact the first time) and somehow get through Chip McGrath's filter. Chambers is intrigued by the neurological dimensions of faking orgasms in general, not because she has endured columnist's block (although, if she were a columnist, we might say that she has) but because she has gone through episodes of something not dissimilar: she sings for her supper. We might call this avocational condition "whoring."

Just how much whoring is too much remains a tricky question. Mata Hari, who was a sharp cookie who liked to dance, and who found herself gyrating obsessively (giving the columnist redundant clauses with which to increase word count), explains, "The dance is a poem of which every movement is a word." Scientists studying the effects of logorrhea, which is what might happen if you were to apply a certain rectal condition to words (i.e., this column), tested for it by asking columnists for columns describing their state of health. Most responded with columns that were too long: the shortest at around 6,000 words. Some scientists resigned from the project immediately. A few collapsed, reporting that they could not read a newspaper column for several years, after being exposed to such limitless verbosity. The handful of scientists left standing asked, "What the hell does any of this have to do with Mata Hari and dancing?" In fact, an early draft of this column was so bad that the folks at the copy desk pined for another David Brooks column. If you're a prolific popular columnist (or you think you are) like me, you can delude yourself into thinking that you're better than those groundlings making wisecracks, or those people who have a sense of humor that you lack. Writing a worthless column is an art, albeit a low one, beyond reproach, that comes out painfully. You may not realize this, but my life is in shambles. Of course, if I admitted anything human like that, then perhaps the perceptions would shift. If I suggested in any real way that I was passionate about books, then you might love me the same way you love Michiko. But allow me this small metaphor, for I am not inured to rejection notices the way that most of you may be. I have not written a novel and I don't have Michiko's Pulitzer, but I am a columnist. And I have an airtight gig. I want to keep my job. You like me, right?

A little snark or playful banter is easy to mistake for something serious. I'm not quite sure where I was going with the Mata Hari reference. And I don't know what I was thinking when I mentioned Marilyn Chambers. But perhaps I can offer a scientific hypothesis that will get us back to the main.

In 2003, many of the book blogs, reading the New York Times Book Review because they liked books and they liked Chip, noticed from time to time that one columnist was full of shit. In other words, too much of a grand gig (i.e., writing for the New York Times), as well as too little (i.e., anything written for Salon), can trigger columnist's block, and this explains why "the bigger the lack of passion, the bigger the block." Lewis H. Lapham writes the same damn column every Harper's, but at least he is a harmless enough crank. Lapham may be one-note. He may have a testosterone that doesn't quit, but he has a passion and a sense of humor. So it was something of a shock to see him writing about George Plimpton this month. Apparently, someone at Harper's finally got around to telling him that his blustery assaults on Bush were maiming small children in Ecuador.

A friend of mine (yes, I have friends) once invented a "cure" for this condition: to counteract a series of humorless columns, create something more humorless. Think up a bland, banal subject -- something like columnist's block or covering a book that you're inclined to hate from the first page -- and expend 1,000 words on it. In your mind invest it with such life-defining importance that your entire journalistic career hinges upon this one central silly thing. You must take a topic that no reasonable person would waste a paragraph on and approach it as if it were some truly important ideal, something as important as the Federalist Papers, something as pivotal to this planet as carbon.

Blocked or not, columnists have been disappointingly unimaginative in their responses to columnist's block. One exception is the tiny literary genre of book columns on the back page of the New York Times Book Review. No, not those cutesy cartoons. Hint hint. I know of only one worthwhile columnist who I can read even when I know she is suffering from columnist's block. In fact, you may not know this, but I have assembled a small chapbook which features this columnist's ouevre. It reflects, I believe, the highest pinnacle of columnist's block. Such useless credos as "you have to live" before you write are pure poppycock, because any real columnist knows that she can bluff her way through anything. Particularly when the columnist has failed to live and cannot crack so much as a smile. Whatever tortures the reader must bear, that makes it art in my book.

Gene Wolfe, Fantasy Maestro

Ultan's Library: A journal for the study of Gene Wolfe.

James B. Jordan interview: "I used to belong to a chain letter that included Gardner Dozois, Jack Dann, Chelsea Quinn Yarborough, Mike Bishop. And we would write long newsletters about our doings and then put them in a packet and they would be sent around. This was before they had computer bulletin boards and all that sort of stuff. And I could almost invariably identify the writer from the first paragraph or two. The writer was only overtly identified with the signature, because it was done in letter form. But the styles of the people who were writing were sufficiently different that I could very easily pick out most of them without difficulty. And I am a good imitator. I could write imitation Shakespeare that you would think was probably legitimate Shakespeare because there is a lot of Shakespeare for me to look at. I have sort of knack for doing that sort of thing."

Excerpt from Knight, Wolfe's new book (part of the Wizard Knight series).

"Under Hill" -- short story

"Castaway" -- short story

"Copperhead" -- short story

Wolfe on Lord of the Rings: "Philology led [Tolkien] to the study of the largely illiterate societies of Northern Europe between the fall of Rome and the beginning of the true Middle Ages (roughly AD 400 to 1000). There he found a quality -- let us call it Folk Law -- that has almost disappeared from his world and ours."

The influence of Borges on Wolfe's work.

The Cincinnati Enquirer is a Purveyor of Filth

Cincinnati Enquirer: "And for those outraged that the low-rated Doonesbury survived while Boondocks didn't, we made the decision to drop Boondocks because we did not want to keep publishing a comic that we regularly needed to censor. During the past year, Boondocks was substituted a number of times because it was deemed inappropriate for a family newspaper. And not just this family newspaper. Editors across the country were making the same decisions."

Well, you have to give the Enquirer credit for a creative excuse. Some folks have caled Boondocks unpatriotic or racist. But this is the first time I've heard of it being "inappropriate for a family newspaper."

But is the Enquirer really a family newspaper?

August 5, 2001: This expose trying to demystify the N-word, mentioning "nigger" ten times and "nigga" ten times.

Peggy O'Farrell, April 9, 2003: "Dr. Safwat Zaki, a urologist with UC Physicians at University Pointe, says products purported to enlarge the penis don't work. Some surgical options are available: Pumps can be implanted into the penis, and fat can be injected to increase its girth. But the injections don't last, and the implants carry the risk of infection and scarring." The Enquirer informing its readers on how to increase penis size? Indecent!

Margaret A. McGurk, Boogie Nights review: "Mr. Anderson handles the porn-making scenes with restraint; by focusing on the onlookers rather than the actors, he achieves an almost romantic mood. A few other sex scenes are hard to watch, particularly one that ends with a savage beating. Yes, there is some nudity, including a brief, display of Eddie's claim to fame." Reporting sex scenes! What is this? Adult Movie Guide? Indecent!

Jane Prednergast, March 25, 2000: "The Fort Thomas suspect used a condom, leaving detectives without semen to identify in the first home-invasion rape Fort Thomas has seen in years. That's one aspect of the case that makes it different from the serial rapes being studied by investigators in Mason, Mont gomery and Colerain Township." You don't talk about semen or condoms in a family newspaper. Indecent!

Mike Boyer, September 29, 2002: "Pedro's is planning a semen collection facility serving the entire Midwest on its farm, with Wisconsin-based Genex Cooperative Inc." Indecent!

Tom Loftus, November 8, 2003: "Seelye said his jail's procedure is to search new inmates 'down to their undergarments' in most cases. A thorough strip search was not done in Hawks' case because such searches are done only when there is some suspicion that an inmate is bringing contraband into the jail, he said." Groping inmates! Beyond indecent!

The Starr Report on the Enquirer servers: Colorful langauge all over the place.

Indecent, I say! Why stop with Boondocks? Why not shitcan all the writers?

(via Old Hag)

Back from My Hiatus

Liz Spiers has excerpts from the new Peter Biskind book, Down and Dirty Pictures. From what I can tell, Ben Affleck tried to give Harvey Weinstein a fruit basket, with unfortunate results ("Apples! That's bad taste. Do you know who I am? I don't eat fucking apples. Who is this guy? I'm going to go outside and kick your fucking ass. You take your apple bitch home and fuckin' kill him."). (via Greencine Daily)

Dave Pelzer is now trying out the "regular guy" angle. But how regular can a guy be when he's made as much money as Pelzer has? Pelzer's quoted, "Everybody thinks, 'Oooo, Dave Pelzer. Oooo, Dave Pelzer.' That's why I just say, 'Just shut up and sit down.' I'm just a regular guy trying to keep my family together. I'm just the village idiot that wrote a book." Five now, actually, with the just-releaed Privilege of Youth. If Pelzer's such a regular guy, if he truly is a self-proclaimed village idiot, then why do people keep buying his books? And why does he keep landing those lucrative lecturing gigs? Hey, Dave, I've got your "regular guy" right here. It's called unshaven, unpublished dude, maybe collecting unemployment, having a Top Ramen fiesta.

Speaking of regular guys, the Globe has an obituary up for Samuel Albert. Albert was an insurance executive who worked long hours and raised five kids, squeezing in a poem when he could find the time.

Need an angle to pitch your project? Try the grey market. The Financial Times writes, "Eighty per cent of the country's wealth is controlled by the over-50s but 95 per cent of adspend targets people under-50; 86 per cent of over-50s say they don't relate to most current advertising yet, for example, 66 per cent of new cars are bought by people over-45. The over-50s in employment outspend their under-50 counterparts by 20 per cent. And over the next 20 years the over-50s market in the UK will grow by 30 per cent, while the under-50s market will shrink by 5 per cent."

The possibilities here are limitless. We're talking a Steely Dan reunion, a fiction market saturated by endless Anne Tyler-like variations on suburban white males descending into mid-life crisis action when their $200 fillet mignon arrives slightly undercooked, and more sex and nudity involving older people (Diane Keaton's flash was just the tip of the iceberg). So go at it, brave new marketers! You've spent a small lifetime getting hep to the demands of a coddled generation just out of high school. But do you have what it takes to get acquainted with the likes of "Rikki Don't Lose That Number?"

The funny thing is that thirty years from now, people will be demanding a reunion of OutKast.

Hiatus

I regret to inform my loyal readers that I will be taking a blogging hiatus that will last approximately twelve hours or so. Perhaps less. The reasons are unimportant. But after talking with my therapist about it, we've concluded that blogging has stressed me out. I need to get out in the world for a little bit and find myself. Of course, while this kind of thing is something that the average person would take days, weeks, or sometimes months to get through, I'm happy to tell you that I'm a pretty decisive guy. Twelve hours of contemplation. Twelve hours of reading that Po Bronson book, Get Off Your Ass and Do Something With Your Life. And then I'll be happy to emerge from my private jetliner and kneel down before the lord like Eldridge Cleaver.

Apologies in advance for any inconveniences this may cause.

Bush Describing His Drunk Driving Days to a Perplexed Multicultural Audience

Seven Books in Tibet?

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger: Optioned by Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston for New Line.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-Time by Mark Haddon: Optioned by Brad Pitt.

Dreamland by Kevin Baker: Optioned by Brad Pitt.

Mark L. Smith script: "Brad Pitt is reading one of his scripts."

And there's probably more. The moral of the story: If your book rides the careful crest between literary and pop, Brad Pitt will option it.

I Love You Too, Irvine (Sort Of)

To his supreme credit, Alexander McCall Smith claims that his remarks about Irvine Welsh have been "misinterpreted." Welsh's status has been downgraded to "a partially indecent hooligan whom I'll never buy a drink for."

A new Michigan law requires publications that depict "explicit content" to be covered up. Booksellers and reading groups are furious. And they've filed a lawsuit. In the meantime, they may want to consider covering up Ann Coulter's books. Pretty explicit stuff, given that she's advocated blowing up the New York Times building, as well as suggesting, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." (via Sarah)

Catherine Kennan has a very juicy piece on highbrow personals. It doesn't get any closer to understanding the phenomenon (who can?), but it does feature a very amusing exchange between Kennan and one of the guys behind a personal ad. And it's impossible to resist this ad: "Find the 10th coefficient in the expansion of the binomial (1+x) to the 20th power. Then love me some more. Mathematical Ms, Cambridge." (via Chica)

The latest culprit behind declining book sales? USA Today suggests it's the DVD.

Sarah Waters has turned down a Who's Who entry because she's not sure how relevant the directory is to today's world.

Columbia Journalism Review has a piece on former New Republic editor Gregg Easterbrook. It's another guy fired because of blog story, but the cause here is far more nefarious (and strangely immediate).

And more on Norr from the Daily Planet. Efforts to track down settlement terms are nice from an outside source, but there are few conditional questions revealed.

Bonfires of the Vanities

Demonstrating to the world that nihilism begins in India, a mob has destroyed 30,000 ancient manuscripts because Oxford University Press spilled the beans about a Hindu king's parents. Strangely, a similar book in the United States, Bill O'Reilly's Who's Lapping Up for You Now?: My Early Days as a Salamander, has not spawned any mobs or burnings. But there have been a few interview walkouts. (via Bookslut)

Martha Freeman's The Trouble with Babies is a children's book with a brief passage referencing two gay fathers. Predictably, the yokels are now damning it, citing the book's "homosexual agenda." The book's been removed from library shelves and sales have dropped off because of this misperception. And the proposed Queer Eye for the Straight Dad spinoff series has been cancelled.

Hey, Chip, You Rock My World!

Well, since folks are either making confessionals or unabashedly whoring, I'm more than happy to join the collective hue and cry. In fact, Chip, send me a book and I'll wash your windows in a garter strap! Not a pretty sight, I know. But if that fails to quell the current cries of sexism, then I'll legally change my name to "Pia Zadora."

Well, Since It Seems So Important.

They gathered on the shifting sands, away from the bright lights and the big stars. Kith and kin caught on the question of kaput, the winds cutting across their chiseled jaws, freezing limber pecs and refrigerating halter tops housing surgical implants. It was an ineluctable assault on the California senses. Fifty degrees was just too damn cold. They were concerned. Perplexed. Unable to offer answers. Ensnared by the greatest enigma to face humanity since Poe whipped up his "Gold Bug" code or those planes disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. But who really cared about these trivialities? There were more pressing concerns than the mysteries and achivements of the human race.

Their friend was behaving strangely.

No longer the virginal vixen they had worshipped. No longer the adorable fuck-me starlet coveted by Bob Dole. No longer the gal who might have slept with Justin Timberlake. Or not. But possibly a John Wayne Gacy in the making. A troubled soul.

Their friend had been spotted slamming shots. More than a few times. Oh, she was of drinking age. Of that, there could be no doubt. But because she was accustomed to staggering demands, because she was rich beyond the dreams of that amateurish carapace she had thrown off long ago when she crossed those Ts on a contract signed in blood, her employees were afraid to tell her that she had a sizable problem. But was it the steady lucrative paychecks or genuine commiseration? Was their friend naive enough to believe that she could buy the sympathies of an entourage or was it a classic case of amoritizing pathos to ensure popularity? Had she been told that all along?

Whatever the case, they kept the hard line. No problems. Nothing to report. Shot while trying to escape. But then their friend had been whisked out of the Palm Casino, vaguely cognizant, succored by white man's burden. But, no, their friend had not imbibed beyond the pale.

Thoreau would have marveled over this denial of excess. If anything, the deceitful impressions slung by well-paid publicists would have sent him into a sudden apoplexy. Their friend could no longer be characterized as modest, as virtuous, as inherently good. Now she was a victim of her own restless problems. Of course, unlike most of the public, there was an image to perpetuate and a deep-seeded unhappiness to conceal. And if she had behaved like that without the platinum records, the limos and the Braques on the wall she never looked at, she would have been 86ed from any self-respecting dive, declared a high maintenance case among an inconsequential neighborhood, possibly left alone to inflict herself with a harder narcotic she couldn't afford. A daily habit in the hundreds.

So when their friend sauntered down a Vegas "30 Minutes or Less" nave with all the sanctity of a microwaved Swanson TV dinner, tying the knot with a childhood friend, acknowledging the true ceremonial import with a garter over blue jeans, and when their friend cancelled the deal 55 hours later, it reflected something else that the newspapers hadn't considered. She could marry on a whim and then throw it away. She could drink to excess and emerge with a momentarily crippling hangover. She could do almost anything and then forget it ever happened. Except one thing. A pivotal facet not long ago.

A recording contract. A Faustian deal she had to fulfill. The only commitment she had. Don't point to the men who had perfected the art of harvesting profit over litigious decades. The star, as always, was the culpable one. Even a star young, dumb, and full of come who didn't know any better.

And they concluded that if their friend fell asunder, or was trampled by her own coping mechanisms (harmful behavior which they encouraged), there would be another friend to grope and laud, to salivate for a time until this friend too became forgotten or the paychecks dried up. Fame was an airtight science, a neverending cycle. And the public would never stop making rash conclusions based on the few things they could espy through the tiny observational sliver.

Shorties

And the Whitbread goes to Mark Haddon's The Very, Very Curious Incident of the Dog Who Was Let Out by the Baja Men in the Morning, Afternoon and Night Shortly After He Was Fed His Meal, which I've been meaning to read. Except I can never remember the exact title.

David Mamet is insane.

I didn't realize the Alexander McCall Smith/Irvine Welsh thing had legs, but even in Scotland, they need their "bag of bones"/"entertainment not literature" Vidal/Mailer in-fights.

Andy Hamilton won't write for BBC1. Hamilton claims that Auntie Beeb has pressured a writer to remove lesbian characters from a script to "incorporate the conservative tastes of focus groups."

Modern Humorist: "Where are all the R's? Is it a typographical error? Does the writer simply not like R's? Or are there mysterious deeds at play, and are the R's somewhow involved?"

Birnbaum talks with Jonathan Lethem. Birnbaum even gets Lethem to fess that Laura Miller is "making a contribution to literary journalism." Birnbaum also shoots the goofy gale with Neal Pollack. Among the revelations: "[Eggers] said he didn't want me along because my stuff was much more confrontational and in your face and aggressive and loud and profane. He wanted to take McSweeney's in a more respectable direction. And then one day I woke up and my link was off the site. And I wasn't a McSweeney's guy anymore. Overnight. My main conduit for communicating over the Internet had been removed, so I had to start my own site."

And The Chronicle has apparently reached a settlement with Henry Norr.

It's A Godawful Small Affair

Beautiful pictures from Mars. An 8MB one was just released today, making it the highest resolution photograph ever taken of another planet.

Public Transmogrification

I'm not much of a public transportation critic, but I'd say that this morning's bus ride was unsatisfactory. It had nothing to do with the 350 pound woman who sat next to me, shoving her backpack into the veneer-like threshold between us, permitting me a space buffer of approximately 1.2 millimeters (less than a trusty bullet caliber) and the compression of my body into the area of (roughly) a burlap rucksack designed for someone of Twiggy's physique. It had nothing to do with the extenuating circumstances of this. Because I was actually able to open my book and read, even if it involved an acute open book aperture angling approximately 27 degrees, with educated guesses on how sentences ended on the left page and began on the right page. ("It was a dark ______________. ____________ better things were afoot when the gentle ________________.")

It had nothing to do with the bus arriving late, or the extremely crowded confines within, or the body odor and the vociferous cell phone conversations carried out over such substantial topics as Paris Hilton's new TV show, of which I haven't a damn scrap of knowledge about. It had nothing to do with what the MUNI ridership comes to collectively expect under these circumstances. I'm convinced that people have only the sweetest intentions at heart when they deliberately collide into your back and seethe, "Get out of my way, motherfucker." And you respond with something along the lines of "Blessed are the peacemakers" or "Have it your way, my dear Boswell." Of this, I remain irrevocably convinced.

No, the problem had much to do with the wavering velocity of the vehicle, the origin of which could be traced to a very militant driver who seemed to confuse a trundle up Market Street with the First Battle of Ypres. "Enter through the front," she barked at some hapless passenger trying to garner pivotal square footage through the back door. I could only imagine what this driver would do with a Glock gun in her hand. The volatility was manifest in the bus's motion. The bus alternately moved at a snail's pace or hit the ground running with a sharp slam on the gas, followed by a sudden brake, buffeting people forward from time to time. I'm not sure if the physical results of this eccentric two-step can be adequately described outside of a dance floor, or if they have underlying value in an aerobic environment. But it did have a unifying effect on the passengers at large. We were united. United in contusions, united in bumping into the metallic seats in front of us, united in being terrified of the bus driver quite possibly working the thirteenth hour of her shift, though being paid a lot more than a lot of us.

Overall, I'd have to conclude that the bus ride was unsatisfactory.

Quick Quickies

Margaret Drabble on Bloomsbury (via ElegVar, a Unix-like acronym I couldn't resist)

Journalista investigates the implications of Borders' "category management" on graphic novels.

Unusual San Francisco Architecture and The Map Room (a blog abut maps) (both via Menlo)

Defective Yeti has a heck of a forward-thinking scheme for making money off conservatives.

Slate: Should students be allowed to hook up with professors? The great irony is that the article was written by Against Love author Laura Kipnis! (via Chica)

Jonathan Yardley takes on The Reivers (which is in my bookpile). (via Sarah)

Smile! You're on Canted Camera!

The Harper's Iraq lies piece with sources, efforts of which originated in this MeFi thread.

And fingerprinting and photographing foreign visitors is overkill. It's bad enough that visitors are subjected to a silly little quiz ("Have you ever been a Communist?") that, embarassingly, demonstrates how little this nation has evolved from its McCarthyist paranoia half a century ago, or that this is one of the few Western nations in which citizens and non-citizens are split up after a twelve-hour transatlantic flight, rather than conjoined in one queue (not always the case going the other way), with instructions articulated only in English. In fact, nothing of these questions, the fingerprints or the photographs is mentioned on the DHS page referencing procedure (again, only in English).

But I don't see how photographs compared against databases will stop the true professionals, particularly when any real criminal can undergo plastic surgery, grow a beard, shave his eyebrows, or do any number of things to avoid being detected by a guy at customs who ain't exactly the brightest bulb at the airport.

What's interesting about the US VISIT program is that it's actually been in the works since 2000, which suggests that this privacy-invasive program isn't a direct countermeasure to Sept. 11. The Post article quotes spokesman Mike Milne as follows, "If we have your information in the system, it protects you as a passenger from someone being able to use your documentation." Oh really? So say Joe Visitor comes into the nation, gets his picture taken by the DHS, and then gets his credit card stolen by some serious thief who uses the card (before Joe Visitor cancels it) to buy "questionable" goods like bullets or raw compnents with which to construct an explosive. Given what we've seen of the INS wilfully damning without burden of proof, and such sickening stories as the treatment of Maher Arer by U.S. authorities, can we really count on a non-ICC compliant government to stand by habeas corpus? (And here are a few more side issues: (1) How secure are the databases? (2) What other information is being compared against the photograph? (3) If accused of a charge, does the visitor have access to this data or would their right to fair trial be obviated by a military-style tribunal? (4) Given the current spending spree of the U.S. government -- projected to hit a $500 billion deficit in five years -- is there any possibility that the government will sell these databases off to a marketing organization to stave off insolvency?)

But the silliest thing about US VISIT is that anyone coming into the United States by land will not be photographed. Given how easy it is to book a flight to Canada, rent a car and head south, this suggests to me that the program is more of a show of force rather than a legitimate countermeasure.

And it's sure to perform wonders for foreign relations. In response, Brazil has begun performing the same tactics on Americans. The U.S. Embassy had this to say in response: "While we acknowledge Brazil's sovereign right to determine the requirements for entry into Brazil, we regret the way in which new procedures have suddenly been put in place that single out US citizens for exceptional treatment that has meant lengthy delays in processing, such as the case today with a more than nine hour delay for some US citizens arriving at Rio's international airport." But is the Embassy more concerned with the delays or the singling out of American passengers? If the latter, the irony is dripping wet.

Queen Anne, Ordinary Life and Assorted Schlepping

Lisa Allardice dares to ask a question that some people have answered, but have refrained from voicing, fearful of being labeled some rabble-rouser to be dealt a harsh blow, never again to be invited to those swank cocktail parties: Is Anne Tyler washed up? Since I value my respiratory tract (and I've been known to cave when wine and cheese are placed beneath my nose, but only in weak moments), I'll only say that I've liked Tyler's books in the past, but reading Ladder of Years on a whim was a very bad idea. I suspect my struggle had to do with what Tyler considered to be the ultimate revolutionary choice for a woman: running away from your husband. And this in 1996 with a rising divorce rate. I think we can all agree that this precludes Tyler from the "contemporary literature" canon.

Also in The Guardian is an amusing and forthright essay from Danny Leigh, first-time novelist of The Greatest Gift. Not only does Leigh try to wrestle with the conundrum of whether his protagonist mirrors his life, but he also confesses that, as a human being, he figures his life experience is pretty banal. But that apparently didn't stop him from discovering things about himself that he could throw an imaginative spin on.

This article on fan fiction doesn't nail down any conclusions, but does offer a not-bad overview of K/S and other exemplars of fan fervor. (via Graham)

Heru Ptah apparently made a killing selling his book on the subway. To the tune of $100,000 and an MTV Books deal with an advance in the mid-five figures.

Great headline with disappointing followthrough: Diet books with prose to savor? Fat chance. If only. And this fillip in the Philly. I dare a major newspaper to assess the poetic value of The Atkins Diet.

Memo to Writers: Please Stop Dying!

Writer Roy Clarke has been kicked out of Zambia. The cause? Calling President Levy Mwanawasa a "foolish elephant" and two ministers "baboons." Apparently, Fleet Street tactics don't get you far in Africa.

Philip Pullman's trilogy is now a six-hour play. But its staging hasn't been without controversy. A few febrile fans have planned to picket the theatres. But if playwright Nicholas Wright "includes the Tom Bombadil scene," the production should be in the clear.

Pulitzer winner John Toland has died at 91. In addition to writing Hitler: A Bigass Biography to Demolish All Bigass Hitler Biographies, Toland won the 1971 Pulitzer for The Rising Sun, which covered the Japanese Empire during the same time period. A few other people who departed from this earth over the weekend: Barbara Jeffris and L.A. underworld novelist Douglas Anne Munson.

And David Kipen has a nice tribute to the recently late John Gregory Dunne.

I'll try and scoop up more news later, but, as all of you nursing vacation hangovers should know by now, today involves something of a shift back into gangly routine. And it's probably more abrasive than casually replacing your bar of soap with Brill-O-Pad. In the meantime, why not try some of the folks on the left, many of whom are returning back to their respective perches?

The Un-Ethicist #2

What's the real story, Lil Miss Anonymous? Do you want to play ball or don't you? Life's a bitch, ain't it? One minute, you're lying flat on your ass eating Cheetos and faxing resumes, not getting a single interview. The next minute, bang, a job lands in your lap with all the gainful ardor of a chihuahua with a bladder problem.

Your altruism is commendable, if more than a little suspect in a capitalist republic that favors a ruthless dog-eat-dog mentality -- to give you a specific analogy, it's a bit like lapdogs and chihuhuas taking bites out of each other beneath a sneezeguard at a Vegas buffet with a broad culinary swath. First off, did your friend know about this specific ad? The great thing about the help wanted section is how some of these painfully cheery recruiters try to disguise their ads by giving you a private fax number for a specific venue (though tracking the telephonic prefixes and the general language used can easily keep you ahead of the game), or don't give you any information at all ("Apply: Position #342"), or offer you very strange instructions on how to apply ("Please arrive on Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. Prepare for further application procedures. Bring dungarees.").

My brother Randy mentioned Samuel Beckett when answering this question, and I have to say that, despite his complacency and attempts to be down with the liberal arts crowd, he's onto something. If you feel the need to throw in the towel (because your friend will find out), keep in mind that the employment world is so hopelessly Byzantine that with any "Luke, I am your father" revelation to your friend, there's probably a million variables you can fall back on.

After working for a radio show with a well-known host, I wrote an essay about it, without naming the host or show, although anybody who'd heard the show could have identified both. I did not vilify the host but characterized him with amused detachment. When I mentioned the essay to a friend who works for an organization associated with a show, he implied, without reading it, that publishing it would be wrong. Would it? A.B.S., NEW YORK.

When William Goldman wrote about his experiences (Adventures in the Screen Trade), he had no problem dishing the dirt. He characterized several stars and directors as utter buffoons -- in a few cases, outright avaricious ones. You could make the case that Goldman was trying to sabotage his own career. He was, after all, around 51 when he wrote it. So a case could be made that the hostile chronicling arose from a mid-life crisis. But something very strange happened. The book became a bestseller and is often referenced in film classes. And Goldman still has a career, albeit writing crap like Dreamcatcher.

What do you really want to do, A.B.S.? That's the real question here. Obviously, you have a hankering to publish this puppy (assuming it bears enough merit to be published). But why the hell are you writing to Randy? If you're not prepared to make a hard decision between your job security and your desire to emulate Rex Reed, then I'd say that you need to put some more complications into your life. Publish it. Accept the consequences. Take a fucking risk for once, you chicken. The fact is, A.B.S., that you're just too passive-minded for my time. So if you want me (or Randy) to make a decision for you, then I'd favor the harder choice. If only to get these silly journalistic urges out of your system and put a little hair on your chest.

Jesus, the radio business turns people into a bunch of wishy-washy bores, doesn't it?

Disappearing Books & Some People Just Don't Understand

In Singapore, Starbucks cafes have initiated a used-book program to get people reading. Read a book, drop it off at a Starbucks, and get $1 off a drink. Of course, there's one chief problem with the plan beyond this failure to encourage people to read it. (Hypothetically, you can just move a book from the National Library to one of the 17 Starbucks outlets participating.) If the book is bad and likely to put you to sleep, shouldn't the coffee discount apply before you read the book, rather than after?

At the Three Creeks Community Library, books on the occult are the most likely titles to be stolen. More so than tomes on test preparation or sex. I leave the conspiracy theorists to figure out if the occult books are hexed or not.

Publishers looking for a quick way to pulp their overstock may wish to contact Ed Charon, who holds the Guinness world record for tearing phone books into shreds. Or not. Ed Charon, you see, was just unseated by a thirtysomething. This young upstart can tear 12 1,000-page phone books apart in 12 minutes. "There's no age or race barriers," Charon said. "Everybody enjoys this."

A.S. Bryatt writes on the enduring power of the fairy tale and concludes that its legacy can be found on the Web.

The Sunday New York Times reviews Wolves of the Calla and refers to Oy as "the talking dog-badger companion," while also comparing a conversational exchange involving stew to Widow Douglas's cooking in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Highbrow attempts to understand popular fiction don't get any funnier than this. Or maybe they do. Also in the Times: Heinlein's "first novel," For Us, the Living is unearthed. No real conclusions about the quality. More of an undergraduate-style summary than anything else. But it does include the blurb-whoring revelation that "the belated publication of this early work is a major contribution to the history of the genre." Thankfully, John Chute has also taken on the book. He notes that For Us, the Living "promulgates the kind of arguments about sex, religion, politics and economics that normally gain publication through fringe presses, not the trade publishers Heinlein submitted his manuscript to."

The Green Man Review asks a few spec-fic names (including Charles de Lint, Gwyneth Jones and Ellen Kushner) to spill their favorite books.

And, just as Gene Wolfe's new book, The Knight, has escaped the floodgates, the folks over at Infinity Plus have an interview up with the maestro.

By the Page

Crazed Hypothesis Which Involves Momentary Shift From Lit-Loving Guy Into Silly Marketing Type (With Extraordinary, Speculative Overtures) And Mischeviously Suggesting That William Goldman's "Nobody Knows Anything" Maxim Applies to the Publishing World: If a 300-page novel is, by Page 165, something you're trying to finish reading so you can move on to the next one, can you conclude it's a good novel (if you admire it in spurts)? Conversely, if it's something you can't put down, does it follow that the book is a great one, whether pop or literary?

Is Page 165 is the make it or break it point? Sure, there's the possibility that the story or prose will pick up in 5-10 pages. But if the reader or critic is not mind-staggeringly drunk over the book by now, then the writer can kiss her shot at being short-listed or getting a rave review goodbye, or face being a literary mid-lister. In which case you hustle the people behind the Today Book Club.

Is this how the publishing world works? Chaos theory?

Here's where a bit of extremely specious speculation into American lit comes into play. If we examine the last five years of winners by page count, we find the following:

Pulitzer Fiction Winners

1999: The Hours by Michael Cunningham (230 pages)
2000: The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (198 pages)
2001: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (656 pages)
2002: Empire Falls by Richard Russo (496 pages)
2003: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (544 pages)

Average: 424.8 pages
Next Awards Ceremony: May 2004

Of the Pulitzer winners, only The Interpreter of Maladies and The Hours are less than the around-500 page mark. And that's only because The Interpreter of Maladies is a short story collection. My guess is that The Hours's uber-homage to Virginia Woolf led the page count factor to be dismissed. But the Pulitzers seem to favor sprawling epics, whether a Greek family coming to Detroit, two Jewish emigres making a killing in the comic book industry, or Russo's wide blue-collar swath.

National Book Award Winners

1999: Waiting by Ha Jin (320 pages)
2000: In America by Susan Sontag (400 pages)
2001: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (592 pages)
2002: Three Junes by Julia Glass (368 pages)
2003: The Great Fire by Shirley Hazard (288 pages)

Average: 393.6 pages
Next Awards Ceremony: November 16, 2004

The National Book Award winners are more manageable reads, averaging out at the 350 page mark. But page count isn't so much as a factor, as are consequences over time (World War II in The Great Fire, what happens to characters over a decade in The Three Junes, familial trappings in The Corrections).

The National Book Critics Circle Award

1998: The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro (352 pages)
1999: Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem (336 pages)
2000: Being Dead by Jim Crace (208 pages)
2001: Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald (304 pages)
2002: Atonement by Ian McEwan (368 pages)

Average: 313.6 pages
Next Awards Ceremony: March 4, 2004

The odd one out here is The Love of a Good Woman, which is a collection of short stories. (And I'm discounting short story collections because, by definition, they're harder sells than novels.) But it would appear that the National Book Critics prefer breezy, puncutated books with a more quirky style. Ian McEwan has a reputation for whittling his prose down to the bone. Austerlitz is "short," but the conversations embedded within the novel require work to pick out, being separated by commas. Being Dead is, of course, the ultimate perspective novel in that it follows the disintegration of two corpses. And Motherless Brooklyn has the Tourette's syndrome hook.

SILLY CONCLUSIONS:

The shorter your book, the more likely you're going to win the National Book Critics Circle Award. But only if the prose is perspective-oriented and "challenging" enough to impress the critics.

If your novel is a little longer and your book is more centered around time and location, then you stand a shot at the National Book Award.

And if you have a sweeping epic, then the Pulitzer's your best bet.

This leads me to wonder whether some publishers are more inclined to typeset their books to pander deliberately for specific awards, with abstruse cover art to match, and whether some editors, sensing that a prospective title has some literary merit (i.e., award-winning potential), will press the writer to tailor their books within these guidelines. ("No. Make it a little longer. And can we go off to Bavaria for a few chapters?")

Of course, all of this is just extremely idle speculation on a rainy day. And I haven't even taken a look at the finalists, or accounted for timed release dates. But being ill-informed on multiple levels about this sort of thing, I'd be extremely curious to hear from someone inside the publishing industry just how "pre-packaged" a particular book is for these three major awards. It certainly works that way with movies, and, since the risks are just as great (on a smaller financial scale) in fiction, it would seem to me that at least something along these lines would be in place in New York.

Just about every trade paperback edition that comes out has some kind of "Short-Listed" or "Finalist" nod on it, if it can include it. (Even a later edition of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius had "Pulitzer Finalist" on it when it already had a built-in audience, which mystified me.) You'll recall that Jonathan Franzen got his panties in a bunch over advertising the Oprah Book Club selection on the first hardcover edition.

So the questions are: Are we seeing a shift towards award-conscious releases (even in first editions)? (The more awards, the merrier.) And, if so, how embedded is this within current publishing house policy? And by what factual criteria do they base these ebullient cover-laden interjections?

Top Films of 2003

A best book list would be futile, for the same reasons that Jessa noted. By my estimate (and I started logging in April), I read roughly around 97 books in 2003. But many of these were attempts to catch up with books published last year, or getting up to speed with the literary canon, or playing the read-the-precursors game with current releases (such as Robert Caro's LBJ biographies and the Dark Tower books). The book-to-film ratio (and the media consumption-to-life experience ratio) this year dramatically shifted. Nevertheless, there were notable lapses into film geekdom (such as the Castro's Noir City series and the San Francisco Independent Film Festival) in which I threw in the towel with fellow cinephiles and went hog wild. While I averaged about 1-2 films a week, it's quite conceivable that I saw fewer films this year than I've seen in the past seven years. Despite a conscious attempt to avoid the obvious cinematic bombs (Bad Boys 2 and The Cat in the Hat to name two that come to mind), 2003 was, nevertheless, a solid movie year for the indies and an abysmal year for the Hollywood films. Oddly enough, my favorite film of the year was, in fact, a Hollywood film.

Best Films of 2003:

1. Mystic River
2. Down With Love
3. Spider
4. Teknolust
5. Spellbound
6. Lucky
7. Bad Santa
8. The Magdalene Sisters
9. Intolerable Cruelty
10. The Barbarian Invasions

Honorable Mention: American Splendor, Capturing the Fleischmans, Thirteen, The Cooler, Alien: The Director's Cut, A Mighty Wind, Dirty Pretty Things, Irreversible

Overrated: The Return of the King, Lost in Translation, Kill Bill Vol. 1, Cremaster 3

Guilty Pleasures: The Core, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Bubba Ho-Tep

Haven't Seen Yet: The Fog of War, The Company, 21 Grams, In America, Cold Mountain, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Master and Commander, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, The Triplets of Bellville, Monster, Shattered Glass

Worst Films of the Year (or Why Did I Pay $10 For This?):

1. Love Actually
2. The Matrix: Reloaded
3. Scary Movie 3
4. The Recruit
5. Big Fish

Is There Life?

The Science article requires membership to some orgainzation that sounds too much like someone's rear end, so all we have are generalities in other media outlets to go by. But it looks like the Australians have found a habitable region in the Milky Way where life is likely to exist. Charles Lineweaver notes that there are four components necessary for life: a star, elements to form a planet, evolutionary time, no chance that the star will fall prey to a supernova. But there are three additional facets Lineweaver fails to list: wars triggered by colossal misunderstandings, edible underwear and parking tickets.

New Books, Arty Books, Odd Books

The Guardian has a nuts and bolts profile of John Gregory Dunne, who passed away over the New Year's weekend. A final novel, Nothing Lost, is planned for publication later this year.

Colson Whitehead's next book has the man going crazy over New York in a collection of essays. Newsday doesn't get much out of him, but it does note that Whitehead's third novel is due out this spring. Oh, and he's bought a home in Brooklyn with the MacArthur money. Hard reporting that boils down to this: Isn't it good to be a hot, young thing?

Can you judge a book by its cover? New York book fetishists may want to check out the New York Public Library. Virginia Bartow has selected 90 books, trying to see if the books in questions can say something without being read. Included is Agrippa, a collaboration between William Gibson and Dennis Ashbaugh encoded in the first letters of DNA's nucleic acids and a poem on a floppy disk that encrypts data upon access.

L. Frank Baum published two books in 1900. One was The Wizard of Oz, the other was The Art of Decorating Dry Goods Windows. Stuart Culver has a little more. Among Baum's observations: "You must arouse in the observer cupidity and a longing to possess the goods you sell." "Arousing the cupidity" didn't actually work for Baum himself though. Most of his business speculations failed, but the Oz books did well.

And a moment of candor from the Post re: blogs? Or are they riffing with alt-weekly angst to keep up? Whatever the case, it's a strange read from the paper of Woodward and Bernstein. (via Sarah)

Because When I Think Radioactive Contamination, I Think Warren Beatty

Radioactive Quack Cures: Includes revigators and radioactive pads.

Radioactive Curative Devices and Spas: "The Revigator itself was a 'radioactive water crock.' A jar made of radium-containing ore, it held several gallons of water, came with its own spigot, and had the following instructions on the side: 'Fill jar every night. Drink freely . . . when thirsty and upon arising and retiring, average six or more glasses daily.' The radon produced by the radium in the ore would dissolve overnight in the water. In effect, it served as a 'perpetual health spring in the home.'"

Radium Cures: "Radium cures, which reached their pinnacle of popularity in the U.S. during the 1920's, promised to remedy these diseases, restore youthful vigor, and revitalize an ailing sex life."

Bush Bonaparte?

From Alan Moorehead's The Blue Nile, explaining the cultural conditions after Napoleon began his Egypt campaign in 1798:

It was perfectly true that the Mamelukes, in moments of violence, behaved infinitely more cruelly to the Egyptians than the French did. But this was not the point. The Mamelukes were the devil they knew, and Bonaparte was not. His sincerity -- and there is no doubt at first his approach to the problems of governing Egypt was both very sincere and very intelligent -- was misunderstood. The Egyptians naturally looked for duplicity beneath the apparent altruism.