Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant

I Don't Care If It's Godwin's Law.

I'm pretty goddam appalled to be an American right now. See these yahoos for yourself.

Nader Prepares for Football Hike; Team Nowhere to Be Found

The Condition

Taking up Stephany's challenge:

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

The Saddest Bachelor Meal

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

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

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

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

He Would Have Stayed If Someone Had Muzzled a Great Dane

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

Must Be a UK Thang

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

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

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

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

"these male writers": You've only quoted Adam Thirwell! He speaks for all men and all erotica?

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

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

Lessig Audio Chapter Sample

So here's the deal. Lawrence Lessig writes a book. He issues a Creative Commons license and puts his book online. A few people get the legit idea that it's okay to create audio versions of chapters. So, acting on some strange whim and without further ado:

Listen to Chapter 12. It runs 52:47. I've tried to keep the energy up by introducing pseudo-Scottish brogues, maintaining a fast-paced delivery, and conjecturing about how aggro Lessig might have been as he penned his chapter.

Quickies

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

Congratulations, Maud.

Now you can go home again.

Nadine Gordimer has been honored by Cuba.

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

Pre-Madonna?

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

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

A Man's Man

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

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

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

Blog O' Sphere

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

Internecine

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

Free Cone Day

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

Presidential Memoir

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

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

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

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

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

Here's Maud In Your Eye

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

NYTBR Meets Maxim

From Publisher's Lunch:

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

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

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

Lawrence Block -- Bitchier Than Second Place to Prom Queen

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

AudBlog #12 -- Musings on Light and the Mind

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Hubert Selby, Jr. RIP

Dammit.

The Latest Meme

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

Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua — Things Fall Apart
Agee, James — A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane — Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James — Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel — Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul — The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte — Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily — Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert — The Stranger
Cather, Willa — Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey — The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton — The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate — The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph — Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore — The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen — The Red Badge of Courage
Dante — Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel — Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel — Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles — A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor — Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick — Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore — An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre — The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George — The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph — Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo — Selected Essays
Faulkner, William — As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William — The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry — Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott — The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave — Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox — The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von — Faust
Golding, William — Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas — Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel — The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph — Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest — A Farewell to Arms
Homer — The Iliad
Homer — The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor — The Hunchback of Notre Dame [But I've read Les Miserables!]
Hurston, Zora Neale — Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous — Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik — A Doll's House
James, Henry — The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry — The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James — A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz — The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong — The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper — To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair — Babbitt
London, Jack — The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas — The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García — One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman — Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman — Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur — The Crucible
Morrison, Toni — Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery — A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene — Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George — Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris — Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia — The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan — Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel — Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas — The Crying of Lot 49 [But I've read everything else! Bonus points for saving unread Pynchon for some much needed later time in life?]
Remarque, Erich Maria — All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond — Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry — Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. — The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William — Hamlet
Shakespeare, William — Macbeth
Shakespeare, William — A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William — Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard — Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary — Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon — Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander — One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles — Antigone
Sophocles — Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John — The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis — Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher — Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan — Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William — Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David — Walden
Tolstoy, Leo — War and Peace [But I've read Anna Karenina!]
Turgenev, Ivan — Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark — The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire — Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. — Slaughterhouse—Five
Walker, Alice — The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith — The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora — Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt — Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar — The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee — The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia — To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard — Native Son

Further: Pulitzer Winners

1918 His Family by Ernest Poole
1919 The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
1921 The Age Of Innocence by Edith Wharton
1922 Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington
1923 One of Ours by Willa Cather
1924 The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson
1925 So Big by Edna Ferber
1926 Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
1927 Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield
1928 Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
1929 Scarlet Sister Maryby Julia M. Peterkin
1930 Laughing Boy by Oliver LA Farge
1931 Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes
1932 The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
1933 The Store by T. S. Stribling
1934 Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller
1935 Now in November by Josephine W. Johnson
1936 Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis
1937 Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
1938 The Late George Apley by John P. Marquand
1939 The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
1940 The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck
1942 In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow
1943 Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair
1944 Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin
1945 A Bell for Adano by John Hersey
1947 All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
1948 Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener
1949 Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens
1950 The Way West by A.B. Guthrie, Jr.
1951 The Town by Conrad Richter
1952 The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
1953 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
1955 A Fable by William Faulkner
1956 Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
1958 A Death in the Family by James Agee
1959 The Travels of Jaimie by Robert Lewis Taylor
1960 Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
1961 To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
1962 The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor
1963 The Reivers by William Faulkner
1965 The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau
1966 Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter
1967 The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
1968 The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
1969 House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
1970 Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford
1972 Angle Of Repose by Wallace Earle Stegner
1973 The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
1975 The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
1976 Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
1978 Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson
1979 The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
1980 The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
1981 A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
1982 Rabbit is Rich by John Updike
1983 The Color Purple by Alice Walker
1984 Ironweed by William J. Kennedy
1985 Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
1986 Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
1987 A Summons to Memphis by Peter Hillsman Taylor
1988 Beloved by Toni Morrison
1989 Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
1990 The Mambo Kings Play by Oscar Hijuelos
1991 Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
1992 A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
1993 A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain: Stories by Robert Olen Butler
1994 The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
1995 The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
1996 Independence Day by Richard Ford
1997 Martin Dressler by Steven Millhauser
1998 American Pastoral by Philip Roth
1999 The Hours by Michael Cunningham
2000 Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
2001 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
2002 Empire Falls by Richard Russo
2003 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
2004 The Known World by Edward P. Jones

More numbers:

Larry McCaffery list: 42
Phobos Top 100: 40
Modern Library Top 100: 46
National Book Ward Winners (since 1950, total possible is 54): 16

Gotta get reading, it looks like.

Perspective

More than one million women (or 500,000 from the more conservative media outlets) marched on Washington yesterday. But apparently it wasn't enough to dominate the news. The Mobilization March on November 15, 1969, the largest antiwar protest in U.S. history, had a crowd estimated between 250,000 and 500,000 and it caused Nixon to announce two months later that ending the war would be "a major goal of United States policy." Somehow, I don't think we'll be getting anything like that from Bush (with twice the turnout of Mobilization) in June. That's nothing less than a goddam travesty.

[UPDATE: And a psuedo-blackout from the blogosphere too. Nothing whatsoever about the rally at Megnut, another tired potshot at Wonkette, an acknowledgment over at Oliver's (although overshadowed by a long essay, "Can the Right Fight Terrorism?"), a photo at Atrios, and some live coverage at Kos. But it's all pretty much reflecting the status quo. 1 million people. What does it take to be newsworthy? Or have protests lost their efficacy? Or is "feminist" a dirty word? Or does nobody want to talk about it? And, no, Scribbling Woman, you ain't chopped liver.]

[4/29/04 UPDATE: Just talked with someone who got back from Washington. She said there was definitely a million.]

There Isn't Any Narrative Value in "Only a Northern Song"

I mean, George wrote the thing in an hour and all. But that hasn't stopped "Yellow Submarine" from being turned into a book.

I Thought He Was Sharing the Taxi to Forget-Me-Land With Anthony Burgess

Apparently, in Rochester, NY, the late John Gardner still has groupies. It's been twenty-two years since Gardner died in a motorcycle accident, but that hasn't stopped folks from festooning leather jackets.

Voices from the Dead

Either The Magic 7 has spent years in development or someone really knew how to plan for a 2004 release in the early 1990s. Or there's some digital weirdness. Or...well, you make the call. Two dead talents, John Candy and Madeline Kahn, are involved with this animated production. Candy himself has been dead for a decade. Now it's worth noting that writer-director Roger Holzberg hasn't helmed a film since 1995. But I'm seriously creeped out by the idea of taking voices from the past and putting them down to contemporary cinema. Is someone sitting on some John Belushi tapes? Can we expect Andy Kaufman to voice the next Disney extravaganza with unreleased Janis Joplin audition tapes set to horrid Sting sequencing? Holzberg owes us all an explanation.

Half-Assed Color Theory

Carrie A.A. Frye's over at Maud's this week, "primed in her tangerine muumuu." This makes a good deal of sense to me, largely because I've always associated prime numbers with the color orange. Other immediate color associations which come to mind: sepia tones and oddball diner to-go cartons, goldenrod mimeographs, and the wild chartreuse decor of mid-1990s urban splendor. What happened to tie-dye camoflauge or Wired's early chromatic schemes? When did pink and emerald green (the color that the eye perceives the strongest; hence, night vision goggles) become so dreaded? There's a particular colored gel look in Dario Argento's 1970s films that suggests an hyperrealized haunted house, and I haven't seen it in a while. And a publicist has encouraged me to generate images in red and black. These days, it's either over-the-top vibrancy or the subdued racket.

AudBlog #11 -- If You're Going to Fulminate...

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If Donna Tartt Described The Current Status

Edward Champion, the proprietor of this blog, was a remote and occupied figure. Edward, a chronic expression of being caught up in some peripheral project on his face, stared at the screen which would lead to a seemingly enigmatic but altogether obvious conclusion.

He was too busy. The sun had dappled down on his shoulders as he scribbled pages outside a cafe, the steam of the coffee drifting upwards, creeping up his nostrils, causing the gears inside his head to stir. There was no pied-a-tierre, no book advance, no expendable income. There was only discipline and endeavor, as he heard the susurrating wind chimes of a wholly unnecessary atmospheric detail half a block away.

On a Sunday morning in April, almost twelve years after that inconsequential day he had turned eighteen, Edward realized that he would not have as much time to blog. Oh, there would be other times. Just not this week. And on this morning, he realized there were other engagements, pressing engagements, engagements suggesting greater things, engagements that would get at the heart of his heart's pitter-patter.

There would be the usual day job subterfuge, but, this week, his blog entries would be sparse and not as frequent as they had been last week, and the week before that, and even the week before the week before that. Faithful as his devotion to his readership was, there was simply too much to do.

AudBlog #10 -- Where Do We Go From Here?

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The Future of Litblogging

I have seen the future and it is George. I've had my doubts about the Virtual Book Tour for some time (it seemed more of a glorified publicity stunt more than anything else), but this use of audio blogging illustrates how to do it right. Plus, it helps that George is a good interviewer.

Too Many Westlakes

In a screwup worthy of Dortmunder himself, a few days ago, I posted some erroneous news about Donald E. Westlake reading a poem over a short film entitled "A Life of Death". Whether it had something to do with enjoying the hell out of Thieves' Dozen or just having Dortmunder on the mind, I was wrong (as many of you kind enough to write in informed me) and I removed the item. Well, I've now heard from filmmaker Dawn Westlake herself. Her film has apparently won two awards and was just nominated for a third in Sydney, Australia. The guy reading the poem is Donald G. Westlake, who is Dawn's father. And Donald G. is a cousin of Donald E. I have no idea if a cousin of Richard Stark may be involved, but as a good faith effort to correct what was a ghastly mistake on my part, for the love of decency, check out Dawn's site.

Joyce Carol Oates' 2004 Publishing Schedule

April: I Am No One You Know
May: You Are No One I Know
June: Love: A Rape Story After A Love Story
July: Brunette: A Novel
September: We Are No One Anyone Knows
October: My Quill Can't Stop
November: Because the Heart Always Patters Twice
December: You Must Remember This Book

Maybe Digression's the Problem

The Rake points to this very long, very detailed Paul Auster analysis that I too will have to read later. I haven't been much of an Auster fan, for reasons similar to B.R. Myers' "A Reader's Manifesto." But I'm always willing to give any well-regarded author another shot (even if The New York Trilogy left me very annoyed). Will someone explain why Auster's the shit? Will someone tell me why this Peter Stillman nonsense is so important? (I should also note that I'm crazy about William Gaddis, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, David Foster Wallace, and Robert Coover. Hell, I'm even partial towards the manic detailer Nicholson Baker. So why not Auster? It's not pomo per se that's the problem here.)

Meditation on Debauchery

Static, and therefore miserable condition of a man emerging from a Sunday morning hangover! One minute, joyful pitter-patter, the next minute, ache and perdition. I wish I could express surprise, or impute the same bemused wonder as my retinue of aching twentysomething acolytes, but, alas, there have been multiple notches on my belt, too many empty bottles, and not nearly enough experiences to get me to stop. Why do men drink so? We study the narcotic effects of these infernal beverages, deliberating upon how the malt and the shaker and the smooth texture of Kahlua enters our corpi and causes us intoxication, occasional fumblings, followed by distress. O miserable condition of drink! which was not imparted onto Adam when Our Lord granted him Paradise. If Adam had wrapped his fingers around the goblet, perhaps we would not have suffered Eve's celebrated mistake, or perhaps the Serpent would not have distracted Eve so. For Adam and Eve, naked in Paradise, engaging in carnal play that, after their explusion, translated into shame and stigma extending into the current age, now a hue and cry pertaining to Janet's Nipple! be still!

Before this topiary business, and presumably before drink, no doubt men and women were engaged in the Act which led to their shapes being contorted, and led further to interesting shadows caused by the flickering flames of their lust. Adjustments, multiple positions, one saying "Oooh!" and another saying "Yeah there!" Disgraceful banter that a proper lady or a distinguished gentleman would not utter while perambulating down a nave, or wolfing on wafers, save through unpredictable conditions of surprise, such as a Merry Prankster (not a PL or a DG) emerging from the pew's mews, only to offer a Weegee in lieu of a Handshake. Is the Merry Prankster's deportment related to the addled and aching head of our Sunday morning man or the originators of this carnal activity? Obvious rhetoric, tip-top conclusions, and Janet's Nipple, alas, draped in some devilish adornment.

It is a question of what is profane and what is natural. Ancestors doing an enjoyable mamba (what non-PLs and non-DGs call "fucking" or "a romp" or "making love"), only to have desires besmirched by the iron fist of authority and reverence, further obviating the flames and the dilemma, in situ. And yet no reference to drink or cause or Paradise! This is the shame which hangs upon exorbitant fees and unnecessary protection from tiny pitchers having big ears, who will learn this anyway!

To which one can only reply, "Pass the bottle!"

A Blog Post A Day?

Sadly, I have nothing really profound or funny to say this morning -- at least, publicly. But thankfully, Sarah's served up some solid commentary on the "book a year" problem. (Three adverbs in one post. Does that clarify matters?)

Zadie Smith = Lousy Neighbor

Zadie Smith is torturing her downstairs neighbor. Smith has a tendency to relax in a whirlpool after writing all day. But the pool's motor whirs so loudly that the walls have been shaking. Hendley Taylor, the man who lives next to her, has been losing sleep over Smith's routine.

How Soon is Now?

The pub frequented by Dylan Thomas has been sold to Morrissey.

Sony Launches PDA Clone

This Saturday, Sony launches the ebook reader. (And if you can read Japanese, here's the Sony page.) The reader resembles a PDA and allows a memory stick will allow 500 books to be indexed at one time. There's no way to download books directly to the Librie. Honestly, if this is the best Sony can do, then they need to go back to the drawing board. Personally, until digital paper with flippable pages offering the same resolution as printed material comes along, I'm disinclined to stare at an LCD for several hours, even if it's at 170 pixels per inch. (A printer, by contrast, is 300 ppi.)

Espionage & Patriot

From America in the Twenties by Geoffrey Perrett:

Following the declaration of war in April 1917, Congress had promptly passed the Espionage Act. Hastily drawn, it was a legal blunderbuss. In 1918, after a year's pause for reflection, the act was amended and made worse. Virtually anything that could be construed as interfering with the war effort or offering a crumb of comfort to the Germans was a criminal offense. Words, naked, unsupported by action, sufficed for conviction. Anyone so foolhardy as to make an unflattering observation on American military uniforms, for example, risked going to jail.

Mrs. Rose Peter Stokes, a noted feminist and Socialist, wrote in the Kansas City Star, "I am for the people and the government is for the profiteers." For this dangerous utterance she received a ten-year sentence. Mrs. Kate Richards O'Hare also received a ten-year sentence for advising women not to bear sons, because the government would noe day consider them cannon fodder. Victor Berger, a noted right-wing Socialist, was under indictment when the war ended for his Milwaukee Leader editorials, which suggested that combat drove some men mad, that there were young men who did not want to be drafted, that the Bible sanctioned pacifism, and that the United States had entered the war to protect its investment in Allied loans.

Under indictment, Berger ran for election to Congress from Wisconson's Fifth District and won. The next month he won a twenty-year prison sentence from Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. He appealed his conviction. When the Sixty-sixth Congress convened in March 1919, Berger proposed to take his seat. The House proposed to take it away from him.

It was not socialism that the members objected to. Three Socialists had already served in the House. An espionage conviction, no matter how footling the cited offense, was considered tantamount to proof of treason (except in the Fifth District of Wisconsin). A new election was called for December 1919. Berger won again, by a larger margin. And although the war was over, Espionage Act prosecutions ground steadily on.

It was against this background that in 1919-20, thirty-two states passed criminal syndicalism laws. Four states that had abolished the death penalty (Arizona, Missouri, Oregon, and Washington) restored it. The loyalty of schoolteachers was screened by local vigilance committees. Hundreds of teachers appear to have lost their jobs for reading the wrong books, having the wrong friends, holding the wrong opinions, or joining the wrong groups.

A committee of the New York State legislature, chaired by Clayton R. Lusk, an upstate Republican, led the grass roots attack on radicals. His committee raided the unaccredited Soviet embassy, the IWW headquarters in New York City, and the Rand School of Social Research. These raids were illegal from start to finish. That made no difference. In 1920, over governor Smith's veto, the legislature passed a clutch of statutes known as the Lusk Laws. These imposed a loyalty oath on teachers, made the Socialist party illegal and set up a bureau of investigation. This last measure proved Lusk's undoing. The hero was a crook. He hired investigators only after they agreed to split their salaries with him. The hero went to jail.

The New York legislature had meanwhile held hearings on five Socialist members, decided that they were "plotting to overthrow our system of government by force," and expelled them.

State criminal syndicalism statutes were more than empty gestures. In Chicago, 1920 saw the prosecution of a score of defendants in a single trial on charges of Bolshevism. An undercover agent from the Justice Department claimed that there was a special Communist party yell for important occasions that went, "Bolshevik, Bolshevik, Bolshevik, bang!' He appeared on the stand wrapped in a red banner. He swore that one of the defendants had an American flag covering his toilet floor. All the accused were convicted.

In Connecticut a clothing salesman named Joseph Yenowsky attempted to discourage a persistent bond salesman by making crucial remarks about capitalism and John D. Rockefeller. To Yenowsky's astonishment, the bond salesman went for a policeman. Connecticut had what amounted to the shortest sedition law ever, and probably the broadest. In its entirety it read: "No person shall in public, or before any assemblance of 10 or more persons, advocate in any language any measure or doctrine, proposal or propaganda intended to affect injuriously the Government of the United States or the State of Connecticut. " Yenowsky received a six-month jail sentence.

An aroused citizenry was inclined to take matters into its own hands. In Hammond, Indiana, in February, 1919, Frank Petroni, a naturalized citizen, was tried for murdering Frank Petrich, an alien. The defense was that Petrich had said, "To hell with the United States." The jury, after solemn deliberations that lasted two minutes, set Petroni free.

On May Day that same year Socialist red-flag parades were broken up in a dozen cities by outraged mobs. Three people were killed, more than a hundred injured. In New York the offices of the Socialist Daily Call were ransacked by uninformed servicemen to ecstatic applause from a crowd in the street. In all these riots the people arrested, and later tried, were Socialists. Their attackers were left alone.

It was also in May that a spectator refused to rise for the national anthem at a Victory Loan rally in Washington. As the strains of "The Star Spangled Banner" faded, a uniformed sailor ended his salute, drew a revolver, and fired three shots into the back of the lone seated figure. The man fell over, critically wounded. The stadium crowd broke into ecstatic applause.

This spontaneous identification with wanton violence occurred because many Americans believed the country was under violent attack.

Greenspan Offers Biggest Smile Yet, But Refuses to Go Into Details on Forthcoming Economic Miracle

Toby Young

As noted by Maud and others, Toby Young is guesting at Slate this week. But apparently, some folks are pissed. I wasn't aware that a seedy memoir had this much staying power. In 2002, I took a look at the book for Central Booking (now defunct) and I reproduce the review here:

There was a time when memoirs involved deliberation. Whether it was Frank McCourt recalling his impoverished childhood or Caroline Knapp probing a conquered alcoholic wraith, memoirs hit the stacks without the obligatory run-in with a celebrity or boastful chapters of self-affirmation. But when Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius became the dog-eared darling on every slacker’s bookshelf, the rules changed. Everyone from Dave Pelzer to Rick Moody published memoirs well before experiencing a midlife crisis, much less the beginnings of a hoary head. Remarkably, these thirtysomething memoirists never offered a single excuse for why their tomes were so premature. They didn't need to. They were more than happy to receive lucrative advances, even if it wasn't intended to pay for any terminal illness.

Enter Toby Young, the bad-boy British journalist who has no problem trashing himself and former employer, Condé Nast in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (Da Capo Press, 368 pp., $24.00). Young’s tell-all book carries the moniker "A Memoir," but it has about as much in common with Eggers’ much-loved book as guano has with chocolate mousse. Same color, different texture.

Young, “a short, balding, Philip Seymour Hoffman look-a-like,” didn't coax Judd Winick into a Might Magazine photo shoot. He interviewed Nathan Lane, first asking if he was Jewish and then asking if he was gay, before being led away by jittery publicists. Young didn’t watch his mother and father die within 32 days or have a younger brother to care for. But he did let a girl freeze outside of his apartment. He was supposed to pick up her cab fare. She didn't have the cash. Why? He was too busy sleeping off a nose candy binge. Young didn’t audition for The Real World. He dated supermodels with little success and hired a company for $750 to have a focus group rate him on his dating “marketability.”

Young’s shit stinks, but, unlike other memoirs that hide behind self-important WASP flummery, his memoir pulls no punches. The book became an unexpected bestseller in Britain partly because of its pugnacious approach. And it translates well here. One of the book’s virtues is its determination to relay the first-person account of a scoundrel. The memoir mixes assessments on America (Tocqueville is unfurled as a repeated, but surprisingly unsuccessful qualifier) with Young’s problematic life. While coming up short in the insight department, it does make for some funny observations.

Young jetted out to Manhattan on the dime of Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, portrayed here as an avuncular snob. Young was a hotshot Oxford man and Fulbright scholar who had made a name in the Fleet Street skids with The Modern Review, a highbrow look at lowbrow culture that featured early work from such contributors as Will Self and Nick Hornby. On his first day of work at Vanity Fair, Carter’s secretary told the Brit that staff dressed “real causal.” He showed up in vintage Levis and a Keanu Reeves T-shirt with the tagline “Young, Dumb and Full of Come.” Months into the gig, Young hired a stripper to bare all on Take Your Daughters to Work Day.

Before the reader can condemn Young as an exhibitionistic blowhard, Young manages to explain his motivations early enough to qualify some of his apocryphal tales. He has a passionate view of the Algonquin American journalist, “somewhere between a whore and a bartender,” lovingly lifted from the plays and films written by Ben Hecht. He bemoans political correctness and “clipboard Nazis.” He finds Condé Nast’s treatment of messengers and freelancers deplorable. And he remains awestruck over how easy it is for Brits like Tina Brown to embrace Manhattan superficiality.

But Young’s sentiments don't empower him to find a bit of self-abnegation himself. Ultimately fired by Vanity Fair, Young turns to drink and cocaine. Young can proselytize John Belushi-antics all he wants, but his sentiments are undermined by the despicable treatment he ekes out to loved ones and peers. And there’s something troubling about a book so astute about American journalism’s inability to take chances while hypocritical in its generalizations of Americans.

Young’s book doesn't add too much promise for the self-absorbed memoir, but it does steer the genre down an appropriately balls-out path. It’s refreshing to read a life story that is both unapologetic and frequently funny. But it’s too bad that Young’s tome is cut from the same attention-seeking cloth as its brethren.

WTF?

Dear American Public (Or, More Specifically, That Very Scientific, Completely Unbiased Cross-Section Recently Polled by the Washington Post and ABC News):

49% for Bush? Are you nuts? If the President were to be photographed in Iraq standing on the bloody chest of an American soldier, would you still vote for him? If the President declared that all people who earned less than $50K would have to submit 82% of their income to the government, would you still vote for him? If the President lined up every world leader in a line and systematically punched each of them in the gut in the name of unilateral diplomacy, would you still vote for him? If the President revealed that the $87 billion Iraq aid package actually involved hookers, vintage claret and overpriced fillet mignons served on the naked backs of women hoping to get partial birth abortions, would you still believe this man was equipped to deal with this nation's most pressing concerns?

Really, folks, I need to know what it takes. Because frankly you're scaring the shit out of me.

I'd say more, but if I continue in this vein, I'll reveal more wanton cliches, more ignnoble and vitriolic wonkage. And who wants more of that? But then since 6% of you are determined to waste your vote on that muddafugga Ralph, whose blustery ego seems incapable of comprehending that a second Bush term will undo much of the public service he's spent a lifetime fighting for, perhaps what you secretly desire are these overbearing platitudes, no better than the pretzel logic placards you see at rallies. Perhaps the crooked status quo is what you've been pining for all along. Perhaps you're all like that fulminating idiot I encountered on the N Judah the other day who demanded that the world listen to his vociferous protests, dammit, but who ostracized everyone in the streetcar because he couldn't understand that a reluctant yet practical vote for Kerry doesn't obviate a desire for greenjeans idealism, a cognizance of globalization, or a concern for social justice.

American Public, if you allow this chickenhead to win again, if you fail to evince the same pragmatism and solicitude that you expressed in the immediate days following September 11, when our President was Un-Presidential and it took an Unlikely Times Square-Destroying Mayor to Express Equanimity and Stature and steer this nation forward, then I will turn my back on you. You will, as Jefferson noted, deserve the government you get. Do you have any memory?

Begrudgingly yours,

Edward Champion

Interviews A Go-Go

Lots of solid long-form author interviews up: Birnbaum takes on Edwidge Danticat and Stephen Elliott, and Laura Miller talks with Neal Stephenson.

I've Got Two Conflicting Memories, Dude!

Another great Philip K. Dick novel is destined for cinematic ruin. Keanu "Whoa!" Reeves will star in A Scanner Darkly. Hopefully, director Richard Linklater won't have him speak that much, although given the talkiness of his other films, I fear the worst. And, besides, who can forget how awful Johnny Mnemonic was?

Too Many Caucasians

Chick Lit has a bigger problem than what you might expect: where are the black women?

Prison Writing

What makes the wiping of prison imate hard drives more pernicious is that it comes as inmate Barbara Parsons Lane is set to win tonight's PEN/Faulkner First Amendment award. If prisoners were not allowed to write, we wouldn't have the words of Eldrige Cleaver, O. Henry, Jean Genet, or Marquis de Sade to stack on our bookshelves.

Michiko Blasts Alice Walker

The review starts, "If this novel did not boast the name of Alice Walker, who won acclaim some two decades ago with 'The Color Purple,' it's hard to imagine how it could have been published," and gets very close to Dale Peck territory. Someone give Michiko a hug. Or maybe attending a cuddle party will calm her down. (via Maud)

The Unexpected Subtext of Barth

Yesterday, I picked up John Barth's Ten Nights and a Night and began reading it. And I couldn't stop laughing my ass off over the subtext. Not only are the book's assorted inner voices reluctant to use the word "postmodern," but they try to settle on the politically correct term of "post-invocation." All this while recognizing that pre-9/11 tomfoolery (i.e., Autumnal Tales written before) may be more of a premium now than before.

If ever a case could be made for the return of postmodern subtext, Barth, one of its beloved grandfathers, is it. While other authors have tried to wrestle with how consciousness has changed since "Black Tuesday," Barth gets at the dilemma quicker than anyone:

Their quandary (Graybard's and Wysiwig's) is that for him to re-render now, in these so radically altered circumstances, Author's eleven mostly Autumnal and impossibly innocent stories, strikes him as bizarre, to put it mildly indeed -- as if Nine Eleven O One hadn't changed the neighborhood (including connotations of the number eleven), if not forever, at least for what remains of Teller's lifetime. And yet not to go on with the stories, so to speak, would be in effect to give the mass-murderous fanatics what they're after: a world in which what they've done already and might do next dominates our every thought and deed.

While there's little doubt that these words were written closer to what Barth styles TEOTWAW(A)KI -- The End of the World As We (Americans) Knew It, it still suggests that American fiction is playing it safe. The situation is compounded by how previous creative efforts have now forever had their meaning altered since that moment. To demonstrate this, Barth includes his famous "Help!" chart early on, a musical notation which displays an audio track split into Left, Right and Center, with assorted helps and variations of distress. Looking at the chart, I couldn't stop thinking about how this could be interpreted to represent the cries of the victims, or the cries of civil liberties being stripped away, or the general sense of helplessness a lot of Americans feel about the actions of Our Current Government. Certainly the chart was funny, but it was more disturbing this time around.

It's also worth noting that the chart originally appeared in a 1969 issue of Esquire, and I wondered how much the poltiically charged events of that time influenced its making.

What's further amazing to me is that The Floating Opera is now nearly fifty years old. Yet this new collection of stories, with the uncompromising tying thread of "Greybard" and WYSIWYG, demonstrates that Barth, now close to eighty, is as much of a giddy deviant as he was in 1956, perhaps more important than we ever expected.

(Further note: If you're new to Barth, I recommend Dave Edelman's John Barth Information Center, which lives up to its name and is a grand diversion for any literary person with a dreary day job.)

President Tries to Forget Funny Moment from "Police Academy V" During Photo Op

I'll See Your Cuddle, And Raise You A Tender Romp

It's silly enough that this blog has a possessive before it's name. But you'd never catch me claiming authorship for something this anachronistic. REiD Mihalko's Cuddle Party is Susie Bright cross-pollinated with the Quirkyalone movement. In other words, it's self-defeating nomenclature, a downright oxymoron, from the get-go. For one thing, there's the problem of the modifier. Cuddling is nice, sure. But "cuddle" implies 8-year-old girls getting intimate with an oversized stuffed giraffe. It is not, shall we say, a place to bust out the bottle of Cuervo, start dancing like it's 1999, and blast Technotronic's "Pump Up the Jam." So why party? Perhaps "cuddle gathering" or "feel-up frolic" or "casual groping" would have been more apposite.

Who the hell is REiD Mihalko? Apparently a bi-coastal Sex and Romance Coach who was (I'm not making this up) given the gift by his mother "of seeing and treating woman [sic] as sacred." In other words, he's one of those unemployed, guitar-playing guys you meet at a coffeehouse who claim that they're as sensitive and gooey as a jelly donut, but have the closet desire to feel you up.

At least that's the impression I'll draw.

I'm all for cuddling. But this whole thing sounds like it's one step removed from bukkake. I mean, what's the difference between being groped by some stranger on a subway and allowing some dude you don't know to grope you, with the queasy bonus of some guy moderating who doesn't know how to use capital letters?

(via Gawker)

Lyttle Lytton Winners

The 2004 Lyttle Lytton winners have been announced. The goal? To write the worst opening line in 25 words or less. The winner: "This is the story of your mom's life." (via MeFi)

Teachout Has Wings

I hope Messr. Teachout pardons my late notice. He is, after all, a man with an inveterate Red Bull addiction (now confirmed through the three investigators I have tailing him).

Average Number of Bloggers TT Has Lunch With Per Day: 2.1
Average Number of Words TT Writes Per Day: 7,500
Number of Books TT Will Publish in 2005: 5
Odds That Commentary Will Be Renamed The Teachout Times: 2 to 1.

And if that wasn't enough, Mr. Teachout was on Kurt Andersen's Studio 360 over the weekend. I listened to the show last night. Good stuff. Check it out.

Iris Murdoch, Novelist-Philosopher

Kingston University has nabbed more than 1,000 books that belonged to Iris Murdoch, along with notes, letters and original manuscripts. The books contain numerous marginalia, and should help future scholars tie in Murdoch's philosophy with her novels.

You Gotta Love Canadian Hospitality

If you're an American army deserter heading for Canada, Heather Mallick has some helpful (and detailed) tips on how to settle down. Her advice even stems into the cultural: "Recycle like you mean it. Read Fire and Ice by pollster Michael Adams about how Canadians are growing ever more different from Americans. Then read Margaret Atwood and Doug Coupland, shop at Roots, stop in at Tim Hortons for a pile of Timbits on your way to your plumbing class. Arrive in a Prius or a Smart Car, which shouts, 'I care about the environment,' and you, short Buddhist, are a shoo-in for citizenship."

John Barth -- the Comeback Kid?

John Barth, favored or disfavored, has remained one of my favorite writers. And the press he's getting for The Book of Ten Nights and a Night is some of the best he's had in years. The Houston Chronicle says that it's as good as Lost in the Funhouse. And Lemony Snicket himself rips open a bag of pomo nuts in the Chronicle.

Well Then, Call Me an Aesthete Too

Dan Green has weighed in on the political art argument continued over at Scribbling Woman. I'd like to clarify just what being an aesthete (since the conversation has now shifted towards these nutty dichotomies) really means. An aesthete, whether an artist, a scholar or a dilletante, recognizes certain sensibilities that speak to her. It could be plotting or prose in literature, symbolism or contours in art, mise-en-scene or editing in film, or tempo and timbre in music. Ultimately it's about trying to understand the immediate visceral impulse, trying to dissect response through theory, or using specific examples to explain why a piece of art works. But it doesn't preclude political awareness, nor does it suggest that consciousness cannot operate outside the boundaries of artistic understanding.

The purported "disdain" has more to do with being subjected to a plodding novel that isn't working, that isn't stirring the juices, and that, frankly, falls flat on its ass -- all because the author needs to convey some didactic point or otherwise interfere with the extant mechanisms that allow art to flourish. The immediate example that was tossed around the blogosphere last month was Tim Robbins' play Embedded, the excerpt of which speaks for itself. Robbins, as I noted, has made some compelling films. But when he adopts a heavy-handed poise with such dialogue as "The message of the new Hitler's evil has been unrelenting and omnipresent," it does nothing but preach to the converted. Where's the nuance in that? It limits the spectrum of communication, and any inveterate aesthete can see that the dialogue's lack of nuance destroys the intent. Now if Robbins had considered the text in relation to subtext, as he did when turning the 1960s lefty folk singer into an arch conservative in Bob Roberts, it might have worked. If he had predicated his work with additional meaning, such as irony or metaphor (Dr. Strangelove's "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the war room." or my previously cited Cat's Eye example come to mind), then not only would his play be more aesthetically sound, but it could operate as a conduit that allowed each individual to ascertain their own private meaning.

I would suggest that the reader/audience member is guided in some part by her subconsciousness and experience, and that politics is one of many things that influence their response. But it is not entirely contingent upon it. For example, since I grew up poor, I developed a bias against the rich, particularly the avaricious and complacent rich. This in turn shaped my politics and has in turn prevented me from sympathizing with art that explores privilege. Lost in Translation was a good film, but its portrayal of rich WASPs kvetching about their La Dolce Vita existences simply did not speak to me. I'm reading Julia Glass' Three Junes right now and, while I admire the plotting and the structure, the characters vacationing in Greece and "suffering" in Scotland leave me lukewarm. I've tried to respond to this by deliberately reading books or experiencing art outside my paradigm.

To go back to Dan, he suggests that the aesthetic stance is a pragmatic one. And speaking for myself, I would agree, if only because my desire to understand art has left me groping beyond emotional response and into cause-effect, specific examples, sometimes placing a work within the purview of current theory. It is the natural progression for anyone to take. And if moving beyond a febrile formalist trying to find every known political quality within a piece of work, a pursuit that strikes me as a dull, tedious and incomplete way of understanding, well then you can throw my ass into the aesthete ghetto too.

Nebula Award Winners

The Nebula Award winners are up, complete with a photo in which everyone's looking remarkably glum and a porky Harlan Ellison is talking with Robert Silverberg. (My goodness. Was the moment really that bad?)

NOVEL: The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
NOVELLA: Coraline by Neil Gaiman
NOVELETTE: "The Empire of Ice Cream" by Jeffrey Ford
SHORT STORY: "What I Didn't See" by Karen Jay Fowler
GRAND MASTER: Robert Silverberg

Next Up: the Hugos.

Thoughts on Kill Bill Volume 2

The second volume of Kill Bill is a marked improvement upon its predecessor, in that the viewer, rather than being bombarded with the first volume's THC-inspired stylistic excess, is invited to pick the finest toy from a Cracker Jack box. Alas, a toy is still a toy. Like the first film, Tarantino tries to have it both ways. He wants you to sympathize with his paper-thin characters, here serviced by repeated moments of Uma Thurman sobbing in anguish. But he also wants you to buy into the comic book absurdity of Gordon Liu balancing his entire weight on the edge of a sword. Sure, the latter image is fun (though not as enjoyable as a later swordfight in a trailer mobile home). But with Liu repeatedly fingering his wispy, spirit gummed beard and throwing it off to one side, I had to wonder if I was supposed to enjoy this juvenile joke, or the whole film was an inside joke, or I've simply grown tired of movies that aren't cemented in anything even remotely real. Do the repeated shots of Thurman's feet represent Tarantino's camera as fetish? And what's with all the flabby ass jokes? Awareness of physical deterioration?

Kill Bill Volume 2 is a mess. It's an enjoyable mess. But it's also the mark of a filmmaker throwing in the towel, perhaps to fight again another day with his promised World War II movie. The usual Tarantinoisms are here. We have a Mexican standoff. We have a lecture on Superman. We have an eyeball kicked around on the floor. And if you close your eyes while David Carradine is speaking and change the modulation, you can just see Tarantino delivering his own dialogue with the same intonations. None of it is real.

There is one great seedy moment at an unpopulated bar where Michael Madsen is trying to explain to his employer why he's twenty minutes late, and the bar owner, doing lines of coke and ordering some scantily clad cosnort to sit, begins crossing off days of the week that Madsen is supposed to work. The moment doesn't add anything at all to the story, except perhaps to explain some of the circumstances which have turned Madsen into a margarita-swilling, rocksalt shotgun-firing, sad sack ex-assassin. But didn't the scene before this with David Carradine already establish this? Is Tarantino cognizant of the maturity he displayed in Jackie Brown and does he miss it?

The disorganization here, which caused Tarantino to split Kill Bill into two movies, left me wondering if Tarantino was trying a grindhouse take on Leone, if only through length alone. But as goofy as Once Upon a Time in the West is, the film was still about something. Henry Fonda may have been the American West's cinematic face inverted into a ruthless villain, but the film's story was strong enough to transcend homage. There were dreams and plans and characters learning to live with loss (whether through Charles Bronson's vengeance or Claudia Cardinale carrying out her late husband's plans for a railroad post). By contrast, "real life" in the Kill Bill universe involves snuggling up with your daughter and "popping in a video," almost indistinguishable from a Lifetime TV movie. Hardly the place where grand plans are forged. In fact, the film comes across as black and white as its wedding rehearsal prologue.

Tarantino, at 41, is too old for these adolescent hijinks. In fact, it's rather interesting to me that the Kill Bill films have come while another major Miramax king, Kevin Smith, was recently derided for his segue into "adult" territory with Jersey Girl. But at least Smith tried something different. Is it possible that Tarantino is too frightened to evolve? Women are presented as one-dimensional objects and repeatedly misunderstood by Tarantino (to the point where women cannot understand easy-to-comprehend pregnancy test instructions) -- all this while Tarantino remains too prudish to expose his candid and potentially creepy feelings for them on screen, much like his hero Brian De Palma. (And is Thurman's inability to understand Cantonese a slam on former Tarantino girlfriend Mira Sorvino, who is fluent in the language?)

Perhaps I should be relieved that Kill Bill Volume 2 offers a return to long takes, dialogue-centered scenes and snappy repartee. But it's doubtful that Tarantino can spend an entire career riffing on the same theme and be regarded with any staying power. Then again, when the bar's as low as it is in Hollywood and accounts are regularly fattened, ingenuity is the first commodity to go. In Tarantino's case, it's a grand shame.

[UPDATE: It would appear that Tarantino's content to keep the formula. In a Newsweek interview last year, Tarantino noted, "If I were to just keep expanding on that 'Jackie Brown' thing, you know, in 15 years’ time I would be making some really geriatric movies. The thing is, I don’t need to prove that I can do that with each new movie—because I’ve already proven I can do that. This time I wanted to grow as a filmmaker by what I consider exciting filmmaking." What's worse? "Geriatric" movies or infantile ones?]

Behind the Curve?

Laura Miller rails against the first person plural. Of course, I did too back in January, which may make the NYTBR officially three months behind blogs. Then again, if they're going to refer to cyberpunk as "the bratty offspring of science fiction," while failing to mention The Diamond Age's influence (particularly with its thoughts on nanotechnology, storytelling and advertising) or give credence to fruitloop Richard Pipes, then perhaps they're not as sui generis as they think. Then again, they do have Choire again this week.

AudBlog #9 -- Baby-Faced Cynics

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AudBlog #8 -- Be Self-Sufficient, Dammit

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Break

Posting will be light over the next couple of days. I won't go into the details, but it's been the kind of week that drags you through a deep residue of pigshit, kicks you repeatedly in the gut, and presents conditions that challenge you to rise with grace, faith in humanity, and your dignity intact. (And it makes generous shoutouts like this that much more special.) Plus, I have serious rewriting to do.

In the meantime, check out Laila's interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, watch Sam's space for upcoming musings on literary theory, and hope that guest blogger Kevin Wignall doesn't fall prey to dial-up noise over at Sarah's grand pasture.

Super Speed Dating

CONDITIONS: Each participant has five seconds to talk to a member of the opposite sex before the buzzer sounds. The participant is then hied away to another table with another participant and another conversation. This procedure ensures that all participants dwell upon that pivotal first impression, which is, as unspecified studies show, the most telling indicator in finding a long-term mate or at least a good lay.

CANDIDATE 1: "So tell me about yourself."
ME: "Well, I'm..."

BUZZ.

ME: "What's your name?"
CANDIDATE 2: "Rachel. What's yours?"
ME: "E...."

BUZZ.

ME: "We don't have much time."
CANDIDATE 3: "I know."
ME: "You..."

BUZZ.

ME: "High maintenance?"
CANDIDATE 4: "No, low."
ME: "Sweet."

BUZZ. Short break. Coffee and bagels with lowfat cream cheese are served.

ME: "I think I'm getting the hang of this."

Continue.

CANDIDATE 5: "Do you like it standing up?"
ME: "Depends. I..."

BUZZ.

ME: "First impression?"
CANDIDATE 6: "You stink."
ME: "You don't."
CANDIDATE 6: "Good."

BUZZ.

ME: "This is silly."
CANDIDATE 7: "Got a phone number?"
ME: "Sure. 415..."

BUZZ.

ME: "Quick. Tell me your favorite color!"
CANDIDATE 8: "Bl..."

BUZZ.

The organizer then asked me if I hit it off with any of the candidates. I mention that there was an ineluctable plus with Candidate 5, but I was more interested in learning Candidate 8's favorite color. Candidate 5, however, had found someone who could articulate his sexual proclivities quicker and the two had disappeared from the rented room. Strangely enough, Candidate 6 thought that we had a connection, but that was only because I was the only man who hadn't shivered shortly after talking with her.

I went home and watched Jeopardy alone. Somehow, I was able to fire off answers faster than the contestants.

Trump Promises Smiles at $10,000 a Pop

Tanenhaus/Keller Watch

A few days ago, I feared that Tanenhaus was turning the Times into a book form of TV Guide Insider. Today, the ongoing trend of cerebral profiles of pop authors with the aw-shucks human interest angle continued. Today's profiles are an interview with Intimacies author Eric Brown and another with Tom McNulty, concerning his book Clean Like a Man: Housekeeping for Men (and the Women Who Love Them. Intimacies is a novel composed of emails, IMs and websites, which, as Sarah suggested this morning, is akin to partying like it's 1999. And it's safe to say that years from now, Clean Like a Man won't be remembered with the same enthusiasm as, oh say, Gulag or even Final Exit. So why give it credence?

When you apply NYT highbrow syntax to everyday situations, it comes off as damn absurd:

"The challenge is summed up neatly in a piece of advice on changing sheets."

"Mr. McNulty is careful not to disturb the dust on men's attitudes and habits involving housekeeping, and he has an innate respect for their haplessness toward cleaning chores and their particular pride of place."

"The stain removal chapter is a litmus for the presence of men at home."

"He works with what he calls his M.C.U., or mobile cleaning unit, which is a double bucket with cleaning agents like Pledge and Windex that operates as his basic handyman's kit in each room."

"Mr. McNulty is not perfect yet, as a white glove test revealed."

"Although they have attracted a lot of attention, digital epistolary and message fiction like 'Intimacies' are not the only electronic forms of literature vying for attention on the Web."

"Still, Mr. Brown's digital novel has drawn praise from some scholars interested in new media, especially those who hope to take e-literature mainstream."

It would be one thing if the content had something to do with the latest from Stephen Elliott or David Mitchell. Under the aegis of an actual idea, we might buy sentences like this. But as I read these offerings, I felt as if I was being bathed in a lukewarm light blinking in a dark, fetid room. Each sentence represents an effort to suffuse flash on a surface of nothingness.

If this is the way it's going to be, I fear that Tanenhaus's early efforts are tarnishing the Times. Where's Eurotrash on this?

[UPDATE: It suddenly occurs to me that the two profiles came, respectively, from the Circuits and Garden sections, and that Tanenhaus isn't necessarily responsible. Even so, the articles were placed in prominent slots on the online Books section as of this afternoon. Why would anybody serious about books be interested in this thing? I suspect Bill Keller's hand has been caught in the cookie jar.]

Sir Walter Offers His Own Edwin Drood

Sir Walter Scott's last novel will be published. The novel, Reliquiae Trotcosienses: The Gabions of the Late Jonathan Oldbuck Esq of Monkbarns, is an unfinished 100-page manuscript that he was working on shortly before his death. The book hadn't published up until now because nobody could spell or remember the title correctly.

Censorship in Germany

Chancellor Schroeder has obtained a court ban against a novel that involves a shopkeeper assassinating a chancellor. The titular and dying charater in Reinhard Liebermann's The End of the Chancellor: Shooting in Self-Defence apparently bore close resemblance to Schroeder.

By contrast, here in the States, Stephen Coonts' Under Seige had no problems including an explicit assassination attempt on President Bush I (with the truly terrifying result of Dan Quayle taking over the nation). And in Loren Singer's novel, The Parallax View, there was a presidential assassination (unlike the A-1 Alan Pakula movie, which took a few liberties with the text).

The Little Big Life of a NYT Fact Checker

Correction: "A front-page article on April 2 about television shows that have recently incorporated criticism of President Bush into their scripts included one erroneously. While an episode of 'Whoopi' critical of the president was broadcast recently, it was a rerun; the show originally appeared last fall."

Integrity! Integrity!

Woody Allen Downgraded from Multimillionaire to Millionaire

The Post: "Sources tell The Post's Braden Keil that the Woodman has gone to contract on his 40-foot-wide Carnegie Hill mansion for just $2 million less than his asking price of $27 million. Brokers thought the comedian had gone bananas when he put the 22-room house on the market last September. Spies now say that Allen is looking to spend about half that amount for a smaller home in the East 70s or 80s."

Guess the tell-all biography bidding war wasn't enough to keep the mansion. Can we expect Woody's next film to be about a neurotic New Yorker ready to let loose his personal demons upon the publishing world while watching his fortune dwindle?

Jaw-Dropping Breslin Blowup

The Observer corrals several tidbits suggesting that the legendary Jimmy Breslin falsified an interview with a minister. The Post talks to Breslin himself. And Newsday notes that the column in question didn't meet their standards.

The Hard Life of a Novelist

Plum Sykes: "When I did the photos for Vogue, Anna Wintour joked 'Can't you go blonde for the day?' And I said 'no!'"

Defiant to the last.

Bush Applied to Contemporary Life

Recently, President Bush addressed the nation in a press conference. He offered many answers to questions on Iraq. In an effort to understand the Bush administration's motivations, I've tried applying some of Bush's answers to everyday situations.

BUSH: "It's not a civil war; it's not a popular uprising."
ME (to Peet's employee): "It's not a cup of coffee; it's not a popular uprising."
PEET'S EMPLOYEE: "No, sir. It's a cup of coffee. Revolution has nothing to do with it. Please leave."

BUSH: "The nation of Iraq is moving toward self-rule, and Iraqis and Americans will see evidence in the months to come."
ME (to IRS): "The nation of America is moving toward self-rule, and America and the IRS will see evidence in the months to come."
IRS: "Actually, sir, if you don't pay your taxes on April 15, you will face severe penalties and arrest."

BUSH: "Iraqi's neighbors also have responsibilities to make their region more stable."
ME (to landlord): "My neighbors also have responsibilities to make their apartments more stable."
LANDLORD: "If you have a legitimate gripe, fill out this grievance form."

BUSH: "Over the last several decades, we've seen that any concession or retreat on our part will only embolden this enemy and invite more bloodshed."
ME (to sibling): "Over the last several decades, we've seen that any concession or retreat on our part will only embolden our family and invite more internecine disputes."
SIBLING: "Ed, do you need a hug?"

BUSH: "And as to whether or not I make decisions based upon polls, I don't. I just don't make decisions that way. I fully understand the consequences of what we're doing. We're changing the world. And the world will be better off and America will be more secure as a result of the actions we're taking.
ME (to co-host of party): "And as to whether or not I organize parties based upon other people's opinions, I don't. I just don't make decisions that way. I fully understand the consequences of what we're doing. We're changing the party. And the party will be better off and the apartment will be more secure as a result of the plans we're making."
CO-HOST: "All right. But don't count on any future invitations."

BUSH: "I hope I -- I don't want to sound like I've made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one."
ME (to lover trying to reconcile relationship): "I hope I -- I don't want to sound like I've made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one."
LOVER: "Jesus, can't you take any kind of initiative?"

BUSH: "And my message to the loved ones who are worried about their sons, daughters, husbands, wives, is: You're loved one is performing a noble service for the cause of freedom and peace."
ME (downsizing employee): "And my message to your loved ones who are worried about how you will support your family is: Your loved one has performed a noble service for the cause of capitalism and profit."
EMPLOYEE: "Oh, just give me my severance pay and shut up."

Terry Jones, World Leader Schoolmaster

Terry Jones responds to Tony Blair's essay: "His essay, of course, is written with his usual passion and conviction, but, in the real world, passion and conviction do not count for many marks."

Amazon Search Engine Launched

A9, Amazon's search engine, has gone live in primitive form. John Battelle has the scoop. The search engine corrals Google results and Amazon book results in one go. A toolbar allowing the user to annotate is also planned. (via Kottke)

Politics and Literature

Recently, Orson Scott Card wrote an inflammatory essay that's about as vile a screed as one can write. However, he is also the author of Ender's Game (a good book) and a solid writer. Maud writes that she won't be reading him. Jessa notes that a novel and a political essay are separate conduits. I'm inclined to agree with Jessa. If politics was a factor in my own fictional choices, then I'd have to discount Action Francaise member Andre Gide, Nazi Knut Hamsun, right-wing isolationist Robert A. Heinlein, and fascist Ezra Pound (or, for that matter, anti-feminist Dave Sim's strong early Cerebus work), to name just a few. And that would, in my view at least, be a tragedy.

While I can understand it when someone is bothered by the poltical motivations of an author (name a single person who really wants to read another bloated Barbara Kingsolver essay), I'm troubled by the idea that an author's political viewpoint spreads like a vicious cancer into his work. This morning, Mark posed a question about whether politics makes for great art. The only immediate examples that came to my head were Elizabeth Gaskell, Arthur Miller, and Margaret Atwood. But even in these offerings, the politics is relatively subdued, more subject to a reader's individual impressions. It's a far more subtle thing for Atwood to point out the politics of gender in Cat's Eye by showing us how girls are reluctant to touch bugs in a university building, implying that 1940s society carried an unspoken stigma that an entomologist's line was verboeten to women. The great thing about Willie Loman is how both the lower-class can identify with Loman's struggles for success, while the successful businessman can relate to Loman's sense of failure. It is human behavior which guides art. Sometimes, the behavior is politically charged, but more often or not, it is the reader's own political sensibilities that make the connections.

As amusing as David Kipen's Tanenhaus column is, there's the deeper question of why Tanenhaus's politics matter so much -- at least, in relation to the fiction coverage. (And full confession: I still have concerns that "liberal" nonfiction books won't be covered as abundantly as they were under Chip McGrath's tenure.) In all the top ten lists listed at Barnhardt's, is there a single political one on the list? Although a case can be made for Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, there's the question of whether it's a politically charged novel with echoes of Huey Long or a novel about seduction and selling out. Again, personal sensibilities determine the individual reader's distinction.

So add me to the list of curious bystanders. Can anyone take up Mark's challenge and name a Great Political Novel and explain why it succeeded?

[UPDATE: Maud and Rasputin respond.]

It Could Work

Christopher Hampton is adapting Ian McEwan's Atonement for the big screen (among other things).

I Have No Real Context For This Entry, But I Won't Be Mentioning "Tron"

Dave Eggers writes about his musical tastes (and the Kings of Leon) for Spin. There are numerous digressions. Some of them are tolerable and got me to smile. Others, such as the candy analogy, are unpardonable. Come on, Dave! Make me love you!

Textbook Price-Fixing Under Fire

For those following the exorbitant textbook issue, there's some interesting reform going on up in Oregon. Oregon Congressman David Wu has proposed a bill that would require the U.S. General Accounting Office to report on the circumstances that lead a textbook publisher to set prices. The legislation was sparked by students in Oregon and California complaining about being fleeced. However, Pat Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers, noted in the CNN article that the student report was flawed.

Because All Novelists Are Financial Wizards

So what do you do when you're a financial site looking to garner some Wall Streetcred? You, uh, interview Kinky Friedman about money. Fortunately, Friedman keeps up a goofy poker face:

Bankrate: What would you have done if you hadn't sold that book?

Kinky Friedman: I was going to commit suicide by jumping through a ceiling fan.

The Blog Warrior

James Marcus: "Already there are turf wars, low-level spats. No doubt a pecking order will gradually materialize, since even cyberspace operates according to the familiar logic of Animal Farm: All bloggers are created equal, but some are more equal than others. There will be stars, contract players, boffo traffic numbers. There will be a proliferation of advertising on the most visible sites -- there is already, in fact -- and a defiant tug-of-war between the early bloggers and their entrepreneurial successors."

NEW YORK (AP): Lit blogger Edward Champion was announced as Maud Newton's bitch last night. Mr. Champion, who lost his right to blog about literature shortly after being beaten to a pulp by Ron Hogan in a backalley brawl last April, had long been targeted by the Final Three: Sarah Weinman, Jessa Crispin and Newton.

Mr. Champion's hair has been shaven off and his limbs have been replaced by QWERTY keyboards connected to Google News. Newton and her gang plan to use Mr. Champion as either a modular bookshelf or a footstool.

Hogan, however, has not declared any firm loyalties to Newton. Independent sources report that Hogan has been conspiring with Mark Sarvas and the disgraced Terry Teachout (fired from his Wall Street Journal and Commentary gigs shortly after OGIC defected over to the Weinman camp).

Crispin remains a formidable force. Shortly after having TFMTML's liver for dinner last week, she announced that Sam Jones would be her World Domination Consultant.

Despite Ms. Weinman's clear lead among the Final Three, there are rumors that
Laila Lalami is planning a coup with Nathalie Chica and the Old Hag.

Robert Birnbaum remains missing. Newton's camp has claimed responsibility.

(via Rake)

Weirdass Cinema Review #2

The Longest Yard (1974): I can just envision the studio execs sitting in the boardroom:

"Hey, man, there's this great Bill Lancaster script called The Bad News Bears in development. A comedy about this losing Little League team coached by Walter Matthau."

"Sounds great, but isn't that Burt Lancaster's son?"

"Yes, but screw the nepotism. We think this script will sell like gangbusters."

"Needs another angle."

"Well, Chuck, that's exactly what I was thinking."

"What's Bob Aldrich been up to? I was having lunch with him the other day and he's looking for another project."

"Well, not much since The Dirty Dozen."

"Wait a minute."

"What's that?"

"What if we took the Dirty Dozen formula and crossed it with this Bad News Bears thing?"

"Burt would know."

"Not if we cast another Burt in the role."

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Hey, my wife subscribes to Cosmopolitan. I just read it for the articles."

"That Burt Reynolds is something, isn't he?"

"Well, if he's hot stuff with the ladies, this will give us the cross-demographic appeal we need."

Or something like that. It's safe to say that The Longest Yard has one of the silliest premises I've ever heard of. Burt Reynolds plays a former pro football quarterback who beats the tar out of his girlfriend (the nature of the relationship is nebulous at best, but it's safe to say Burt won't be sending her a box of chocolates anytime soon) and then decides to go on a drunken joy ride in her Mazerati, empty glass of bourbon near the stick shift, getting into a car chase with the police. He dumps the car in the harbor and then gets into a bar brawl with police officers.

Before you can say Cool Hand Luke, Burt's in the joint in an unspecified area of the South. He's working detail, dealing with racist but apparently good-hearted guards. He rolls in the mud with one fellow prisoner. Another inmate has a crush on him, performing one-armed push-ups and various other exercises in an effort to get Burt swooning. The prison warden then cuts Burt a deal to QB a football game between the inmates and the guards. Burt is free to pick the teammates he wants and apparently train them without a single guard in close proximity.

One character, The Caretaker, is taken on as team manager. The Caretaker, a fat-faced man with little in the way of screen charisma, is apparently so skillful at acquiring contraband goods that he's able to get joints, liquor, deluxe fruity foods, prison team helmets, and a 15-minute "pesonal services" visit with (really, I couldn't make this up) an uber-beehived, pre-Pennies from Heaven Bernadette Peters. Peters is not only the warden's secretary, but she apparently learned a few tricks in Tallahassee.

As absurd as this all sounds, believe it or not, The Longest Yard is a fairly enjoyable film, even with the "modern film effects" provided by Steve Orfanos. (These "modern" effects are hastily cut split-screen effects for the climactic football game. They're mercifully brief, somewhere between the heights of Brian De Palma at his best and the lows of More American Graffiti and Woodstock.) Lest we forget, the Prison Movie and the Football Movie have pretty much operated on the same basic formula. Get a bunch of rough-and-tumble guys, have the audience root for their inevitable victory, and keep the movie going with some general, but crowd-pleasing narrative arcs. It makes perfect sense to conjoin the two genres. In The Longest Yard's case, that means at least a few deaths, a couple of token scuffles, the obligatory gentle giant, a few 1970s "Ebony and Ivory" moments, and even a mentally disabled man, who reacts to Burt's invitation to play football by throwing large bales of hay into the air.

The silly formula doesn't preclude The Longest Yard from espousing a few subtextual points about honor. There is, however, one disastrous turn in which Burt offers a fabricated story about his father.

The unfortunate thing is that Adam Sandler is set to remake this movie with Anger Management director Peter Segal, scheduled for release next year. The Longest Yard is hardly a movie that calls out to be remade. I can't imagine how the Sandler-Segal combo will recreate the original, particularly since prisons are hardly as innocuous today (in image, at least) as they were back in 1974.

Tanenhaus' Times: A Highbrow TV Guide Insider?

The reign of Tanenhaus has begun, and it looks like we're off to a juicy start. Dinitra Smith has a fun little profile-cum-review up about author humiliations. Carlo Gebler was trying to read in front of a bunch of drunken students. Carl Hiaasen arrived at a reading, only to find he was scheduled at the same time as a chili-cooking class and a football game. Rick Moody's mother gave reviewed one of his books for Amazon and gave it only three stars. More in the article.

To Bid or Not to Bid

A rare edition of Hamlet is set to go on sale at Christie's. The edition is one of only 19 copies remaining from a 1611 printing (second edition ever), and may close at around $1 million.

Well, It's One Way to Cure Writer's Block

Colm Tobin tried to write a series of essays on Henry James. But as he pored through the papers, he ended up writing a novel. I wonder if this is the kind of thing that Bob Coover had in mind.

Reading Recommendations

So far, thanks to the blogosphere, I've read Ian Rankin thanks to a recommendation from Sarah, Kate Christensen thanks to a rec from Ron, and (soon) John Banville thanks to a rec from Mark. Now Rake gets into the game and tells us that Jack Butler's Jujitsu for Christ is the shit. Okay. Sold!

Is Emma Brockes A Competent Interviewer? No.

I'm getting really tired of these Margaret Atwood profiles that paint Atwood as an overly serious and dowdy woman, rather than concentrating upon her writing talents. The headline here may as well have read: Margaret Atwood: Humorless Bitch or Not? Well, certainly her novels can be bleak, but it hasn't occurred to Emma Brockes that she might be asking some really moronic questions. And I have to wonder if the Guardian would have been as nasty if, say, Martin Amis was as forthright as Atwood is in this article.

The Top Ten

A number of folks have been asked what their favorite ten novels are over at Professor Barnhardt's. If I had to pick my own choices, today, they'd be (in no particular order and subject to change in the next five minutes):

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Absalom! Absalom! by William Faulkner
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Recognitions by William Gaddis
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Nebulas: Who Will Win?

The Nebulas are coming to Seattle over the weekend. Here's the nominees, with several excerpts. Among the guests are Connie Willis, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, and Vonda McIntyre.

One Brontë Sister Down, Two to Go

Newsday checks in with Clare Boylan, who took a two-chapter manuscript authored by Charlotte Brontë and finished it. The result is the book Emma Brown. Laura Demanski compares it to The Crimson Petal and the White. The Guardian offers shaky kudos, pointing out that Boylan is missing Brontë's "strange power of subjective representation."

Richmangate

Michael Chabon writes about the Richman scandal and teenage imagination in the Times.

In the Shops

Donald E. Westlake's Thieves' Dozen, a collection of Dortmunder stories, has hit the shops. The shortest of the shorts can be found on Westlake's site.

Also in bookstores is Mr. Teachout's The Terry Teachout Reader. Our man got some press in the NYTBR, but the details of his energy drink addiction remain curiously secret.

Azevedo Update

Kerry Jones has reported here that Zoo Press sent the following email to its contestants:

Unfortunately, the entry fees for the relatively few number of submissions we received went toward promoting the prizes;(specifically we received approximately 350 submissions for two prizes totaling less than $10,000, which we put into a full page ad in the Atlantic Monthly and two other smaller email campaigns, to our financial loss).

He also notes that Zoo Press did not place a full-page ad, but took out a digest-size ad in the September 2003 issue. (Question: Even accounting for hosting, email is relatively free, no?)

Azevedo has yet to return any of my calls. I will try and confirm the nature of the Atlantic ad in the next few days.

[UPDATE: I've heard back from the Atlantic. As reported here by Kerry Jones, the half-page ad rate is $5,390. The Atlantic has confirmed with me that they did run a half-page ad (not the full-page one implied by Azevedo) in September 2003. However, quite understandably, they cannot divulge details about what Zoo Press paid and what the terms of the contract were. So whether Zoo Press negotiated the price or not remains a mystery. Azevedo does not return my calls. As always, the forum here is open for us to hear his side. But he would seem to prefer silence.]

More Random Picks

Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon: "And should I get in past your Blade for a few playful nips, and manage to, well, break the old Skin, -- why, then you should soon have caught the same, eh?"

The End of the Road by John Barth: "So when I'd a real maniac on I nursed it like a baby, and boils plague the man who spoiled it!"

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren: "The old man was on the front steps now."

About a Boy by Nick Hornby: "He never managed to strike up much of a rapport with Maisy, Angie's mysteriously sombre five-year-old, who seemed to regard him as frivolous to the core."

Allan Quatermain by Rider Haggard: "Poor fellow, he had died of fever when on his return journey, and within a day's march of Mombasa."

I, the Jury by Mickey Spillane: "The case was turned over to them."

Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber: "And the mirror-decorations on my hats and bags and dresses -- you've guessed it, they're Tibetan magic to reflect away misfortune."

You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett: "I leave the note folded by his side."

The Tenants by Bernard Malamud: "Back in his study, he wrote hurriedly, as though he had heard the end of the world falling in the pit of time and hoped to get his last word written before then."

Familiar Studies by Robert Louis Stevenson: "If I am vile, is it not your system that has made me so?"

A Primate's Memoir by Robert Sapolsky: "It was during my first season in the troop that time no longer stood still for Solomon, that the inevitable shadow of mortality finally took form as Uriah."

[Apologies to the ladies.]

Enduring Ligaments

Some news on Ian McEwan's next: a day in the life of a neurosurgeon. McEwan is reportedly at 8:00 PM. and spent some time following a doctor around. (via Sarvas)

Random Passage

From Caterina via David Chess:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

RESULTS: D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover: "My God!"

You can't win 'em all.

The Confusion -- DOA

Neal Stephenson can't even win over the Scots: "The author biography says that having discovered his 'pretty humour for the writing of Romances... he took up the Pen and hath not since laid it down'. To which one can only add: Please do. " Ouch. (via the Saloon)

Paul Di Filippo also remains unconvinced: "But if we wanted this kind of pure historical romance, we'd be reading Patrick O'Brian. Where are the observations and insights that relate all this ocean of storytelling to our current era? Lost in a welter of (mostly) entertaining Pirates of the Caribbean material. A single sentence from Enoch Root that parodies Clarke's Law—'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo'—is hardly enough to carry the day."

I Heart Liz Penn

The dear Ms. Penn replies to a spammer: "How dare you, Mr. Pussy? (I take the liberty of addressing you as 'Mr.' since the default sex of the human being is apparently male, an assumption your colleagues have made freely as they express their ongoing concern for my need for penile enhancement.) How dare you pollute my beautiful pristine comment boxes, waiting in all innocence to be filled with thoughtful comments from readers throughout New Zealand, with your onslaught of meaningless filth? (I generally shy away from such ideologically loaded dichotomies as 'purity' and 'filth,' but as Groucho Marx said, in your case I’ll make an exception.) Your 82 comments are so many exhalations from the foulest depths of hell, and I deplore them, and you, with all my being."

On Protests

She couldn't be more than four. She had bouncy black braids and lithe limbs, and her hand was clutching a red Virgin Megastore bag. The bag contained CDs, all packed taut, forming a modular brick.

When the police motorcycles roared down Market Street, the little girl's ears pricked up. When the protestors followed the cops, a few stray "pigs" loosened into the angry din, her tiny brown eyes widened. She began jumping up and down as they came, stirred by the excitement. No war! Get out! When do we want it? Now! Her limbs flailed. And that's when the girl's bag bashed against my thigh. A day later, there's still a purplish welt that stings.

The girl's mother hadn't noticed. She watched the parade from the sidewalk, mesmerized, smoking a cigarette under a MUNI bus shelter.

The girl herself didn't see that she had hit me with her bag. The protest's hypnotic power inured her from awareness. And it's doubtful that she had an idea about the politics or what this was all about. She ran down the street. I wondered whether mom was setting herself up for a milk carton nightmare. When the girl returned to the bus shelter, I moved on.

I had come downtown to run errands. I hadn't known there'd be a protest. There are protests in San Francisco every other week now, it seems. Par for the course. But none of them have done a damn thing. The protesters did shut down the City on March 20, 2003. Windows were bashed. Drivers were heckled. A thousand or so were arrested. And the whole contretemps cast a gloomy fog over antiwar momentum, which had started off with peaceful gatherings that involved students and families.

The protests continue. But there are still troops in Iraq. There is still questionable accountability in Washington. There are still privacy-invasive initiatives legislated on Capitol Hill. The protests, it seems, have done little good.

It's not because the protesters are without common sense. During that March evening, as police congregated en masse around the Civic Center, I followed and photographed a splinter group that was wandering around SOMA. The spontaneous leaders of this group, to their immense credit, made efforts to calm people down, getting them to focus. They encouraged the protesters to promote awareness, rather than busting shit up. But when you have a few bad apples acting of their accord, terrible things happen.

I took this picture near the end of that night. The man cowering behind his crutches was homeless. He was asked by the group to join them in their impromptu walk. He declined. And because he declined, the young man in the green jersey, high on mob mentality, kicked him in the gut repeatedly. He stopped just before the homeless man clutched his threadbare blanket and curled his gaunt frame into a protective fetal position.

This incident horrified me. As I look at that photo, I still hear the man's painful squeals and the sudden silence that followed. I was so stunned that I don't even remember taking the picture. It set me off politics and protests almost completely.

Protests aren't without benefit. But it could be argued that they have lost their purpose. Where previous generations sat down at lunch counters or used public gatherings to stir up revolution in India or end the war in Vietnam, the current set is only too happy to organize without thought. Testosterone and impulse has replaced education or even a basic grasp of social know-how. The young cull their arguments from Michael Moore's latest book, but maintain facile opinions and Manichean conceptions of existence. Their actions, much like their thoughts, are ill-formed. Little heed is paid to finding out where the opposition stands, or what motivates their thinking. It has become a tableau of metaphors and lunatic analogies, rather than facts and cause. The status quo is demonized in the same way the Russians were demonized during the Cold War. Republicans are evil brutes. Bush is Hitler. And if you don't understand, dammit, you're a goddam sellout.

"What does your play have to do with the current situation?" she said.

I told her it was a business satire. It was farcical with slapstick and bad puns. But ultimately, it was about human behavior.

"Oh," she said with a contemptuous huff. And she turned away. She was the one to ask the question, but to her mind, it was apolitical. Whatever floats your boat.

There is a man in front of City Hall right now on a hunger strike. Are the protesters aware of him? Could any of them make that kind of sacrifice?

I walked against the syncopated beat. Deliberately. It wasn't because I was inconvenienced or that I didn't, in part, share the protesters' politics. But I was bothered by the crude logic. An undergrad agitator handed me a flyer, trying to convince me that I was responsible for Iraq because I paid my taxes. I responded to this young ruffian by asking him what then I should do.

"Don't pay your taxes," he said.

"Well then I'll go to jail. And what's the point of that? There are enough taxpayers in this country to keep the Department of Defense running well to the end of the century."

"Fuck you. You just don't get it."

Not long ago, a LaRouche supporter told me that I needed a blow job when I disregarded his mad vitriol.

There was once a time when I participated in rallies. The Contract with America. The various Gulf Wars. In 2000, I had even canvassed for Nader. But I began to recognize cliches. There'd always be militant Wobblies. There'd always be people who couldn't find the Persian Gulf on a map. Apparently, it was impossible to adopt a neutral stance on Israel. You were either for Palestine or against us. Likewise, with this kid, you were either for not paying your taxes or against us.

In all of these gatherings, I found myself drifting away from the throng and listening to regular people who watched the proceedings, all wondering what the fuss was about. It never occurred for any of these militant-minded folks to do this. And when they did, it involved talk and bluster, the same unilateralism they decried.

Little wonder that current political protest is so disregarded.

Weirdass Cinema Review #1

Behind Locked Doors (1948): I'm almost certain that Sam Fuller found some inspiration in this movie for his masterpiece, Shock Corridor. Behind Locked Doors doesn't offer Fuller's cultural scope, but it is a strangely entertaining B-movie, with typical yet solid noirish cinematography by Guy Roe. Richard Carlson's a private eye hired by a San Francisco journalist (Lucille Bremer, who retired from acting shortly after making this movie) to hole up in a sanitarium, pretending he's insane, so that he can determine if a crooked judge is hiding out there. He's given the DSM manual, flips through it, and points to "manic depressive" because he "kind of likes it." The book is thicker than almost anything published by the Library of America, but it's something of a relief to know that finding insanity credentials is this easy.

In the sanitarium, Carlson befriends an employee with the unlikely name of Hopps (played by the uber-thin Ralf Harolde), who appears here as the Confidant with the Golden Heart. It's clear early on that Hopps will find his redemption for being such a nice guy. That's the way these B movies work.

But the true genius (or, in this case, mad serendipity) of this movie is Tor Johnson. Johnson, perhaps best known to cinephiles as a kitschy behemoth frequently employed by Ed Wood, somehow stumbled upon the role of his career. In this film, he's a boxer locked in a private ward. The minute that someone starts hitting the bars of his cell with an ingot, Johnson stirs to life, tearing his chair into pieces and punching at invisible opponents, somehow identifying the sound as a bell. Never mind that bell in a boxing match only rings when a round has concluded. He's referred to only as "the Champ."

The reasons for Johnson's madness are never explained. And I would contend that this is a good thing. Johnson has little in the way of range and this lack of detail provides an unexpected enigma. He's a big guy capable of picking up people and tossing them over stairwells. An easy enough task for a cinematic brute. But Johnson has a methodical, soporific way of stumbling across the screen that I've always enjoyed. It more than makes up for his lack of thespic abilities, limited to raised eyebrows and a face crunched up in unconvincing community theatre horror.

Hopefully, it's clear enough from my description that the plot is utterly ridiculous. But the film is a brief 62 minutes. Director Oscar Boetticher keeps things moving along at a brisk pace. The dialogue is hard-boiled. This movie has enough courage to bring a hurried austerity to lines like "It's almost six and I have a dinner date." Alas, such courage results in unexpected camp.

But if you're drunk or you have a short attention span, Behind Locked Doors is that questionable morsel illustrating that even a heavy-handed fruitcake can come across as unexpectedly beatific.

The Whale Will Understand Again?

The Saloon notes that Moby Lives is "almost done resting." Huzzah!

Andrew Franklin Is My New Hero

Publisher's News UK: "[Profile Books Publisher Andrew] Franklin made the point almost as an aside at last month’s SYP meeting. 'I think it’s despicable to try and pay anybody less than the minimum wage,' Franklin told PN later. 'Salaries at the top of publishing are not too bad now, and, when people are paying themselves more than £100,000 a year, it’s awful that they would try to pay people less than £150 a week.' He also attacked the system’s effect on publishing recruitment, saying, 'it’s like the debate about tuition fees: it creates a barrier to entry, and people whose parents can’t afford to support them can’t go into publishing. That’s why you have so many people in publishing with names like Rowena and Belinda.' Profile never pays less than the minimum wage."

Rest assured, I'll be buying some Profile titles as soon as possible. (via Publisher's Lunch)

Separated at Birth?

Sentences That Sum Up Dale Peck

Rake has tried to summarize Dale Peck's assault on Sven Birkets. But it may be easier by simply singling out sentences:

"Here’s criticism’s trade secret: you can find meaning in anything if you look hard enough." Meaning you couldn't find anything constructive to say at all? I guess that's when you break out the Sontag.

"I sure do laugh a lot" I never knew, Dale.

"Ladies and gentlemen, meet Sven Birkerts." The ego has landed.

"Indulge me for a moment:" I never thought I'd see dialogue from a James Bond villain appear in a critical essay.

"We must linger a moment longer on the subject of ironies and disappointments . . ." Why linger when you can just segue?

"called by what I think is his middle name" You're kidding, right? You're going to hold Sven accountable for his name?

"No, Birkerts’ only subject here is himself, the inevitable progression from frog-killing child to book-killing critic." Is this a meta confessional or a critical piece?

"Birkerts, in other words, isn’t re-viewing his life in My Sky Blue Trades, he’s reviewing it in much the same way he reviews fiction, telling his readers what they can learn from the text of his life." And what's wrong with that? It worked for Henry Miller, Nicholson Baker, too many others to list.

"Let me state the obvious and get it out of the way: Sven Birkerts really loves books. To move beyond that, Birkerts doesn’t love individual books so much as he loves the edifice of literature and his own conception of himself as a small but integral part of that edifice—the keyhole, say, maybe even the doorknob." If loving books and trying to find a place within them is a sin, then nearly every writer is guilty.

"For example, Birkerts dismissed William Gaddis and Don DeLillo as part of the postmodern plague that had 'infected' all the arts in his 1986 essay 'An Open Invitation to Extraterrestrials,' but had completely reversed his position by the time of his 1998 review of Underworld." This may be news to you, Dale, but people change.

"He can take the tiniest premise and stretch it out like a child smearing that last teaspoon of peanut butter over a piece of bread, unaware it’s spread so thin that it no longer has any taste." That's rich coming from a man who writes 5,000 word hit pieces.

"about as interesting to watch as a game of Pong" When you can't cite specific examples, resort to batty metaphors.

"But Birkerts wants to do more than merely bring books to readers. He wants to tell readers how they should be reading them. He doesn’t want to represent the canon, he wants to explain it." This is a bad thing? And how can we judge Birkets' overall failure at explanations from a single paragraph?

"in horseshoes, a ringer is worth three points..." I didn't realize Peck got out of the house.

"It is a large oeuvre. Six books, hundreds of essays. The temptation is to refute each one individually, but to engage with the arguments is, at the end of the day, to give them more credence than they deserve." In other words, Peck's approaching his maximum word count. So legitimately addressing the arguments is out of the question.

" I’ve been looking for a contemporary critic’s work to discuss for some time." So there was a pretext here.

Mars Responds

Last month, I wrote a letter to the Mars company. Mars, apparently a division of MasterfoodsUSA, a conglomerate operating out of Hackettstown, New Jersey, had aired a commercial in which they digitally inserted various M&Ms into a scene from The Wizard of Oz. Dagmar Welling, Consumer Affairs Specialist, had this to say by mail:

Dear Mr. Champion:

Thank you for contacting us with your views regarding our television commercial. Specifically your reaction to the M&M's® Brand Color Quest commercial "Wizard of Oz". [sic]

We never intended to disappoint or offend anyone. But, as with anything we see, hear or read, reactions sometimes vary based upon individual preferences and interpretations.

We value the comments from our consumers and always refer them to our advertising associates for their review.

Sincerely,

Dagmar Welling

Consumer Affairs Specialist

On immediate glance, this is standard boiler plate. Dagmar no doubt answers several of these letters each day. So we can forgive him for not enclosing the period within "Wizard of Oz" or for typing an additional space between "preferences" and "and."

The language here deserves speculation. What is a consumer affairs specialist? Since Dagmar's job duty is to correspond with consumers, why isn't Dagmar a consumer specialist? Why haven't they given poor Dagmar a more compelling job title? It would seem that the inconsiderate nature of MasterfoodsUSA extends beyond the company's inability to add a space between "foods" and "USA."

But more importantly, why is my letter being gauged in terms of reaction? I took great pains to delineate how deeply ingrained The Wizard of Oz is into my cultural consciousness and general well-being. And yet Dagmar, whom I will now refer to as Mr. Welling just because I can, views this as an "individual preference" and an "interpretation." I am a problem (i.e., "individual"), because in the corporate world, I don't quite fit into the hard "consumer" definition. There is the further implication that my concerns are childish with the comparison between the M&M's commercial and "anything we see, hear or read," as if one is supposed to look the other way while works of art are butchered to sell products.

Furthermore, Mr. Welling cannot simply refer to the commercial as a commercial. It is a "M&M's® Brand Color Quest commercial." (Note the registered trademark.) And this "Brand Color Quest commercial" actually has a title that has been shamefully appropriated from the source.

If MasterfoodsUSA never intended to disappoint or offend, why then do they respond without respect for the film or my opinion? Why take the trouble to write such a letter? If Mr. Welling had simply said to me, "Hey, Ed. You may have had a point. In the future, we're going to encourage the Madison Avenue wizards to use their creative noggins rather than pilfering from film classics," or, more realistically, if they had even deigned to apologize, I would have possibly reconsidered my boycott. But the fact is that my opinion doesn't matter to MasterfoodsUSA or to the overworked Dagmar.

Dagmar may be a consumer affairs specialist, but he sure as hell doesn't understand how to appeal to cranks

Interactive Technology

A number of sexy people tried to telephone me tonight. Their voices careened into daring Kappa curves, crossing into other dimensions. When I heard their susurrations, I thought at first that I was somehow drunk and calling a 1-900 number and paying for someone to purr. But no -- these were real people with real salutations. They wanted to say hi.

There were problems -- the foremost of them being dead batteries. Yes, it was possible to live in the 21st century with two phones that sputtered out dying calls and responses. Both at the same time. It was a bit like the hot dog and bun contretemps, where both supplies extinguished simultaneously. Or one was useless without the other because the hot dogs were gone and there were still a few buns left. Technology allowed these buns to flourish, but no one had done the basic math.

Because of this basic design fallacy, which spread into every known R&D conduit and the accompanying documentation, you could believe late in the week that the phones would somehow last forever. Fly off into the night! Be cordless and free! You don't need wires or plugs or cables that curl around your legs and strap you into a spaghetti nightmare. Be liberated!

But no one had thought to program these stunning tools with accountability.

The modern age was supposed to empower us. In fact, I have some hazy memory of a Duracell commercial promising sizable staying power -- more stamina than a virgin ready to burst on prom night. But it was all a grand lie. And since the technology was so convenient, we bought in.

So to the fab folks who crooned, many thanks, delights, and my apologies. Some of us are ill-equipped. Or perhaps it's a matter of demanding basic workarounds from our benefactors.

Book Babes Watch

The duo takes on Christian publishing -- a veritable subject, though, in light of the various discussions on the Left Behind books and the upcoming Easter one, a slightly dated one. Unfortunately, the Book Babes come across as quite ignorant on the subject they're writing about. Ellen declares that "The market for books with Christian themes has been a continuing motif in publishing for the past 10 years." Well, that's the understatement of the century. I could make a crack here about The Pilgrim's Progress or the Gutenberg Bible, but instead I'll just openly wonder about Ellen's long-term memory. Has she not heard of Lloyd Douglas?

I also have grave doubts about The Da Vinci Code selling solely on its religious content (which Ellen herself even confesses). This was, after all, a book that Laura Bush deigned to read, published outside the Christian book industry. Likely, it was the dumbed down Umberto Eco style that captured reader interest. But did The Da Vinci Code generate the kind of born again fervor that The Passion did? Did pastors and preachers demand that their congregation buy and read The Da Vinci Code the same way that they played into Mel's hands? Absolutely not. So why bother to include it? And beyond this, what do movies have to do with the "religious book market?"

Beyond this, there's no mention of Jesus Christ Superstar or The Life of Brian or Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ or Jim Crace's Quarantine. And that deserves a Special Badge of Honor for Cultural Blindness alone. If Jesus is appearing everywhere in art, it might also be helpful to mention the more subversive examples.

Ellen comes across as equally obtuse: "The millennium, 9/11, and the war in Iraq have all fueled people's interest in books about prophecy and the afterlife." Hey, Ellen, have you been paying attention to the raving fundamentalism going down this year? The gay marriage debate and the partial birth abortion bans? The National Park Service thing? Wake up, sister! They may have a teensy bit to do with this as well. And what's with the "divide between liberal Christians and conservative Christians" horseshit? Next time you're in San Francisco, I'll be happy to sing "Ebony and Ivory" with you at The Mint. Are you coming out as a Christian or something? If so, these personal revelations have nothing to do with the state of the religious book market.

But it's Margo who offers sui generis in the reading miscomprehension department: "Often, people who are bothered with the idea of faith -- like Christopher Hitchens, they think themselves too smart to be hooked on the opiate of the masses -- are fascinated by its citified cousins, philosophy and ethics." Perhaps because they're trying to understand it? Even so, if the Hitchens reference is meant as a disapproving flourish towards his takedown of The Passion, then Margo has missed the point of Hitchens' essay completely. Not once in his essay did Hitchens call religion the "opiate of the masses." He was referring to the film's anti-Semitism.

Having failed to establish The Da Vinci Code as a centerpiece in the publishing industry, Margo then returns to it, offering an oblique reference to it as a thematic token of our culture, without offering a single example for her argument.

So what we get, as usual, is false rhetoric, empty unfocused arguments, and an inability to tie the article into previous takes on the subject.

Poynter, why are you encouraging this tautological thinking? The Book Babes have to go.

Academy of Art Uproar Gathers Storm

Yesterday afternoon, Alan Kaufman held a rally to protest the explusion of a student and the dismissal of a teacher. 100 students and several authors delivered speeches. There are still no answers or explanations from Sallie Huntting.

New Yorker Fiction: An Explanation

Mr. Birnbaum has noted here and on his blog that, in the great New Yorker fiction debate, Jim Harrison's "Father Daughter" has been overlooked. Now that I've finally read the story, with its existential themes and its subtle use of details and language, I'm inclined to agree.

Why was it forgotten? Well, speaking for myself, my stack of New Yorkers is half-read, with the articles perused in an very idiosynchratic manner. I read everything after the fiction section and the whole of Talk of the Town. And then, time permitting, I launch into all the articles or, alternately, the ones I have time to read. This system allows me to leaf through the offerings several times and gives me several opportunities to read it all. Plus, it's a great way to cure a hangover.

But more often than not, I don't give the New Yorker's fiction a chance, unless a "familiar author" has written a story or it's a special fiction issue (in which case, I read everything). As previously noted, it has a lot to do with the New Yorker's emphasis on bourgeois concerns, utterly foreign or overly niggling problems to drive narrative, about as relevant to the average person's life as Cheez Whiz is to the gouda connoisseur. In fact, it was something of a shock to read Jim Harrison's story, with its scope extending across race, class and generation. Because that's the kind of thing I'd expect somewhere else.

So, yes, I plead guilty. But, as I noted before, I rely on other magazines for my short fiction. Even though this is entirely unfair to Jim Harrison. But then it's also possible to make a case for enthusiasm: What reader wouldn't swoon at a new offering from Z.Z. Packer or T.C. Boyle?

I suspect that the real perpetrator here is the New Yorker itself. If the New Yorker were to offer two or three stories per issue (as they did back in the day), then the emphasis would be on fiction, as opposed to the singular literary superstar who, through talent, pluck and East Coast connections, managed to score a week under the eiderdown. When I look at the fiction section, I get the uncomfortable sense that peacocks somewhere are extending their feathers. To me, that's not what fiction should be about, even though that's the way the publishing industry works.

[NEWSFLASH: This just in. Jim Harrison has tragic results for bookish romantics.]

The Roundup

There's some good stuff hitting the 'sphere.

First off, Jimmy Beck takes down New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman -- specifically, over the insufferable Ann Beattie story now hitting mailboxes. Now the New Yorker still publishes good fiction (that last T.C. Boyle story comes immediately to mind), but if you need a hard dose of the Genuine Article, the latest Ploughshares (featuring a hearty offering of young writers handpicked by others) and a subscription to the always reliable ZYZZYVA or The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction might be a start. It would be foolish to declare that the New Yorker has jumped the shark. But I would love -- just love -- for the New Yorker to publish something gritty, something that would reduce us all to tears, if only to subvert the de rigueur digression of McSweeney's and the overall obsession with upscale Caucasians living in upstate New York complaining about things that a few rounds of therapy couldn't cure. Why not commission Edward Jones (now the proud winner of the Pulitzer) or Colson Whitehead or Dorothy Allison or someone like Kathy Acker or anyone, goddam anyone, to write about the seamy side of life? At the very least, it might leave a few Caucasians clutching their claret with greater alacrity. But then that's what fiction is about, isn't it? Leave in the umlauts for words like "reentry" and spell "role" in that funky way. That's why we love the New Yorker. And besides, that isn't the issue. Treisman needs to understand that it's the 21st century.

Then there's Laila looking into the Zoo Press deal. I've received no callbacks from Azevedo either. But I'll keep trying. On the Atlantic front, I've been playing telephone tag with a very nice lady in the advertising department. Don't know if I'll get any answers, but I'll keep you folks posted.

The illustrious Mark Sarvas remains in New York, but he has, to my considerable astonishment, checked in here when he should be doing other things. Do visit The Elegant Variation and keep Scott Handy some company. He's doing a fine yeoman's job at guest blogging this week.

Sam promises to offer a series this week devoted to narrative elements.

There are two big questions at About Last Night: (1) Who's feeding Terry the Rockstars? and (2) Where the sam hill is OGIC?

And Dan Green (recent winner of the FOG Index contest) has been on a roll too. He takes on literary contest scams, reviewer biases and (bravely) James Wood.

And visit the good folks on the left while you're at it.

All good stuff. Joe Bob says check it out.

Microsoft CEO Explains Submarine Sandwich/Longhorn Tie-In

Once Smitten, Twice Shy

Psychology Today has an interesting story up on the relationship between shyness and society:

In this cultural climate, we lose patience quickly because we've grown accustomed to things happening faster and faster. We lose tolerance for those who need time to warm up. Those who are not quick and intense get passed by. The shy are bellwethers of this change: They are the first to feel its effects. And so it's not surprising that hyperculture is actually exacerbating shyness, in both incidence and degree.

(via Nathalie)

Patterns Upon Patterns

The new Bold Type is up. And there's a link which explains how Martin Amis writes. Here's the risky part:

I work from 10.30am to mid-afternoon, not stopping for lunch. I drink lots of coffee and smoke cigarettes. Smoking is so tied to writing I could not give it up.

Judy Blume Film Headed for Trouble

From The New York Times:

"'I said, Shut up!' " Ms. Glass recalled in an exclamatory cadence more familiar among adolescent girls than women in their 40's like Ms. Glass. " `You do not! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!' So I went to Nina, my boss, and said, `Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!'"

This might explain why Glass works at Disney.

So You Write a Bitchy Slate Column. Who Cares?

While newspapers and literary blogs got excited over the Pulitzers, primed to post and publish within minutes of the announcement, one grumpy Slate editor decided enough was enough. For Jack Shafer was a man who never smiled. He walked though the Slate offices with a hard gait and an even harder heart. No cookie or ice cream cone in his hand, no sir. Those trivialities were for the heaving pukes. He could find no joy in turning Times reporters into irregular verbs.

Because Shafer was dead serious. There were more pressing matters for his Press Box. He'll rake you across the coals, amigo. Because that's the kind of man he is. Tough as nails. No stone unturned. Where ordinary men would overlook Jayson Blair, Shafer's a guy who will clarify his review. Because that's what real men do. Real men sue for libel. That's right. Get with the program or Shafer will pound your ass into an early grave. And that means you too, you pesky anonymice! If you can't get inside the other guy's head, you have no business being in journalism.

Jack Shafer means business. He's an old hand from older times. Never mind when. The old days, he calls it. Back when reporters came to their desk with a pistol in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. Where were the rewrite guys? Cowering behind their desks when Jack walked in, no doubt. But Jack was ready to bust chops with a single stare.

Washington Post, be a man! If you can't fight dirty in the streets, you have no business being on the newsstands! Steal your moves from neocons if you have to, but if you can't stand the heat, cry me a frickin' river!

Jack Shafer. Fierce and friendless. But in the end, Jack's a legend in his own mind.

Tom Ridge Demonstrates Future of Homeland Security. Two Words: Hand Shadows

I Sell My Toes Too -- After Several Shots of Wild Turkey

Dylan Thomas's first love letter is being auctioned. An excerpt: "I don't want you for a day (though I'd sell my toes to see you now my dear, only for a minute, to kiss you once and make a funny face at you): a day is the length of a gnat's life: I want you for the lifetime of a big, mad animal, like an elephant." Couldn't Dylan settle on slicing off his ear? (via Book Ninja)

Tell A Half-Truth Long Enough and People Will Call You On It

As previously reported, Lauren Slater is in hot water over unsubstantiated allegations in her book, Opening Skinner's Box. Ms. Slater states that Deborah Skinner spent the first 2 1/2 years of her life locked in a box. But as reported by Alex Beam, Ms. Slater's sources were shaky. Ron has also been on the case. After Ron pointed out the dubious nature of additional sources, Ms. Slater herself responded. The results stand alone.

Canadian Bacon

Amy punctures some holes in the Alanis free expression debate -- particularly, as related to journalism. In Canada, judges are in the position of preventing verifiable information, to the point where citizens were flocking to American papers to unravel the facts about a rape and murder case. Amy's done a marvelous job of summarizing the expressive benefits in America, which is why it's very important to pay attention to those who might do away with these liberties.

Writing Contest in Omaha -- Scam?

Laila reports that the Zoo Prize Short Fiction contest has been canceled. But here's the rub: all the writers who submitted their work (some 350) won't get their $25 entry fees refunded. Even with Michael Curtis's involvement, this strikes me as a potential scam, particularly since the money ended up going towards a full-page ad in the Atlantic Monthly -- hardly the literary celebration that the writers expected. To cover its ass, the Zoo Press page reports that "Zoo Press reserves the right to withhold the Award in any given year."

But if we do the math, 350 X $25 = $8,750. It's too late in my time zone to call the Atlantic's advertising department to try and confirm placement of the ad. But I will call them tomorrow morning. A full-page ad, according to this resource, costs $40,480.

The man behind this operation is Neil Azevedo. Some casual Googling reveals that Mr. Azevedo has been published in The Paris Review and The New Criterion. However, it may be worthwhile for the 350 writers to make their presence known to these and other publications. If Mr. Azevedo has a history of taking the money of writers and using it to promote (or in this case, partially subsidize) his own interests, then he needs to be called on it.

The Ghost of Novelists Past

The cover painting for William Boyd's Any Human Heart is based in part on a 1927 photo of Anthony Powell. Powell, whose A Dance to the Music of Time series, chronicled characters over several generations is one of the best known post-Proustian novelists -- right there with Jules Romain and (on my list, anyway) Eric Kraft.

Alas -- it's not a vanity painting. Painter Duncan Hannah's simply an Anglophile.

Beware of Alcopops

One more reason to avoid Smirnoff Ice (besides, of course, its faux alcoholic stature and similarities to Zima): one bottle has more calories than a Krispy Kreme donut. Not only are you better off drinking a 12 oz. can of regular beer, but you're better off eating a Twinkie. By contrast, 1 jigger of vodka is 94 calories, 1 jigger of 86 proof whiskey is 105 calories, and 1 jigger of 90 proof gin is 110 calories.

(And if we do the math for those who can't slam vodka straight, a screwdriver ends up having the same count as a beer. 75 calories in OJ plus 94 calories of a jigger. Plus, a greater likelihood of getting buzzed.)

I was at a social gathering a few months ago. An athletic thirtysomething lady insisted upon drinking nothing but Smirnoff Ice, but wouldn't touch beer. I figured there wasn't all that much of a difference. Turns out that my suspicions were correct.

Of course, true calorie counters will probably be better off drinking something like no-calorie water. But then who orders H20 from a bar other than the destitute and the suffering?

(One suspects that the thin Englishman opts for hard liquor and water to maintain his wiry physique, along with the afternoon tea. Not that I'm wallowing in stereotypes or anything.)

Nader Reveals Number of Sane People Who Will Vote for Him in November

Baroque #2 -- DOA?

Some early reviews of The Confusion, the next round in Neal Stephenson's interminable prize fight, have started hitting the wires. The boys over at The Complete Review are generous, giving Stephenson props for erudition. The Guardian's Josh Lacey is less forgiving, noting that "pages read as if they have been copied directly from history books." Both reviews confirm that, aside from a few action sequences, The Confusion looks to continue Quicksilver's tedium. It's too bad. Thomas Pynchon, John Barth and David Mitchell all mined detailed historical territory, but at least they had the good sense to make it rewarding. This could very well make the Baroque Cycle the Matrix trilogy of literature.

Pulitzer Winners

The Known World has won the Pulitzer for Novel.

Drama went to Doug Wright's I Am My Own Wife.

William Taubman won for Biography for Kruschev: The Man and His Era.

History went to Steven Hahn's A Nation Under Our Feet.

Anne Applebaum won general nonfiction for Gulag.

Franz Wright's Walking to Martha's Vineyard won for poetry.

Paul Moravec's Tempest Fantasy won for music.

Kurt Cobain's Death: Ten Years Later

Ten years ago today, I was in my English class when I heard the news. Kurt Cobain was dead. He had blown his head off with a shotgun.

The professor, who read Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison weeks before, allowed this news to seep in. She understood the significance too well. We didn't. At least not then.

I remember a hush lasting a minute. The power chords shimmered through my mind. Nirvana, man. Kurt Cobain. "Floyd the Barber." "We can plant a house, we can build a tree. I don't really care. We could have all three." The honesty of "Rape Me." The secret track at the end of Nevermind. The Meat Puppets there during the Unplugged appearance. All gone save through the discs we spun.

Cobain hated being hassled. He hated playing stadiums. He was raw and angry and depressed and somehow sensitive. His voice sounded like a spatula scraping paint from a wall, the noise somehow filtered through a shaky Sennheiser, and committed to a reel-to-reel machine found in somebody's basement. He was beautiful in his simplicity. Because he was the DIY punk inside us all.

Everyone knew Nirvana. Whether they had discovered the trio (then quartet) through the amazing Bleach, or had become part of the grand throng latching onto Nevermind. Nirvana had even obtained a strange legitimacy with the Weird Al Yankovic parody, "Smells Like Nirvana."

But was Cobain the voice of my generation? Fuck no, I said back then. I was nineteen and cocky. And I was damned if I was going to let anyone -- MTV, Ted Koppel, or any pundit trying to eulogize -- throw labels around. We were the generation that had grown up during Reagan. We were the generation who knew that there wasn't the house with the picket fence and the dog and the 2.2 children. There was no American dream. There was only a nation throwing its grandchildren into debt.

Cobain gave credence to our anger. We could crank up his music and feel the shimmering cesspool of suburban impoverishment. We could deny the existence of Motley Crue or any of the hair bands that came before. Because Nirvana was about something. The music was never overtly political, but it was sure as hell visceral.

I was in a garage band back then. And we all got together that Sunday and decided to pay tribute to Nirvana. It seemed the right thing to do. We played the songs and tried to make them sound as shoddy and slapped together as Cobain's. But it was never the same. I screamed and grumbled into the mike. We all did. But it was never Kurt's rage.

Nobody seemed to know the secret ingredient. But Nirvana somehow worked. Cobain was the rare voice who infiltrated both mainstream and underground circles. And, like it or not, he was the voice of my generation.

[UPDATE: More memories at The Black Table. (via Maud)]

[UPDATE: More remembrances of the Daleks Cobain from Tom, Graham, Syntax, Ellen, Coolfer, and Infoleafblower.]

Academy of Art Update

Despite repeated inquiries by telephone and email to Senior Vice President Sallie Huntting, I've received no answers to any of my questions on recent policy changes.

I've learned that a U.S. District Court lawsuit was filed against the Academy of Art University back in September by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of a courier. The suit alleged that a manager subjected this African-American employee to repeated racial slurs. I haven't determined whether this lawsuit has had any bearing on current policy changes, which were instituted at the beginning of the current semester.

The policy changes, as reported to Neil Gaiman by Daniel Handler last night and as I learned from both Jan Richman (the instructor who wasn't rehired) and a source who wishes to remain anonymous, are as follows: Shortly after the student story incident, there was a series of individual meetings between administrative heads and instructors. The school then required all instructors to approve any supplemental instructional materials through administration. Students are no longer permitted to distribute their work to fellow students. The teacher must now see the work and approve it first. Before the current semester, teachers were allowed to use whatever materials they wanted, with stories and artwork passing directly into the classroom without any safeguards.

Alan Kaufman, another Academy of Art instructor, has had writers attending his classes to discuss the matter. As reported in the intiial Chronicle story, one of Kaufman's students had been asked to leave when she submitted a paper related to suicide threats. I asked Kaufman if I could speak to him at length about this, but because I didn't belong to a major media outlet and this was "a sensitive issue," he declined.

I've also made efforts to track down the student. The student hasn't talked to any reporters yet.

I will get my interview with Richman up later this week.

Two Pieces of News

1. I've solved the RSS problem. Anyone looking at this site through an aggregator (all three of you) will now be able to see full text and images. My apologies. Thanks to Stavros, I only just recently figured out what this crazy stuff was all about.

2. And then there were four. The litblog revolution continues with El Haggis at the Washington Post.

Silt List

Donald Barthelme's reading list. Good choices, but I've only read 12. (via Stephany)

Lemony Snicket Denied Guest Appearance at Academy of Art

Leah Garchik reports that Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) was not permitted to speak at Alan Kaufman's class this past Tuesday. Kaufman had arranged for several people to attend in response to Jan Richman's teaching contract not being renewed. Among the participants were Richman, Handler, David Greene of the First Amendment Project, and (I'm told) Matt Gonzalez. Security guards did not allow Handler to get through. I have a tremendous amount of independent information to process, but I hope to collect it over the weekend.

Mr. Jones

Gerard Jones, the lovable man behind Everyone Who's Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing, has released a fully revised version (what he styles the "Third Edition") of his majestic site. The update is timed with the release of Ginny Good, the memoir he sold to Consortium through an incredible combination of lies, persistence, and personality.

April Showers

Well, it appears that the damn thing got wiped -- courtesy of a few people who commented. Can't fix it for the next sixteen hours, as I won't have access to the computer it originated from for sometime. But for those of you who missed it, here are the intro page and the Carl Weathers page. I'll put the whole thing in a permanent spot tomorrow.

Also: hot damn. Ron's on the case, covering last night's Young Lions awards. This is the future. So work it, people. Work it.

Also also: Emails to all tomorrow. Apologies.

Also also also: Jimmy Beck is guesting at the Hag. He's good. I give him six posts before he starts firing rifles into the air. Give this man some whiskey and give it to him quick.

[UPDATE: Man, only a few hours in and Beck is on a roll. This rant begins with "I had no intentions of getting into the whole Jewish thing, at least until erev Shabbat," and turns into a side-splitting expose that dares to reveal all. Go read it. Between Beck and Rake, the newcomers are making sure the blogosphere's a kickass place to be in.]