Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant

Questions for Plum Sykes

Your new novel, "Bergdorf Blondes," have created some disgraceful and unintentionally hilarious Q&A sessions which demonstrate that you are a Tina Brown in the making.

I have a new disease, which I've called glitteratitis. I want Bret Easton Ellis to use me as an object in his next novel, preferably as a footstool.

As a writer for Vogue, you have ideas, right?

I'm too beautiful to be concerned about the human condition.

You've used "blonde" as a verb and every time you open your mouth, people have been actually lost brain cells listening to you.

You've got to keep the English language fun. Have you ever known an English teacher aware of this season's fashion designs? I haven't. Perhaps if these teachers paid attention to the way they dressed, English classes wouldn't be so square.

How can you justify writing a book about these kinds of women with all that is going on the world?

After 9/11, I finally had the excuse I needed to open up my secret stash of candy. And I thought to myself that Jonathan Franzen needed to write a history of candy rather than these long novels about human behavior. He made my head hurt. Who really wants to pay attention to that sort of thing? This age is about comfort and self-entitlement. If you look at this lady with the cigarette in her mouth, she's simply not in fashion. And besides, we have cheerier photos at Vogue.

What did you study at Oxford?

I wrote my thesis on the frizzy hair movement of the 1970s, drawing particular attention to the Farrah Fawcett feathering movement. It was well received.

P.T. Barnum once said, "Never underestimate the stupidity of the American public." Would you say that you could apply this to being born in London?

How brilliant. Can you pick up lunch?

AudBlog #16 -- Memorial Day Weekend

audio post powered by audblog

"Dagger of the Mind" -- Allegory for 2004 America

[For the purposes of this experiment, replace DR. ADAMS with THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION, KIRK with VOTER IN AMERICAN HEARTLAND, HELEN with AMERICAN INTEGRITY, and "Enterprise" with DETERMINATION TO TAKE BACK WASHINGTON.]

DR. ADAMS: "Now Captain Kirk is going to have a complete demonstration. I want there to be no doubts whatever in his mind."

KIRK: "Mmmmm."

DR. ADAMS: "You're madly in love with Helen, Captain. You'd lie, cheat, steal for her, sacrifice your career, your reputation."

HELEN: "No, Doctor! No!"

DR. ADAMS: "The pain -- do you feel it, Captain? You must have her, or the pain grows worse, the pain, the longing for her."

KIRK: "Helen."

DR. ADAMS: "For years, you've loved her, Captain, for years."

KIRK: "For years, I've loved you."

DR. ADAMS: "You must continue to remember that, Captain. And now...she's gone."

[The mind machine is turned up to a dizzying level.]

KIRK: "Helen! Helen, don't go! I need you, Helen!"

DR. ADAMS: "Now, Captain...you must take your phaser weapon and drop it to the floor. Captain, the pain increases unless you obey me."

KIRK: "I...must...drop it."

[KIRK drops phaser.]

DR. ADAMS: "Very good, Captain. Very good indeed. And now your communicator. Drop it to the floor."

[KIRK desperately flips open communicator.]

KIRK: "Kirk to Enterprise."

[The mind machine is amped up further.]

KIRK: "Uhhhhhhhhhh! Kirk...to...Enterprise. Ahhhhhhhh!"

HELEN: [shrieking] "No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[KIRK laughs maniacally in pain/torture/confusion, as camera fades out to commercial break.]

And the Worst Thing is That He Can't Stop Talking About the Fuckin' Beatles

There's a guy from Liverpool in our apartment at the moment whom we haven't seen in six years. (Yeah, we're just as mystified as you are.) Between this and the planned Memorial Day debauchery, what this means is few, if any, updates until June 1.

An Open Note to Maud Newton

In response to this:

Avoid the hoopla and the hate and be you. It's almost Memorial Day Weekend and people all over the nation are freaking out. Probably some unspoken reaction to the fact that a madman is in office, the United States has been caught with its hands in the photographic cookie jar, and there appears no immediate remedy. Tough times, when you factor in the economy and the fact that more guns will be fired into other people tomorrow than any other day of the year. (Okay, that last statistic was a lie.)

But my point is this: everyone is entitled to freak out a little, including you. If that means stopping the blog for a little while, we'll miss you, but so be it. It's a fait accompli. We're cool.

Writing a novel is one of the hardest things that anyone can do. But don't stop. Keep trying. Your shit is good. Or are you convinced that there's some nutty conspiracy here who loves you? We here at Return of the Reluctant have offered to give 24-7 cunnilingus to Kate Lee, if only she'd check out our wares. She's declined. She doesn't like our tongue action. But no worries. Whereas, on your end, no prob. In short, what else do we have to do to point out that you rock?

In response to (1), please stop the negativity. Your stuff is not drivel. Don't listen to the angry folks. They're jealous and have too much time on their hands.

In response to (2), did you know that Jonathan Lethem essentially strung together a bunch of stories for his early novel Amnesia Moon? Sounds cool what you're doing. Part of a grand tradition. You've got to start somewhere. Plus, you've got to set goals. Glad you're taking the bull by the horns.

In response to (3), good good and good. Do what you need to do. When it's ready, it's ready. Only three people have read my play so far. But you'll eventually get to the point where it's no longer love-hate, and it simply just is. Keep at it.

In response to (4), bloggers are fucking crazy. No one is asking anyone to offer in-depth interviews. Since we feel partially responsible, given our previous call for greater coverage, we should also point out Samuel Johnson's grand maxim, "No one but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." We should also point out that we are blockheads. Fuck, we'd love to offer that kind of in-depth coverage, but we're trying to pay the rent ourselves. And it sounds to me like you're an expert in yourself. Probably more.

In response to (5), We've told you this several times privately, and now we're going to tell you publicly: You don't have to answer every email, especially ours. Human beings have limits!

In response to (6), if it's not fun, don't do it. Come back when you feel it's fun.

And for all you other whipper-snappers, you leave Maud alone. Or we'll personally subscribe you to every known mailing list pertaining to organized religion.

That is all.

The Short Answer: Consumption is Still Conspicuous

George Bleecher re-examines Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class, and looks at the similarities between the Gilded Age and today.

Cold Mountain, Cold Fish?

Charles Frazier is to be honored by his hometown. North Carolina residents plan to burn dollar bills to celebrate Frazier's $8 million advance.

Just Imagine How Much Trouble It Is To Buy A Pack of Trojans

Singapore is lifting its chewing gum ban, but not without a few stipulations: (a) only 19 medicinal brands will be allowed, (b) anyone dealing black market gum will face two years in jail, and (c) you will need a license and an identity card to buy a pack. (And, yes, that's all true.) No word yet on whether Singapore has taken a cue from the Brady Bill and plans to add a 30 day waiting period.

It Ain't Just Birnbaum, Sarvas and Newton Out There

Trashotron has an audio interview with Tom Perrotta. I plan to listen to it later, but my hope is that they clarified the goldfish controversy. (via Sarah)

The Real Question: Which One of the Two is Goofier?

In one of the most inspired and frabjous convergences of online talent, Yankee Pot Roast talks with Robert Birnbaum.

The Literary Hipster's Handbook -- 2004 Q2 Edition

"con-fuse": When an author uses his reputation to offer an overlong and unedited book, thus conning his audience into buying or reading it, and eventually lighting the reader's fuse. (Or: Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.)

"Dale Pecker": An unpleasant asshole at a literary cocktail party who claims erudition, but who will never shut up. The distinction between a Dale Pecker and a socially maladjusted person is that the latter still has a love of literature, while the former does not. Term expected to fade into obscurity before summer. Use sparingly. (Ex. I was shooting the shit with Bill over China Miéville's upcoming New Crobuzon book, when this Dale Pecker came up and wouldn't shut up about Ted Chiang.)

"get Doctorowed": To be booed at a literary gathering, often when one blusters about politics. (Or. E. L. Doctorow) (Ex. He had the audience in the palm of his hands, until he got Doctorowed after referring to some obscure and apparently evil legislative acts against potatoes.)

"Laura crown": Generally used when a person has repeated the same point in 35 different ways over the course of an hour. A term sometimes punctuated with a pantomine gesture that causes the person to which the phrase is being directed to bow down and become donned with an imaginary crown of laurels. Reported inspiration: Laura Miller.

"niggerati": Out of style. A failed effort to sound politically incorrect in the comic style of Richard Pryor, but a term that ultimately sounds silly and serves no purpose save through contextual mocking of the term's originator. Source: Alice Randall, Pushkin and the Queen of Spades, discovered by Old Hag

"to Rushdie": To read a literary book that is too long and not very good and slip into a despondent state. Also, used in the context of flashy marriages and writing -- the latter, more specifically applied to anything Salman Rushdie has scribed from The Moor's Last Sigh onwards.

"swink away": To become thoroughly rapt with a hip literary magazine like Swink or Pindelyboz, only to be found in a semiconscious state under the docks days later, magazine clutched tightly in hand.

"wonketting off": Disparaging. Used when angry bloggers express jealousy over the possibility of other bloggers getting book deals, even if the book deals in question are not forgeone conclusions. Often used by paranoid types who have too much spare time and believe the blogosphere is out to get them. Sources of grief: Ana Marie Cox and Daniel Radosh "Talk of the Town" piece.

Kamala Markandaya Dead

Outlook India takes a look at Kamala Markandaya, who passed away a week and a half ago. Markandaya was a pioneering Indian author writing in English, best known for Nectar in a Sieve.

There Are Better Ways to Relieve Depression Than a Disappearing Act -- Hassling Scientologists is a Start

The Last Samurai (which has nothing to do with Tom Cruise) author Helen DeWitt has pulled a Spalding Gray. She disappeared shorty after emailing a friend that she was feeling depresed.

Separated at Birth?

LEFT: Lynndie England
RIGHT: Fairuza Balk in American History X

Super Blog Me

Apparently Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock has a blog.

And There's A Touch of Eggers In There Too

My man Rake reports that "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature," a story from David Foster Wallace's Oblivion is up. The big surprises? No footnotes or use of "w/r/t."

Hans, Boobie, I'm Your White Knight

Denmark is gearing up for the bicentenary of Hans Christian Andersen. Two exhibitions are underway. One will wander through Europe, Asia and North America. The other will involve a tent shaped in the form of an open book.

Don't Forget Edible Underwear

Brendan Gullifer offers some literary pitch ideas: "When you're a struggling artist, like me, the F-word always grabs attention. Writing a novel has used up more money and energy and time than an affair. Two years ago, we sold our house to pay the bills. For the sake of my marriage and sanity, I need closure. I need a publisher."

What's Worse Than Cowboy Bluster? A Completely Ignored Genocide in Africa

Reuters: "The United Nations has estimated that one million people have been displaced by fighting in Darfur and calls it the largest humanitarian emergency worldwide. Another 125,000 Sudanese refugees have fled to Chad to escape violence....UNICEF said it was providing 300,000 displaced people with access to clean water, double the number of a few weeks ago, but 700,000 people remained out of reach. It has installed nearly 190 new water pumps and repaired 320 existing ones in the area."

John Kerry, Can You Hear Me?

There's a moment in Superman II where E.G. Marshall, playing the President of the United States, appears on television, announcing to the nation that he has surrendered his authority over to General Zod. But Marshall breaks down midway through the speech and shouts into the microphone, "Superman: can you hear me? Superman!" Zod then picks up the microphone and asks, "Where is this Superman?" and demands that Superman come to challenge his authority if he dare, so that the son of Jor-El can eventually kneel before Zod.

But Superman has lost his powers. He has just been beaten to a pulp by some hick in a diner and he suggests to Lois Lane, as he is bleeding, that maybe they might need a bodyguard. But Superman, knowing that he must rid the world of the forces of evil, insists that he has to go back. He eventually gets his powers back and stops the three baddies. Though not without sacrificing his love for Lois Lane.

The moment is one of supreme comic book movie melodrama, but for some damned reason, it's one of the grandest cinematic moments I remember as a kid. It might be the general state of helplessness, an unexpected breakdown following the calm actions of a leader willing to kneel before Zod to save human lives. But I like to think it's more about decency in the face of horrible capitulations -- something that buys the human race a little more time.

In contemplating the current situation, I feel almost exactly like E.G. Marshall reflecting the will of the people. If Kerry is really presidential material, just where the hell is he? Deaths continue in Iraq. The economy remains in the toilet. Bush's approval figures are now the lowest ever in his presidency. And now Bush wants more troops while remaining in firm denial about the consequences of our actions: "The actions of our enemies over the last few weeks have been brutal, calculating and instructive. It reveals a fanaticism that was not caused by any action of ours and would not be appeased by any concession."

This should be a slam dunk, a moment that the Democrats should be seizing with momentum and mobilization. This should be a time in which John Kerry is galvanizing the nation with the same fire he showed protesting Vietnam.

Pollster John Zogby himself is on record stating that John Kerry will win, but only if he, and he alone, will screw it up. And from where I'm standing, I see a tepid man and an ineffectual leader. I see a man playing it far too safe for the present time. I see a man who doesn't have the guts to fight the good underdog fight and act like a goddam President, a man who believes that Bush's extra spending before the Republican National Convention will somehow buy the faith of the American people -- this even as Tom Clancy almost came to blows with Richard Perle..

Kerry's hands may be admittedly tied by current campaign finance and a colossal Republican-to-Democrat spending gap. But the real question here is whether postponing the nomination until the Republican National Convention so that Kerry can spend his own money is worth sacrificing the general morale of the country.

It would be one thing if Kerry managed to express public consternation over our current unwillingness to accept responsibility for the horrors that we sow. But whether he's officially the Democratic candidate or not, the time has come for Kerry to start acting like our next President, which means sacrificing something in the process.

John Kerry needs to show us that he's Superman.

Information or Parody?

The London Times business section examines, of all things, the economics of writing with crime writer Julian Rathbone.

The Power of Denial

The Guardian: "[Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt] insisted there were 'no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration'. However, the video obtained by APTN - which lasts for several hours - shows a large wedding party, and separate footage shot by AP cameramen the following day shows fragments of musical instruments, pots and pans, and brightly coloured beddings used for celebrations scattered around a bombed-out tent. There were also fragments of ordnance that appeared to have US markings."

The Dangers of Opening Twix

Until now, only ten important people were aware of their existence. The Tupperware people knew of similar creatures for sealed pies and pastries, but they recognized that the specific conditions beneath the seal, combined with certain sugary textures, created the necessary living variables, much as carbon does for the silly homo sapien race. But since Tupperware does not in fact mass-produce the contents within, their legal team has a clear defensible position which places them in the clear for endangering lives. They escape culpability.

Twix, on the other hand, does create conditional material -- specifically, gooey candy bars within sealed packages that allow life to evolve. Thousands of tiny environments, in fact. Sets of two. And until now, the horrible secret has remained tightly kept.

The men inside spin spanned steel twixt twain chocolate sticks. Micromen clanging miniscule hammers, breaking tiny flakes of chocolate for plinth, suspension, so long as the package is unopened. They live happy lives. The chasm beneath these nimble worker bees is a giant reservoir of air, the silt bottom reflecting the shimmering sky of plastic protecting them from the elements. This small working class microcosm hopes that ants and other assorted insects will not use their mandibles and destroy the plastic seal of their happy little gated community.

There are many of these candy bars circulating throughout the world, finding their way into stores and eventually into the hands of consumers, sometimes opened immediately and, other times, opened after being momentarily put into a freezer, where the workers within the candy bar housing shiver and freeze, often dying cold and painful deaths.

But this tragic hypothermia pales in comparison to the micromen's vampire-like evaporation when exposed to light. When a customer rips open a package, the light instanteneously destroys not only the wondrous bridges, homemade bowers and glorious chocolate Quonset huts that these beatific micromen construct, but also the very micromen themselves. The only trace of their existence is the ridge, which forms as the microman stands happily on chocolate terrain, only to disintegrate into nothingness, his footprints the only remainder. While most people believe that the machines create those glorious ridges, found on the topmost texture of all Twix bars, it is actually the small, barely perceptible conflagrations of a suddenly opened package which cause this tiny subtlety.

Despite the presence of an expiration date signaling the time that the community will transmute into moldy, melty or otherwise unedible form, the process of opening a Twix bar, which thousands of people enact every day, is, in short, genocide. Millions of micromen are destroyed on a daily basis. On a tiny, basic level, the sudden tear of a candy bar package has produced a veritable Rwanda 365 times a year.

I ask those who would dare open a candy bar how they can sleep a night. How can they willingly disregard this tiny life form, who has done nothing save construct bridges of chocolate? And where, pray tell, are the archeologists and zoologists? Why does the mysterious life of the Twix Microman remain a secret?

I have much more to say about these and other ethical questions at a later time. But for the moment, the immediate solution is to get the candy-eating public to stop eating, let alone opening Twix bars. Respect these small creatures. They have the potential to be your friends.

Jump Around

We have no time these days, but our colleagues do. Maud interviews Jonathan Ames, Lizzie takes on Alice Randall, and you can find Sarah in The Denver Post.

Diana Abu-Jaber

The Chronicle talks with Diana Abu-Jaber about Arab-American identity. She notes that since there are so few literary depictions of Arab life in America that she receives highly scrutinizing letters from readers niggling over the details. Abu-Jaber also points out that people consider her work highly politicized when it is not. According to Laila, she's also a grand reader. Abu-Jaber has also recently launched a website, which will contain information on future appearances. There's also an interview with Terry Gross up from March 2003.

It Could Be Worse: She Could Be Turning Out Endless Books On Top Ramen

The Sacramento Bee gets into the auctorial interview game and talks with Jane Smiley about how selling the film rights to A Thousand Acres has allowed her to write about horses. Smiley will be working on The Roan Tetrology through 2006. An early galley of the first book, My Kingdom for a Horse, features a 24-page monologue on why every American should own one.

Send the Moneymen In for the Commencement Speeches, Not the Novelists

Novelist E.L. Doctorow was booed at Columbia University while delivering a commencement speech attacking Bush. Financier George Soros offered a similar anti-Bush speech at Hofstra, but was not booed.

Brown Trains Treasury Secretary John Snow to Talk to Hand Rather Than Bite Hand That Feeds Him

Reluctant to Kate Lee: We Sleep Four Hours a Night

The New Yorker: "After directing the driver to East Seventy-second Street, she said she wanted to make it clear that, while she loves her bloggers, and has faith in them, it can be difficult to get them to be productive. 'They all have day jobs,' she pointed out. Writing anything longer than a blog post is a commitment they don’t always seem up for."

Virulent Developments

Graham has a spiffy new layout, with a decided Kottke influence. But thanks to the colors, his integration of remaindered link content is something a lot easier to follow after a few beers. Which reminds me: the plan is to tinker with WordPress for the soon-to-emerge Wrestling an Alligator production blog. If all goes well, then I may switch over to WordPress for Reluctant. This comes at a time when I was planning a major overhaul of this place anyway. For anyone else looking for a smooth MT to WP transition, here's the skinny.

Michael Moore -- The Ray Kroc of Left-Wing Documentary Filmmakers?

Andrew Anthony: "'Do you think [Nick Broomfield] wants to be on camera?' [Michael Moore] puts the question back to me. 'Do you think he looks like he's enjoying it?'"

Back in 1996, when Michael Moore came through San Francisco on a book tour for Downsize This, I walked up to the man at A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books, mentioning that I had started a comprehensive FAQ that began with obsessive riffling through microfilm when I was an undergraduate. "Hey, Kath, it's the FAQ guy," he said to his wife, not directly addressing me but presumably hoping that I would be impressed by this aside to his wife. At one point, in the middle of his lecture, Bay TV cameras came in and Moore lit up, becoming the consummate showman and acting as if the crowd who assembled there to buy his book was simply a fill-in audience for a television show. Outside the bookstore, I asked for an interview, figuring that Moore would, by way of his purported "working class" roots, be interested in talking with the little guy. He grilled me at length over what media outlet I was with. It was the kind of treatment I expected from Bruce Willis or John Travolta -- not a man running around from coast to coast to get in touch with the great American heartland, going out of his way to expose corporate wrongdoings. I named off a few sites I had been writing for that would probably take it.

"How many hits?" he asked.

When it became clear to Moore that I wasn't the New York Times, he handed me his business card, suggesting that I could contact the general number at his office for any questions I might have, and then pretty much ignored my existence. As I recall, he didn't even shake my hand or thank me. I figured that since my FAQ wasn't a completely slavish portryal of the man, having pointed out the Harlan Jacobson Film Comment controversy, Moore didn't really care to talk with me. When I saw Moore's 1997 documentary The Big One (a film, along with Canadian Bacon, curiously omitted from most discussions of Moore's ouevre), I was struck by how much the film served to boost Moore's ego. The Big One prioritized Moore's standup routines over the struggling working class people who saw Moore as a Will Rogers type for our time.

This is, by no means, a complete condemnation of the man's work. I thought Bowling for Columbine functioned as an effective polemic (its quibbling with the facts aside), and I certainly look forward to seeing Fahrenheit 9/11, now that it's won the Palme d'Or.

But Andrew Anthony's revelation is nothing new. Moore has a long history of being a self-serving whiner. There was, for example, the infamous San Diego "arrest," in which Moore's unwllingness to leave a building prevented janitors from going home, hardly reflecting the sympathies of a "working-class" hero, and Moore claimed that it was a freedom of speech issue. Another fact that goes unmentioned is that, when Moore made the switch from TV Nation to The Awful Truth, Moore stopped using FAIR to fact-check his information.

One should never confuse the man with his work, but the question brought up in the Anthony profile is whether Moore, now with his grand win in France undisputedly the most prominent figure for the left, has a certain responsibility to maintain a more dignified profile for the Left. Will rewarding Moore with the Palme d'Or serve to amp up his ego to heights beyond Limbaugh? Then again, if Moore's legions of followers are so blindly unquestioning, drawing the exact same arguments when rattling off their bluster to potential converts, what makes Moore any different from Limbaugh?

If Fahrenheit 9/11's chief goal is to get Bush out of office, then progressives have a definite interest in seeing this film get distributed. It's impossible to comment upon the film until one has seen it, but the real question that needs to be asked is whether this film's audience is a built-in demographic or something that extends beyond it. Like Ray Kroc pilfering the McDonald brothers' ideas about how to serve food in the interests of cash, Moore may be the consummate businessman, marketing to a select niche, taking other people's ideas and adding them to the company repertoire without credit. This might explain why Moore would be so wililng to trash his peers (in this case, Nick Broomfield) by suggesting that Broomfield doesn't enjoy being in front of camera (a ridiculous assumption for anyone who has experienced Broomfield's self-deprecatory approach and watched his willingness to wander down seedy avenues).

Susan Sontag Rebounds

New York Times: "Considered in this light, the photographs are us. That is, they are representative of the fundamental corruptions of any foreign occupation together with the Bush adminstration's distinctive policies. The Belgians in the Congo, the French in Algeria, practiced torture and sexual humiliation on despised recalcitrant natives. Add to this generic corruption the mystifying, near-total unpreparedness of the American rulers of Iraq to deal with the complex realities of the country after its 'liberation.' And add to that the overarching, distinctive doctrines of the Bush administration, namely that the United States has embarked on an endless war and that those detained in this war are, if the president so decides, 'unlawful combatants' -- a policy enunciated by Donald Rumsfeld for Taliban and Qaeda prisoners as early as January 2002 -- and thus, as Rumsfeld said, 'technically' they 'do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention,' and you have a perfect recipe for the cruelties and crimes committed against the thousands incarcerated without charges or access to lawyers in American-run prisons that have been set up since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001."

Weekend Report

• On Thursday evening, I met with the erstwhile Mark Sarvas and the incomparable Sam Jones. I had expected to stumble into them on the streets of North Beach. But to my surprise, while reading an Ian Rankin novel, I was thrown into the back of a Range Rover, whereby the two men blindfolded me, read me several Blake poems, and then led me into the basement of City Lights. There, they announced that I was part of a grand sadistic experiment to see how I could leave the bookstore buying as few books as possible. I escaped, but not before signing over the rights to my firstborn child over drinks at Tosca. I have no idea what the full extent of their grand plan is, but I'm seriously considering a vasectomy to throw a monkey wrench into their diabolical plans against democracy.
• Donna Tartt's The Little Friend is a disappointment that will not end. Tartt is a talented writer, but her plotting and thin characterizations (reduced to easy archetypes like the beautiful sister, the smart sister, the crazed fundamentalist, the hayseed criminal) leave much to be desired. This is a major letdown after The Secret History. Some fellow book freaks have compared the novel to a TV movie and I'm inclined to agree. As January Magazine's Tony Buchsbaum notes, "it takes for-freakin'-ever to get where it's going." And yet I remain determined to see this novel through to the end. It might be because I'm struck by the novel's depiction of childhood and teenage life. According to The Donna Tartt Shrine, Tartt is working on a novella version of the Daedalus/Icarus myth to be published by Cannongate this year. Hopefully, this will represent a return to form.
• On a side note, I've been on a bad book run of late. And if anyone can suggest foolproof titles (aside from the Sarvas-sanctioned John Banville), I'd greatly appreciate it. Chang Rae-Lee's Aloft, so far, has been a good rebound.
• I discovered that Shalimar on Jones Street has the spiciest Indian food in the City, if not Northern California. Don't get me wrong. It's good stuff, affordably priced, and it's one of those great places where you bring in your own beer from the store across the street and load up on yummy spinach and curry combinations. (There is also mango lassi, which is also quite important.) For a moment, I seriously considered trying the lamb's brain concoction, but I was talked out of it by my colleagues at the last minute.
• I'm woefully behind on current cinema, but I did check out Super Size Me. (Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes is next on the list.) There isn't much in this film that you wouldn't get from reading Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, but as low-key personal documentaries go, it's an entertaining and less narcissistic affair than the norm. Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock deserves some kind of prize for making the McDonald's meals he eats more repellant than graphic imagery of reductive gastric surgery. I really don't understand the comparisons between Spurlock and Michael Moore. The whole documentary is more of a stunt which proves a terrifying point, effective enough to get even the staunchest junk food fans off the fatty stuff. But while Spurlock has a definite agenda, his terrifying dedication to eating three McDonald's meals a day, even as his health wanders into lethal territory, is of chief interest here. There is a disturbing and cheery determination on Spurlock's part that echoes how easily it is for anyone to slip into a McToadburger diet.
• If you like Neil Diamond or kitschy pop in general, the local band Super Diamond (a Neil Diamond cover band) puts on a groovy show. I saw them years ago, but they have truly honed their pitch-perfect reproduction since. Singer Surreal Neil has Diamond's deep wavers and pregnant pauses down. The bassist, with his dark sequin and groovy glasses, reminded me of Bruce Campbell in Bubba Ho-Tep. Super Diamond played Saturday night at the Great American Music Hall. From the floor, I observed several fiftysomethings and sixtysomethings grooving to Super Diamond over the edge of the balcony, just one fortuitous indication of Super Diamond's cross-appeal.
• However, I must confess that I was more impressed with the opening act, Casino Royale, a 1960s cover band that I hadn't seen before (despite the band's many appearances at the Red Devil Lounge). Beyond Casino Royale's taut sound and groovy go-go dancing girls, the big reason to see these guys is singer Danny Shorago, a bald-pated man with so much energy that I spent several hours contemplating just what specific proteins the man was chomping on. Shorago performed a rousing version of "Mellow Yellow," whereby he flourished his cane in a way that suggested a poor man's Fred Astaire or a curiously booked Vegas lounge act. Make no mistake: this is an endorsement. Shorago could not stand still. There was not a single part of his body that did not move. He offered karate kicks. He breakdanced. He jumped off the stage. He undulated his ass in a way that even I, a male heterosexual, had to admire. About four songs into their set, my girlfriend and I felt really bad that this rousing band didn't have a single dancer on the floor. So we boogied away. But Shorago filled me with such joie de vivre that I found myself running up to the stage, jumping up with a raised hand and a mighty roar, and watching Shorago leap back in mock fright. Needless to say, this crazy near-psychotic gesture on my part got the dance floor populated, which was my m.o. all along. However, near the end of the show, I collided into Shorago as he did a handstand, which resulted in Shorago picking up a chair and me momentarily impersonating a Pampalona bull. I never got the chance to apologize to Shorago, let alone express my admiration for his energy. But if he's reading this, I'd really love to find out what gives the man so much pep. In other words, can I have some?

New P.O. Box

Since there's been a rise in people expresing the desire to send their review copies, love letters, hate letters, and other assorted literary paraphernalia to me, I proudly announce that a P.O. Box has been set up. Rest assured, we like free stuff too and will happily review or assess what we can.

Please send all literary goodies, incriminating photographs, handwritten diatribes, and last wills and testaments inked in blood to the following address:

Edward Champion
Return of the Reluctant
P.O. Box 170130
San Francisco, CA 94117-0130

The Elements of Biblical Style

Those nimble proofreaders at Peachtree are taking all the fun out of the Bible. "Sour ancestors" is now "our ancestors." There is no longer an end to "fractions," but an end to "factions." But that still doesn't trump the ultimate typo from a 1631 King James edition: "Thou shalt commit adultery."

Dan Brown -- Spineless Chicken

NBC4Columbus: "Dan Brown said that when he wrote the best seller that dissects the origins of Jesus Christ and disputes long-held beliefs about Catholicism, he considered including material alleging that Jesus Christ survived the crucifixion.
While speaking at a benefit Tuesday for a New Hampshire writers' group, Brown said the theory is backed by a number of 'very credible sources,' but that he ultimately decided it was too flimsy."

"Semen-Stained Dress" to Be Added in Afterword

W.W. Norton & Company will publish the September 11 commission's report.

No Conclusive Correlation Between Family History and a Litigious Disposition

Jim Ritter examines Born to Rebel, the infamous Frank Sulloway book that suggested that firstborns are grat achievers and younger siblings that turn out to be the revolutionaries. Apparently, an attorney by the name of Frederic Townsend has taken Sulloway to task in his spare time. Poring through Sulloway's contents, Townsend submitted a critique to the journal, Politics and the Life Sciences, which resulted in publication, a lawsuit, a retraction, misconduct charges, and volatile outbursts -- in short, a shitstorm more stirring than L'Affaire Slater.

Jerry Bruckheimer Presents "Ernest & Scotty: Masculinity on the Left Bank"

A new Hemingway movie is in the works -- this time, with Patrick Hemingway, Papa's sole surviving son. Hemingway is collaborating with DVD featurette director John Mulholland.

Not a Wedding Party

The United States government has insisted that on Wednesday, it did not fire airstrikes on a wedding party. More than 40 Iraqi citizens were killed and, yes, there was a bride and a groom there. But no, sir, the event was not a wedding party. There was a cake and several people dancing. There were guests, a maid of honor, a best man, and even a wedding singer. But no, the event was not, repeat not, a wedding party.

Under current Pentagon policy, a wedding party must closely resemble the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Since the Iraqi "wedding party" had only one culture involved with the "post-coupling event" rather than two, it was not, in fact, a wedding party at all. Since there were no Greeks or Caucasians present, it was not, in fact, a wedding party at all. Since there wasn't a father with a bottle of Windex (Windex being an anticlimactic presence in the desert sands), the event was not, in fact, a wedding party. Most importantly, there was nobody there named Portokalos.

There were no dead children on the scene. There were, in the words of the Pentagon report, "miniature, tiny-limbed Iraqis who were not exactly alive."

Because of these and many other mistaken impressions, Maj. Gen. James Matthis, who wears glossy pink fingernail polish and is fond of rolling around naked with refrigerated ground chuck, felt no need to apologize.

"It should be perfectly clear by now that Iraqis are second-rate citizens," said Matthis. "If these people want to marry and reproduce, then, well, goddammit, they'll do it where and when we say they will!"

Matthis refused to offer further statements, but he did say that he could be found at the meat locker if anyone else was into "the lifestyle."

Just Don't Ask Him to Do Silly Walks

John Cleese is starting a blog. The site's up and Cleese promises activity before mid-October. (via Cinetrix)

The Real Maud

On the surface, it would seem that Maud is a nice gal, a talented writer, an able chronicler of the literary world, and, to my continued astonishment, a remarkably thorough correspondent. However, now that I've encountered Fraud Newton (defunct after mere days of wasted productivity by some cowardly anonymous employee at The Foundation Center), I have at last seen the light. Fraud Newton reports that beneath the seemingly benign sheen lies a heart of anthracite. This blog has revealed to me that Maud is a cold and calculated manipulator of the first order. I now realize that her friendly emails are part of a grand plot to overthrow the meat and potatoes of Western civilization. Would you believe that Maud has the temerity to lie about her birthday? Who needs the Iraq situation to get angry about when this minx is offering such jocose fibs? Thanks to Fraud Newton, I will avoid visiting New York altogether and I will stop sending her my boxer shorts by post.

No doubt the Old Hag will be the next grand hypocrite to be unmasked in the litblogging conspiracy. (She's from Baltimore! Enough said.)

Cloud Atlas Update

The Complete Review has its Cloud Atlas review up. We here at Return of the Reluctant have been nursing this fantastic novel like an exquisitely mixed margarita for several weeks and, given the extent of our notes, will weigh in eventually at a forum to be determined. The short answer is: Yes, this novel is better than the superlative Ghostwritten (we haven't read number9dream, but we will) and, yes, it's made us so happy and delirious that we're actually using the first person plural against our better judgment.

An Open Note to Supermarkets Dictating "Personal Policy"

Dear Safeway, Albertson's, Lucky's, and the Like:

While I appreciate the care and service of your cashiers trying to be "personal," of which more anon, what gives your company the right to have these clerks address me by name when I haven't offered so much as an introduction or a handshake? That isn't exactly personal, is it? I speak of these Super Saver Cards that clutter my wallet and the transactions that involve swiping a credit card through a machine, thereby giving your clerk several pieces of personal information (and who knows what else) with which to launch an impromptu conversation entailing some three seconds of labor? When in fact it's quite likely I'll never see the clerk again.

Who was the marketing wizard who decided that this breach of privacy needed to go down just after I paid a fortune in groceries, with the "Thank you, Mr. Champion" timed as I am being handed a longass receipt that resembles a slightly wider version of 1930s tickertape? Is the implied message here that you not only know who I am, but that your stores are giving me a paper noose with which to hang myself? Is this some odd homage? Am I meant to leap out of a building like those unlucky businessmen wrangling with the ironic coda to the Roaring Twenties? Is the message here that I can never win? That even if I were to bring in cash you would, by some technological marvel, figure out who I am and still salute me with the invasive words? "Thank you, Mr. Champion."

I mention this because sometimes I have come in with cash, and I have denied the existence of my Super Saver Card. This has resulted in a mystified expression from the clerk and often considerable alarm. I am then pressured to sign up for a Super Saver Card. I decline. I am asked again. I decline again, even when I know it will save me about $2.67 in my current purchases. This has happened several times, irrespective of the length of the line. What makes the decision creepier is that the clerk actually stops sliding items across his scanner just to ask me this pivotal question, which is apparently important enough to supercede all other service. Sometimes I fear that if I do not produce the Super Saver Card, the clerk will call management. Nevertheless, I hold out. After a brief impasse, the clerk then scans the final few items, but not without slamming a can of tomato sauce hard against the slick plastic surface, as if to suggest that because I have not exercised my Super Saver Card option, I have dramatically inconvenienced him, if not caused irreparable injury to his work ethic, pride and reputation.

Who was the madman that spawned this code of deportment? And why should "Mr. Champion" and Super Saver Cards matter so much? Most businesses would be proud to recoup an additional $2.67 that I choose to give to you out of a strange combination of laziness and concern for civil liberties. But your respective stores have actually taken umbrage because your profit margin is lesser.

Or to put it another way, what the fuck?

Confused and terrified of the American shopping experience,

Edward Champion

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Australian News: "Those on low-carb plans lost weight more quickly over the first six months but failed to shed much more over the next six. Those on low-fat, low-cholesterol diets continued to lose weight throughout the year. There was no difference over the full 12 months."

Boo yah, low carbers! I win!

Uptight 35 Year Old Reveals Her Sad Two-Partner Sexual History in Public, Hopes to Rope In Virile 25 Year Old for Saturday Night Romp and Sign Modification

No to Exposed Nipples on Television, Yes to Exposing Nipples to Ashcroft -- I Don't Get It

Wired: "Americans are willing to 'get naked' for their government if they feel it will make them more secure. That's the conclusion Jeffrey Rosen reached in his new book The Naked Crowd, which explores the willingness of Americans to abandon privacy for perceived security.

Fahrenheit 9/11 Reviews

BBC: "But the movie's conclusions - true or otherwise - and highly emotional interviews with bereaved parents and injured soldiers will have a big impact on audiences around the world."

Roger Ebert: "The film shows American soldiers not in a prison but in the field, hooding an Iraqi, calling him Ali Baba, touching his genitals and posing for photos with him. There are other scenes of U.S. casualties without arms or legs, questioning the purpose of the Iraqi invasion at a time when Bush proposed to cut military salaries and benefits. It shows Lila Lipscomb, a mother from Flint, Mich., reading a letter from her son, who urged his family to help defeat Bush, days before he was killed. And in a return to the old Moore confrontational style, it shows him joined by a Marine recruiter as he encourages congressmen to have their sons enlist in the services."

Unintentionally Hilarious Lead of the Day

1490 WBEX: "Coldplay singer Chris Martin says he and wife Gwyneth Paltrow have no idea why they decided to call their baby Apple."

Comparative Interviews

E.L. Doctorow: "Writing isn't just a matter of putting words on a page. If you do this long enough, there's a kind of loss of self. It can drive a writer to drink, depression, whatever. The hazards are quite visible in the physical wreckage."

Jerry Jenkins: "Jesus is our model. His parables were clearly fictitious, while communicating truth with a capital T."

At 21, The Goldfish Put an End to My Three-Week THC Experimentation Phase. Apparently, They Sell Novels Too.

It's been reported everywhere, but grab the goldfish cracker cover of Tom Perrotta's Little Children while you can. Pepperidge Farms, in collusion with Perrotta to obliterate all remainders, has provoked a recall.

Interview with Good Ed & Bad Ed

Since I don't have the time right now that my sexy colleagues do to read an author's collected works and interview some writer about the pressing issues of the literary world, and since pith is the order of the day, the other night, I had a conversation with Good Ed and Bad Ed. Neither of them are authors, nor are the collective two half as interesting as Andrew Sean Greer. Good Ed is a nice, considerate entity living within my body who sometimes treats people to lunch, walks old ladies across the street, and the kind of guy you might take home to meet your parents. Bad Ed, by contrast, is the Loki to Good Ed's inveterate angel. Bad Ed is known to scowl, drink too much, and offer scathing remarks without apology. What follows is my transcription, which took six days and several bottles of lager to get through before the tape inadvertently cut off.

ED: I notice that you've been reading Anita Diamant's The Red Tent and that you were getting through the book only with complete reluctance.

GOOD ED: I'm sure Ms. Diamant is a nice woman. Perhaps the problems started with me. I must confess that, as an atheist, I don't really have much of a religious background. So I may not be as familiar with Genesis as other folks are.

BAD ED: Shut up, bitch. A bad tale is a bad tale. The lady can't write. "Ruddy" and "red" in the same sentence to describe that insufferable tent? "Impassive" and "without expression" in another sentence later in the book? What kind of shit is that? Two things that mean the same damn thing. I've got your red, ruddy, and rosy bluster right here.

GOOD ED: I don't think you're being fair. This was a neglected tale that needed to be expanded and elaborated upon. Feminist subtext and all.

BAD ED: Oh please. Expansion of an oft told tale? Don't even pretend that you weren't snoozing to Gregory Maguire's Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. I remember that you were one disappointed mofo when you were reading that puppy. You want feminist subtext? Go read Doris Lessing or Margaret Atwood.

GOOD ED: Can I give you a hug?

BAD ED: Hell no, bitch.

ED: Okay. Hold it. Time out, you two. I can see this conversation is getting heated and I haven't even asked my second question. What prompted you to read this book?

BAD ED: That cute girl who recommended it.

GOOD ED: What?

BAD ED: You'd suffer another insufferable Rushdie novel for the opposite gender, wouldn't you?

GOOD ED: Hardly an issue now, given that we're going out with a very fantastic lady these days. And how dare you make this personal!

BAD ED: What's that? Do I detect the whiff of dishonesty?

ED: Let's be fair here and suggest that you were looking for alternatives.

GOOD ED: Fair enough.

BAD ED: Not fair at all. Be honest. How many books have you read with the intent of digging up these hazy analyses for a highly literate foxy lady?

GOOD ED: Again, not an issue. And premeditated reading? You're insane. I genuinely dig Atwood.

BAD ED: Preventive reading. Why subject yourself to trash, sweetheart?

GOOD ED: The standards are high.

BAD ED: Dear Lord, you're sounding like Laura Miller.

ED: Okay. Stop! Stop! This is not what I had in mind.

BAD ED: Hey, it was your idea to put us in the same room.

GOOD ED: Highly unprofessional. Let's talk books. Maybe about how great Cloud Atlas was.

BAD ED: Since when did you care about being professional?

[Sounds of scuffling, whimpering and various shouts.]

GOOD ED: [unintelligible]

ED: But I...

[Here, the tape cuts out.]

So How Do You Get a Creative Writing Student on the Slush Pile?

Shelley Jackson has published a short story entirely on human skin. The story, "Skin," is 2,095 words long and was published on creative writing student Rob Poulos. Poulos is currently being sent to various literary magazines with a SASE.

Hemingway the Nudist

Metherell Towers, Britain's oldest nudist camp, has been put up for sale. The nine-bedroom chateau was opened up by Edward Hemingway, cousin of Ernest, back in the 1930s. The inside dirt is that Hemingway wrote nude standing up, with the typewriter roughly at waist level. And certainly granddaughters Marguax and Mariel have had difficulty keeping their clothes on in the films that they appeared in. Is there some nudist streak within the Hemingway genotype? I leave the fine investigative team at the Literary Dick to sort this out.

Don DeLillo, Not the Next Clifford Odets

The Vancouver Courier is unimpressed with Don DeLillo's 1999 play Valparaiso, pointing out "it doesn't make for fully satisfying theatre. At the heart of DeLillo's play, there's a sad, sad story and the impact could have been overwhelming. But that's not where DeLillo wants to go and so Valparaiso doesn't go there."

The Great American Heartland: Comics First, Sexual Positions Beyond Missionary Second

Newsweek takes a look at The Escapist Unbound, suggesting that literary involvement with comics is the key to mainstream acceptance.

Walter Tevis

James Sallis is crazy about Walter Tevis, a native San Franciscan, pointing out that by Tevis's own admission, The Man Who Fell to Earth is "a very disguised autobiography." The now famous book had been rejected multiple times by publishers, despite Tevis's remarkable success with The Hustler. Here's an audio interview with Tevis from 1983 just before his death. And last August, Bookslut's Michael Schaub took a look at The Queen's Gambit. And back in 1999, both The Hustler and The Man Who Fell to Earth were named by Jonathan Lethem as two examples of great novels overshadowed by their film adaptations

But Only One Mention of Chow-Yun Fat?

Angry Asian Man, among many others, is interviewed about the sexual identity of the Asian male by the L.A. Times .

This Isn't Your Book, Bill?

At a Canadian bookstore, a discussion of Howard Rotberg's The Second Catastrophe was interrupted by an Iraqi Kurd and Palestinian taking umbrage with Rotberg's words and ethnicity and spouting off antisemitic epithets. But the two hecklers wouldn't be arrested because Rotberg shouted back at them.

Kunzru -- The M. Night Shyamalan of Literature?

Hari Kunzru, who nabbed a cool £1.2 million for The Impressionist, hopes to repeat his success with his second novel. "I've become so used to the good life that I can't imagine going back to pauperhood," said Kunzru. "Writing isn't just a testament to my abilities. It's also about stock options."

Wonder If He'll Get His Deposit Back

Worst. Apartment. Ever. And here I was thinking that I was a bit messy. (via Six Different Ways)

The Blogosphere Will Not Rest Until Every Proofreader Chronicles Their Daily Doings

Ron points to The Slush God, the blog of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction assistant editor John Joseph Adams. As Ron notes, it shows promise, not just for the insider's dope, but for anyone interested in the kind of submissions likely to be returned back to the writer.

Notice

Kevin gets published in the National Review, Maud interviews Salar Abdoh, and while silent on how the new job's going, Sarah has the Top Ten Mysteries from Booklist.

On this front, my hope is to get similar substance along these lines toe-tapping in this humble corner. However, due to current existential demands, I wish to inform my reading public that this blog is likely to suck for the next month and a half. Blog epicures are encouraged to check out the folks at the left until the beginning of July. I'll keep posting as I can. But I assure you that the content here will be written in haste, the arguments and supporting points will be flimsy, and the news obvious and hastily stumbled upon. Don't say that I didn't warn you.

California Literary Swank

David Kipen examines California literary journals in detail. Kipen notes that Zoetrope's latest issue doesn't reflect a California consciousness, but notes that the current crop extends beyond mere gimmicks.

Birnbaum v. Sarvas?

Sarvas' interview with Andrew Sean Greer is up.

The Decline of Thought

I find myself transfixed by the continuing decline of Naomi Wolf. The journalist stands, still riding on the success of a well-researched, successful and thought-provoking book The Beauty Myth, just after her anticlimactic assault on Harold Bloom. Faced with the prospect of triumphantly rebounding from this abyss with another thought-provoking article on gender relations, she tackles the recent Iraq torture photos. All of which would be shocking enough, of course, were the journalist in question not trying to apply gender roles to an inexcusable moral disintegration that defies such easy dichotomies.

If Lynndie R. England, the woman photographed next to the prisoners, were a reasonable human being, if she did not insist that she was doing a good job, if the trailer park minx did not justify her barbarism, photographed or unphotographed, with the understatement of the decade, " Mom, I was in the wrong place in the wrong time,", then perhaps a reflective essay along Wolf's lines would be necessary. If Wolf had, for example, compared England with Private Jessica Lynch, a figure used as casus belli and conveniently forgotten by the current crowd, in her essay, she may have had more credence. But like most pundits, Wolf clings to the innocence that Kurt Vonnegut recently wrote about and, as a result, remains tragically ridiculous.

That Wolf is just as capable as Maureen Dowd of hyperbole shouldn't come as a shock. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this generation of journalists is more likely to engage in jejune deconstructions of barbarism than actual reporting and analysis. Why bother to explain when the American public and their media mouthpieces are so willing to keep their heads in the sand? Why bother to demand accountability when there's the latest reality television show to cling to? And why bother to get inside atrocity when you can drag up the porn argument?

Naomi Wolf has transmuted into that impassive grad student who would respond with ideology instead of revulsion. Being detached is one thing. One expects a journalist to do her best objective work under ugly circumstances. But when theory is promulgated and porn is summoned up as the magical reason why (much like video games and movies were used to justify Columbine), one wonders whether America is capable of taking responsibility for its own representative behavior. Does the feeling of helplessness beget a feeling of removal? I leave greater minds to speculate on this troubling question.

San Francisco Travel Tip #43

For those visiting Nob Hill, the following two maxims hold:

1. Nobody drinks coffee at a cafe, especially early on a Sunday morning when most normal people are bound to enjoy it. (They all have espresso machines at home, if they drink coffee at all. And besides, what sort of madman buys scones or pastries before 10 AM?)

2. Nobody would dare to buy the Sunday New York Times from a corner store or a supermarket. (They all subscribe to it. Only plebian intellectual types will slap down their five bucks with the glorious, grousy, and growling hawker just outside Cala Foods.)

Should you find yourself visiting a friend or a loved one and not wish to commit yourself to an unexpected cardiovascular workout (as I did this morning), please keep these two things in mind upon your next visit.

Weekend Hiatus

The landlord has temporarily turned off the hot water until 5PM (and I forgot about it) and I have too many things to do, including tweaking the last ten minutes of the play. Expect a return on Monday. In an effort to provide more pith, I hope to write about the following next week:

• The stunning mediocrity of Anita Diamant and the problems of transposing familiar tales to novel form
• The promised Book Babes followup
• A post on first lit loves inspired by correspondence with the erstwhile Terry Teachout
• Larry Sultan's wonderfully smutty photograph expo at MOMA

The Book Babes Must Be Stopped

Ron points to this despicable column from the Book Babes, which not only suggests that journalism and book publishers should hold back in their coverage, but actually states the following:

[D]on't you think that it's reasonable for people to expect that depravity won't be served up with our cornflakes? This expectation has been sorely tested this week. Over and over again, we see the same photos of prison abuse in Iraq. And now, you can even witness the slaughter of an American innocent on the Internet. When does freedom yield to a form of depravity, of witnessing torture and death as if it were normative?

The stunning ignorance and willing denial expressed in this paragraph requires not only a detailed response, but a call to action that will get things changed at Poynter. At the moment, I do not have the time for either. But rest assured, for all who signed Mark's petition and for all who give a damn about the current journalistic clime, I will be in touch with you in the near future. More to come.

Humbert Hummer?

Nabakov's private papers have been auctioned off for £500,000. Among the items sold were drawings of butterflies, various zoological papers and a crude doodle of a pearl necklace.

The Bellow Family Saga Continues

Saul Bellow has received an honorary degree from Boston University. Bellow, who is 88 and remarkably virile, plans to perform the macarena the night before accepting the award. Bellow's son, Adam, has suggested to the BU faculty that, because of literary nepotism, he too has rightfully earned an honorary degree. BU informed Adam Bellow that if he'd stop writing half-engaging books, he might get his one day.

Rock Around the Shelf

Nik Cohn picks the top ten rock 'n roll books. While I certainly approve of X-Ray, where's Lester Bangs?

John Kerry: Ho-Hum Candidate, Ho-Hum Video Game

You know that the Republican National Committee is getting desperate when it tries to use videogames as a marketing tool. One of them is a boxing game called Kerry vs. Kerry, featuring commentary from Don King. But according to Jim McClellan, "these games aren't much fun to play, even if you are a Bush supporter."

Recent Confusion

It suddenly occurs to the proprietor that he is allowing silly things to plague his mind and thus the blog here in question. Recent emotional currents rolling down my grand river of life have left me in states that involve (a) absent-mindedness, (b) placing priorities on things that I might otherwise never have considered, (c) operating on a tightly regimented plan in defiance of states (a) and (b), (d) divesting myself of a lot of needless muck, and (e) being far too nice and considerate to people, more so than the cheery days of March. The end result of this is something strange, productive, and otherwise unworldly. Nevertheless, it's all true -- indeed, truer than before. I'd go into more details, but the simple fact is that I'm not entirely cognizant myself and I need to memorialize much of these strange sensations privately before I can begin to be forthright about them publicly. Plus, some of the grand plans keeping the momentous rivulet gushing are still being carried out and the nautical expert's results remain inconclusive. Plus plus, the details are bound to mesh with more details pertaining to completely unrelated things and developments rolling along (including this play). So there you are.

I'll just momentarily state that I acknowledge your confusion, but out of this mesmerizing chaos will come, I suspect, a clarity deeper than before. For those who have waded through these waters, I admire your determination. I'll do my best to provide life preservers and remind you to roll up your jeans before you get your feet wet. But at the present time, I cannot guarantee consistency in content, disciplined or otherwise. But I'll do my best.

Notes on the Slave Class

Research into day jobs has turned up some surprising insight into how bland occupations destroy the human spirit and contribute to premature mortality. Workers clinging to jobs they despise have been found not only to die two to five years earlier than those working an enjoyable day job, but have also shown a marked decline in enthusiasm for outside interests and passions, occasionally identified as "boredom." Chained to an economy that cuts tax breaks for the rich while failing to recognize the plight of the working poor, the slave class has seen their inner strength and faith depart earlier than their bloated brethren. As the slave class has recognized how closed their world has become, their interests have, in some cases, become limited to cable television and potato chips.

Experts from Plato onward ("No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man.") have realized for decades that it's necessary to enslave a sizable portion of the population while preserving an educated class. Referred to as "the service sector" or "the temp industry" or even "dull admin jobs," this slave career niche is often advertised with remarkable and unholy enthusiasm. Perky people working in departments called "human resources" and "career analysts" often inform potential applicants on how to "market their skills" or instruct them "how to create a positive impression." Descending lower down the ladder, the slave population can often be located in retail stores, motels and restaurants, hunkered over toilets with a brush, their faces plastered with the most genuine smiles they can muster, all toiling for a pittance and all subject to greater scrutiny than the population fortuitous enough to have been borne into wealth or blessed with Ivy League connections.

However, none of the social scientists ever anticipated that the existing state would create such unmanacled misery. Nor did they count upon the fact that the educated class would require the services of the slave class from cradle to grave. Nor could anyone anticipate the peak in globalization. Who knew that the slave class would be manumitted to some degree? Who knew that presenting them with the illusion of "independence" would make them resistant or perhaps so angry and irrational that they would throw their faith in with some cowboy from Texas who clearly could not manage the current state of affairs (let alone his own), or even consider a terrible act of torture as a heroic deed?

Who knew that it would be "lack of training" that would also be the casual explanation for the abusers? A casual problem that the human resources person would have an answer for: "No problem! Market your skills!"

There Are...Certain Things I Will Not Buy

DVD File reports that After Hours, a beautifully twisted Scorsese film, is coming to DVD, along with several other rocking titles. After Hours will have audio commentary from Scorsese, deleted scenes and a featurette.

Attention Potential Employers

Charles needs a job. Hire him.

Celebrating Reading Underachievement Since 1974

Kevin has again bravely served up what he calls his "lack of education" regarding the National Review's Top 100 Non-Fiction Books of the Century. My own bolded paucity (23 -- admittedly, the number would have been greater if the list had slanted left or if I had counted excerpts) follows.

1. Churchill, Winston S.. The Second World War.
2. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I.. The Gulag Archipelago.
Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia.
4. Hayek, F. A. von. The Road to Serfdom.
5. Orwell, George. Collected Essays.
6. Popper, Karl. The Open Society and Its Enemies.
7. Lewis, C. S.. The Abolition of Man.
8. Gasset, José Ortega y. Revolt of the Masses.
9. Hayek, F. A. von. The Constitution of Liberty.
10. Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom.
11. Johnson, Paul. Modern Times.
12. Oakeshott, Michael. Rationalism in Politics
13. Schumpeter, Joseph A.. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.
14. Weber, Max. Economy and Society.
15. Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism.
16. West, Rebecca. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
17. Wilson, Edward O.. Sociobiology.
18. II, Pope John Paul. Centissimus Annus.
19. Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millennium.
20. Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl.
21. Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror.
22. Muggeridge, Malcolm. Chronicles of Wasted Time.
23. Einstein, Albert. Relativity.
24. Chambers, Whittaker. Witness.
25. Kuhn, Thomas S.. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
26. Lewis, C. S.. Mere Christianity.
27. Nisbet, Robert. The Quest for Community.
28. ed., 11th. Encyclopedia Britannica. (sort of -- but I won't bold)
29. Mitchell, Joseph. Up in the Old Hotel.
30. Chesterton, G. K.. The Everlasting Man.
31. Chesterton, G. K.. Orthodoxy.
32. Trilling, Lionel. The Liberal Imagination.
33. Watson, James D.. The Double Helix.
34. Feynman, Richard Phillips. The Feynman Lectures on Physics.
35. Wolfe, Tom. Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.
36. Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays.
37. Banfield, Edward C.. The Unheavenly City.
38. Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams.
39. Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
40. Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man.
41. Becker, and Ethan. Joy of Cooking, Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker.
42. Hofstadter, Richard. The Age of Reform.
43. Keynes, John Maynard. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.
44. Jr., William F. Buckley. God & Man at Yale.
45. Eliot, T. S.. Selected Essays.
46. Weaver, Richard M.. Ideas Have Consequences.
47. Jacobs, Jane. The Economy of Cities.
48. Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind.
49. Sowell, Thomas. Ethnic America.
50. Myrdal, Gunnar. An American Dilemma.
51. Freud, Sigmund. Three Case Histories.
52. Wilmot, Chester. The Struggle for Europe.
53. Parrington, Vernon Louis. Main Currents in American Thought.
54. Huzinga, Johann. The Waning of the Middle Ages.
55. Pannenberg, Wolfhart. Systematic Theology.
56. Tyng, Sewell. The Campaign of the Marne.
57. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
58. Lonergan, Bernard. Insight: A Study of Human Understanding.
59. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time.
60. Blake, Robert. Disraeli.
61. Babbitt, Irving. Democracy and Leadership.
62. White, William Strunk & E. B.. The Elements of Style.
63. Burnham, James. The Machiavellians.
64. Pobedonostsev, Konstantin P.. Reflections of a Russian Statesman.
65. Berlin, Isaiah. The Hedgehog and the Fox.
66. Genovese, Eugene D.. Roll, Jordan, Roll.
67. Pound, Ezra. The ABC of Reading.
68. Keegan, John. The Second World War.
69. Parry, Milman. The Making of Homeric Verse.
70. Wilson, Angus. The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling.
71. Leavis, F. R.. Scrutiny.
72 Gaulle, Charles de. The Edge of the Sword.
73. Freeman, Douglas Southall. R. E. Lee.
74. Mises, Ludwig von. Bureaucracy.
75. Merton, Thomas. The Seven Storey Mountain.
76. Zweig, Stefan. Balzac.
77. Lippmann, Walter. The Good Society.
78. Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring.
79. Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition.
80. Bloch, Marc. Strange Defeat.
81. Douglas, Norman. Looking Back.
82. Adams, Henry. Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres.
83. Jarrell, Randall. Poetry and the Age.
84. Rougemont, Denis de. Love in the Western World.
85. Kirk, Russell. The Conservative Mind.
86. Gilder, George. Wealth and Poverty.
87. McPherson, James M.. Battle Cry of Freedom.
88. Edel, Leon. Henry James.
89. White, E. B.. Essays of E. B. White.
90. Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory.
91. Wolfe, Tom. The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test.
92. Behe, Michael J.. Darwin's Black Box.
93. Foote, Shelby. The Civil War.
94. Wanniski, Jude. The Way the World Works.
95. Wilson, Edmund. To the Finland Station.
96. Clark, Kenneth. Civilisation.
97. Pipes, Richard. The Russian Revolution.
98. Collingwood, R. G.. The Idea of History.
99. Manchester, William. The Last Lion.
100. Starr, Kenneth W.. The Starr Report.

Another Good Excuse to Use if the Subways's Late

Associated Press: "The 9-to-5 shift overwhelmingly favors larks. When has anyone complained that employees show up too early? Owls, on the other hand, are frequently stigmatized as recalcitrant slugabeds who fritter time and resources on the company's dime. That stigma is just another sign that shallow emblems of productivity impress American managers more than results. After all, the 9-to-5 shift has become an anachronism in the 24-hour global economy. It fails to take into account the impact of e-mail and other technologies in making traditional work hours less relevant."

If It's Any Consolation, I Was Equally Smitten With My Pre-Algebra Teacher

The Age: "According to literary critic John Guillory, the relationships that form between literature teachers and their students may carry an erotic charge. Anyone who has studied or taught the subject at university can readily confirm this from experience, observation, or hearsay. In his ponderously titled but surprisingly readable book Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation, Guillory argues that desire plays an important role in the transfer of knowledge from academics to their students in a university environment."

I've been telling folks this for years. You don't need whips and chains and whipped cream in the bedroom. Or maybe you do. Even so, a little bit of poetry and a professor's cap never hurt anyone lying naked beneath an eiderdown. So work that bump and grind, baby! Get some of that hot deconstruction action! If music be the food of lust, oh yeah!

Another Randall Misfire?

Alice Randall, who parodied Gone with the Wind, received an injunction from the Margaret Mitchell estate, and won her case on appeal, is suggesting that Pushkin was part of the Harlem Renaissance with her next novel. Alas, Carlin Romano isn't impressed: "Unfortunately, Randall's effort drags for many of the same reasons "The Wind Done Gone'' did: overwriting and repetition, tiresome thumping of racial resentment, and a pathetic Afrocentric need to claim scalps for the cause. Windsor's logorrhea suggests that Randall's own self-absorption trumped any ambition to master her invented subject. The entire Russian aspect of the book reads like pretentious window dressing for a shapeless vanity tale."

Another Reason to Bemoan the New Blogger

He was raked over the coals by Blogger, but you can find the trusted Rake at his new Pad.

A Moment of Silence

Sad news from Bakersfield. Bandit, the world's heaviest raccoon, has passed through the great raccoon gates in the sky. Bandit weighed nearly 75 pounds, more than enough to secure an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records. He was fond of Froot Loops and french fries. He is survived by his owner, Deborah Klitsch.

Joyce Carol Oates Alert

If keeping up with her publishing schedule isn't bad enough, the Washington Post reports that Joyce Carol Oates' theatrical adaptation of The Tattooed Girl will make its premiere at Washington's Theater J. Oates will also be writing Van Helsing 2: They Needed Real Writers for Universal. Efforts were made to pry the pen away from Ms. Oates' hand, but she remained stubbornly resistant and even penned a short story during the unsuccessful attempts to stop her from writing.

Library Records Reveal Neighborhood Reading Patterns

At the Seward Park Library, serving the Lower East Side of Manhattan for 95 years, annual reports have unearthed details about readers. The Times notes that in a 1920 report, sweatshop workers and tenement dwellers greadly desired Dickens and Hawthorne. During the Depression, "undesirables" scoured the stacks for books on syrup flavoring. And They Were Expendable and A Bell for Adano were popular just after World War II.

And a Real-Life Mr. Do's Castle Will Ensure a Guaranteed Coma

Wired: "The idea was to explore what happens when digital games are placed in the larger analog world of city streets. And, according to player Mike Olson, a player in Saturday's Pac-Manhattan game, one of the things that happens is that, soon after the game starts, 'the more dissolute graduate students begin throwing up.' "

Yahoos Beget Yahoos

Guardian: "A video posted today on an Islamist militant website appeared to show a group affiliated with al-Qaida beheading an American contractor in Iraq, saying the death was revenge for the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers."

Putting the Novel Into Novelty

Following up on Ernest Vincent Wright's Gasby: A Story of Over 50,000 Words Without Using the Letter "E", Michel Thaler has written a novel without verbs. Which begs the question: can a novel resembling the Incredible Hulk's vernacular remain captivating for 250 pages?

Dead Letters

A list of epistolary fiction.

War letters.

Famous Love Letters: Includes Napoleon, Robert Browning, Lord Byron, Samuel Clemens, Honore de Balzac, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and more.

"Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter Writing" by Charles Dodgson

Emily Post on Longer Letters: "The art of general letter-writing in the present day is shrinking until the letter threatens to become a telegram, a telephone message, a post-card. Since the events of the day are transmitted in newspapers with far greater accuracy, detail, and dispatch than they could be by the single effort of even Voltaire himself, the circulation of general news, which formed the chief reason for letters of the stage-coach and sailing-vessel days, has no part in the correspondence of to-day."

Einstein's letters to FDR.

The letters of Henry James.

The letters of Jane Austen.

The Key to Poison Resistance: Being Well-Endowed?

The history of Rasputin's penis (and its forgeries), before it hit St. Petersburg.

Swatting Flies with Chopsticks

One man's quest to recreate the Karate Kid shower costume. (via Pop Culture Junk Mail)

[Related Link: The Ralph Macchio Homepage, "a wholehearted tribute to the greatest actor of the 20th century."]

This Week's Forecast

Due to lack of sleep, considerable diligence, and a surfeit of giddy emotions, posting will be light, if not nonexistent, over the next couple of days. Communications will continue, although indignation may be staged and/or plagiarized solely for the benefit of house residents.

Cheney Claims Temporary Deafness When Asked About Iraq Torture

Are You Being Sarved?

Mark "Macho Man" Sarvas has a rocking new design up and promises to get an interview with Andrew Sean Greer up in the near future.

I'm Still Recovering from Chicago Chaise Longue Time

The Chronicle on Noah Hawley: "With this unexpected gift of New York barstool time, he grabbed a napkin and made notes about characters and scenes for a novel about love and marriage."

Did I miss the memo that outlined the differences between East Coast and West Coast barstools? And can you dance in New York barstool time? Or do you need a jazz trio to make sense of the signature?

Scott and Zelda

Just after the Fitzgeralds' lives have been turned into a musical, Kit Harvey takes a look at the "first celebrity couple."

Information Overload? No. Try Cheap Justification for Passive Behavior.

MSNBC: "Levy is all but helpless, he says, when new e-mail arrives. He feels obliged to open it. He is similarly hooked on the news, images and nonsense that spill out of the Internet. He is also a receiver and sometimes a transmitter of 'surfer's voice,' the blanched prattling of someone on the phone while diddling around on the Web."

Hey, Levy, I've got two words for you: pro-active life.

I've become increasingly bothered by the idea that people feel "helpless" in our present day. Just about the only thing that mystifies me more are the people who proclaim that they're "bored." Bored? How can you be bored with all the crazy shit going on? Depressed? Delighted? Lustful? Geeky? Hell yeah. But bored?

For the "helpless" sort, I'm not talking about folks who have specialized interests and exchange knowledge about particular topics. That much involves a pro-active discussion in which various people are trying to wrestle with pertinent information, often in collusion with each other (sort of like these lit blogs). I'm talking about the folks who are incapable of moving the rudder even a smidgen, the people who feel compelled to use outside variables as an excuse.

I couldn't balance my checkbook because I was catching the last episode of Friends.

I went shopping but I forgot my list and I was overwhelmed by the choices.

I couldn't get up this morning because I was too mesmerized by my girlfriend's accessory.

It never occurs to this type of person that filtering out the nonsense and focusing on the important information may very well lead him to a personal evolution. Or not. But, at the very least, it will get the person closer to who he really is, even if it involves taking steps and falling flat on his ass.

Levy follows up his whining with the idea that "it is part of our birthright as human beings to have space and silence for our thoughts."

Well, it's also part of our birthright to make decisions, sometimes without the benefit of considerable rumination, and to try things. That means seriously considering that 3AM call from Phil about an impromptu road trip to Vegas. To me, one of the most horrifying ideas of existence is to remain in a year-long passive stupor. Perhaps Levy's idea angers me because I used to be like this, and I had pretty horrendous parental models involving passive self-entitlement that took years for me to personally reprogram.

Today, I cannot understand how anyone could ever live like this, let alone someone like Levy, who, at 53, is too old to be intimidated by everyday existence when, in fact, he can set up spam filters or unplug altogether.

One Week of Bananas

(Photo courtesy of Z.)

Tanenhaus, Divorce That Laura Miller Column!

A reader wrote in to say that she was mystified by the continued employment of Laura Miller at the Gray Lady. "I knew," she continued, "like an unreliable vibrator, that every time I put a Laura Miller column into my hands, the sensation would start off pleasant and then sputter out because the electric current turned tepid and the vibrator itself was poorly designed. So now, in lieu of a pleasurable Times experience, I've been forced to call my man over every Sunday morning and have him ram me against the bedpost to iambic pentameter, while we both shout out Shakespearean sonnets. Fortunately, the downstairs neighbor, a professional drummer, appreciates our mutual syncopation."

Yankee ingenuity is justly celebrated, independent and far away from Sam Tanenhaus's hallowed millieu, but why subject yourself to an irksome book columnist when so many sublime ones are available? Every literature freak recognizes the threshold my correspondent has yet to cross: the moment you decide that a book columnist has jumped the shark.

For some, it's like having your limbs tied up with hard hemp rope, your mouth gagged with a tight hankie, and a dominatrix referring to you as Phil Donahue. Even when you suggest that capital punishment should be aired on national television, there's still the problem of being muffled by the handkerchief and manacled with the rope. And the dominatrix may, in a moment of kindness, get you your Sunday newspaper with that precious book section. But when the last page is Miller, as opposed to Margo Jefferson or that enjoyable comic strip, the dominatrix gains additional leverage, ruining what is, ostensibly, a perfectly deviant sex life.

But surely readers, who aren't responsible for filtering through idiotic op-ed columns and deciding upon who gets a column and who does not, and who know what it's like to suffer through silly book coverage offered by The Scotsman, are more generous? Not really. Even when columnists like Miller grab quotes from noted authors in an effort to justify their stature, it still cannot propel a 1,000 word column that can essentially be reduced to one sentence: "Don't read the books you don't want to, dude."

The fact that these book columnists are so joyless and smug over book-related subjects that are essentially non-issues makes one wonder why these columns exist in the first place. Is the answer simply that Laura Miller is, as Chicha has suggested, sexually frustrated? If that's the answer, then why the horrendous columns? Other great writers (HP Lovecraft, Emily Dickinson and Cornell Woolrich come to mind) have managed to produce greatness in stark contrast to their nonexistent sex lives. And they were writing fiction and poetry, not literary criticism, let alone a regular column.

There remains one ineluctable conclusion: Laura Miller has served her purpose. She must either produce something compelling in the next 60 days, something that recalls her early days at Salon, or jump over the Harold Bloom Memorial Bridge and throw herself into the Ponderous Hudson.

Tuning Out Is Not an Option

The Guardian: "Using sexual jibes and degradation, along with stripping naked, is one of the methods taught on both sides of the Atlantic under the slogan 'prolong the shock of capture', he said. Female guards were used to taunt male prisoners sexually and at British training sessions when female candidates were undergoing resistance training they would be subject to lesbian jibes."

Scalia Erodes Free Speech for AP Reporter: "As Scalia spoke, a United States Marshal stepped in front of Denise and demanded that she turn over the digital recording she was making to back up her notes. She tried to say no, but the marshal ignored her and erased Justice Scalia’s words from memory on the spot."

CNN: Judge orders couple not to have children.

I'm sorry if there hasn't been a lot of book news lately, but when we live in a nation that restricts personal freedoms, obstructs the press, and teaches unnecessary sadism (later enforced) to soliders, it's a bit difficult to dance a joyful jig.

Oh, and Van Helsing is easily the worst movie of the year. If you want vampires, see the old Universal horror films, any of the Hammer horror films, Near Dark, hell even Lust for a Vampire, anything other than this cinematic turd. I am convinced that Stephen Sommers will become a dreaded name in the annals of cinematic history. The film is so dumb and condescending that when we see a half-constructed Eiffel Tower framed prominently in an establishing shot, we also get a title card that reads "PARIS." No shit? Paris? I mean, here I was thinking we were looking at that Paris hotel in Vegas or something.

So spineless is this film that there are no nipples on the flying vampire ladies. The film is an unrelenting headache of noise, futile shock moments and ADD editing. It's something of an unintentional achievement to throw in Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster and a wolfman and not offer a single compelling moment. Kate Beckinsale is neither attractive nor capable of emoting beyond the level of a stale Saltine cracker. (Witness her bland delivery as she hears her brother howling in torture, which suggests an actress whose idea of human experience doesn't extend beyond the hauteur of a Parisian catwalk.) Hugh Jackman does what he can, but not even Laurence Olivier could bring dignity to jejune dialogue like, "Guess it's time to leave." And Richard Roxburgh is the dullest Dracula I've ever seen. Lousy accent, even lousier delivery, the kind of inept thespian you expect to pop up at 3AM on the Sci-Fi channel, not some big-budget Hollywood movie. Think Wild, Wild West applied to Universal horror. Yes, it's that kind of pain.

Thank goodness I saw this with an amazing moviegoing pal

Friends Recap

Last night, millions of Americans decided that they needed an emotional experience. The only way, of course, to feel the pitter-pattering within their collective hearts was not to set foot outside their homes and get to know their fellow neighbors, but to turn on their televisions and watch the final episode of Friends. There, they would experience cardboard cutouts who would illuminate and enrich them. Would Ross and Rachel get back together and have all sorts of crazy sex on camera right before a commercial break? And, most importantly, would we ever see a character in the Friends universe who was not shallow, Caucasian and attractive?

Having seen maybe ten minutes of one episode of Friends and not having experienced a single magical moment of this amazing television program since, I feel as if I'm thoroughly qualified to provide you with speculation on what happened last night.

The big question was whether Ross and Rachel got back together. Since this was in fact the final episode, this was a plot development as smoothly calculated as a Tic-Tac-Toe victory. But, yes, Ross not only got Rachel back, but had another character named Phoebe drive him to the airport. At the airport, shortly after walking past a dark-skinned extra being frisked by airport security, Ross told Rachel that he would be voting for George Bush in November and that he wanted her to do the same. Rachel told Ross that this was the most romantic thing that any guy had ever said to her and, after some witty banter about having freedom fries for lunch, Rachel did not get on her plane to Paris. Ross and Rachel decided that they would move to upstate New York and hire a few Spanish-speaking maids to use as human furniture.

The six New York flatmates handed in the keys to their apartments and collectively beat their landlord up. Not only did they receive their security deposit immediately, but they also received a signed waiver stipulating that the landlord would never bring the assault charge to a court of law.

Chandler revealed to Monica that he had a serious drinking problem and that he had taken the twins to the Pussycat Theatre from time to time for some quality pornographic entertainment. Monica understood and decided that it would be best if their young family moved to suburbia, where they would be better able to hide their problems from their neighbors and the television public.

Phoebe told Joey that she would be more than happy to have 2.2 children and be "a good wife." She resolved to be put in her place, clean and cook for Joey, and agreed that she would never have a partial birth abortion.

Joey, meanwhile, promised that he wouldn't develop as a character any further. He had a spinoff series to pursue and, thus, it was essential to color himself within the lines. We will report any developments as they come in.

AudBlog #15 -- Rebuttal Memo (Warning: Pretty Frightening)

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AudBlog #14 -- Memo to Self

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AudBlog #13 -- The Impression (Warning: Tired Ranter)

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2004 -- The Year of Kickass Mammoth Novels

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

Remind Me Never to Play Tackle Football with Ian Sansom

Ian Samson offers an unapologetically scathing assault on John Fowles:

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

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

(via Rake)

Rummy Told to Stand in Corner for Iraq Torture, Refuses; Defiantly Demonstrates Disappearing Thumb Trick

It's A Good Thing They Didn't Ask Me to Write the Captions

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

Fahrenheit 9/11 -- Publicity Stunt or Legitimate Gripe?

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

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

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

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

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

Never Mind the Orgasms

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

James Patterson to Write Children's Book

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

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

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

"It's a good smile," Rufus the Elf whispered. "I wouldn't change a single thing about it."

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

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

"Tough business," Kimberly admitted. "But we'll make it through."

"Just keep smiling," he said to her. "It's the right thing to do."

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

Rufus looked at Kimberly. Kimberly looked at Rufus.

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

The Decline of Customer Service

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ED: Stop reading from the script!

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

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

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

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

New Crobuzon III

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

Happy Cinco de Mayo

Adding It to the Bookpile

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

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

New Granta

The newest Granta has hit the stands. And with the emphasis on hidden histories, there looks like some juicy stuff to sift through. T.C. Boyle, J. Robert Lennon, Geoffrey Beattie, Diana Athill. None of it available online, mind you, but a very enticing reason to hit the literary journal section.

PEN Announces Important Subsidies to the Rich

Starving writers let loose a collective cry of anguish as PEN awarded extra cash to those who didn't need it. Two year scholarships at $35,000/year have been granted to rich literary darling Jonathan Safran Foer, Will Heinrich and Monique Truong. Also rolling in the dough is poet laurete Robert Pinsky, who has reportedly been planning an east wing extension to his house. Other awards were given to Anthony Swofford for Jarhead, playwrights Lanford Wilson and Lynn Nottage, and children's author Deborah Wiles.

Regular Coverage Involves Subjecting the Host to Misery

Some of you may have noticed that I haven't been posting a lot of literary content lately. I promise to get back to the usual book news, reviews and other thrills that keep my three regular readers glued to the monitor, along with another staccato burst of audio blog entries, but until then, let me offer some reasons why:

1. During the weekend, I had an incredible experience that lasted twenty-four hours. It did not involve drugs or any out-of-the-ordinary debauchery, but it did involve lack of sleep. Just as bad I suspect, given that I didn't have a bite to eat during seventeen or so of those hours, save for a rat I found wandering underneath an ancient icebox located in a dingy basement that I escaped from, moments after the blindfold was removed.

2. In the past two weeks, I have been pretty darn happy and very pro-active in other parts of my life. If there's any downside to this, well, it's prevented me from engaging in this little web-based distraction. Your only hope for regular and focused blog content is a bona-fide state of misery and anger which causes an impromptu 4,000 word dirge on how lit blogs are organized into academic, non-academic, post-academic, pre-operative, pastoral, paint-by-numbers, postmodern, and OFF (i.e., outright fuckin' funny). Then again, who wants another manifesto about blogs that only a handful of people care about?

3. I believe I've been writing more and reading less. I read only one and a half books last week, as opposed to my usual two or three. That's clearly not enough stacked next to the amazing folks who can get through six books a week, have a full-time job, live life, and apparently amputate all four limbs from a random pedestrian in less time than most of us take to make a sandwich.

4. George Bush and his policies are bankrupt on almost every level.

4(a). Political discourse revives the same damn arguments. But it doesn't refrain me from expressing horror. Still, even with politics fired off in extreme bursts, it fits the same damn arguments.

4(b). John Kerry is a goddam bore and I've been spending way too much time trying to convince other people that they must vote for him. Frankly, it's a tough sell. I feel like a snake oil salesman or some guy on a used car lot named Bernie. I'd be able to sell shit-scented toilet paper better than this guy.

5. Because there is no way to modify the size of the little window in Movable Type, my eyes hurt after about 600 words of rambling about something. Factor in thinking under the radar of emolument, and you begin to realize how it's become next to impossible to post long magnificent entries like Sarah's.

So there you have it. I'm sure some of these things will change. But your only hope for regular coverage is to kill my friends, destroy what remains of my reputation, and otherwise make my life miserable. It's not going to happen, of course, because my head will keep popping up like a jack-in-the-box. But you can try.

I will, of course, try to maintain the blog under these conditions. But, dear readers, if I abstained from the truth, I wouldn't be able to keep up the grand echelons of blogging seen here.

Personally, I've Whiffed a Micromegas on A.O. Scott

"Elvis has this sort of Candide-like air about him." Elvis has left the Gray Lady, and the press is pulling reverence histrionics that are laughable at best and incoherent at worst. However, anything that gets Bill Keller groveling can't be all bad. (via TMFTML)

Happy Season

Scott O'Connor writes in with news of The Happy Season, a collaborative poem/photography chronicle now in week two (and very much inspired by Fray, it would appear).

Forecast

Posting will remain light, with a possible chance of lengthy ramblings during the day job. Because of very pleasant recent events, temperament will remain sanguine, likely to settle into a calm that may disappoint readers looking for aggro tirades and felicitous flayings.

Denueve -- Apparently, No William Styron

Catharine Denueve's diaries, A l'ombre de moi-même, were published in France last week, creating something of an uproar. Liz Hoggard doesn't think it's a big deal, pointing out, along with other critics, that the book is a collection of "food, the weather, wigs and costumes but disappointingly little on psychology."

Yesterday's Definition of Libel is Today's "Duel of Stories"

Laura Miller: "The ''Opening Skinner's Box' controversy looks like a quarrel about facts, but it's really a duel of stories. Slater's subjects are saying, in part, 'How dare you presume to tell the story of us? Now we're going to tell the story of you!'''

For more on the subject, check out Ron's Lauren Slater archives, which include comments from Slater herself.