Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant

A Proud Crank

To the foolish fop who dared to defend my honor at Maud's, let it be known that I am a proud crank, a consummate dunce, and run such a fever that neither a team of doctors nor infinite cases of quinine can stop me from babbling like a raving loon. There's no honor denying these silly misinterpretations. I get enough of the jejune (nod to Birnbaum) PC shit when I visit Berkeley. So please: I urge all able Reluctant readers to flurry epithets posthaste!

Back to my temporary Bastille.

Why Walter Kirn Should Take a Vacation

Exhibit: Kirn's review of David Foster Wallace's Oblivion.

Number of words in review: 1,399.
Number of words quoted from book in review: 186
Percentage of quoted excerpts as part of review: 13%
Approximate fair use percentage under dispute in the infamous Gerald Ford/Nation dust-up: 13.3%
Number of times "anxious" or "anxiety" is mentioned: 2.
Number of parenthetical asides: 6
Number of onerous Tom Swify adverbs (not counting quotes): 17
Number of prefix-laden non-words: 7 ("maladapts," "decontextualized," "hyperfocused," "microtextures," "superbrain,""hyperarticulate," "overstimulated")
The Pain Reliver Commercial Homage Award: "Data-dazed. Cybernetic. Overstimulated."

Back to hiatus.

Hiatus

Due to life circumstances, we're pretty much done here until the 4th. We're also still behind on our email. So apologies to all on that score. We'll get back to all of you when the DSL kicks in at the new place. (In fact, we've already started on the replies.) In the meantime, check out this latest John Barth interview and feel free to visit some of the fine folks on the left.

[UPDATE: And before I poof away completely for a week or so, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Terry's self-reflective essay on living day(s) with nothing to do, an existential state that the Reluctant hungers for, but that seems a far off day to dream about.]

[ANOTHER UPDATE: Since people apparently want to know, my take on Fahrenheit 9/11 is this: It doesn't present a solution. If you've been following the news, it doesn't present much in the way of new information. The marine recruiters are creepy. The singular trooper governing Oregon is sad. It makes great satirical use of found footage, but if it's meant to serve as agitprop, then why doesn't the film have the conviction to lobby for Kerry? I found the story of the conservative Democrat who lost her son to be heartbreaking, but I felt as if this interesting side story was lost within Moore's deliberate pandering. Three stars. Joe Bob says check it out, regardless.]

You Didn't Hear It From Me...

...but Maud's story is up at Swink.

Just Tell Them You're Kilgore Trout, Assuming the Fuzz Has a Sense of Humor

Wired: "The Supreme Court ruled Monday that people do not have a constitutional right to refuse to tell police their names. The 5-4 decision frees the government to arrest and punish people who won't cooperate by revealing their identity."

We Are Them

The Guardian: "Detainees held in Afghanistan by American troops have been routinely tortured and humiliated as part of the interrogation process, in the same way as those in Iraq, a Guardian investigation has found. Five detainees have died in custody, three of them in suspicious circumstances, and survivors have told stories of beatings, strippings, hoodings and sleep deprivation."

My Culture: High and Low

In light of moving and all, I wasn't able to attend the California Book Awards. But now I'm regretting it. Jeff points out that the awards ceremony turned nasty:

"His view is that art is elitist. He's wrong."

At this, one San Francisco author stormed out, causing a slight breeze. (Word spread quickly that she is a friend of King's, and they are both members of the all-author rock band, the Rock-Bottom Remainders.)

Wenclas Responds, Reluctant Rebuts

King Wenclas has responded to the criticisms hurled his way. He writes (in the first of two comments):

Well, I'm going to defend my organization and myself. It's called free expression. There is nothing wrong with debate. It's healthy for literature. Before the ULA arrived on the scene there was too little of it.

The truth is that literature is marginalized in this culture, because for much of its recent history it's been the property of stuffy professors genteely drinking tea in faculty rooms. (The tea to keep the enervated creatures from nodding off.) Contention is healthy-- even when it's over-the-top, the way the ULA does it. A little noise might remind the general culture that literature isn't completely dead.

At the same time we've done way more than anybody else to expose genuine corruption in the literary world, while everyone else has preferred to remain quiet. Or does anyone believe that Mr. Moody, mentioned on this thread, who lives on Fishers Island, really should be receiving so many financial grants? We circulated our Protest about that to 300 literary people and not one would sign it. (40 zinesters did.) What does that tell you?

Are we really picking on him? We, a rag-tag group of zine writers, and he sitting at the center of many of the major centers of cultural power (PEN, Young Lions, NEA, major magazines, etc.)

My point about Peck is that in his review about Moody he ignored any main issues, giving readers smoke without the fire. And yes, the ULA has been effective in circulating our message (including numerous write-ups in Page Six) so that Peck (who taught at the New School at the time we were making noise; a school where much of the writing faculty are Moody's friends) and Sven Birkerts could hardly not be aware of us, and the contention we generated.

I don't think this is a difficult issue to understand. Birkerts writes an essay about contention in the literary world. Much of said contention was raised by the ULA. (Why The Believer covered us in one of their early articles-- and put it at the front of the issue. Then later ASKED us to submit a letter to them to continue the matter.) Dave Eggers and Jon Franzen were certainly aware of us; witness February's Amazon fiasco. It's not a case where someone is inventing the telephone in America while someone is inventing it in France. In this case the telephone was already invented and operating, coming through loud and clear.

Either Sven Birkerts intentionally left us out of the story, or he's clueless about what's happening in the lit world. That's all.

Am I too vociferous in making these remarks? Should I soften them, water them down, so they're acceptable to the Princess-and-the-Pea denizens of the literary world? Should we return to before, "where never is heard, a discouraging word"?

I don't think so.

First off, I thank Wenclas for his fairly civil response (at least with the first comment), which is always a good place to start when having a discussion.

Certainly, I can agree with the sentiment that quality literature is often outside the grasp of the commonweal. The question is whether getting in everyone's faces about the problem is the right way to elicit awareness. We're talking books here, after all, not foreign policy. I have a significant problem with where the ULA's crosshairs are targeted. Rick Moody may very well be an overrated writer or "the worst writer of his generation," but it's the industry that publishes his books. It's the educational system that determines literary standards and, as a result, has a formidable influence in forging literary tastes. Factor in teachers tied to mandatory reading lists of dead white guys, dingbat mandatory standards, and inner city school libraries reduced to ancient crumbling texts housed in asbestos-laden cinder blocks, and you have an atmosphere that's about as nuturing to reading as a certified massage therapist bluntly pummeling his client with a gunrack between rubs. Consider, for example, the case of Philadelphia, a state where federal funding has not been allocated to school libraries since 1976. Or, for that matter, how Tennessee's blurry state guidelines have allowed school libraries to remain out-of-date and far from eclectic.

The unilateral assumption here is that authors are to blame for this predicament. But that's only part of the problem. Without even scratching the surface, one would have to uproot the whole of American life to (a) promote reading in a way that doesn't bore the pants off the next generation, (b) encourage the current generations to develop their own literary sensibilities, and (c) maintain a publishing equilibrium whereby "real" literature (still, a curiously nebulous definition from the ULA) is published hand-in-hand with tales from the privileged. The idealist in me would like to believe there are answers to these problems, but any pragmatic-minded person can agree that they certainly won't be had overnight. Perhaps if ideas and solutions were bandied about with the confrontational hijinks, the 300 literary figures might have signed the petition. (In sifting through the ULA's site, I was unable to find any copy of this purported petition or even an detailed platform of the ULA's position, save through the four general points seen on the main page. Even the Black Panthers had a platform. Call me crazy, but it seems very counter-productive for any movement to disrupt without having a clear-cut set of goals and an agenda available for the people whom it wishes to convert. What we do find, however, is a bunch of hoodlums flipping us the bird.)

And while the publishing industry certainly is problematic, without specific examples, the "genuine corruption in the literary world" sounds like one of Nixon's paranoid fantasy, particularly since it comes graced with the implication that the ULA represent the only group of rabble-rousers. Has Wenclas not observed some of the stuff that the literary blogs have uncovered in the past few months? Ron and Mark questioning the Book Babes' limited definitions of publishing on CSPAN? The Zoo Press scandal uncovered by Laila? The Academy of Art student expulsion scandal reported here and at Neil Gaiman's? Au contraire, Wenclas. There are more than enough people who care about literature out there, many with the same goals and feelings, all putting in the work that the New York Times Book Review should be committing their considerable resources to. The difference is that they aren't out there demonizing their targets. They're collecting information and trying to report it as fairly and accurately as possible.

Furthermore, as I suggested in my previous post, ideas are far from exclusive. Any professional writer knows this. It's about how one articulates and argues the idea. That's what's going to create the impression in the reader's mind. But to insist that a writer is "clueless" because he decides to ignore the opinions of others, let alone fail to recognize all 6,000 takes on the same idea in a 2,000 word essay, is unreasonable and baseless. A critic like Birkets prioritizes what s/he deems the most valuable offerings of the bunch.

And if literature is the territory of the rich and should be damned accordingly, then where do we place the noble gesture of Jonathan Saffran-Foer, who announced on these pages that he had given back his award back to PEN? By almost any assessment, that's a magnificent gesture -- one overlooked by the ULA, despite the fact that the ULA's very antics may have helped in some small way to make authors aware of the disparity between the starving novelist barely getting by and the bestseller making a fortune.

Again, as I said in my previous post, I'm not completely damning the ULA. I'm just offering some possibilities why the ULA may not be getting the press it desires. Personally, I find it infinitely tragic that the ULA's basic message (which I agree with) is dwarfed by its inability to articulate, its frequent Manichean damnations of writers, and its recurrent incivility.

We're Not In This for the Money or Anything

In a bid to avoid the real purpose of this blog, we decided to catch the wave and try harder to cater to our readers. While we decided what it was you wanted, figuring out what good things to bring into your mailbox and calculating what you might be interested in buying, we felt sort of hollow giving into this commercial impulse. Therefore, we leave others to maintain the subterfuge.

Sadly, Terri Schiavo Won't Be Able to Join the Fun

In Florida, Jeb Bush has unveiled a program called Read Together Florida, essentially a statewide version of Oprah's Book Club. The first book chosen was Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. The Golden Gate Gazette reports that early meetings at the Collier County Public Library had people discussing the storyline.

Miguel Cohen's "Ulysses," Part 2

TEXT: He peered sideways up and gave a long low whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm.

-- Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you?

MIGUEL: First, we had peering down and calling up. Now we have sideways up. Is Joyce suggesting that Buck's pining for multiple positions? The other day, I threw several quarters on the ground and picked them up so I could look up a few skirts. It was a trick I learned from Splash. One thing I didn't do was offer a catcall like this Buck guy.

And Chrysostomos? Turns out I'm not as familiar with my Bible as much as I'd like to be. This guy says it's a reference to Buck's "gold-capped teeth" (duh, dude) and some Greek guy who liked to bandy about a lot of rhetoric. But I think this is the kind of nonsequitur thing you usually spout off after a curry and lager. But what's with the long whistle and then the two short whistles? Morse Code?

Switch off the current? Okay, so Buck's going to settle down finally?

TEXT: He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips.

-- The mockery of it! he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!

He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet, laughing to himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped up, followed him wearily halfway and sat down on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he propped his mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and lathered cheeks and neck.

Buck Mulligan's gay voice went on.

MIGUEL: See, he's getting off the gunrest. So he's no longer sexually frustrated! But what's the deal with the covered bowl? And if he's looking gravely at Kinch, is he ashamed of his sexual energy? Loose folds. Yeah, Buck, it's still ungirdled. But where's the wind to save your lecherous ass now, padre? Also, he's still plump, but he's gone from "stately" to "shadowed." So if Buck's a randy bastard, the presumption here is that he'll always be plump no matter what. Are we to imply here that plump people are more sex-obsessed than others?

There's also the juxtaposition of age and higher status (prelate). But it doesn't sound terribly sexy to me. Where then is this pleasance coming from?

And why is Buck jealous of his name? Or is he still drifting in abstractions?

I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little worried about Stephen moving to the gunrest. If that's where the "current" or the action's at, then I fear that Stephen will succomb to Buck's sexual frustration. Or perhaps it's this whole Greek-themed Catholicism that's at issue? Religion as the ultimate sexual current?

And, no no no! Don't put the sticky ejaculate on your cheeks! Ewwww! And his neck! He's been annointed!

TEXT: -- My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring, hasn't it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. We must go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid?

He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight, cried:

-- Will he come? The jejune jesuit!

Ceasing, he began to shave with care.

-- Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly.

-- Yes, my love?

-- How long is Haines going to stay in this tower?

Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder.

-- God, isn't he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks you're not a gentleman. God, these bloody English! Bursting with money and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus, you have the real Oxford manner. He can't make you out. O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knifeblade.

MIGUEL: So it's Buck and Malachi now. Just like it's Stephen and Kinch. I see what's going down. Now that Kinch has been annointed with the holy shaving cream/ejaculate, he's now pining for his own Greek-like annointation. And we all know what sort of sex the Greeks were interested in, no? Will he come? Will he come? The loaded language! Lawrence of Arabia, eat your heart out!

And he's shaving, presumably a reference to the whole tonsure thing. But it looks like the love might be one way after all. Yes, my love? Take a clue from Miguel, Stephen. This Buck guy is bad news. And is this whole hair thing some masculine indicator? Maybe Buck might be calmer with a mohawk.

And Haines? The underwear? English vs. Irish? More dichotomies! Miguel's head hurts!

The Latest Hitchens Dust-Up

Christopher Hitchens has posted a longass essay tearing Fahrenheit 9/11 to shreds. I have no comments one way or the other. The wholesale dissection of the film either way before its release leaves me with a bitter aftertaste.

And You Thought Your Email Backlog Was Unmanagable

AP: "While it's long been part of the culture of the romance-novel business to accept unsolicited proposals, some publishers are making the process easier. News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers, for instance, accepts e-mail pitches on its romance Web site -- and gets a mind-numbing 10,000 online queries annually. 'We're starting to get them from other countries, sometimes in broken English,' says Morrow/Avon Executive Editor Carrie Feron. E-queries have arrived from Italy, eastern Europe and Asia. At least a few top editors are frankly irked. Diana Baroni, an executive editor at Time Warner's Warner Books imprint, says she deletes e-mail queries as soon as they arrive. 'I don't know how they get my e-mail address, but I'm getting so many I don't respond.'" (via Book Ninja)

He's Even Got the Contractions Sans Apostrophes Down

TMFTML has obtained first serial rights for My Life, which has a curious Faulkner ring to it.

Miguel Cohen's "Ulysses," Part 1

Miguel Cohen, brother of Randy "Ethicist" Cohen, has expressed a desire to come back to Return of the Reluctant. After several rounds of therapy, he confessed considerable guilt to me in an email about the Unethicist column. He was ashamed that his offerings weren't literary. He was bothered by the fact that he had to compete with his brother. More importantly, he offered me five bucks.

Inspired by the recent Ulysses blog and the Bloomsbury anniversary, Miguel has decided to offer his interpretation of what it all means. So long as Mr. Cohen's funds remain liquid, we here at Return of the Reluctant will reprint Mr. Cohen's annotations in installments.

CHAPTER ONE: TELEMACHUS

TEXT: Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

-- Introibo ad altare Dei.

MIGUEL: The thing that confuses me here is that this guy Buck is stately and plump. If Buck Mulligan echoes an elder statesman, I ask you, outside of Kucinich, have you ever seen a thin politician? Isn't this a redundancy? And if he came from the stairhead, did he pop some chick's maidenhead? How the fuck does one come from a stairhead? I know there's a lot of dirty jokes in this book, but apparently this Joyce guy couldn't keep his cock in his pants. He's coming down with a bowl of lather, dig? He let loose in a bowl. So this Joyce cat has to get down and dirty from the very first sentence! My kind of guy. And what kind of asshole wears a yellow dressinggown? What's restricting this Buck guy? The fact that he's stately and plump? When's he going to put on his girdle? And is Joyce implying that Buck's cock-a-doodle-doo is exposed? Naughty pederast, I think.

And Latin? Frickin' Latin? How can anyone say something in Latin before their cup of coffee? Of course, if he's choked the chicken, then, fuckin' hell, he's probably wouldn't need it anyway.

Anyway, this "Introibo ad altare Dei" nonsense means "I will go into the altar of God." It's the beginning of a Latin mass. Presumably, this bowl of lather is his offering for God. Half a life force. Dead sticky sperm. Or something. All I know is that this man always has Kleenex in hand.

TEXT: Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:

-- Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.

MIGUEL: So is "halted" an emotion or did this Buck guy halt? What the hell's stopping him? And why would you peer down and call up? That's bad for acoustics! Unless, of course, he's about to hock a loogey on this poor Kinch mofo. So that's two references to bodily fluids and we're only three paragraphs in!

And then we have more "coming" forward. Yeah, right, Joyce. That and mounting the round gunrest. Well, we all know what that means. He's being an asshole again with that jesuit thing.

Now we have more cross stuff. As if the mirror and the razor weren't enough, he's establishing the holy venue. Gurgling when Mr. "Kinch" Dedalus is coming in? Bad form. Does this guy have a hangover? I've never known a guy to do this when he wanks himself silly. And this guy has a horse face too? And isn't hair by its very definition "untonsured"? What the fuck, Joyce? So Buck has a tonsure and Dedalus does not?

TEXT: Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly.

-- Back to barracks! he said sternly.

He added in a preacher's tone:

-- For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.

MIGUEL: Peep marshmallows? Yeah, pretty instant, I think. Best to cover the bowl there, Buck, before ol' Kinchie discovers the tight mess you've made. Been there before with brother Randy back in the day. Back to barracks? So that's where it happens. So this is what Catholicism does to folks. I've seen it happen too many times. This Catholic girl I was seeing back in Boston wanted me to feed her a communion wafer every time, just after she screamed. You know how expensive those wafers are? $15.99 for a box of those motherfuckers! And I was already spending a lot of bread on the condoms.

So if Buck's speaking in a preacher's tone, he's not a preacher, right? The genuine Christine instead of Christ? White corupscles? Okay, cat's out of the bag. You're a sick cat, James. I'm blowing this joint. And not the way you're thinking.

Someone Give Wenclas & Co. Hugs

Dan Green has weighed in with a thoughtful post about the Underground Literary Alliance, that ragtag bunch of frustrated writers-cum-Yippie wannabes that I have, until now, remained silent and nonpartisan upon. I have not exactly sanctioned this "organization," but, because I am sympathetic to alternative and underground voices, I have at least tried to acknowledge them to some degree. However, after watching the ULA antics for several years, I must now conclude that, unless they change their tune, these folks are no longer worthy of my attention or yours.

The recent Birkets-Peck whinefest, which essentially had King Wenclas complaining that the new wave of literary hatchet men had appropriated the ULA review style, left me with a queasy feeling of sour grapes, almost as if I was reading a puling adolescent's diary. I felt momentarily obliged to offer Mr. Wenclas a cookie, if not a hug and a comp ticket for the clue train. Because the professional writer and the responsible thinker knows that, given the rampant generation of ideas in the universe, inevitably another person will draw from the same associations and respond to the universe around them in a similar fashion. It happened to me once when a writer for a major news outlet used Ferdinand de Lesseps as a comparison for the dot com bust, about a few months after I had written a similar piece. The insecure writer will kvetch about it. The secure writer will realize that there are plenty of other pitch ideas floating within her head to lay down for a query or a piece.

Whatever the case, as Dan quite rightly points out, "'saying something' almost always turns out to be itself a matter of saying something that's been said many times before, or something everybody already knows, or something of great interest to the writer but of no conceivable interest to any readers, or something with which those readers already agree, or something that seems of burning urgency today but tomorrow will seem as prosaic as the newspaper article it was taken from, or something as tedious and doctrinaire as almost all 'revolutionary' statements ultimately are." The ULA's myopic intolerance to the revolution of, say, finding the edge within midlife crisis as John Banville does in Eclipse or attacking John Barth without offering a single example why the summation of his works are completely invalid (particularly, since, as I noted back in April, he was one of the few writers to expose 9/11 transitionary life in fiction) is comparable with that of a frustrated undergraduate. Certainly, all readers go through a stage where they see easy dichotomies and evil in every grey corner. But it's hard to take an "organization" seriously when they are prepared to damn a writer without offering a constructive argument.

If anything, the ULA comes across worse than the Dale Pecks of the world. For one thing, they aren't nearly as witty. And, if it can be believed, the ULA is even more Manichean in declaring certain authors as evil. Take Michael Jackman's slam of Middlesex, where he writes, "One might ask Mr. Eugenides why he is able to get away with making such idiotic comments as, 'Why is a hermaphrodite not the narrator of every novel? It's the most flexible and omniscient voice. Every novelist has to have a hermaphroditic imagination to get into the minds of men and women.' Note the emphasis on imagination, as opposed to experience. Note the emphasis on getting inside the mind, as opposed to out into the world. In such comments we see his limitations, coming from a rarefied culture addicted to gender studies and obsessed with the self and sensitivity. Like a college streaker, he is willing to look ridiculous if he thinks it shows off how he has no hang-ups." The complete inflexibility here to imagination makes one ponder whether King Wenclas could ever enjoy something as joyously harmless as the Oz books, which is nothing but the purest invention. And what's with the college streaker comparison? To offer a metaphor in return, that's like a jock circa 1987 being transplanted to contemporary Queer Eye-loving America, trying to apply his harsh homophobic language where it no longer cuts the mustard.

It is the skilled individual who will try and find something redeeming within an author they despise. (Speaking personally, as far as I'm concerned, Dave Eggers may be the most overrated author of the past decade. But the first third of Heartbreaking and Eggers' story in the mostly disappointing McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales are enough for me not to completely dismiss him.) Likewise, it is the skilled organization that will recognize that promoting literature is about gathering the best ideas of the whole group, using an invitational approach rather than a harsh procedure that destroys alliances. Granted, the ULA is one of the few literary-related groups around that takes a confrontational stance, and, given the safe and staid atmosphere, they deserve some credence on that score. But confrontation as an approach should be as well-timed and justified as silence or diplomacy. And when you're confrontational all the time, well, frankly, you're just not that interesting.

Update

I've been in the middle of packing (books -- too many books), so I have no idea if the photocopies of Norman Mailer's Xeroxed butt, which have caused at least three heart attacks and one epileptic seizure, have finally been released to the Internet. But Lizzie reports that there's a new column in this month's Poets & Writers in which Laila, Maud and myself were referenced. I haven't read the column, but I appreciate that Poets & Writers has started to not only pick up on the stories and developments of my peers (Laila was the first to note the scandal), but also gone to the trouble to source them. With literary blogs beginning to develop beyond news filtering and ancillary zingers into full-blown profiles and reviews, I think this might be the beginning of a mutually majestic relationship. But more on this later.

I now return you back to your regularly scheduled hiatus, which means intermittent literary news in the next four days and a vague glow of activity until July 4th. After that, the hope is to up the ante and get this site pepping with some more meaty offerings (along with a design upgrade) within the time allotted.

Also, Rake has unveiled the perfect antidote to the Book Babes.

When Good Roommates Go Bad

The roommate who doesn't get along with his fellow living mate will either address his grievances to his living mate or amicably part, working out the nature of his departure through courtesy and discussion, and ideally without resorting to pistols at dawn. Assuming that the two roommates are rational people, there will often be a discussion, if not a common ground where these two roommates agree to live out the remainder of their lease with the same easy adult skills that one puts to task when balancing one's checkbook. In other words, the two roommates take the appropriate responsibilities and make the most of an unpleasant situation. That generally means giving the other roommate enough time to divvy up common area possessions or plan accordingly for the other's rental-related demise.

Of course, such a smooth hitchless transition assumes that both roommates are rational, reasonable and courteous. But as I learned when returning to the apartment late this afternoon, my now ex-roommate, despite replying "Great" (and possibly "Swell') when I asked him how things were going (bimonthly, I might add), even the kindest visages hide screwball dispositions, whereby logic operates on truly skewered methodologies and even the tiniest of trinkets becomes territorial (of which more anon).

Or to offer another possible explanation: My roommate is a registered Republican in San Francisco.

Now that I've signed a new lease for a kickass apartment, some of the reasons for my hiatus can now be publicly addressed and the fascinating story of what I found left in my apartment this afternoon can, at long last, be unraveled.

The deal was this: At the end of this month, a one-year lease expired. My roommate, as one of the two tenants on the lease, planned to leave, not citing any specific reason other than that he was maybe moving in with his girlfriend in the not-too-distant future. In light of the play and the other secret projects going down, this was inconvenient but fine. I had plenty of notice from the guy. And, of course, in my efforts to be a good guy, I congratulated him and communicated to him the exact date and details of my migration -- this, with the suggestion that we could, if desired, split costs and keep the communicative beacon flaring so as to benefit the twain.

Apparently, giving him the moving skinny was my first mistake.

There had been some talk that he was planning on moving the weekend of the 26th/27th. And I had not seen or heard from my roommate for a week until this morning, where I was in the process of cooking breakfast for my sweet and fantastic girlfriend. With approximately five seconds' notice, my roommate informed me that he was moving out. this instance, rather than the 26th/27th weekend we had talked about. Sorry. Oh, and the plates were all his and he wanted to pack them now.

Never mind that I had just deposited some freshly cooked eggs, sausage and other stuff onto these very plates and was planning to take the goodies into my bedroom. I told him I'd get back to him in an hour. Fortunately, my girlfriend was beneficial in pointing out that stuff was just stuff, that it didn't really matter, and that I could always get some more. So, rather than figure out just which of the common area kitchen shit was mine (I knew I had purchased at least a few of the plates, but whatever), I told my roommate to take what he deemed his, silently concluding that if he took my coffee machine, he would be drawing blood. My girlfriend and I left, letting my roommate do his thing.

Telling him to take whatever he wanted was my second mistake.

Late this afternoon, we returned home to find various dusty trails on the ground. We opened bare cupboards and witnessed an ironic message hidden in these airy deposits. There wasn't a single plate, glass or bowl left for me to use (save one coffee mug and three shot glasses from a four shot set I had purchased a year ago -- what happened to the fourth shot glass?), not even a friendly note saying, "Goodbye, you gullible bastard! Have fun trying to serve your girlfriend some eggs now!"

Okay, whatever. I'd start from scratch. And maybe my roommate was right about buying most of the kitchen ware. It didn't matter. The new place kicked serious ass. It had an icebox, man. Tuxedos and martinis weren't too far away.

But as my girlfriend and I walked up the hall, we noticed that the shower curtain had been removed. Never mind that this shower curtain's days were numbered. It was a mildewed, ratty, and ugly old thing that was on its way out -- in other words, the perfect shower curtain for a remaining week in this place. Frankly, we were shocked that my roommate had laid claim to this.

But that wasn't all. My girlfriend and I recalled that there was half a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom when we left in the morning. When we returned, we noticed that the toilet paper had been reduced to a cardboard roller with a few spare strands of paper that, collectively, couldn't fit a pygmy marmoset's bottom.

And if this wasn't enough, I noticed this morning that my roommate had seen fit to apply his last name via Sharpie to a three-to-two prong electrical adapter (a whopping 49 cent item at Orchard Supply Hardware). This too was gone, no doubt mounted to an Elks Lodge den next to the shower curtain and a few moose heads.

Was this a joke? A testament? Some kind of canard?

It's worth noting again that my roommate never once raised his voice, nor did he address any problems, even when I asked him how things were going. Were these passive-aggressive acts the end result? Me? I'm just relieved that it's all over.

But if there's any lesson to this story, whatever you do, always have extra toilet paper and a spare shower curtain -- ideally with a printed tag bearing your name. You'll never know what kind of crazed living mate will get all proprietary on your ass.

The Fiction Writer's Get Rich Quick Not As Quick as Non-Fiction (And, In Fact, in Forty Years or So) Scheme: Write About Desert Camps

Ben Jelloun has won the world's richest fiction prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Nothing more to report today except utter depression about world events and those duplicitious deviants in Washington. Real hiatus again. As usual, check out the fine folks on the left.

If Not Tangerine Muumuus, Then Some Shade of Orange...

It's a sure bet that we were informed, but we're so behind on email that we learned it only just recently from Maud. Tingle Alley, Carrie AA Frye's fantastic new blog, goes live tomorrow. We remain sensitive, of course, to Ms. Frye's hue and garb contretemps, but we'll let forth a color and cry if she does not find a suitable sub for the tangerine muumuu. This may or may not explain our obsession. And did we mention that Halloween is our favorite holiday?

The Case for Marquand

I don't know how I missed it in the May Atlantic, but Martha Spaulding continues the ongoing fight to reinstate satirist John P. Marquand into the American pantheon. Regular Reluctant readers may know that I am nothing less than crazy about Marquand.

If you can find any of his books in used bookstores, I recommend starting with The Late George Apley or Sincerely, Willis Wayde, which are my two favorites out of the seven or so I've read (not counting the Mr. Moto books). Right now, I'm reading So Little Time, which transplants Marquand's obsession with social stratas to America, circa World War II. Much as David Lodge would later incorporate mythological subtext within the popular novel, Marquand has inserted the narrative framework for War and Peace into this fairly meaty work, which is bristling with pre-Gaddis cocktail party banter, isolationist cluelessness, and, perhaps more than many novels I've read, a depiction of how ordinary people in typical upper-class and middle-class atmospheres might have talked about America's ineluctable involvement with the War in 1940. Fascinating stuff, and timely, given the current helplessness I hear expressed over the Iraq contretemps.

The Nonfiction Writer's Get Rich Quick Scheme: Write About Postwar Life

Anna Funder's Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall has won the Samuel Johnson Prize, the world's richest non-fiction award.

Better -- The New Buzz Word for "Slightly Tolerable"

The third Madonna children's book has been declared "better" by the Canadian Press. Other reviewers have insisted that the reported increase in quality has been an orchestrated ploy to keep Madonna from writing further books after her five-book series.

Next Up: Tolstoy in 15 Minutes

A North Carolina theatre is offering an abridged version of the complete works of William Shakespeare (in less than 90 minutes, in fact). The comedy has apparently been making the rounds since 1987.

Expert to Dunce in Ten Minutes

"Crime expert" John L. Stanley was arrested in Kansas City minutes after robbing a bank. What's even more surprising was the amount of incriminating evidence on his possession.

Rosenbaum Rivals Old Faithful for Violent Gushing

Ron Rosenbaum has nabbed the new Philip Roth novel, the alternate history novel in which Charles Lindbergh beats FDR in 1940, and devoted some 4,000 words to it. The precis: the article reveals key plot elements, and Rosenbaum is as ecstatic as an aging Marin County New Ager slipping into his Birkenstocks. The more specific quibble: Ron, did we really need to know about the Lakers-Piston game?

We're Looking for the Hidden Jokes in Homer

David Kipen: "That's the Joyce I recognize. Not the mandarin classicist who finds slang and pidgin "frightful," but the omnivore who knew dirty jokes in 30 languages. My Joyce knows that the punchiest remedies are mixtures: of high and low, of songs and of tongues. Just you try it on."

AudBlog #17 -- A Special Message from Dave Deluxe-Diner

audio post powered by audblog

Rummy Demonstrates New "Cop-A-Feel" Foreign Policy to Powell

Apparently, Deb Schwarz Didn't Have the Walls for the Fitzgerald Homage

Rejection letters from various literary magazines, as collected by Deb Schwartz. (via Moorish Girl)

Believe Me, Umberto Eco Makes a More Compelling Case for Sandwiches

A desperate baker in Portland, Maine has tried to woo low-carb obsessives back to bread with an Atkins alternative culled from The Da Vinci Code.

Pryor to Written Approval

Recent NYT refugee Elvis Mitchell is writing a book about Richard Pryor. Meanwhile, Walter Mosley is writing the liner notes to a forthcoming 9-CD boxed set. And Pryor himself is writing a sequel to Pryor Convictions.

A Page of "Ulysses" A Day -- That's All We Ask

Botheration is blogging a page of Ulysses a day, courtesy of the 100th anniversary. (via MadInkBeard)

Yann Martel Off the Deep End

The Globe and Mail: "Martel shrugs when asked whether he's become downright smug because of his recent success. But he follows this shoulder roll with diabolical laughter, sticking his tongue out before answering the question.

"'You know what? You get used to anything,' he said. 'You can get used to being kicked repeatedly in the crotch and you can get used to getting random blowjobs from bookstore groupies. I know about these things because I'm Yann Martel and you're not. Do you want me to show you the two tattoos on my ass? There's one for YANN and one for MARTEL. Perfect symmetry! Of course, if that's not appropriate for a Canadian newspaper, then I'll be more than happy to offer a tasteless comparison to the Holocaust. Anything to sell more books!'"

Comics as Literature -- Some Starting Points

Superhero Comics as Literature: "It was precisely this pathos that made the potential literary quality of superhero comics almost impossible. Before Starman, comics like the aforementioned Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns took the "reality principal" found in the early Marvel Comics, (Spiderman is really a nerdy shy high-schooler that can't get a date) and gave it an edge that infused the comics with a real relevance. But quickly this "reality principal" itself became formulaic: Marriage (Superman!), divorce, death, alcoholism (Iron Man!), violence, are certainly things that people experience, but when they happen in a cape it is almost impossible to control. You end up with worse caricatures than before, as when the superheroes only had secret identities so they could pay their rent."

A New Frame for Comic Books: "It saddens me that, by and large, Americans still don't know the literary value of comic books. Much of the world and certain domestic pockets already know that the cultural stereotypes on comic books is long past over and a new generation of exceptional works awaits our discovery."

Are Comic Books Literature? "I, for one, am not ashamed to say that comic books are a form of entertainment no different than any other form of popular entertainment. As such, there’s about as much crap and as much good stuff in it as in any other entertainment medium. Comics can be clever, well-written, involving popular entertainment, but they’re pop entertainment nonetheless. That’s as should be. Comics aren’t meant to be literature, appealing only to those with cobwebs in their brains. Comics are meant to be enjoyed by all."

Eddies in the Mainstream: "Clearly, repeating the past is a poor strategy to rejuvenate an art form. Nevertheless, the alternative that is most often offered, that comics adopt the subject matter and techniques of High Art, runs into a problem that is equally obvious at this point. "

The Difference Between Comics and Literature: "The BOE claims that comics produced by Mavrides and other artists are not literature, but camera-ready commercial art, which is taxable. "

Someone Cuts Through the Swath

Rasputin gets to the heart of the matter: "What it comes down to is this: Comics began as a populist artform. They belong to the uneducated lower classes. No self-appointed defender of literature is going to let some underdressed raggamuffin into his club house -- good lord, what would the neighbors think? Artistic writing got its start during a time when only the wealthy and the clergy could actually read. It's a high-class artform that has never purged itself of its utter contempt for the common man, even when advances in public education began to allow the masses to crawl their way out of illiteracy. Comics, on the other hand, have always belonged to groups at whom the upper-crust have traditionally pinched their noses -- immigrants and adolescents."

[UPDATE: Brian offers his candidates for the Ulysses and Canterbury Tales of comic books, among many other thoughts.]

ULA A-Go-Go

King Wenclas writes in to report that Snobs Revisited Part 1 and Part II has been posted at the ULA site. This time, the ULA's main targets are Bookforum, Sven Birkets, and even Dale Peck. Note to the ULA: your huge typeface draws unfortunate comparisons to a hideous large print book.

In Defense of Rebecca Walker

Deborah Solomon & Rebecca Walker: You're the daughter of the novelist Alice Walker. Why did you decide to take her name instead of your father's, who is a lawyer?

"It's not that important for me right now. Can we talk about something else?"

Three Possibilities:

1. Using her mother's name had nothing to do with capitalizing on nepotism, but everything to do with rejuvenating the career of Jimmie "Dy-No-Mite" Walker.

2. The Dreaded Lawyer Incident of 1998. While walking one afternoon under the bright cherry trees of entitlement, Ms. Walker accidentally collided into a young law student with a bad case of eczema. The student's blotched skin reminded her of Jell-O, which she hadn't been particularly fond of as a young humorless girl. But there was one horrible side effect. Any time anyone would mention the word "lawyer," Ms. Walker would demand all parties to cease conversation. So serious is Ms. Walker's affliction that you might be having an amazing conversation with her about the influence of dadaism upon current advertising, finally coming up with a few angles that the bright young things at Brown hadn't tossed around, only to have the dialogue halted midway. It should be noted that earlier responses were more extreme. Two years ago, Ms. Walker used to scream on cue whenever anyone mentioned the word "lawyer." But with the help of a therapist, Ms. Walker now calmly replies, "Can we talk about something else?" Not only does this phrasing carry the illusion of sangfroid, but it is also an homage to Joan Rivers' infamous catchphrase (now forgotten by those nimble NYT Magazine readers who've never left upstate New York).

3. An appeal to those suffering from speech impediments. It's not very widely reported, but one of Ms. Walker's high school friends had a speech impediment. It took years of linguistical therapy for this friend to stop confusing her Ws with her Rs. Consequentially, Ms. Walker figures that the name Rebecca Walker may possess a special alliterative quality when pronounced "WEBECCA WALKER."

Drifting Inside for a Mite

As can be gathered from the slipshod updates, and my firm resistance to the idea of giving up blogging during this quasi-hiatus period, current life has reached levels beyond hectic. But I did want to weigh in on a couple of pieces of news floating through the rivulets before morphing momentarily into driftwood.

• The Rake, if it isn't clear enough, is a fantastic human being. I've been meaning to get back to him privately on this, but I'm hopelessly behind on email (assorted apologies to all on that score). For now, I'll just state my kudos here publicly. That's about all I'm capable of right now.
• As the Literary Saloon points out, Hamish Hamilton has eviscerated the latest McSweeney's. Having not yet had the pleasure of checking out this momentous comics issue, I agree in part with the Saloon's assessment. There have been too many insalubrious suggestions from the "comics as literature" crowd without justification or solid arguments. It's one thing to state it, but it comes across as a callow undergraduate announcing for the umpteenth time that God is dead. It's another thing to have someone like James Wood or Christopher Hitchens weighing in on the matter and offering a proper historical or critical perspective. Ergo, it's nice to see someone rock the boat (with admittedly too much gusto), if only to get the pro-comics crowd reconsidering their arguments. I'll only say that safe 'n sane hero worship seems steeped in the same "anti-snark" rhetoric that amounts to inexorable backpatting rather than genuine criticism. Why, for example, has the subject of Dave Sim's decline remained curiously unmentioned? I'm as much of a Chris Ware fan as the next guy, but if the comic book is a form of literature, where is its Ulysses or Canterbury Tales? Get cracking, people. Offer real arguments outside of the Scott McCloud facsimiles.
• The Complete Review has also reviewed James Cain's overlooked Sinful Woman.
• I caught The Red Elvises at Slim's on Saturday. They have to be one of the hardest working bands around. (The band, apparently, is crazy enough to play in twelve completely different venues for twelve straight nights.) While I was more impressed with their scatological riffs on 1950s be-bop rather than their tired Yakov Smirnoff misunderstandings (they have, after all, been based out of Santa Monica for several years), outside of the ho-hum neverending solos, you'd be hard pressed to find a more endearingly kitschy show. Their new songs, "Love Rocket" and "Juliet" appealed to the fourteen year-old within and have siingle-handedly made Lunatics & Poets a must-buy. Imagine if the staid Stray Cats were tainted by a much-needed dose of burlesque and you have the Red Elvises in a nutshell.

[UPDATE: Since a certain someone apparently seems to think that everything I write on my blog is about her (when I merely alluded to the "comics as literature" crowd, bandied about for several years pre-certain someones and before McCloud), and since this certain someone would like to use enigmatic argot like "certain someone" rather than get involved with an adult and civil discussion on a very interesting issue, I only wish to add that the wholesale subscription to an argument without examples, initiated only by how a particular article enrages, is balderdash. It deadens the discussion and gives ammunition to detractors. It's no better than a Green Party supporter hassling you at the Haight Street Fair without citing a single reason why. ("Because we're the Green Party, man!") What better way to nip these issues in the bud, so to speak, than an all-encompassing response that stands as sui generis? Something which takes McCloud and Ware's points and hits the ground running. This is the kind of interesting issue that literary blogs can look into. (For example, I'd love to see Mr. Green's thoughts on the matter.) Fortunately, Maud has looked at this issue from reverse, citing a Rani Dharker article that compares pomo novels with comic book technique. ]

[UPDATE 2: Also, Mr. Sarvas has interviewed Swink Editor Leelia Strogov.]

The Secret to Being Shamelessly Lionized? Convince the Public That You're Real

Patricia Harrington of Nashville, TN: "He was an honest man -- very honest -- and a real man."

John Morton of Cumming, GA: "That's what impressed me, that he was a real person."

F. Lyman Simpkins, Mayor of Pemberton Borough, NJ: "As farm [sic] as I'm concerned, he was a real man to look up to as I went through the political end of it."

Katie Heideman of Littleton, CO: "He was a real person."

Gary Mervis of Rochester, NY: "[H]e was just a real person, a very nice person."

Donny Lingle of Manheim, PA: "He was just a real person."

How Would Gavin Stand in Front of Pruitt-Igoe?

My feelings towards Mayor Gavin Newsom are mixed, but I think we can all agree you'd be hard pressed to find a sillier way of showing concern when standing in front of a housing project.

RIP Ray Charles

Put Up or Shut Up

Too many balls in the air. The content here sucks isn't as grand as I'd like it to be. I'm pulling the plug for a few weeks.

One more thing: Post offices and federal courts closing Friday because of Reagan? The funeral turned into a partisan event? Even Nixon didn't get this kind of treatment. And I will never eat a JellyBelly ever again. Never.

Hopefully, We Fare About as Well in September

The Mercury offers a first look at Dave Eggers' play, Sacrament (adapted from You Will Know Our Velocity), concluding that "the playwright and director have not yet found a way to tether the show's considerable emotional impact, its wry humor and acute sense of loss, to the concept of giving and receiving sacraments." But Robert Hurwitt gives it a rave.

Lamda Lit Award Winners

Among several award winners, Christopher Bram has won the Gay Men's Fiction Award a Lamda for Lives of the Circus Animals, a comedy set in the New York theatre world. Nina Revoyr's Southland took home the Lesbian Fiction Award.

Actors/Volunteers for "Wrestling"

Apologies for corrupting Return of the Reluctant business with the play business. We will have a separation between church and state firmly in place next month.

But if you are an actor in the San Francisco area, and you're looking to be involved with a nutty Beckettesque kind of play (with bad puns and unapologetic jokes about Preparation H), then please note that we will be holding auditions for Wrestling an Alligator on July 17 and July 18, with callbacks to be held on July 24. We have four roles, two male and two female. (To the Demolishing Crew: Yes, that's right, a character's gender has changed over the last couple of days, along with several other things, thanks in part to your valuable input. But please keep the feedback coming.) Feel free to email me at ed@edrants.com for details.

Also, we will be looking for crew volunteers for the months of August and September. More details to come.

Tanenhaus Watch

Under Tanenhaus's firms hands, it appears that the NYTBR has begun issuing corrections. The corrections, as usual, are laced with the kind of minutiae that will prevent merely a handful of fulminating fanboys from slashing their wrists. However, given the pedantic obsessions, we here at Return of the Reluctant encourage Tanenhaus & Friends to continue. Here are a few that we suggest:

"A review by Michael Kinsley suggested that David Brooks be bitch-slapped three times. Mr. Kinsley actually intended for Brooks to be bitch-slapped four times, not three. In addition, Kinsley would like to kick Brooks' ass while he is being simultaneously humiliated by a Girl Scouts troop."

"When pressed by editor Sam Tanenhaus for an 'innovative' idea for her column, Laura Miller referred to 'lingering headaches' and turned out a silly column about spy stories. She followed this up with an epileptic fit and demanded a Ritalin prescription. The Times regrets any misinterpretations caused by Miller's histrionics."

"Lizzie Skurnick intended to use 'fuck' in her review, but it was gently suggested to Ms. Skurnick that the Times was a family newspaper. The Gray Lady hopes to let down her guard, however, in the event that Mr. Bush is re-elected in November."

Orange Prize Winner Announced

Andrea Levy has won for Small Island.

Publishers Begin Reagan Grave-Dancing in Record Time

Reuters: "'We all said Ronald Reagan has passed away -- what should we do?' said Gene Taft, director of publicity at publisher PublicAffairs. 'Maybe we should take some orders.'"

Transit of Venus

We here in North America don't get the one going down today, but on June 6, 2012, the rest of the world will be jealous.

My Unilateral Country: Right AND Left

Here in the City, there's a big brouhaha going down because of a Biotech conference happening at the Moscone. In one corner, there's Mayor Gavin Newsom and the business sector heaping dinero on glitzy gilded booths, using every technique at their disposal (including well-practiced sycophantism) to woo industrialists. Because unless you're living off a trust fund, it's still a perrenial juggling act if you want to live in this town and do your own thing. So what better way to upgrade the overall standard of living and spark up the sulfur of plentiful jobs and affordable apartments then to pivot your head like an aspiring socialite at any ol' big boy looking to get inside your pants? (And in this case, the fact that the big boy's all "biotech" pounds the crude and distasteful metaphor in further, along with all subsequent explanation of same.)

In the other corner, we have protestors! From what I've been able to conclude from my morning commutes, most of the protestors are pockmarked teenagers whose working definition of instilling change involves dumping rotten fruit into intersections, rather than having civil discussions with the right people or the citizens about the issues. (You know, those trivial bystanders who might be responsible for exercising conscious consumer choices? Well, like many protestors in this cartoonish town, the protests in question are about aggravating these bystanders, rather than informing them. And what better way to vex than to block intersections at rush hour, thus causing regular working Joes and Janes to explain to bosses why they are late for work, and subsequently throwing a small monkey wrench into their job security during one of the worst economic periods in the last twenty years? Way to go, team!)

The protestors have declared the Biotech conference to be a bad thing because the biotech sector is responsible for genetically modified food. Never mind that the Frankenfood industry can be put out of commission if enough people were to consciously reject it (i.e., read labels before sliding credit cards). Never mind that, well, economic circumstances being what they are, the pickens are slim on the job front.

Do I come across as cynical? On the contrary. I actually sympathize with both camps here. But where I have the problem is that neither the Newsom camp nor the protestors are mature enough to address or understand each other's points. What we have here is the potential for a fantastic debate over a major issue. Where do we draw the line in the sand? How do we balance shaky economics with moral principles? It's an important question that deserves serious consideration as our unemployed road warriors put the pedal to the metal to pick over the small morsels dropping from the wilderbeast's maw, at least until the economy picks up. But like all political skirmishes, neither side wishes to compromise. Unilateralism, that wonderful political principle still in vogue thanks to the cowboy on Pennsylvania Avenue, has become so indoctrinated through almost every sliver of the political spectrum that it is now virtually de rigueur for politicans and protestors to do likewise.

Is this democracy at work? We all remember how effective those Five Year Plans and Great Leaps Forward were, right? What makes the current political atmosphere in this country any less different from that of the Soviet Union? Rather than world leaders deciding for us the policies and dicta we should believe in, perhaps in response to the current frustrating atmosphere, we've now deferred this duty to ham-handed small-time politicos and the barker-like protesters who follow them. The overall contentment by anyone to believe so fundamentally in their own points without listening or considering the other side is perhaps the worst aspect of political discourse that this nation has seen in the past twenty-five years. Sure, I could blame television or the Limbaughs and Moores. But consider the following statistic:

In a global study comparing voter turnout in a parliamentary election over the past several years, the United States scored 93rd out of 100.

You could blame the people for this appalling placement. Me? I blame the early advent of unilateralism, which has transformed politicans and protestors alike into living cartoons. The folks at the top of the food chain are rolling in their oversized sties, but my guess is they'd be scared shitless if we actually started listening to each other.

San Francisco -- Third City?

Bay Area improv gets a big cover story in this week's Bay Area Guardian, with the usual suspects cited (including True Fiction Magazine and Diane Rachel, whom I was fortunate enough to take classes with last year), just in time for the San Francisco Improv Festival, now playing through June 26. If you're looking to take a plunge into improv, I highly recommend taking classes at BATS or experiencing some of these fantastic groups live.

On Presidents

Right after Ronald Reagan died, I began reading Joseph J. Ellis's fascinating biography American Sphinx, which attempts to log the duplicities and conflicting character of Thomas Jefferson. I had long been interested in the book, but when I saw the endless column-inches painting Reagan as a grand hero, as a man no less holier than the Messiah himself, I grew despondent over how the role of the President has remained decidedly unpresidential in recent years. I became ired over two ideas: (1) that the current editorial clime remains so fundamentally immature and dishonest that it cannot offer a portrayal that shows Reagan's strengths and weaknesses (if only Lytton Strachey or H.L. Mencken were around to weigh in) and (2) that we now have a President as comparatively active on the culture front as a rotting rowboat tied to a quay leading up to some marvelous museum. As if in answer to these issues, Ellis's bio fit the bill. American Sphinx profiles a man who was, without a doubt, presidential material, but it has (so far) done so in a way that has allowed me to keep my hero worship in check while presenting additional mysteries.

I won't offer yet another tired dirge that either celebrates or condemns Reagan. There's enough of that floating around on the blogosphere and elsewhere. I'll only say that for as long as I can remember, I've admired Thomas Jefferson. When I was a boy first learning about this lanky Virginian, the fact that the two of us shared a dark reddish head of hair was always a plus. The fact that he was an intense reader and a man of many interests also attracted me. And when I heard that this was the guy responsible for the swivel chair, which I had always thought was one of the handiest pieces of furniture ever created, I knew that this was the horse I should bet on.

And when I learned as a teenager that this slaveowner had simultaneously written against slavery while keeping the issue on the q.t. during his political career, I was more intrigued than ever.

But I think Ellis pointed me closer to the answer when he recalled Jefferson's infamous 1786 relationship with Maria Cosway. Jefferson was in Paris at the time and Cosway was married. Jefferson had promised his wife Martha at her deathbed that he would never marry another woman. (He didn't.) But that didn't stop him from becoming completely smitten with Cosway. During their six weeks together, Jefferson injured his wrist -- for what reasons, we do not know. To this very day, on the romping front, scholars have been unable to determine precisely why, how, or if it happened. (Jefferson was very scrupulous with his private affairs, which makes Ellis's job considerably tougher.) But what we do know is that from that affair, Jefferson wrote what had to be the most passionate letter of his career. For a brief moment, the assiduous Jefferson let down his guard and authored a 4,000 word letter in which he carried on a dialogue with his Head and his Heart.

Read (or reread) it. This, and not the ability to woo over everybody on television (a mere parlor trick), is the stuff of great men. And in light of the November race, it seems a pity to me that this year, we have two candidates who, like the last race four years ago, who can't come nearly as close.

It's also worth noting that Jefferson was a lousy orator.

Major Newspaper Introduces Book Spoiler Policy

USA Today has spoiled the ending to the next Dark Tower installment. I won't even bother to link to the article, but, needless to say, seeing as how I was five books into the Dark Tower saga, I was planning on reading the other two as comfort reads. And, of course, I accidentally read the piece of information. But this throws a new monkey wrench in the grand book coverage debate. What kind of evil bastard kills a book by revealing the ending?

Be a Winner at the Game of Life

Jonathan Heawood has attempted to take advantage of Penguin's recent findings. Apparently, Penguin Books has determined that men seen to be reading a book are more attractive to the opposite sex. I find this conclusion problematic on multiple levels. For example, how does the power of reading transcend offset teeth, bad body odor, unruly hair, and an adenoidal laugh? Does this rule apply to Tom Clancy novels? And if the book is really good, is the man capable of shifting his short attention span to notice the hypothetical lady who is staring at him? And if the woman is initially attracted to the man reading the book, how will she react when he opens his mouth and she realizes that he's more capable talking about how some stirring streetcar advertisement that has caught his eye? Or is it best for the attractive male reader to simply remain silent and thus momentarily intellectual before the grand journey to the lady's flat?

Turning the issue to more private millieus, if clandestine copulative activity is going badly, can the man redeem himself by putting Jennifer Weiner between he and his lover? Is holding the book a new way to resolve relationship issues? Can the man can now simply hold up the book, receiving a Charisma +2 mod while rolling the ten-sided die in the grand RPG of life, instead of listening? Will men be seduced into laying down their money for books instead of beer? More importantly, how does this translate into actual sales?

Weekend Update

• The play is progressing. Early feedback has produced some very thoughtful conversations in email and in person, one of which went down today with close members of the crew at a Chinese dive. The fact that folks have been both honest and enthusiastic about the play has seriously overwhelmed me. I'm astonished by the passion and the generosity. People have been open, forthright and very constructive, responding in ways that demonstrate that theatre is far from dead, that rewriting is far from over, and that this thing will mesh together in ways that leave me convinced that we're tapping into something that people really want to talk about, and that, even with a few misplaced over-the-top moments that will be honed this week, people from all walks of life have very valuable thoughts on how the business world has influenced and transformed human behavior.
• Jonathan Safran Foer has responded to the PEN imbroglio previously reported here. He writes, "Hi. A friend made me aware of this discussion. Just wanted to let you guys know that I completely agree with most everything you said about monetary awards and whom they should go to. That's why I gave the money---every cent of it---back to PEN, which is as deserving as groups get. I didn't make a big deal about it, because it didn't seem fair to any other winners, who might have needed the money at the moment. But on the other hand, I'd had to take flack for something I didn't do." If this is indeed the case, then I am in full support of Mr. Foer's gesture, particularly after the post-deal bonanza missteps of Jonathan Franzen and Rick Moody. I hope to draw upon the subject of meritocracy and the obligations of authors with pre-award windfalls in a future post.
• Dan Green responds to Sarah's post about the publishing industry. The Literary Saloon also weighs in. Dan notes that the publishing business has been the least business-like of businesses and, quite rightly, points out that the pulps were a beneficial component of staying power, and the Literary Saloon points out that countless "literary" authors could have been marketed for the price of the Ronald Reagan memoir flop. My own quick take on this is that we won't have an answer until authors and publishers fully understand the human impulse to read, and actively work to encourage it, responding to this desire in ways that transcend both popular and literary trappings. For example, if the previous magazine conduits are, for the most part, dead and the average bookstore browser makes his decision by flipping through the first few pages, instead of book excerpts, why not offer a free buckram-bound, promotional sampling of emerging authors in lieu of a book tour? Furthermore, I don't believe that a bridge between popular and literary is possible without getting the word out to both camps that both can be acceptable on their own terms, while maintaining a certain standard. But such a position presumes idealism, an editorial team passionate about literature, and an openness to new choices on behalf of the reading public;. However, word of mouth often gets an otherwise obscure author read. I don't believe that publishers have taken full advantage of this. But then again, who has the resources to take a chance?
• On Saturday, I went to an open studio exhibit run by Marisa Williams in Oakland. If you're into photography and calligraphy, check Marisa's stuff out. Beyond being an exceptionally nice person, Marisa has a good photographic eye for still life and architecture and offers lovely handmade cards for purchase. She even offers some nify thank you cards.
• It is possible to play Taboo with sixteen or so people at one time. However, the more people you have, the greater the possibility that communications will be more harried. Factor caffeine into the equation and you have a fait accompli involving destroyed egg timers and nearly every card used up within a matter of three hours. I urge the folks at Milton Bradley to pay more care to how they construct their game components. Able board gamers have more adrenaline than the R&D boys have accounted for.
• Ronald Reagan's passing. To paraphrase the Gipper himself, if you've seen one dead President, you've seen them all.

Even in the Book World, Crime Does Not Pay

The Chicago Tribune considers the case of David George Holt, a seemingly quiet man who used various aliases to swindle countless rare-book dealers to the tune of $95,000. Despite serving in jail for steailng his grandmother's bonds, Holt has yet to be convicted for his tome-related offenses.

No Sex This Time...Really.

Due to a number of exciting things going down, it will be silent around these parts until maybe Sunday. Until then, check out Mark and Ron's outstanding coverage of BookExpo, read the Cinetrix's hilarious takedown of boomer music, and hope for the Hag's swift return.

Failing that, get your hands on a copy of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas immediately.

Also, Danny Shorago was kind enough to write in and clarify important allegations. Not only does the man not munch on supplemental proteins, but his other band, the Fuxedos, will be playing at the Odeon Bar on the 19th. The show's a mere $6. Be there and experience Shorago's stunning acrobatics for yourself.

Michiko: A Homebody Toppled Over the Edge?

The first paragraph of Michicko's review of the new post-Bridget Jones Helen Fielding book features a very disturbing segue: "As Bridget Jones and most single women well know, there's nothing worse than falling head over heels for a man, only to discover that he is not only the Wrong Man, but the Very Worst Sort of Man, a True Cad and Charlatan, or Someone Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know. (O.K., there are worse things, like being half-eaten by your Alsatian dog and being found dead in your apartment three weeks later, but that is another story.)"

Actually, there are worse things than that. Perhaps more disturbing than its cavalier comparative placement is the fact than the Alsatian dog was actual news. Two years ago. So what we have here is the case of an overworked book critic who has been dwelling on this disturbing informational nugget for some time, just waiting to sneak it into a review.

We only hope that Michiko leaves her house sometime soon and that, if she has a pet Alsatian, the dog is friendly.

Book Babes Smackdown

It looks like you'll have two shots to watch Mark and Ron vs. the Book Babes. Book TV reports that they will be airing the Saturday coverage (which will include a recording of today's Book Babe panel) on June 5 at 1:00 PM and at 8:00 PM. The Book Babes panel will happen at 4:30 PM-5:30 PM ET/3:30 PM-4:30 PM CT. By my caluclations, that means that it will happen again at 11:30 PM-12:30 ET/10:30 PM-11:00 PM CT.

And for those (like me) who don't have cable, you can actually watch the broadcast "live" as it's aired.

Ludovico Technique Meets Dynamic Profiling

The Guardian: "Film companies in Hollywood are employing a brain scientist at California Institute of Technology to measure reactions to films so they can tailor them more closely to our unconscious needs. Steven Quartz, a lab director at CalTech is pioneering the use of 'neuromarketing', using brain scanning technology to do market research. 'We wanted to look at how the brain processes emotions and, since movies induce emotions so powerfully, they were an effective way of doing that," says Quartz. "Out of that grew the awareness that it would be a good way of seeing how people respond to movies.'" (via Ryan)

Lit Bloggers, 1, Book Babes, O

Mark offers a report from BookExpo. Mark reports that he and Ron should be on C-SPAN tomorrow. According to the BookTV schedule, the Book Babes panel will air 4:30 PM-5:30 PM ET, 3:30 PM-4:30 PM CT on Saturday, June 5.

The World's Largest Crossword Puzzle

28,000 clues, 91,000 squares. Yours for $29.95 (via Traveler's Diagram)

Short Break

In the next forty-eight hours, I'll be (a) taking a short breather and (b) manacled to the computer finishing the latest draft of Wrestling an Alligator. What this means is no blogging and no sex during a sizable portion of this time. Let it be noted in the great annals of history that I focused and did my duty, sacrificing great joys for questionable art.

I also have a tremendous email backlog to respond to. And if I haven't responded to you yet, I plan on doing so sometime before Sunday. Needless to say, you folks are sweet, endearing, and I'm continually amazed by your effusive outpourings. Even that crazed Caitlin Flanagan from Wichita who wanted to cut one of my fingers off had nothing less than love and the best interests in his heart. I will get back to you all eventually.

John Howard Falls for Ah-Nuld's Infamous "Stain on Shirt" Trick

Brit Brain Erodes to Beat World Record

Tom Gibson has broken the world record for continuously watching television. Gibson stayed up for two days, only stopping to go for 15-minute bathroom breaks every eight hours. He existed on a diet of sausage rolls, ham and cheese sandwiches, and sugary drinks.

The Carrie Who Couldn't Be Humiliated on Prom Night?

It would be criminal for me to neglect mentioning that Carrie A.A. Frye is guest-blogging at Maud's this week. Of course, the fact that she mentioned this place several times yesterday has nothing to do with the current plug. Whether she'll regale us with an additional reference to her tangerine muumuu or ditties involving ancillary chromatic raiment (outside of hot pants and the red-sequined top) remains to be seen. For the nonce, Ms. Frye plans to instigate discussions on Ann Patchett's recent memoir, shortly after addressing thirty or so people (some of them named Ted). To all the boys out there waiting for the scoop, pop in those Tic-Tacs and prepare to serenade the gal with some Villa-Lobos.

Jowly Journalist Just Jested?

Bob Baker of the L.A. Times has accused America of a major crime: alliteration. Baker also reports that he lost all abilities to feel the joy of language sometime in the late 1990s.

Public Health Announcement

Sarah has alerted me to this Observer piece, whereby the Bizarro world of Caitlin Flanagan is laid out again for those who haven't kept track. In Rachel Donadio's article, a certain cocktail recipe was referred to. I wish to assure all readers that the recipe was designed exclusively for determined drinkers looking for a little something off the beaten track. The Pentagon was not involved in the concoction of the recipe. In fact, national reports indicate that the Caitlin Flanagan is now being served in more than a few disreputable establishments and that it has not been a success. If anything, it has furthered sales of Pepto-Bismol. As such, like any horrible beverage idea, the drinker should devote no more than a few minutes, and preferably no time at all, to its namesake.

On a somewhat related note, one should never drink alone in one's house. Particularly after writing a piece for the New Yorker. Recommendation: perhaps listening and boogeying to some George Thorogood instead.

Of course, a few theories have been tossed around about Ms. Flanagan -- specifically, strange nouns. Is she a wit? Perhaps, but only if you find trivializing the service sector tantamount to a well-delivered bon mot from Oscar Wilde. Is she a wag? It depends really on who's the dog, and it would seem that nannies are. Of course, they are too busy wagging their butts trying to contend with a privleged mother's child. Is she a delight? Probably not, given that she's provoked so many calm, amicable and affectionate souls to anger. Is she an utterly maddening interlocutor? Well, she's utterly maddening. But interlocutors can be found in the pages of bad translations of Russian literature, not around the hallowed grounds of Central Park West. Although her strange questions to Ms. Donadio ("How old are you? What do you think I mean?") lend credence to a paranoid type. We leave better minds to draw more astute conclusions.

Nude Gene? Inconclusive

Regular Reluctant visitors may remember my query a few weeks ago about the possible existence of a gene causing the Hemingway family to spontaneously take their clothes off. Fortunately, the able team at The Literary Dick has attempted an answer to my question. One doctor declared the question a weird one. While the Genome Project hasn't yet been consulted, the Literary Dick speculates that until such a gene can be demonstrated, it cannot possibly exist. There are additional possibilities over whether this might be a nature vs. nurture argument. But I leave the able scholars of nudism to unravel potential genetic dispositions.

I'm Waiting for Madonna to Address Harvard

Bono's Commencement Speech: "My name is Bono and I am a rock star. Don't get me too excited because I use four letter words when I get excited. I'd just like to say to the parents, your children are safe, your country is safe, the FCC has taught me a lesson and the only four letter word I'm going to use today is P-E-N-N." (via Syntax of Things)

Michiko Influenced by Peck/Kinsley?

Michiko on DFW: "These moments, sadly, are engulfed by reams and reams of stream-of-consciousness musings that may be intermittently amusing or disturbing but that in the end feel more like the sort of free-associative ramblings served up in an analyst's office than between the covers of a book. Mr. Wallace's previous work shows that he possesses a heightened gift for what the musician Robert Plant once called the 'deep and meaningless.' But in these pages it more often feels like the shallow and self-conscious."

Count the adjectives in those last two sentences.

New Reports Indicate That Bush's Short Attention Span Extends to Hugs; Throwaway Embraces & Gestures Added to 2004 Republican Platform

Ben Brown at Bookslut

Some guy named Ben Brown is guest-blogging at Bookslut this week. All we know is that Mr. Brown may or may not be Neal Pollack and that he has slept with everyone at 826 Valencia. He does, however, possess an important skill: the man can insert breaks between paragraphs. We wish Mr. Brown well on his temporary journey and we will be reading him with delight. We encourage you to send incriminating photos to benbrown@gmail.com.

Soon to Come: Sergio Aragones' "The Avengers"

Ron's located the ultimate creative matchup: Jack Kirby and The Prisoner.

A Real Author Enters the Children's Book Marketplace

Elmore Leonard is writing his next novel for teens. His new book, A Coyote's in the House, assumes "a coyote-eat-cat reality." Leonard decided upon this formula after concluding that Madonna's "cat-eat-coyote fantasy," Jay Leno's "cat-eat-dog quasi-reality" and Billy Crystal's "ants-eat-anteater delusion" weren't premises that could sustain the attention spans of young readers.

William Machester Dead

Biographer William Manchester, who recently handed over the reins to Paul Reid to finish the third book of The Last Lion, his highly lauded Winston Churchill series, has passed away at 82.

Expect Three Revised Editions of "Waiting to Be Heard" Before the End of the Year

826 Valencia has published Waiting to Be Heard, which features several stories by teenagers who took the classes. As the Chronicle reports, one of the young writers, 18 year old Courtney King, grew up in the Bayview-Hunters Point area. The book was funded by the Isabel Allende Foundation. Dave Eggers has claimed that the 826 Valencia students offered "professional editing" when assembling the book.

British Rely on American Aid in Race for Literary Superiority

The British have announced that they no longer feel inferior to U.S. novelists. The sudden burst in UK hubris, however, had much to do with noted American novelist John Updike singling out UK minority writers -- an option, according to the Guardian, apparently outside the purview of the typical Brit reader or the average Fleet Street hack.

Just Wait Until They See the Underlying Anti-Globalization Message in "Spider-Man 2"

Rasputin: "Moveon.org, I love you, but seriously, what is this shit? You're handing out fliers, trying to get people to go see The Day After Tomorrow? Maybe you should reconsider?"

Confessions of an Idiosynchratic Domain

Sarah, the grand gal single-handedly responsible for getting me to read four Ian Rankin novels in the past month, has moved to a new domain. Go check it out. And to answer Ms. Roy's concerns about blogs about underground streetcred, we mentioned "colostomy bag" before 8AM. Surely, this counts for something.

A User's Guide to Recovering from Memorial Day Weekend

1. Above all, don't panic. Going back to work isn't as dreadful as it seems. Keep in mind that you essentially have a four-day workweek ahead of you. Your co-workers will be sympathetic to your readjustment. And if they aren't, invent an imaginary newspaper article pointing out how holidays lead to temporary malaise extending into across the midweek swath into Wednesday. You can get away with this, because, quite frankly, nobody read the papers over the weekend.

2. Yes, there's a ridiculous email backlog and there weren't as many books finished as you had hoped. Yes, you may have even succombed to paying for that silly Roland Emmerich eco-disaster movie or perhaps engaged in the horrors of television. But the good news is that you can go back to your routine, such as it was. People in general will be slower, thanks in part to the overall lack of holidays in the United States of America, and the strange turn of fortune that momentarily granted the public a three-day weekend (that is, if they were lucky not to be working in the service sector).

3. When in doubt, resort to coffee. Its efficacy can never be underestimated. This woozy Tuesday isn't unlike a hangover, what with your body drooping out of bed and your shirt being slightly more difficult to put on. But the good news is that if you didn't drink last night and slept horribly, the coffee will have an even greater effect than before.

4. You can always relax again. Either tonight or next weekend. However, keep in mind that this time, it might be prudent to accomplish something, if only to make up for the debauchery.

5. Please know that it was perfectly fine for you to lounge about the living room while other people paid homage to the deaths of soldiers.

6. If you saw that eco-disaster movie, know that Dennis Quaid will eventually slip from your mind.

7. When in doubt, sexual release, whether solo or with another partner, is a pretty solid cure-all, particularly during lunch hour.

8. If you're terrified by the idea of cooking tonight, keep in mind that there is probably a good deal of food in the fridge that you can reheat. Your overcompensatory zeal in the food department, together with such ubiquitous technology as the microwave oven, should get you through dinner tonight.

9. Set at least two goals that you must accomplish before bedtime. Make these modest goals. Things like balancing your checkbook or reading a Dr. Seuss book. You can save the loftier accomplishments (climbing Kilmanjaro on Wednesday, performing philanthropic CPR on a colostomy bag on Thursday) for later.