Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant

And She's Back in Heat

As widely reported, Bitch Novelist will fuck your shit up.

Secret Agent

No mention of SPECTRE's presence within slush piles or the ridiculous signing demands of Elder Statesmen (accompanied by their egos), but Secret Agent has launched over at Maud's. And it's good stuff. We just hope the Agent will squirt Norman Mailer in the eye with one of Q's gadgets just before his appearance on Gilmore Girls.

Material Girls, Zola's Game Theory, Tipping Points

• Edinburgh hopes to add a walking tour to the Royal Mile.
• Three refurbished Truman Capote volumes have been released in time for Capote's 80th birthday.
• Unemployed doctoral students may want to consider analyzing Zola. Apparently, it ties into current French politics.
• David Halberstam sinks his teeth into Rathergate.
• Neal Stephenson has shaved his head. And apparently his audience has grown older.
• Andrea Dworkin has written a followup book about the infamous drug-rape.
• The new stamps for 2005: Greta Garbo (check), Henry Fonda (check), The Muppets (check), Richard Fenyman (double check), Arthur Ashe (check) and *sigh* Ronald Reagan.
• Newsday talks with Philip Roth. The big surprise? Apparently, tenderness.
• Richard B. Wright: a literary career forged on endless awards?
• Nympho Bride: Ashcroft's idea of terrorism.
• The New Yorker still has faith in Tipping Point Segmentation technology. What's Gladwell's cut?
• Madonna studying literature at Oxford?

Personally, We Hear Little Voices Encouraging Us to Become an Insurance Adjuster

It was missed yesterday, but Today in Literatue celebrated the work of William McGonagall, who was, without a doubt, the Bulwer-Lytton of poetry. Here's McGonagall on the collapse of the Tay Railway Bridge:

...Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

If you've got a hankering for more, there's McGonagall Online, which includes McGonagall recounting the first man who threw peas at him, as well as his complete autobiography, where he describes his inspiration: "I wondered what could be the matter with me, and I began to walk backwards and forwards in a great fit of excitement, saying to myself-- 'I know nothing about poetry.' But still the voice kept ringing in my ears - 'Write, write,' until at last, being overcome with a desire to write poetry, I found paper, pen, and ink, and in a state of frenzy, sat me down to think what would be my first subject for a, poem."

The Umpire Strikes Back

George Lucas on the Three Stooges films: "I am very concerned about our national heritage, and I am very concerned that the films that I watched when I was young and the films that I watched throughout my life are preserved, so that my children can see them."

You and me both, George. And you won't have my DVD money or my respect until you release the Star Wars films I remember. Let's face the facts: Han Solo blew Greedo away without simultaneous fire or a second thought.

Exclusive Excerpt

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Return of the Reluctant has obtained an excerpt from Breaking Wind: The Quest for Architectural Hubris in an Age of Terror by noted architect Howard Roark.]

Ellsworth wanted to hurt me. But that was okay. His niece was fond of steely antiseptic sex when I wasn't flexing my bold, industrial muscles at the drafting table. After a few cigarettes, I marveled over the proud rectilinear vision of a metropolis that others had the temerity to call dull and commercial. Even pro-business. What was wrong with that? What was wrong with money earned rightly over the blood of three thousand people? Art Spiegelman had done it. Why couldn't I?

When I got the commission to build my distinct vision at Ground Zero, there were, of course, several people to squash, if not outright ignore. Little bugs who wouldn't listen or appreciate my selfish virtues. Let the insects stay afraid. If they wouldn't play ball over my grand plans, then they needed help. They were in the way. They watched that terrorist alert move from orange to yellow and they'd vote for the status quo so they wouldn't shake so much. Which was fine, considering that most of the people who ran the country were socialists hoping to destroy free enterprise.

But I got them to look at and approve my plans because I was better than them. I had muscles, a full head of hair, and lots of sex between meetings. More importantly, I could outtalk them with long speeches about money. We'd build the best steel and use it for the new towers. And the trains that moved the steel all there would not only speed up well beyond government regulations, but even stop the whole of East Coast business itself.

And these fools always said I was delusional. Well, where are their contracts for the World Trade Center? Who is John Galt?

Vollman Ain't Got Nothing On This

"Our goal was to give you a book with every recipe you want." Apparently, that's the purpose of The Gourmet Cookbook, which weighs six pounds and runs 1,040 pages but will only set you back a mere forty Washingtons. As the Times reports, the book's authored by Ruth Reichl, editor of Gourmet. Perhaps this cookbook's length was another reason Reichl commissioned the now infamous DFW article on the Maine Lobster Festival. Even so, we're grateful that such a grandiose depository exists. If we calculate five recipes to a page, that runs to about 6,000 possibilities. Or enough new dishes and appetizers to last (one per day) for about 16.44 years.

As I Drank My Morning Coffee

• The History of Punctuation (via Jeff)
• The American Bar Association has published its first work of fiction and folks in Miami are trying to find out the real-life models for the characters.
• Lindsay Sinclair is trying to keep E.B. White's memory preserved.
• The Guardian asks why women go crazy over Mr. Darcy
• An Italian newspaper is doing brisk business by offering a reduced-price book with the daily edition.
• This zeppelin could be yours for only $10 million
• Angela Davis turned 60 and she's still fighting the man
• If only 2% of women genuinely describe themselves as beautiful, we've got a serious problem.
• Older folks are turning to online personals
• Andrew Lloyd Webber's adapting Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. For the love of decency, stop the man before it's too late.
• A new film adaptation of Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men is in the works. The amazing cast includes Meryl Streep, Kate Winslet, Mark Ruffalo, Sean Penn (as Willie Stark!) and Jude Law. The script's by Steven Zallian. This oughta be good, even if Rossen's a tough guy to follow.
• For anyone who's read Carol Shields' Larry's Party, a labyrinth has opened up in Winnipeg to celebrate her life and work.
• A paper in Science has used the Bible to back up a hypothesis.
• Verdi is getting an upgrade in Korea

Mailer's Ghost

Carrie has the scoop on Norman Mailer and her mom: "Her courtroom work in Boston had put her in contact with a lot snakes and liars — there was one well-connected politician who repeatedly showed-up at her doorstep in the middle of the night, expecting to be taken in because of his last name (creepy she said, because he shouldn’t have even known where she lived) — and so Mailer, even in all his bluster and alcoholism, was a far more appealing species of male."

Don't Forget An Incurable Touch of Insomnia As Well

Michael Berry compares the last volume of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle with the last volume of Stephen King's Dark Tower series: "Stephenson, on the other hand, is best appreciated once you have a solid liberal arts education under your belt, perhaps with a couple of graduate courses thrown in for good measure."

RIP Mulk Raj Anand

Mulk Raj Anand, one of India's best-known English writers, has passed on. He was a few months shy of 100.

On (Not) Retiring

Rasputin's extremely touching words have reached me. And perhaps I should clarify a few things:

1. When someone like TMFTML retires or posts infrequently to live life or preserve a perceived drop in quality, it is a very sad thing. But one thing that strikes me about our ready band of regulars is that when they stop blogging and they transpose their talents elsewhere, it sometimes doesn't occur to them to tell their readership where they go. And that is even more tragic. They're not entitled to, of course. But why isn't there a print venue which preserves the best of their work, or leaves a permanent record to the universe that they existed? (The Internet is, after all, so ephemeral.) For all the gardyloo and tomfoolery here, I do take blogs seriously. They've opened up an incredible array of friends, thinkers, opportunities, and ideas, and united a motley group who express more passion on a daily basis than a jaded steeldog journalist does in a year. They've done the world of books, I believe, a great deal of good and probably turned more than a few people on to titles and authors that would have ordinarily fallen by the wayside (think of the Complete Review's indefatigable coverage). And it delights me to see a continuous barrage of new litblogs pouring out of the woodworks as the beat goes on.

2. If I had to be pinned down, I don't know how long this blog will last. It could be three weeks. It could be three years. Nor is there any guarantee that I'll be prolific on any particular day. All of this depends upon existential factors that I won't go into. The problem is that synapses constantly fire off in my brain, curiosity must be fulfilled, and it's so easy to ramble in the little box.

3. Since Points (1) and (2) are in direct conflict of each other, why am I here? Well, because Point (1) is so appealing, even with limited time. And because, as my main squeeze constantly reminds me, more ambitious than realistic about things. (Yet I do them anyway and sleep like a prisoner in D Block.) If I weren't here, I'd be somewhere else (and sometimes am) doing something similar.

4. No matter what happens, life is the grand pursuit.

5. When someone takes a break from a blog, it's more of a severe interruption than a blog's readership might contemplate. You're banging out several hundred words a day in a format that's as set as a review. Then all of a sudden, you feel as if you're repeating yourself or it's just not fun anymore. Or you've said all there is to say. Or you see yourself suffering. So you feed the impulse and then you stop, only realizing that it's just as much a daily part of your routine as everything else. And then you return, sometimes in an overwhelming manner. Confusion sets in before the next troubling dip. And so it goes -- like a starter pistol firing in slow motion. You can't win. You've got other irons in the fire. But the sound of that pistol is so irresistable. The question is whether or not it's good for you. Well, maybe. But then they also say that about a low-carb diet.

As I said, we'll see how it goes. The refreshing thing is that no one is holding a gun or a deadline to my head. (At least not now.) But so long as the water's fresh and my pecs hold up, I'm in for the swim.

That's the last word (for now) on that.

I Hope to Hell They Don't Touch Terry Pratchett

Bad enough that they bastardized Riverworld, but now Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy is being turned into a Sci-Fi Channel series.

Biblical Boiler Plate

Contrary to popular belief, the phrases "dearly beloved, we have come together..." and "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" can't be found in the Bible. Wedding and death ceremonies have pilfered their terminology from The Book of Common Prayer (ASCII). There's some other good stuff too. In fact, from a boiler plate approach, the Book of Common Prayer precedes the World War I form letter (the latter well documented in Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory). Good to get used to this sort of stuff (and realize exactly where it comes from), in the event that Bush wins a second term. Although if anyone can help me with the origin of "Burn in hell, sinner," I'd appreciate it.

Norman Mailer to Appear on Gilmore Girls

Norman Mailer will appear on an episode of The Gilmore Girls -- apparently, as a tea drinker. Now if the Gilmore Girls producers were really smart, they'd throw in Germaine Greer into the same episode as well. The role of Mailer's Ego has yet to be cast, although producers hope to enlist Colin Farrell for a guest shot. (via Maud)

More Geniuses to Add to the Reading List

The MacArthur Foundation has announced more geniuses. Among the literary types: poet C.D. Wright, Rueben Martinez (who has taught Spanish-speaking people to appreciate literature), The Known World author Edward Jones, and Sarajevo writer Aleksandar Hernon.

As most MacArthur junkies know, the genius grants involve $500,000 paid out over five years. This year, to allay concerns over assorted egos being snubbed, there were also several Not Quite Genius grants handed out, which included a $100 coupon for an anger management seminar to Stanley Crouch.

Bloomberg Denies Living to Average New Yorkers

This morning, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg hiked the MOMA price from $12 to $20, part of a larger plan that will transform Manhattan museums into the exclusive playground of the rich. "Those good-for-nothing bootlickers belong at the bottom," said Bloomberg as a personal assistant shined the Mayor's shoes with his tongue. "Why do they need art in their lives when they can watch HBO?"

At this point, the personal assistant stopped shining. "Um, excuse me, sir. I can't even afford basic cable."

"That's not my problem!" Bloomberg roared. "Shine, boy! You weren't born privileged. Deal with it!"

Bloomberg also unveiled additional plans to keep the underclass from dining at good restaurants, having more than two drinks on a Friday night, and using the subway during peak hours.

"We'll also stop them from eating ice cream," Bloomberg smiled. "I think I can speak for everyone when I suggest that only the richest 1% are entitled to their Hagen-Daz."

Across the coast, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is said to be contemplating similar moves.

In A Parallel Universe, Papa Ended Up Writing Lurid Grisham-Like Thrillers Involving Colons, Well-Hung Cows and Virile Walter Mitty Types

Sun-Times: "Hemingway scholar J. Gerald Kennedy, who has a copy, guffawed out loud as he paraphrased the story over the phone. The main character kills the bull with his bare hands. But the hapless hero loses part of his entrails -- his duodenum ends up in the sand.

'"'It's pretty typical of the kind of after-hours parody Hemingway was writing in Paris in the mid-20s,'' said Kennedy, a professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, La. 'It's not great literature. He's still a year away from writing The Sun Also Rises.'"

There Are Articles, and There Are Articles

Sarah's first column at the Sun is out. Check it out, pref. with BugMeNot.

And this piece pretty much makes a case against any future feature-length article about blogging. Since when did Wonkette get a definite article? Next thing you know, they'll be calling our asses The Our Girl from Chicago, The TMFTML, or The The Old Hag, or The Dr. Mabuse. Come on, you silly people. If you're a newspaper with a fact checking department that employs more people per issue than the United States did during the entirety of the Rwandan massacre, at least you can get the fucken* terminology right. Right?

As for Tanenhaus, we're biding our time, folks.

* That goes for you too, DBC Pierre!

Around the Sphere

We're stuck at home on a beautiful day waiting for the damn gas man to show up so we can cook again. There are also deadlines. Such is life. But here's a brief look at what's happening in the literary world:

• LNR Diary continues its hilarious coverage, judging the Booker shortlist on the merits of its covers.
• Chekhov's Mistress notes that today is the anniversary of Messr. Faulkner's birthday, and has some great interview excerpts and links to boot.
• Some perspective on the Anne Rice contretemps (via Ron)
• The Olive Press turns one year old.
• Send good novel-writing juju Jimmy's way, why dontcha?
• David Lodge at Bookforum on his new Henry James novel. (via Rake)
• Melville House gets sexier every month. They've just published Stephen Dixon's latest. (via Dan)

And we promise to alert readers sometime in the next 24 hours whether or not Mr. Tanenhaus has earned his brownie this week or not. We apologize profusely for remaining incognito on this extremely pressing development. But we shall do our best to post all the statistics that are fit to print. Unfortunately, this also means resetting the Brownie Batting Average for consistency's sake. We're sure you folks understand.

It's Kaiju Time!

If you live in San Francisco and you grew up watching Creature Features, your prayers have been answered. 20 Godzilla movies in seven days, Bob Wilkins, Russ Tamblyn and John Stanley. Needless to say, Lady Mabuse is also a huge Godzilla fan. And determined as ever to see every one, this should be one of the most insane film festivals I've ever attended.

RIP Francoise Sagan

Francoise Sagan, the S.E. Hinton of France, has passed on.

We're Wondering Ourselves When Gallo Will End Up Pumping Gas (As Opposed to His Fragile Ego)

Liz Penn serves up The Brown Bunny review to end all Brown Bunny reviews: "But during the course of this trip, you come to realize that, in fact, you yourself hate this boyfriend, because he is a dreadful person; his fragile neediness is soon exposed as tyrannical passive-aggression, and his exaggerated preoccupation with women poorly masks a withering contempt. In fact, this boyfriend ignores you completely; it is as if he is traveling alone. Why did you agree to get in the car with him? He promised the trip would be short – 93 minutes, he said – but a few minutes in, it already feels like days. Trapped, you pass the time looking out the passenger side window, but the views he thinks are arty Kerouackian landscapes just seem random and poorly framed."

(And, by the way, D/L, don't let the bastards grind you down.)

Memo from Professor Stuyvesant

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Since the Superfriends have remained silent, to foster variegated opinions and commentaries on this blog, I have enlisted Professor Timothy Stuyvesant (rumored to be in the running for emeritus status) to offer excerpts from his lectures here on a semi-regular basis. The Professor specializes in English usage and made at least forty-five students weep the last year. (Approximately. The number hasn't been confirmed.) He has yet to be featured on Rate My Professors for fear of immediate reprisal. But several experts have concluded that Stuyvesant's work remains as baffling as anybody else's.]

Excerpt From "The Spoken Astonishment" (first delivered in English 467: The Ethics of Punctuation on April 5, 1992):

"Oh boy!"

You've probably said or heard this at least some point in your life. But not in my classroom! Here, I would rather have you declare astonishment to a piece of fecal matter than have you degrade the human race with two simple words.

Degrade? Yes! Degrade. This is a very serious matter! When you are having a bad day or trying to come to terms with an unsettling situation, why is it a boy that comes from your lips? Are you craving a Bob's Big Boy hamburger? I think not! And if you are, come by my office later. I might let you in on a few good burger joints. Are you frightened by the prospect of a girl materializing in front of your eyes to alleviate you?

Don't get any ideas. This concerns her too.

Who is this boy you speak of anyway? Why does it have to be a he? Did this boy ask you to mention him? Did you even ask this boy if you could talk about him? How could you be so rude?

Let me tell you where I am going with this. It is the unfortunate tendency of the sexist machinations of the Western world to confine astonishment to a masculine gender status.

It must stop! Either we must come to terms with the boy, perhaps subduing his anonymity by referring to him by first name. (Perhaps "Oh Phil" or "Oh Glen" is the answer here.) Or we must find a nongender noun that will offend no one. We need a term of astonishment that will lead us into the 21st century. Something that nobody will anticipate. Something that makes everyone feel good and is more concerned with meaning rather than ambiguity.

We lost the ERA fight and the foolish masses keep electing Republicans to the White House. But this will not stand.

Tastes Great, Less Filling?

Mark's posted a fantastic comparison between Cloud Atlas and The Great Fire, daring to put his literary sensibilities on the edge while chronicling how his literary tastes have changed as he's grown older. While I haven't yet read The Great Fire, I can offer the perspective of a crazed reader who's just turned thirty (who, by the maxims of another time, can still, just barely, remain trusted). Recently, I read Idoru and Pattern Recognition. It was the first time I had read William Gibson in about ten years. When I first encountered Gibson (through Neuromancer and Count Zero, I was just out of high school and impressionable to wild-eyed language housed within what a plot indistinguishable from a conventional pulp novel. At nineteen, I could relate to characters who had given the totality of their lives to cyberspace and technology (although Doestoevsky made an infinitely deeper impression upon me). Today, at thirty, while I admire Gibson's language and consider Pattern Recognition to be the best of the Gibson books that I've read, I've found the comparative identifying experience to be lacking.

There are several reasons for this. Where are these characters' families? Where are their grand existential destinies? After thirty, how can one find pleasure in a universe where technology comes first (where life becomes a playground devoted to seeking out correllating swaths of footage on the Net and traveling desperately around the world to find the people behind them)? As a quasi-geek, I can relate. But I am not a total geek. There is a line in my personal universe where humanity must thrive, where experience simply cannot be suffocated for the whole. And sometimes the so-called "mammoth" novel, whether it's The Recognitions, Cloud Atlas, or even Box Office Poison or The Crimson Petal and the White, offer the expanse necessary, whether implied or explicit, to get at the abstract or very real goods that govern the human race.

I still think Mark's dismissal of Cloud Atlas' characters fails to get at David Mitchell's purpose, which is to profile a bold trajectory for how humanity is influenced by its own tales and actions. That's not necessarily the ideal form for characters to thrive. Particularly with five interweaving tales, something's bound to buckle under the impact. But if Cloud Atlas can be judged as a functional novel, beyond the glorious puzzles, it's absolutely beautiful. And yet, as I read Adam Thirlwell's Politics, I find myself more annoyed by the book's stylistic pyrotechnics (the narrator's Kunderaesque asides) even while I simultaneously enjoy them. One could make the case that Thirlwell's characters are just as caricaturish as Mitchell's. And yet Mitchell's characters feel alive because of the richness of the world that they are immersed in. (And on that score, I have a feeling that Mark would hate the detailed worlds of the incomparable Frederic Prokosch.)

First off, an open note to Mark. There's nothing necessarily wrong with having conservative literary tastes. On some basic level, judging and loving literature is about what an author does within a framework. Nor is there anything necessarily wrong with leaving a certain passion for the abstract at the gate of one's own choosing. However, it remains my belief that one should strive for pith and subtext once one has crossed that gate. And I think Mark's firm passion for Banville and what he describes as a desire to linger, makes his tastes more practically liberal than staunchly conservative. No lesser novelist than Richard Powers has, with his latest offerings, tried to scale down the information overload and pursue a fundamental humanity. And the exciting thing is watching David Mitchell on the cusp of doing the same.

And a happy birthday too to Mr. Sarvas.

Twin Farms -- Sinclair's Steel Trap?

Twin Farms, the working farm where Sinclair Lewis and Dorothy Thompson (inspiration for the Hepburn film Woman of the Year) once resided, is alive and well -- today, well populated by tourists. But it's worth noting that Lewis' worst books came after 1928, the year he moved to Twin Farms. So either Twin Farms is a bona-fide source of depleting inspiration, or a beatific menagerie guaranteed to trap and sap talent. Whatever the case, Lewis might be glad to know that talent is the only thing being fleeced. Tourists have been paying as much as $2,600 a night.

Plenty of Book, But the Other Part

By the way, folks, Michael Schaub is kicking some butt this week at the Bookslut blog (I didn't know that Toni Morrison was a smoker), although I wish he wouldn't be so frightened about confessing his licentious interests. Really, Michael, all lit bloggers are randy in one way or another. It's okay. Some Erica Jong, Carol Queen, and Fanny Hill references and you'll be all right.

Excerpt from Anne Rice's Diary: Anne Rice Defends Her Day

Dear Diary:

Seldom do I consider subject-verb agreement when telling you what I've done. In fact, the entire development of my career (which should pay for a few more Botox treatments) has been fueled by my ability to write as lazily as possible. These fans amuse me. They actually expect me to write more of these goddam vampire stories? Well, if they're prepared to part with their cash, then I'll just have to extend the pergola at the back of the house.

There is something compelling about Amazon's willingness to accept my reviews. You and I now, Diary, that I tossed that puppy off almost as quickly as my last book. Worthy of Lestat, I suppose. But those fanboys have to learn one way or the other. I consider my rant an ethical warning, a panegyric for the unlived life. Those little bastards are obviously smarter than I suspected. I guess I may actually have to revise a paragraph or two -- that is, assuming they'll lay out thirty bucks a piece. (Oh, they will!)

Worse comes to worse, I can blame it all on the diabetes. There's always something or someone to blame. That's what being a privileged and popular author is all about.

I'm justifiably proud of being taken so seriously. They like me! They really really like me! But for how long?

Of course, Diary, you and I both know who has the sexiest ass. No magic mirror needed. It's in the bag.

Loving myself more every day,

Anne

Et Tu Sarvas?

The Book Babes' latest column not only acts as if none of last year's comparisons between comatose newspaper coverage and the galvanizing eclat of literary blogs ever happened, but suggests that the Book Babes and the illustrious Mr. Sarvas are now in cahoots. While we're certainly pleased to see the Book Babes begin to understand the influence of blogs (and Mr. Sarvas' careful ruse), we remain perplexed over the Poynter Institute's continued encouragement of the Book Babes' naivete.

"From a blogger's perspective, old media feel too old-fashioned, too corporate, too confined by non-literary objectives and philosophies to meet the needs of today's reader." -- There's an assumption here that "today's reader" (and, for that matter, the feverish lit blogger) is either (a) some unemployed slacker shut-in who only emerges from his home at the thwack of an Amazon package hitting his door or (b) some rapturous latte-swigging casual reader who bases her reading decisions exclusively on review coverage. What the Book Babes continue to misunderstand is that newspapers fail to capture word-of-mouth, or the free-spirited conversation found on lit blogs -- itself an extension of passionate bookstore patter. It's not a matter of being "old-fashioned." It's a matter of being connected with the prime pulse that drives today's readers, of generating excitement, and getting people reading and talking about books.

It's not about things like the Virtual Book Tour, which, while interesting in nature (particularly through George Kelly's interview with Danyel Smith), is nothing less than an accelerated marketing gimmick modified for the information age. It's not about selling books or walking on eggshells. It's about reading books, assessing them constructively, finding out what literature means today, and simply giving a damn. If that means tipping over a few sacred cows (whether Sam Tanenhaus, Leon Wieseltier, Dale Peck, Dave Eggers, or the antiseptic domesticities of Margo & Ellen) in the process, then it's the inevitable price of caring enough to express the very best (ideally, sans Hallmark card).

"It's way premature to say that literary blogs have supplanted the established media." No, Ellen, to respond in your valley girl vernacular: Way. Literary blogs offer the bustling crop that the current establishment would turn into fallow over a five-martini lunch. The fact is that, outside of appealing to the suburban mom who would spend her spare time worshipping the mediocrity of Anita Diamat, established media conduits take no chances and are more concerned with catering to plummeting attention spans than fostering literacy or letting people in on the secret that books are pretty kickass. It was established media in the form of The Telegraph that declared David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas "unreadable," while the online arenas thrived, discussing and citing the book a mere month after its American publication. How you like them apples?

It would be refreshing to see the Book Babes, instead of aping established media, take a few chances themselves. Perhaps it might set an example for the bloated bovine nuzzling in the neglected pasture.

[UPDATE: Mark has responded to the Book Babes' questions at Ober Dicta, his other blog.]

[FURTHER UPDATE: Galleycat weighs in, with an accurate description for those new to the BB controversy: "In 1962, two girls with very different personalities met at summer camp and bonded over Nancy Drew and simultaneous first periods. Since then, they've been fiercely loyal penpals, publishing their exchanges about books at Poynter Online, and saving their more personal exchanges for an epistolary Bridges of Madison County-type debut."]

Under Doug's Thumb

Well, if Maud is going to come out of the woodworks as a Doctor Who fan, then I should also point out that the radio series of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (with the original cast!) picks up with "The Tertiary Phase" (starting at Life, the Universe and Everything) with Douglas Adams himself revived through digital technology as Agrajag.

Books You Can't Love: The More Popular than Jesus Syndrome

I suspect that Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell will be, for me at least, this year's equivalent to Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude (a title I still haven't read, despite its recent paperback release). Last year, there were at least twenty-two moments in which I had the hardback for The Fortress of Solitude in my hand, but ended up putting it back before hitting the cashier. Some of the reasons were as follows:

• "Oh shit! Magical realism!"
• "Motherless Brooklyn was good, but would you have purchased that in hardcover? Put it down, you fool!"
• "Quicksilver! More challenging!" (Little did I know.)
• "I'll get it in paperback."
• "I'll borrow [insert name here]'s copy."
• "I should probably read all of Lethem's back catalog before this one."
• "More pop cultural references subbing for plot? Come on, get real."

And so on...

None of these reasons, of course, were fair. Most of these were irrational. And yet it happened again and again. Nothing against Lethem, but I found myself unwilling to commit myself to the man (and yet quite willing to take crazed chances on crummier titles).

And now I find myself in the same boat with Jonathan Strange, afraid that I'll be terribly disappointed if I read it now. I came very close to picking the thick tome up the other day, but some stubborn impulse in me resisted. How could I join the crowd? How could I get excited about some book that everyone and their mother was declaring as more popular than Jesus?

This impulse, of course, is pure snobbery. It has something to do with the book reviewing climate and the endless din buzzing around readers and publishers alike. And yet almost every book afficionado is guilty of this. How many titles have eluded your immediate perusal because the kool kids kouldnt stop talking about it?

The way it works is this: To be an effective literary enthusiast, the unspoken goal is to wander off the beaten track and find the titles that no one else has read. And not just that. Ideally from some lofty parapet (preferably delusional), the literary enthusiast can let loose spitballs and catapault leftover caviar while simultaneously mocking the great unwashed for reading The Curious Incident of the Dog at the Night-Time or The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay behind the curve. Alternatively, why not delve into something highly unfashionable? (And if that's the unspoken rule, now might be the perfect op to read Lethem.)

Which is why I'm glad I read David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas well before everyone else and why it was nice to read William Gibson's Pattern Recognition without the sound of a thousand Slashdot fanboys coming my way. Mark my words: if Cloud Atlas wins the Booker, it will be slammed as mercilessly as DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little. Just because. And that's silly.

I'm tempted to read Jonathan Strange just to spite the bastards.

RIP Russ Meyer

Felix Dennis, Clandestine Poet Laurete?

Not content with unleashing sexist, short-attention-span snippets upon a unsuspecting magazine market of illiterates, Maxim publisher Felix Dennis has turned to poetry. Apparently, Mr. Dennis has been at it since 2000. Fortunately, Return of the Reluctant has obtained an exclusive look at Mr. Dennis's poetic oeuvre. Here's a small sample from Mr. Dennis' "Throwing My Love Into the Barbeque Grill," which was rejected (as of last week) by seventeen publications (including Cocker Spaniel Quarterly):

Fifty words! Too much to read
Let's cut it in half so we can clear out
And get that hun to bob her mouth
Fast cars, big tits, what's wrong with that?
I'm with Delta Phi Alpha for life

Pour the wine and they'll believe
I'm hip! I'm rich! I'm a poet!
I made more cash than Guccione
And I paid all my writers to pen baloney
Where's the next sleek and sexy Croat?

What it takes is a steak and a coupla brews
Over the edge, with some red meat to stew
Get a few Swedish models and a few Polish dogs
Dress 'em down, keep your pet in your pants
Keep the look garish and carefree

You'll end standing up at the barbeque grill
What a thrill!
Better than the window sill!

And she'll be there reading your latest issue
This time, she's there. You won't need a tissue

Neat Pate Manifesto

These days, our hair is falling out faster than a Niagra clip. (Or possibly not. Our propensity to exaggerate is well known.) Neverthless, it's brought forth an important issue: to shave or not to shave, that is the question. Now the last thing the world needs is another bald Caucasian guy in his early thirties. However, the m/sq. has expressed happiness over hypothetical condition. Oddly enough, it may be H.L. Mencken who might send us over the edge.

Cloud Atlas! Boo Yah!

David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas has made the Booker shortlist. Again, we here at Return of the Reluctant cannot say enough about how fantastic the book is and how disappointed we are that the American copy is only available in paperback. The novel deserves nearly every plaudit it has received. However, if you need additional arguments, here are a few U.S. receptions:

• Mark's thread
• Jeff Turrentine, The Washington Post, August 22, 2004
• Peter Keough, Boston Phoenix, August 27, 2004
• Tom Bissell, The New York Times, August 29, 2004

Unreadable? Not on this side of the Atlantic, baby. The Telegraph must be very embarassed right now.

Fringe Post-Mortem

Lessons I learned from Wrestling an Alligator:

1. It could have been simpler. We had a gargantuan set and this was a bit of naivete on our part -- particularly since this was a Fringe show that had to be set up and struck in 15 minutes. Given that the tone was absurdist, the realism of the set detracted from the goofiness, to the point where the performances were scrutinized more heavily than they needed to be.

2. As a director, I neglected to have pickup rehearsals between performances. The result was a carefully tailored show that radically changed in a matter of days. I'm still happy with how it turned out. 160 audience attendees for four performances for a debut play in a small venue is fantastic by just about any standard. But since I come from a film background, this in-the-can mentality could have been avoided and the careful tics that had been established over time could have been preserved, had I done the basic work here. My bad. I'll be volunteering on some more shows and taking a few classes to get my chops up here.

3. Production circumstances kept me in the booth, where I was only able to see half the stage. I really needed to be in the audience to assess the show and keep things tweaked. Of course, if I hadn't insisted on crossfading between two CDs, it wouldn't have been necessary. Funny how one little detail becomes an arduous regularity. (And that's just one little example.)

4. Do not give the audience too much information to process -- particularly when it's oblique and obscure. This kind of thing works for novels (Gene Wolfe comes immediately to mind), but this approach is more prohibitive to the stage. There were audience members who remained enraputed with our show, but were trailing five minutes behind trying to pick out all the references. This killed potential laughter. And it came at the expense of audience members reacting on relaxed instinct. Some people really hated us for this. A couple people saw the show twice, and they confessed to me that they were relieved that they were finally able to understand it.

5. If you introduce a pre-show element, be sure it relates to the show and doesn't come across as a cheap marketing gimmick. For all shows, we handed out visitor badges. This was an eleventh hour idea on my part, but ultimately it created more confusion than it was worth.

6. Hauling a bigass van around San Francisco with a set is a bad idea. Because there's just no damn parking in the City, and you end up parking in the Avenues and getting home at two in the morning. Had the set fit into a car, I wouldn't be nearly as exhausted as I am right now.

7. Never underestimate the gestures of other human beings. I was truly overwhelmed by our incredible volunteers, and the support I received from friends, family, co-workers, lit bloggers who came all the way from Los Angeles, and the other swell folks who came out to see our show. Beyond that, Christina, Kirk, Amanda, Meredith and the good folks at the Fringe were some of the nicest people I've encountered. The other Fringe performers and volunteers who went to see our show were incredible. San Francisco's film scene may be teetering on the brink right now, but this city's commitment to independent theatre is very much alive and well. There's a good deal of talent and drive in this town.

Despite all this, I wouldn't trade my Fringe experience for the world. I learned a good deal about theatre, myself, and other people, and had a blast. There are many things I will and will not do again. And it was fantastic to watch our great actors create such magnificent characters. Contrary to the anonymous coward who wanted to "off the bastard before he 'creates' again," I will return next year to the Fringe -- if not sooner for another local show.

For those who weren't able to see it and expressed interest, we did videotape Saturday's show. If you're interested in a tape, drop me a line and we may be able to work something out.

And, hell, I may pop in here more regularly than I suggested. It's really just a matter of time. I have a funny feeilng that I'll have more of it starting this week. But now it's time to rest.

Dark Rider

Some reading for your retirement, Ed: Stephen King interviewed in the Guardian.

As her husband lay in hospital, Tabitha King, who is also a writer, bought the battered truck, not - as many stories have had it - so he could later beat it with a baseball bat, but because at that stage, she was convinced he would die in hospital and didn't want it to wind up on eBay billed as the vehicle that killed America's most popular novelist.

Highly Irregular

What's going on in the blogosphere? What's happening in the literary world? Is George Bush out of office yet? I voted for the other guy, didn't I? Or was that a dream?

These are the queries that come to mind as I stick my head above the ether, checking in on this place just after Bondgirl's grand interview, which I knew about but truly astonished me in its final form. I'm here to announce a fundamental problem that I truly hadn't anticipated a few months ago: namely, a new and very active life.

The new life is good, don't get me wrong. Despite a rapidly receding hairline, I feel sexier than I did six months ago, and, on the whole, I'd have to say that I digest my meals better. (And here I was thinking it would get worse.) But this new existence comes at the expense of regular posts to this blog. Those who've watched Return of the Reluctant (and the other edrants incarnations) may have been taken with the prolix prolificity. I'm really not certain I'm the same person today than the punk who went literary gonzo last December. Something about turning thirty. Something about diving head-first into theatre. Something about setting goals, making it happen, and recalibrating my priorities to also encourage unexpected greatness in others, take chances, and demand the most out of myself. Something about, well, leaping into research on the second play, working to extend the run on the first, and otherwise broadening this lovely plane I've been building up.

I don't even hate Dave Eggers anymore.

I'm still reading, but obviously not enough to count. I'm still writing, but I value it more.

The problem is that I'm doing. A lot, actually. And something had to fall by the wayside. So I counted all the treasures in the chest, and scaled it down to what was needed. Sadly, Return of the Reluctant was one of the gems that had to be thrown overboard -- even though I liked it. Or, at the very least, put in a semi-retired state.

So I'm here to say adios, muchachos. Either that or call me in Tijuana. You'll see me on the backblogs. You may even see me here. If any of the Superfriends are interested in sleeping over at the beach house, they're more than welcome here. But me? Sorry, folks, but the muses sweet-talked me.

Wonder Woman interviews the fabulous Ms. Kelly Link

Your trusty Bond Girl Superfriend here with a (sort of) surprise (I stopped getting married long enough to finish it) interview with my Superfriend and one of the most generous writers I know, Kelly Link.

Kelly Link writes the most excellent short fiction. No, really. And I'm not just saying that -- other people think so too. To totally steal from the bio linked above, here's Kelly, in case you don't know who she is:

Kelly Link's collection, Stranger Things Happen, was a Firecracker nominee, a Village Voice Favorite Book and a Salon Book of the Year -- Salon called the collection "...an alchemical mixture of Borges, Raymond Chandler, and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Stories from the collection have won the Nebula, the James Tiptree Jr., and the World Fantasy Awards.

Kelly lives in Northampton, MA, and is currently working on a new collection of stories. She received her BA from Columbia University and her MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Kelly and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, publish a twice-yearly zine, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet -- as well as books -- as Small Beer Press.

So, let's get to the interview wherein the release date and other information about her BRAND NEW collection of stories emerges, despite my inability to ask interesting questions (except about zombies). Oh, and you should buy and read or listen to everything mentioned, but I really, really was too lazy to link to everything.

***********

Gwenda: So, let's start with a question you've gotten a thousand times and are bored sick of but no doubt can answer easily – what made you decide to start Small Beer Press and what was the process of getting out the first two books like?

Kelly: We’d been putting out a zine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, twice a year for two or three years, and so we had a rough idea of how much it cost to put out a zine or a chapbook or a book, and how many you had to sell to break even. We were interested in making something that looked like a book. The goal was always to break even.

I owe a large debt to other artists who have self-published. I was a faithful reader (and later a bewildered reader) of Dave Sim’s Cerebus. There are musicians like Sonic Youth and Gillian Welch and John Wesley Harding who have started their own labels, or put out their own music -- Ani DiFranco and Aimee Mann and Natalie Merchant. I like the DIY, zine-y approach. Oh yeah, and I’m a control freak.

We realized that if we could publish my collection, then we could publish other people as well. I was a huge fan of Ray Vukcevich’s short stories, and after we ran into him at a convention in Texas, we asked if he had enough stories for a collection. Publishing my own book was messy. It was an act of indefensible hubris. I didn’t know how to edit myself into book form. You’re not supposed to publish yourself. Working on Ray’s collection was a kind of reward for deciding to start a press to publish my own collection. Ray was a delight to work with. I got to read his stories over and over again.

I loved designing the books, and I loved being able to ask Shelley Jackson to provide cover art for my book. All of the minutiae of book design and copyediting and proofreading turned out to be enormously satisying work. Much better than simply writing the stories. I grumbled about it at the time, but even writing the jacket copy for Stranger Things Happen was relatively enjoyable.

The unexpected thing about book publishing was that we were able, with a great deal of help, to figure out how to do it, how to make things that looked like the sort of book which I would want to pick up and read. Publishing books turned out to be a lot easier than I expected it would be. Meanwhile, lots of unexpected things were going on outside of starting Small Beer Press. In 2001, George W. Bush somehow ended up being president after all. Gavin and I got married. We got married eleven days after September 11th. In March of 2001, Jenna Felice, an editor at Tor Books, died suddenly. She was a close friend, a neighbor in Brooklyn, and part of a community of writers and editors and small press publishers. It was a relief to have a project to work on, after her death, but it was also difficult, because she had been so much a part of our everyday life, and in helping us figure out all of the things we needed to figure out, in order to start a press and publish books.

Gwenda: Well, the exciting news is that you’ve written enough new stories for a collection and will be putting one out through Small Beer in 2005. Tell me about this new book. What will be in it? Does it have a name yet? Whatchya working on?

Kelly: The new collection will be out next summer. I have six new stories, and I’d like to write at least one more longish story, and maybe a few shorter ones as well. Right now I’m still working on the sixth and newest story, which is called "Some Zombie Contingency Plans." Some of the new stories are darker in tone than the stories in STH, I think, although hopefully still funny. The seventh story will be a bit more cheerful, a bit zippier and playful-er. Not a ghost story or a zombie story. Of course I haven’t written it yet. Too busy playing MozPong (like Pong except you have to catch chickens as they fall out of the sky, and the ball that you’re bouncing is a fleshy, wrinkled sack with eyes) and building bookshelves and painting cabinets and catching up with freelance work.

I’m also working on a couple of short stories for young adult anthologies, and eventually I’d like to sell a YA collection. I’d still like
to write a YA novel.

I’ve been trying like mad to come up with a title. I knew what Stranger Things Happen was going to be called very early on (while I was still in graduate school). I love Angela Carter’s short stories and she’d had a collection of old wive’s tales which was called Strange Things Sometimes Still Happen. So it was a sort of homage to Carter. And now M. John Harrison has a book (published by Night Shade) called Things That Never Happen, which I think is a wonderful collection. So I'm very happy to be sandwiched somewhere in between those two in whichever bookstore alphabetizes things by title. The working title for this new collection was Everything Must Go. I also liked We Fell in Hole and Couldn’t Climb Out, but it sounded pretty hopeless and gloomy. I started making up lists of favorite titles: How Late It Was, How Late and I Capture the Castle and Enormous Changes at the Last Minute and Why I Hate Saturn and David Marusek’s short story "We Were Out of Our Minds with Joy." (I also liked the word "delicious" a lot, but couldn’t come up with a good title that used it.) I couldn’t come up with anything as good as any of the titles above. I only got increasingly more covetous of other people's excellent ideas.

But I think I finally have a title: Magic for Beginners. And since I came up with it, I’ve been coming up with other good titles. But I’m not going to tell you what they are.

Gwenda: Why did you decide to publish the new collection (possibly called Magic for Beginners) through Small Beer?

Kelly: Why we’re publishing the new collection: I would love to work with an editor at a major publishing house, and I hope that someday I’ll have that chance. My agent sent this collection out, and largely the response was the same as the response to the first collection. We like these stories a great deal, but hasn’t she written/isn’t she going to write a novel?

Publishing the first collection was an entirely positive experience. It’s a hard thing to give up. My agent, when she called to tell me that two editors had made relatively decent offers, sounded bemused. These weren’t bad offers, but they didn’t suggest that either house felt that they would do exponentially better with the new collection than Small Beer had done with the first collection. As my agent pointed out, most writers don’t have viable alternatives. In most cases, publishing yourself isn’t the better option.

Most writers don’t make a living by writing. I don’t necessarily expect that I will, either. But Gavin and I can reasonably expect to make a certain amount by publishing the new book ourselves and doing the work ourselves on the design and production side, and on the promotion, etc. And in the end, I will own all the rights to my own work.

Of course, Stranger Things Happen had a lot of champions. Other writers, editors and critics, especially Laura Miller!, venues like Salon and the Village Voice, independent bookstores like St. Marks and Elliott Bay and Shakespeare and Co. and City Lights did so much work getting the book out. I have no idea if any of this will happen when the new collection comes out. It would be willfully stupid and egotistical to expect everything to happen the same way all over again. I have no idea what to expect, and that’s something that I enjoy a great deal.

Gwenda: So, you (and Gavin) travel all over the place and really promote your own work and the work of the writers Small Beer publishes. What would you say to writers about promoting their own work?

Kelly: I toured with Shelley Jackson when Stranger Things Happen had just been published. She had just published The Melancholy of Anatomy with Vintage. We drove cross-country to California and Washington State and back again in her family-heirloom bus. She had a figurine of Little My which went with us, and she had also composed three songs, two of which she alternately performed before she read. I wrote and gave away about two hundred copies of a mini-zine which contained a new story that I’d been working on. I don’t know if touring is essential, but it’s pleasurable in a different way from writing. I love road trips. I love bookstores. I’m much happier in cars or in bookstores than I am at home when I’m trying as hard as I can to avoid writing. Maybe I love road trips because it’s a much more successful way to avoid writing, and because they can accommodate as many bookstores as you possibly fit in? I now own an iPod, and therefore roadtrip book tours can only be more enjoyable & efficient.

As far as promotion goes, I’m much more comfortable promoting the other books that we publish than I am promoting my own work. That’s because as a reader, I love all of the books that we’ve published. I don’t love my own work in the same way. Talking about my own writing is embarrassing, unless I get to make up lies about it in some way.

Promotion: the best possible way to promote any kind of book is to get copies into the hands of as many people as will enjoy it. Having been a bookseller, I like the idea of giving reading copies to booksellers. We just published two books, one by Sean Stewart and one by first-time novelist Jennifer Stevenson. We gave away hundreds of copies of both books through BookSense, and also at the American Booksellers Convention in Chicago. Sean Stewart also worked with the comic-book artist Steve Lieber on a one-issue, free mini-comic for Stewart's novel Perfect Circle. If you think that other people are liable to enjoy something that you’ve done, giving away free stuff is probably a good idea. We’ll put up as much of the collection online as seems feasible. I like the idea of Creative Commons, which Cory Doctorow has utilized and promoted.

Whether or not a book finds its audience seems to be partly hard work, and partly luck. Mostly word of mouth.

Gwenda: Okay, then let’s stop embarrassing you with discussions of your brilliant stories (sorry!). Now that you’re co-editing the fantasy half of the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (with Gavin), you must read just about everything. What have you been reading lately that you’d recommend?

Kelly: What I’ve been reading. At heart, I’m still a bookseller, or maybe a book pimp? I want to put books in people’s hands. (When I was a kid and my friends came over, I used to make them sit down in our treehouse -- we lived in Florida, so it was more of a triangular two-story structure arranged around three palm trees than an actual treehouse -- and read various books. I was into Anne McCaffrey at the time, and she was always a popular choice. Later on, I had more trouble with books like The Wasp Factory, and yet which is really more disturbing: Ian Banks or Anne McCaffrey? I vote for the weird dragon/rider gender & sexual dynamics in Anne McCafffrey’s books.)

Books I’ve read recently:

Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which reminds me a bit of T. H. White’s Once and Future King. I also highly recommend her short fiction.

The Truth About Celia by Kevin Brockmeier is absolutely one of my all-time favorite novels. It covers some of the same territory as William Browning Spencer’s Zod Wallop (also a fantastic book) and The Lovely Bones.

I’ve just reread Joyce Ballou Gregorian’s young adult trilogy, which begins with The Broken Citadel. I would love to reprint these books. I’m also rereading Joan Aiken’s short stories, and again would love to put these back into print as a series of collections.

Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw, which is this wonderful mixture of Trollope and epic fantasy dragons bringing lawsuits against each other. It’s hard to describe without making it sound impossibly silly, but it was a wonderful and strangely sensible book.

K. J. Bishop’s The Etched City, which is an extremely baroque New-Weird-ish fantasy, and M. John Harrison’s Light, which I suppose is space opera for people who didn't realize that they wanted to read space opera, are both just being republished in the U.S. I loved both of these books.

In comics, I've been reading everything that Alan Moore has been publishing, as well as New Frontier, and Kevin Huizenga’s work in the Drawn and Quarterly Showcase 1. I also loved Craig Thompson’s Blankets, Persepolis by Marianni Satriappi, and Lynda Barry’s Hundred and One Demons.

Bangkok 8 by John Burdett. Big If by Mark Costello. Going Postal by Terry Pratchett. Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, which seems to me to be a kind of horror novel, an updating of The Bad Seed. I loved Poppy Brite’s new novel Liquor. Ann Patchett’s Truth and Beauty. (Bel Canto is one of my favorite novels of the last few years. Now I have to go read Lucy Grealy’s book.) Thirsty by M. T. Anderson is a wonderful YA novel. His most recent book, The Game of Sunken Places, is more tongue-in-cheek and a great deal of fun.

If you like traditional fantasy and genre and don’t mind reading series, Rosemary Kirstein, Kij Johnson, Laurie Marks, Gene Wolfe, Mitchell Smith, and Kage Baker have all published extremely good books recently.

The books which I’m most looking forward to reading: The Iron Council by China Mieville, Firethorn by Sara Micklem, The Year of Our War by Steph Swainston, Blink by Malcom Gladwell, Natural History by Justina Robson, Links by Nuruddin Farah, Nowhere Man by Alexsandar Hemon, Beautiful Somewhere Else by Stephen Policoff, Name All the Animals by Alison Smith, One Day the Ice Will Reveal All Its Dead by Clare Dudman, Thinner Than Thou by Kit Reed, McSweeney's iss. 13, and a whole stack of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Barbara Comyns novels.

Then there are the books which I like to give to friends: Diana Wynne Jones’s Archer’s Goon, and Dogsbody; A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japrisot; Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle; Karen Joy Fowler’s Black Glass; Wild Life by Molly Gloss; Disobedience by Jane Hamilton; Pobby and Dingan by Ben Rice; Peter Dickinson’s The Poison Oracle; Strange Toys by Patricia Geary; Sylvester (and also Venetia) by Georgette Heyer; Flowers From the Storm by Laura Kinsale; The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten; Flight of the Dodo by David Quammen; Strange Monsters of the Recent Past by Howard Waldrop; Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman; Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud; Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem; short story collections by Grace Paley and Eudora Welty and Fritz Leiber and M. R. James and E. F. Benson; Cruddy by Lynda Barry; Goodbye Without Leaving (or Family Happiness) by Laurie Colwin.

Gwenda: What about magazines? Or stories you’re really liking lately?

Kelly: For the last few years, The New Yorker has been my favorite magazine, hands down. All that nonfiction by people like Katherine Boo and Malcolm Gladwell.

There was a story by Ben Rice two or three years ago that just knocked me over. In genre, Ellen Datlow at SciFi.com consistently publishes short stories that I want to read. Recent favorite stories have been by John Kessel, Andy Duncan, Christopher Rowe (yes, that Christopher Rowe), Kij Johnson, and Jeffrey Ford. I've been an occasional slush reader for Ellen and SciFi.com for the last four years, and in all that time, she has only bought two stories (both of them in the last 8 months) that I’ve passed back to her. I have to admit that I deeply enjoy reading slush.

In the last few years, F&SF – The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction -- has published great stories by M. Rickert, Kit Reed, and William Browning Spencer, whose story "An Essayist in the Wilderness" remains one of my all-time favorite stories. The zine I enjoy most is probably the food zine Peko Peko, which doesn't come out often enough, and always goes out of print too quickly. The Believer is mostly fabulous. I love One Story.

I like all the new genre zines Say . . .{Bond Girl note: blush}, Trunk Stories, Problem Child, Flytrap, Electric Velocipede, and Full Unit Hookup. It seems like a good thing that so many writers are working as editors, and learning something about production, etc. Of course it would be nice if all of us were also making a living.

Gwenda: So, what’s your zombie contingency plan?

Kelly: In all situations, I like to ask myself: What would Jackie Chan do? Not because I have any sort of Jackie Chan skills, but because it's soothing to contemplate an imaginary Jackie Chan in imaginary action, kicking imaginary ass, zombie or otherwise. More usefully, what Jackie Chan does is improvise, using objects at hand. So we have a pantry with a lot of different kinds of jam, and some Lyle's Golden Syrup, as well as a lot of heavy, tall bookshelves, and several interesting fireworks, such as The Titanic, and The Naughty Elephant. There's also a lawnmower in the garage, and I've seen Peter Jackson's Dead Alive at least five or six times.

So although I'm not wedded to any kind of plan, I'm prepared to improvise ferociously. I could have a lot of fun with one of those large inflatable balls that Jackie Chan rolls over the cliff in, in Operation Condor. There's also the old barricading-yourself-into-a-shopping-mall-or-a-public-library-or-a- cruise-ship.

Gwenda: Good answer. How do we defeat George Bush?

Kelly: These two questions seem related, and yet I have no George Bush contingency plan.

We Did It!

On Friday, 49 people saw the premiere of Wrestling an Alligator. Which means we sold out (I think). I wasn't able to completely read the audience reaction from the booth, but we got laughs, gasps, applause, and at least one positive review. Our cast did spectacularly well and we were praised to the nines by audience members while I was loading the van. All of which was far more than I hoped for.

I can't say enough great words about the people who run the San Francisco Fringe Festival (much less the surprise audience members who showed up on Friday). All of them have been extremely kind and supportive. And if you're in the San Francisco area, I highly encourage you to check out the numerous shows presented.

And then there's us. There are still three more opportunities to see us. Location again is the Exit at Taylor theatre, located at 277 Taylor Street.

The three remaining shows are:

Friday, 9/17/04: 10:00 PM
Saturday, 9/18/04: 4:00 PM
Sunday, 9/19/04: 2:30 PM

Please be sure to join the fun. Only $8!

Now excuse me while I go collapse.

The Manchurian Debate

Jonathan Demme's remake of The Manchurian Candidate is actually quite good. Lots of great details, fantastic sound design, and creepy eyelines directed to the audience. Even Miguel "Ass Kicking Motherfucking" Ferrer shows up. For those who've seen the movie (and we do mean those who've seen the movie -- there's lotsa spoilers being bandied about), there's a good discussion going over at Liz's.

Five Days Till Opening

First off, happy new marraige to Bondgirl, who was kind enough to offer many entries here in my absence (appearances here are still scant for the next two weeks).

Did Sam Tanenhaus earn his brownie during the past two weeks? Really, I wouldn't know. There hasn't been time to read. And this morning, my New York Times arrived without the Book Review section. (Am I on a list, Tanenhaus?) Nevertheless, when the play is over, we'll keep Tanenhaus Watch alive until Sam shows that he can do better. These are the stats that dreams are made of.

The play: Last night, we had our tech run and, aside from a few technical glitches that we'll be fixing this week, it went well. Kirk White, our designated techie, was very quick and helpful in giving us the lighting moods we were happy with. Kirk was very patient with the apparent "scale" of technical elements and "large cast" of four that we had included. In fact, Saturday night was the only time the stage manager and I raised our voices during our entire production run. "What the hell is going on?" I shouted when our opening music played through the first three minutes of the play (instead of the first minute) and when our curtain call drowned out the last line. Yes, these things happen. Fortunately, we found a solution by scaling down our sound FX a tad.

The actors all lit up like unexpected kilowatts coming back from the late 90's California power crisis -- this, I might add, after two full runthroughs that day. (Our play has no scene changes and has a good deal of physical comedy and crazed timing.) I was actually very surprised to see that the extra depth at the Exit at Taylor (compared to our rehearsal space, at least) really enhanced our blocking. It helped tremendously that we kept our rehearsal space to about 80% of the actual dimensions of the theatre. Our rehearsal space, however, was on a slight dais. I was very worried about this, because we had blocked a lot of action behind the desk. I figured it would show up alright, but I couldn't always see the behind-desk action it at our rehearsal space. Fortunately, the Exit at Taylor's theatre is set at a fixed level, it ended up working out.

The alligator painting arrived at the eleventh hour. We finally added it to the set yesterday afternoon and it really helped to sell some of our jokes and the chiaroschuro aesthetic subtext we attempted.

The show has turned out to be incredible. For all of the hardships, the lack of sleep, the depleting funds, and what have you, I'd do it all again in a heartbeat. I feel as if I've given birth to something. When I told our key stagehand during some unknown post-midnight hour, he replied, "What have you given birth to?" He's right, of course. At this point, I'm horribly biased in favor of the play. We'll see what happens when the audience reviews start trickling in.

(And, yes, Bondgirl, there are several James Bond references in the play.)

Now If Morris Can Only Film 2000 Nader Voters Who Aren't Afraid to Vote for Kerry

Real People: directed by Errol Morris.