Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant

Gone Fishing

I'd initially posted some ballyhoo about taking a break. But announcing yet another hiatus strikes me as not only repetitious, but vaguely dishonest. This blog has always served as a beacon for truth. A skewered truth, a truth restricted by my own blinders, sometimes a downright ugly honesty. But truth nonetheless. I'd be doing my readers a disservice if I didn't explain why my appearances here will be less frequent.

William Gaddis once described it as "the rush for second place" and composed an essay on the subject in 1981. He dared to chart how a certain spirit of rebellion in American culture was often spawned by a gnawing sense of failure, a long and frustrated nose cantilevered against a morose and pockmarked face that frowned long into the deepest shadows of yesteryear. The feeling that one's efforts weren't worth much in the long run. The successful person in our society, the hard-liner who plays by the rules and makes partner or vice president after a decade or two of thankless labor, is in so deep that it would never occur to him that there are others who starve and scrape for an altogether different success. These lower-end feeders are often derided as failures. Their needs don't meet the basic burden. But what would our world be without these non-conformists who perform unspoken deeds in the dead of night?

Whatever measure of success one finds, there are hard choices. Passion flaring over common sense. And when a bottom-end straggler reaches a certain age, when the hair falls out and the crow's feet form around the eyes, there comes a point where one wonders why it continues. Because persistence pays off? Sometimes. Because no man is an island? Definitely.

The duty remains, the steadfast flow follows. But it requires rumination and rest and unseen labor and barely any sleep. I'll be back, but right now I'm reoiling the wheels. And I'm smiling as I dance in the dark.

[UPDATE: In response to certain socipathic nitwits who clearly have more time than I do (and whose currency is so inflated that they feel the need to goad some A-1 folks), I quote Carl Sandburg: "Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you."]

[UPDATE THE SECOND: Publisher's Lunch reports this item: "Separately, the NYT Book Review has announced that next Sunday's issue will present a considerably slimmed-down 100 Notable Books of the Year. They will publish their list of top 10 books of the year on December 12. Editor Sam Tanenhaus says of the 'more selective' list, 'In general, we favored strong narratives. This happens to be a year when some of the best books, fiction and nonfiction, were about or set in the past.'"

[I can't tell you how sad this makes me feel. One of the great annual joys is seeing the NYTBR present a crazed list that backs up their credentials as a book review source for one of the nation's major newspapers. It essentially communicates to the reader that, love or hate their selections, the NYTBR is doing its job. But more importantly, much like the recent joys of the IMPAC longlist, the sheer number of books is something to cheer about, an annual occurrence that offers a friendly nod to reading. The reader finds the morsels he may have forgotten about and a few titles he didn't know about. It's a win-win situation between reader and listmaker.

[That Tanenhaus would scale this down to a piddly selection of ten (no doubt with Leon "Scummy Little Reviewer" Wieseltier's involvement) proves that, despite his recent poetry issue and the inclusion of James Wood prominently on his pages, he still remains an asshat who is, in all likelihood, Bill Keller's corporate handmaiden. That he would dispense with such a proud tradition in favor of audience-friendly "10 Sexiest Books Alive" homages to People convinces me that, unless he offers a compelling alternative, he's not going to get any brownies on my watch.

[NO BROWNIES FOR YOU, MR. TANENHAUS!

[UPDATE TO SECOND UPDATE: The good Dr. Jones, fresh from his excavations in Nepal, informs me that we can't withhold baked goods until the final tally. To uphold the brownie fairness doctrine, I renege on my brownie decision until we see what happens over the next two weeks. Tanenhaus shall salivate at his own peril.]

A Special Therapeutic Column from Jonathan Glandzen

In May 1981, a few months into the Reagan administration, my father and my brother Colin and in fact every member in my family started fighting. They weren't fighting about Reagan, per se, but they wanted to give me a solid foundation for long-term neruosis. I never blamed anyone for the fight, but years later, after making a mint off of my novel, The Peregrinations, I felt stifled by the smell of cash around me. I had been approached by several financial advisors who suggested long-term savings and IRAs. They wanted me to live and travel and roll around like a self-entitled pygmy while my fellow writers starved. Had I been rude to Oprah? Had I forgotten the little people?

In considering my sordid sobbing history, I remember that it was Colin who first suggested that a real man took control of his life and that obtaining this confidence was easier when one was well grounded. Every time I tried to be myself, I was faced with Colin's menacing shadow. Colin made less money in his life than I had in a single year, and yet he was secure, happily married, and encouraged me to roll into a fetal position at family reunions.

I think back to those halcyon days of 1981, because, despite my upper middle-class upbringing and a stable, albeit occasionally combative family, I was frightened every time I had to make a decision. I didn't learn to tie my shoe until the age of 26 and it took a Iris Murdoch type who knew what she wanted to deflower me in grad school. She must have anticipated my hunky looking author photo -- the bane of my existence since my success. She never revealed her name.

But there was some comfort growing up -- no thanks to Colin, thank you very much. On my night table was the Marmaduke Omnibus, a dogeared (if you'll pardon the pun), decaying paperback that I had found one day in the dumpster. I opened its pages and discovered that someone had written "This shit isn't funny" on the inside front cover. This austere warning didn't faze me one bit. Indeed, there was a sense of comfort in seeing Marmaduke's innocuous disruption of the household. Like me, Marmaduke didn't know any better. My heart quivered over Marmaduke's long ears, and I soon developed an intimate relationship with Brad Anderson's creation that posed certain problems during adolescence. Marmaduke, as you might imagine, was the only dog that counted. It took several Siamese cats, four parakeets and a few goldfish before I could allow another dog to roam in my own home.

Thankfully, my therapist understood this. After the unfortunate sprinting incident at a cocktail party, I was given a ritalin prescription. This, I might add, at 36.

Throughout the years, Colin suggested Bloom County, The Far Side or "hell, even Doonsebury." But my mind was made up. Even Boondocks was too much for my refined sensibilities. It was Marmaduke or nothing. Other people I met had bad heroin habits. For my own part, I had a sociopathic obsession with a comic strip that wasn't particularly funny.

Momentary Sayonara

There's nothing really to say. And the last thing I want to do is lecture like Neal Pollack. So I'm going the hell away for a week or so. I leave these pages to the annoying spammers, the killer barflies, and perhaps the Superfriends, if they even remember their passwords. No bullshit hiatus here. Just casual indifference and a return to these pages after a much needed lost weekend with Paul Giamatti. I might even teach a red state virgin a thing or two about reproductive rights.

Oh, and fuck you, Homeland Security.

[UPDATE BEFORE FLIGHT: Holy hell. Maud's opened up a can of whoopass on Neal Pollack. On the Pollack question, I should point out that Lenny Bruce's last days were spent reading from law books pointing out the absurdity of true writ. It was, by all reports, the dullest standup comic routine ever devised.

[Also, McSweeeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, Michael Chabon's followup to the Treasury of Thrilling Tales, is (so far), a marked improvement over its predecessor and well worth your time. It certainly helps that RotR fave David Mitchell has a Number9Dream-like tale in there, propinquitous to cool contributions from Margaret Atwood, Poppy Z. Brite, Jonathan Lethem, Roddy Doyle, China Mieville, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King and Peter Straub. Charges of nepotism aside (Julavits and Waldman show up), I'd love to see Chabon edit one of these things every year or two. Of course, if he could include a few overlooked folks like Paolo Bacigalupi, Barry Malzberg, Kelly Link, and the prolfiic Paul Di Fillipo, his rants against genre ghettoization might have more credibility. Now, flight.]

Hold the Mayo, Hold the Line

Excerpt from "Toto's Misunderstood Musical Prosody," thesis paper by Wally Hanthorp, M.A. Music, 1991:

"Hold the Line", a seminal track from Toto's innovatively titled 1978 album, Toto, represents a rare case of restrained genius overstating the obvious. Critic Leonard Parvoo once suggested in The Peoria Journal Star that this was "a tune written, produced and performed specifically for stadiums and FM radio." But it is worth noting that Parvoo, who communicated his unique fury over this innocuous little tune (and Toto in general), founded a Peruvian leper colony three years later. Clearly, the bile he expressed towards Toto in his review was transmuted in some small way into munificence. This demonstrates the value of Toto's simplicity and the band's power to change the world. For even Toto's opponents are motivated to do great things.

But our subject concerns "Hold the Line." Beginning with a simple snare drum snap, we are then acquainted with Steve Porcaro's repetitive keyboard chords (thus anticipating the grand opening moments of Jefferson Starship's "We Built This City"), which are then momentarily fluctuated in a slightly jarring beat, only to return to a traditional 4/4 beat that remains wholly uninterrupted throughout the song. This is our first clue that, while radio-friendly in nature, "Hold the Line" insinuates something more baroque. It is as if this tune represents an effort to "hold the line" on several levels, with the slight slippage hinting at a darker inconsistency. It is worth noting that singer David Paich himself is simultaneously singing while frequently pounding on his keyboard throughout the album, thus multi-tasking well before this term found usage in American vernacular. This is a truly admirable achievement -- indeed, an American one. But why the unexpected introductory shift?

The answer is simple. Beyond the metaphorical elements of the song, Porcaro is holding the line musically, waiting for Paich to come in. Porcaro is determined to bang mechanically on his keyboards, despite the echoing barre chords from the guitar and the rote bass-snare backbeat. Paich's obligation is simple: keep the listener hooked just in time for his introduction and the inevitable guitar solo. And what a rousing introduction it is!

"It's not in the way you hold me."

We are introduced almost instantly to the song's sense of fervent denial. This is then followed up with a simple guitar riff that echoes each line.

"It's not in the way you say you care."

We hear the same denial, barely deviating from the previous line and sang in almost the same quasi-forcefulness. And the same guitar riff. When indeed will the transition occur? Prosody, as usual, has been maintained with a firm yet simple way of hooking the listener.

"It's not in the way you've been treating my friends."

More syllables in this line. These guys can cook! And indeed interject with a few more notes. In this way, Toto deviates from traditional stadium rock of the era, both by defiantly refusing to rhyme and ins ticking to the simple words "It's not in the way." And like the lyrics, we come to learn that "Hold the Line" is, musically, not like its corporate rock brethren. For we are eventually introduced to a chorus that quite deliberately offers perhaps the worst lyrics in Toto's ouevre.

"Hold the line / love isn't always on time."

Even the most generous Toto appreciator would have a hard time reconciling "line" with "time." There is nothing about these two words that rhymes. But then Toto is forcing us to come to terms with the remote propinquity of four-letter words. How many of us can truly rhyme on command? It's also worth noting that the four-letter words Toto includes are not obscene. They are, in fact, quite interchangeable within the realm of everyday human vernacular.

Yet in this way, we immediately understand the initial discordant keyboard riff. For what is this but an oblique reference to Mussolini's trains running on time? Where other bands could have employed a whistle sound effect, Toto lets the music speak for itself. The song needs no flash, save Steve Lukather's driving guitar solo.

Will Paich offer us the full thrust of his emotions? Not here. He will save such moments for "Rosanna" and "Africa." Here, he is concerned with how emotions are interchanged, often denuded of their primary value. His "Love isn't always / love isn't always" reminds the listener that this song is inherently about love, albeit love of a highly general nature.

It is the kind of love that helps one to get through a Saturday night. It is the kind of love that one can use, if one is fully inclined, to found a leper colony.

Palabra About Paizogony, Baby

Gymnosophic grounds for gyniolatry. Solo, saccadic jerks before saltire, abbreviated waldflute for Waldgrave Wiggins, committing randy wales, always wanchancy before his own private obeliscolychny, if you catch my drift.

Wiggins, perhaps a pyroballogist (in a sense), pyrexic to the last about his xanthippe, afraid of xeransis qua "Oh!" and, were quacksalver transposed to quadrimular English degrees, a stolid pettifogger.

Certain dactyliologist, the Waldgrave ruminated further, facinorous in his fantasies. But not to be, the incident ended with neither paideutic progress or pumped penis.

Big Google is Watching You

Google Scholar is a very helpful resource. Say you need to find an obscure or out-of-print book. Well, punch it into Google Scholar, type in your ZIP code, and, shazam, a listing of libraries shows up. Even so, given that Google is the top dog search engine and has been criticized for its very serious privacy concerns, one wonders why Google would introduce a feature that bears such a striking correllation to related attributes within the PATRIOT Act.

The PATRIOT Act authorizes the Department of Justice (and its related entities) to keep track of booklists that citizens check out at libraries or buy from bookstores, presumably based on the silly logic that anyone who reads A Catcher in the Rye (which would include a sizable cluster of high school students) is going to transform overnight into Mark David Chapman.

But Google Scholar fits the bill so exactly that one wonders what relationship the company might have with the government. If Google's infamous cookie (which resides on a system until 2037) remains in play through Google Scholar, the big question is why does Google need this data? To service its users or to profit while compromising an individual's privacy? What happens when a teenager trying to come to terms with his sexual orientation looks for a book on the subject to see if his urges are biologically normal? None of these very sizable concerns is addressed in the FAQ.

Four Bitches Down, One to Go

Lily Tuck has won the National Book Award for fiction, narrowing it down to just one woman writer from New York for the Times pull its hair out over.

It Happens in Small Steps

"Leave our homos alone." (via MeFi)

We're Not in Kansas Anymore, Teachout

Wait a minute. Teachout's listening to Toto? I could understand Journey. Twist my arm and you could even make a case for Foreigner. But Toto? He really must be sick. Our hope is that we can get Teachout's toes tapping to Built to Spill or the Magnetic Fields and back to robust health. Nevertheless, we wish him well and suggest you buy his new book.

As for us (And this will be our last use of first person plural for the year. How did we get sucked into this stylistic vice? Worse than nicotine, I tell ya. Just as bad as parenthetical asides.), we're overcapacitated. Expect us to return tomorrow. Maybe.

New Secretary of State Promises That President Will Sleep Only Four Hours A Night; President Concerned

Literaryland

LOS ANGELES (AP): In an effort to reach out to a new demographic, the Walt Disney Company announces the introduction of Literaryland, a new section that will be added to Disneyland and Walt Disney World in 2006.

Magic Space Mountain: An exciting new ride that takes seven years to complete! Riders will be pummeled with ideas and then treated at a hospital, where they will rhapsodize with Mickey Mouse and philosophers.

It's a Small World's End: Passengers will be able to witness scenes from various T.C. Boyle's novel (sexual communes, Victorian prudery), as an insufferable song (composed and sung by T.C. Boyle himself!) is played at top volume.

Greymatterhorn: A new cafe reproducing Teutonic existential splendor which will serve up such dishes as the Croissant of Pure Reason, Beyond Food and Evil and a special omelet called Beating and Fluffiness. Customers will be encouraged to eat their meals in angst.

Pirates of the Fabian: Visitors will be attacked by overly idealistic turn-of-the-century writers dressed up in pirate garb, taunted by various passages from George Bernard Shaw and E. Nesbitt. Our marketing experts report that 95% have exited the ride with their capitalistic philosophy intact.

Literaryland hopes to continue Disney's long legacy of understanding the tastes of the American public. Several books will be offered with their morbid endings changed for happy consumption. Disney plans to tie in Literaryland with its upcoming animated musical (set for release in 2006), Walt Disney's Crime and Punishment, which will feature a tap-dancing Raskolnikov smiling in the face of poverty, with a talking bowl of Top Ramen for company.

This is an exciting time for Disney. We hope that you can join the fun!

A Case for Minor Larceny?

Malcolm Gladwell's latest article chronicles how artists across several mediums are prone to sampling. While the obvious examples such as George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" (taken subconsciously from "She's So Fine") and Tarantino's wholesale lift of the magic marker anecdote from Scorsese's American Boy are left out, Gladwell does make a strong case for greater sensitivity in how artists "steal."

If Gene Wolfe hadn't been inspired by Jack Vance, we wouldn't have his fantastic Sun books. Nor would we have Eric Kraft without Proust, or David Foster Wallace without Borges, Coover and Gaddis. Lindsay Anderson's cinematic masterpiece, O Lucky Man!, couldn't have come into being, had Malcolm McDowell and Anderson not been inspired by Voltaire's Candide. Should we damn David Mitchell from the blatant Haruki Murakami inspiration in Number9Dream?

I once interviewed Guy Ritchie and pointed out that his subtitles in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels reminded me of the jive talking from Airplane. Apparently, nobody else had pointed this out to him and the stylistic similarity had never occurred to him until that moment. But the scene in question helps to give Lock its lived-in feel.

Months after writing Wrestling an Alligator, while there were a few conscious nods (and revisions) to other influences (the argument clinic sketch from Monty Python, Daffy Duck running around like a loon in his early Warner Brothers appearances), I was shocked to learn that I had unexpectedly included a line from Superman II (a film I had watched too many times as a child): "I've seen a lot of sleazy moves in my time." When Mark finishes his novel, I have no doubt that John Banville will work his way in there somewhere.

I'd hate to see a world where "stealing" becomes so rigid that it fails to account for an artist's subconscious inspirations. The simple fact is that we are just as inspired from what we read as we are from what we experience. There's an idea in this somewhere about the pros and cons of novelists as cultural and literary stenographers.

The Author Who Fled

It's not available online, but the latest NYRoB has a fantastic essay on the underrated writer Frederick Prokosch. I've praised Prokosch before on these pages and expressed sorrow that everything he's written is out of print, but it was nice to learn that The Asiatics is being reissued early next year. The Asiatics, if you haven't read it, serves as a gloomier-than-usual take on the American expatriate traveling through exotic land formula. The difference is that Prokosch's fantastic descriptions, to say nothing of his riffs on consciousness and identity, transform it into a kind of honed, yet primitive poetry that's sui generis.

An Open Letter to the FCC

Dear FCC:

Since three people decide the fate over what is indecent on American television, I figured that my viewpoint counted for just as much. Plus, since this nation has spiraled into a financial abyss (and could use some cash), I thought you might want to investigate the following indecent things that I see on television every day. I am, to put it bluntly, quite mortified by what passes for "entertainment" these days. I will need therapy for years. Perhaps you may want to send me a finder's fee to cover this.

Regardless, what follows are some of the many indecent things I have unearthed for your beautifully authoritarian eyes:

• There are commercials that try to convince me to give them money! They use scantily clad models and people who offer false smiles to convince me that their goods (which are usually bad for me) are fun and harmless. They set down good rock songs to commercials and take away the value of great music I grew up listening. INDECENT!
• There is a boorish man named Bill O'Reilly who tells other people to shut up! He is the rudest person I have ever seen on television. And what's more, I understand that he actually gropes people who work on his show. INDECENT!
• There is a purported "news" network called FOX News. Have you seen it? They spin stories based off of half-truths and cater to spiteful impulses. They never get all sides of the story and scare the bejesus out of me with their martial theme music and extremely frightening news graphics. INDECENT!
• There is a network called WB that shows African-American people in stereotypical roles. I have met and befriended many African-Americans, but I have never seen them eat nearly as much fried chicken as they do the WB Network. Furthermore, on all networks, African-Americans are only cast as the Lovable Sidekick or the Badass Cop. Where are the African-American lawyers and professors? This is clearly racist and INDECENT!
• There is clearly not enough sex on television. Where are the shows devoted to hours of bobbing breasts and naked people thrusting in slow motion? Don't people on television jerk off? To deny such basic human impulses while simultaneously perpetuating the employment of such anti-actors as James Spader and Mark Harmon is INDECENT!

I trust that you will fine each and every network that carries out these indecent practices. The future of this clean nation depends upon it!

Very truly yours,

Edward Champion

The NBA Horror! The NBA Horror!

Dennis Loy Johnson: "When I got there I found the place crawling with security, a bunch of heavy set guys with ear pieces and Uzis slung over their shoulders. It was a big place, dark, creepy, with a moat and a drawbridge. Moody was inside surrounded by toadies peeling grapes for him. He leapt up and grabbed me by the lapels and said, 'You gotta help me! You gotta get me out of this! Those women at the Times—Caryn James, Laura Miller, Deborah Solomon—they're trying to kill me! I mean, when Michiko Kakutani gets out of her court–mandated anger management classes, I'm a dead man!'"

"No One Wants The Job? Why, Sure I'll Be Your Secretary of State!"

30 Second Roundup

• January magazine editor Linda Richards gets copy in the Vancouver Sun. (via Sarah)
• G.K. Chesterton: unfairly neglected? My short answer: yes and no. (via Mark)
• A George Eliot statue was knocked down by a careless lorry driver.
• Out the door.

The Ugly Truth Behind the DC Universe

(via Metafilter)

You Don't Have to See It to Be Terrified

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the eight most frightening words in the English language: Screenplay by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Joel Schumacher.

RIP ODB

In Defense of Fucking the South (And the Red States Too, For That Matter)

"In swearing, as a means of expressing anger, potentially noxious energy is converted into a form that renders it comparatively innocuous. By affording the means of working off the surplus energy of the emotion induced by frustration, the tension between the emotion and the object of it is decreased and the final dissolution of the tension is expressed in a feeling of relief, which in its place is a sign of the return to a state of equilibrium." -- Ashley Montagu The Anatomy of Swearing

The new political correctness has arrived, and it cuts across a much broader swath than Berkeley. It all started with an election, unearthing a long fragmented nation of reds and blues, followed by purples that tried to underplay the division. Some folks, understandably, didn't buy into this. Before too long, people were fucking the south, letting their frustrations simmer over the linguistic saucepan.

It was all good fun. Because how many of us either thought or expressed these words just after the election? We were able to view the rant, recognize the angry voice, and move on. Because for many of us, the election was really tantamount to crying "Shit!" when stubbing a toe, or "Fuck you, you fucking fuck" to an inanimate object that either failed to function or caused a lasting bruise. An immediate expression of relief (considered strangely profane in some circles), followed by relative equanamity and a determination to get through the day.

Unfortunately, where the reasonable person can comprehend how frustration funnels into curses and profanity (after all, they are just words), the oversensitive idealist can't. The oversensitive idealist (represented these days by Neal Pollack, whose latest persona is a strangely sanctimonious theologist of expression) views a world where one must say "love the south" instead of "fuck the south," never considering that in expressing a momentary curse, one might be, as the great Ashley Montagu suggests, converting short-term negative energy into a greater goal of long-term peace and cohabitation. In this sense, the Pollack view is very much like the JesusLand caricature: a place where human expression is unrealistically hindered, where anger isn't allowed, and where the very idea of allowing one's fleeting negative emotions to suffuse, whether in conversational or Web form, is verboeten.

As far as I can tell, nobody is painting black Xs on doors. Vigilantes aren't heading to a red or a blue state to string up a few dissenters. While there are certainly a lot of silly stereotypes being promulgated on both sides, the silent ban on expression is perhaps even more damaging. Because how can anyone on either side "reach out" when they can't purge themselves of their negative feelings?

If fucking the south, or fucking the red states, or transforming California or Texas a joke (both very easy to do) leads to national healing, then I say let loose. Theodore Roosevelt famously decried politically motivated journalists as "muckrakers" in 1906, but the term developed beyond its pejorative meaning to classify and understand a specific pursuit still quite active today. Sometimes disparagement helps people come to terms with a concept and create the very unity desired.

It wouldn't be human to do otherwise.

Confidential to Some Sexy Correspondents

Folks, folks, folks, folks. I should point out that just because some of us may disagree on minor points (and, boy, they sure are minor), this does not mean that I've stopped respecting you. Particularly since you're good enough to offer a reasoned and impassioned argument along with your thoughts and you're willing (much more than that!) to weigh in on subjects literary and cultural, and offer the Good Doctor some contrarian food for thought.

This is the cornerstone of democracy, I think. If I don't respond to your emails within 24 hours, it is because I am busy with research and preparation on a few projects. It is not because I don't love you or value your thoughts. You are all incredibly sexy. The fault here is entirely mine, because I'm a slacker, I can only do so much, and I don't get back to people as quickly as I'd like. But trust me on this one, folks. You're all hot mommas.

Anthropology Awaits

Thankfully, circumstances have made us unexpectedly busy for the next four days. So our recently misinterpreted fury (not directed at James in general, who for the most part is a competent critic, save for the piece in question) has been siphoned into more productive conduits. Please visit the fine folks on the left in our absence. We've got work to do.

In the meantime, we leave you with the following personality test. Between these two actresses, who do you prefer?

I'll keep the lips sealed on my choice until the ballots are in. But from a sociological standpoint, I'm decidedly curious.

More Archivin' Fixins

The BBC is about to release an Internet video viewer, so that one may review BBC content over the last 7 to 14 days. No word on whether this will be a paid viewer or UK-exclusive, but I wish that all networks took the ideas of TiVo and applied it like this. (via Die Puny Humans)

The Girl Who Cried Julavits

OGIC has weighed in on the Caryn James piece, as has Galleycat. OGIC suggests that the James piece is honest criticism. Meanwhile, Galleycat (inter blogia) has stated her reasons why James has attacked. Rather than ape Galleycat's able analysis, I thought I'd respond to OGIC's notion that we all leaped into some touchy-feely Julavits antiseptic tank.

If James had stated specific examples in her profile, then her huffing and puffing would have had more validity. But I perceived this piece as an "assault," not because of the piece's intensity, but because it was the worst of assaults (the spineless passive-aggressive tone) available in the human repertoire. But more than that. James was fundamentally dishonest about her sensibilities in the following ways:

First off, James complains about a chapter being composed of one sentence and then inveighs against "bite-size fragments" (and, no, she's not talking about those bags of tiny Snickers bars, but books, believe it or not!). This is certainly an interesting position to take. I'm genuinely curious to understand why anyone would be so hostile about a book merely because its spine failed to stretch out at least three inches or a single sentence carried over to another page. But the most we get from James is some vague quibble about "the tyranny of white space" and then a logical fallacy (and thus dishonest argument) that employs a backwards Chewbacca defense, suggesting that anyone interested in an abbreviated book inherited this interest from watching too much MTV. (And since Terry Teachout himself has confessed that his attention span has shifted towards shorter books, I get this wonderfully comic image of Teachout sitting through a Real World marathon on the weekend.)

Having failed to reference a single example to support her argument, James then badgers not the similarity of the books, but the close proximity and gender of the authors! How dare this quintet have vaginas or dine in Manhattan from time to time! Why, those two simple facts alone are enough to corrupt literature as we know it! Never mind that within the Bloomsbury Group, you couldn't get any more disparate than Lytton Strachey's crisp satire and Virginia Woolf's baroque paeans to consciousness. No! In the Caryn James universe, if you have at least two personal attributes in common with another person, you will live similar lives and make similar choices. Does that mean that all male writers living in San Francisco put together prose like Dave Eggers or Daniel Handler or Andrew Sean Greer? I couldn't name three more local writers whose work contrasts more sharply.

Then, after all this flummery, James throws us a frickin' bone. She likes the Silber. But not so fast, kids! Because all five books are "built on compressed observations that easily veer into precious writers' program language, too woozy and poetic for its own good." And not a single example of what these "compressed observations" might be (what a writer sees while diving in the deep sea perhaps?) or the "woozy and poetic" MFA stuff that James takes offense to.

Again, this is unreasonable and dishonest. If you were a lawyer trying a case in court, you'd tell a jury that the defendant raped and murdered 32 squirrels, but you'd point to the police report, the testimony of witnesses, the laboratory tests, and the like. In short, you'd rely upon evidentiary support and ensure that the depraved squirrel killer would pay for the 32 small lives in blood, currency, or imprisonment of the judge's choosing. It might give the hypothetical attorney a cheap thrill to call the defendant "woozy and perverted," but without hard evidence, it's nothing more than silly ad hominen.

Then James offers a valid point about award ceremonies offering variety, only to drift back into the "claustrophobic sameness" of the five books that represents a still as yet unestablished style that she objects to. James turns to the books themselves, but again and again seems confused. Instead of citing examples, she attacks story structure as a "trendy gimmick." She then tells us, "Trendy gimmick bad, illuminating strategy good," which is the same thing that a marketing manager once told me. Then there are the handicaps and yet another unfair assualt on Bynum not because of the writing, but because she is 32. (And, by the way, the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission is being cc'd on this post.) And still no hard examples.

By then, the James profile ends and the anger across the blogosphere begins. But in rereading James with a more careful eye, I take back my initial assessment. Her article isn't an "assault." It's simply dishonest and incompetent criticism.

Iris Chang Found Dead

Horrible news. Not far from my digs, no less. Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking and a Northern California resident, committed suicide just south of Los Gatos. She was only 37.

Armistice-Challenged Roundup

The ongoing massacre in Fallujah and the nomination of Alberto Gonzales (who once declared the Geneva Conventions "obsolete") as attorney general are enough to hinder any self-respecting humanist from smiling. But I'll try nonetheless to offer a literary roundup on this most ironic of Veteran's Days.

• The first of two major reports on the Paris Review archive is now up. Laura Miller is expected to offer a writeup in an upcoming issue of the NYTBR.
• A rare collection of Coleridge's poetry has been saved by Lottery funding in the UK. The collection is now on display in Cumbria.
• In other archival news, the world's best-selling romance novelist Barbara Cartland will live on after her death. 160 of her unpublished novels will be released to the Internet over the next 13 years. Amazingly, none of them have any sex and all will have happy endings. There may, however, be kissing and frequent brushes of the hair and possibly "a nibble on a nipple or two."
• Duke University (based in North Carolina) weighs in on Wolfe's latest. While "DuPont" University appears to be modeled after Duke, Chrissie Gorman notes that Wolfe never bothered to show up there during his research.
• The tireless Ron Hogan has been interviewing the National Book Award fiction nominees. Meanwhile, the New York Times continues its baffling assault on the nominations, claiming now that the books are too short and that not one of them has a sense of humor. Well, by that criteria, maybe we better toss our copies of The Stranger, Desperate Characters and Hunger into the rubbish bin.
• The castle that inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula is going to be turned into holiday homes. The Van Helsing Suite will have a jacuzzi, a minibar, and a valet who will frequently stop into bite guests on request. Happy hour will feature affordably priced bloody Marys.
• Nicholas Spark is ponying up the dough to renovate a high school track in his hometown. The track will be called Running in a Bottle. Runners will be required to sprint around the track for fifty years until either love or Alzheimer's strikes first.
• And Maud has an interview with Josh Melrod up, concentrating upon literary magazine launching (and perhaps lunching).

AudBlog #21 -- We Can Live Without Toast

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AudBlog #20 -- The Aging Process

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AudBlog #19 -- Red & Blue

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Paris Review Archive

Since none of us can wait, I just spoke with publicist James Meader. He confirmed that the 1950s section of The Paris Review online archive will be up on Monday, November 15, 2004.

Tom Wolfe Lays Down New Book Signing Rules

1. No jokes about the white suit or my hired minions beat you up.
2. You must refer to me as "Charlotte Simmons" rather than "Tom Wolfe."
3. For every autograph granted, you must sign an agreement in which you will never utter a bad word about my novel. Failure to utter hosannas about my genius will involve expensive litigation through Farrar.
4. Bonfire of the Vanities? There was no Bonfire of the Vanities, nor was there A Man in Full.
5. I invented gonzo journalism and you didn't.
6. Don't ask for an unnecessary exclamation point from me. The book speaks for itself! It's just "Tom Wolfe," not "With love, from Tom Wolfe" or "To my dearest Bertha, Tom Wolfe." Stop adoring me, buy my book and leave me alone!

RELATED: Rejected Titles for Wolfe's Latest.

But Will Tanenhaus Ever Be Tried for Literary Crimes Against Humanity?

Mark, Jessa and the brownie-denied Sam Tanenhaus talk litblogs on NPR.

"Real Life" Fiction

Maud points to "literature from the underground" from the ULA, everybody's favorite group of Knut Hamsun/Henry Miller flunkies. One suspects that the ULA's problem is their aversion to editing. So as a service to the ULA's genius writers, I've decided to help them out with the first two paragraphs of Emerson Dameron's "Uptown Valhalla":

Thursday evening, 8:34 PM. I jerked awake on my brother’s couch in Uptown. [How does one jerk awake on something as uncomfortable as a couch? A couch will deaden your back muscles and hinder the waking process.] “At least I don’t have a hangover; that’s a goddamn miracle,” I thought [Why express this as a thought? Shouldn't he be feeling this or the omniscient voice expressing this?], right before the railroad spike went in one ear and out the other. [Who the hell are you? Pheinas Gage? This makes no sense whatsoever.] I glanced at the coffee table. I shoveled my hands in my pockets. Wallet and keys were not forthcoming. [To shovel is to dig and unearth some sediment. One cannot shovel and produce nothing. It is like applying a shovel to air.]

Fortunately, my sibling [Your brother? Your sibling? Does he have a name? Is this even relevant?] had a few twenties stashed in a Pokemon Stadium cartridge [Aren't these unnecessary pop cultural references what you're damning Dave Eggers about?] on the bookshelf. I left the apartment and plodded toward a local jazz club, rubbing the fresh, acne-like bumps on my scalp. [Did you recently shave your head or is this supposed to be metaphorical? This sounds more like eczema rather than "acne-like" description that fails to tell it like it is. Clarify.] It felt like a TB test was coming up wrong. [Yeah, and I feel like a simile tossed out in desperation.] A nest’s worth of defiant hornets buzzed ‘round my circulatory system. [Make up your damn mind. Does his head hurt? Is he suffering from a condition? This is incoherent rubbish.] These weren’t coke bugs. I know what those feel like. [Too bad that we don't, becaue you're incapable of clarity.] They look for escape routes, whereas these li’l fellas seemed to be on some sort of reconnaissance mission. [Ho ho ho!]

Now if I were a literary editor, the above bracketed statements would be racing through my mind. I'd toss this story out in an instant. This isn't "real" writing. It's junk. I'm sorry to be rough on Mr. Dameron. I'm sure he's a nice guy. But the ULA has yet to offer a compelling reason why we should subsidize people who put together this kind of drivel in one draft while others spend years starving in rat-infested garrets actually developing their craft. Like it or not, there are some people who can write, and there are others who can't.

You want real life, Wenclas? I'll show you rooms of starving writers (and patient spouses) turning out novel after novel, receiving rejection slip after rejection slip, and continuing despite the fact that 90% of everything is crap and that bleary-eyed editors are beleagured by "aspiring writers."

The simple truth is that when a story has so many foolish inconsistencies embedded within its first two paragraphs, even the most experimental editor won't have the patience when the piece is competing against a vertiginous slush pile of manuscripts. And I say this is a good thing. As readers, we only have so much time in our lives to devote to the neverending amateurs and incompetent moonlighters who pester like self-entitled whiners. And even then, we have to choose from what's published.

The ULA wants to "overthrow" the literary establishment. Well, that's silly. Because, for the most part, these people know what they're doing. They read perhaps more than any of us. Granted, money plays a sizable role in their decisions. But then money plays a sizable role in everyone's decisions. Even the wannabe Bohemian writer who spends hours of his time railing against the machine rather than writing a novel.

I'd have more respect for the ULA if they were actually promoting something of value. But they are a first-class literary sham. They're the assholes you encountered in high school who wanted divisiveness for the sake of divisiveness, fools who would spend a whole lifetime making enemies, rather than truly "fucking up the shit from the inside" like the best of subversive novelists. And as such, they deserve no respect: not from you, not from me, and certainly not from anyone who seriously cares about literature.

White Bread

So listen all, peeps. We got this here Whitbread dope piquing crosst the pond. My boy David Mitchell got jacked, dig, but there other choices instead. Add some shortening to them cookies, biatch, and you get a list so simple that my ditch-dirty cuz could bake youze some mean pumpernickel blinded.

Dwellin' on da fiction:

So we gots us a clear favorite with Alan Hollingshurst. Wasn't enough for The Line of Beauty to scarf the Booker, now it needs Whitbread too. Sheet, book's got bigger appetite than my libid. Leave the boy alone. Bee-effin-seiged by 'views, he is. Cat can't stop answering dubyaass questions. So he out, cause we all tired of his Thatcherism-ramblin' ass.

Kate Atkinson has nice name and tome titled Case Histories. No doubt ever'one's main forens-fixated folk is pleased by this. Still, the girl's favorite books are hackneyed as hell, and I ain't talkin' taxi. So she out too, cause we like influences spiced, if you know what I'm sayin'.

Annie Levy's got that Small Island, smart, sassy and cerebral. We like that and nice curves in a hot momma. But more postwar posturin'? We sick of the Gravity's Rainbow offshoots, dig? Maybe 'cause we drinking 40s and revisiting the mack daddy who started all this -- who is a lot clearer than these messy folk. No, Levy's out, just cuz we be chillin' through year's end.

Then there's this freedom-soundin' author named Louis de Bernieres with Birds Without Wings. Boy's humble with the Tolstoy comparisons. Sounds like a right cat. Our horse is on him. Go Louis go! We may be movin' on up to Paris if that Penn Ave. bad lay push us in da slums.

Iowa Yin-Yang

Tonight, at Modern Times, two University of Iowa grads read from two books issued from University of Iowa Press. Both books were remarkably compact (both around 135 pages) and both authors had won several awards. It is here that the similarities end between Marilyn Abildskov and Merrill Feitell. (Although, you see? They also have similar first names!)

Both read for about twenty minutes: Abildskov from The Men in My Country and Feitell from Here Beneath Low Flying Planes. Abildskov's book is a highly personal memoir set in Japan about her days as an English teacher, while Feitell's book is a collection of short stories (and winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award).

After their readings were up, the two answered a handful of questions, before Marilyn took the mike and began interviewing Merill and expressed how astonished she was at Merill's output, before Merill confessed that writing her California-based novel was an uphill battle.

Even so, the two ladies demonstrated that there's one heck of a demand for Iowa writers here in San Francisco. It was SRO by the time I got there, but I somehow managed to find a strange seat watching the two authors in profile. I felt a bit like Tom Landry, which is a strange sensation to feel at a reading.

Incidentally, I've read The Men in My Country and I've been trying to talk Marilyn (a friend of mine) into a Segundo interview. I made an impassioned pitch to her that she did indeed have things to say, but we'll see.

Status Report

1. I am badly in need of a vacation. I have been waiting for Thanksgiving to roll around, but alas even two weeks away is an eternity.
2. Because of the general fatigue, my reading speed has dropped to an all-time low. A mere 75 pages a day, if that. It's not the books I fault, but a certain malaise that nags at me. Why does literature matter? It does, don't get me wrong. But in prioritizing reading and responding above other things, am I not the apolitical parvenu remaining blissfully ignorant in Stalinist Russia?
3. November's election: oh, how to fight off the bitter aftertaste! And why is the right so angry? They won this motherfucker!
4. Writing is pathetic. We're talking 400 words or so a day and that involves staring at a screen for about two hours, putting a ZoneAlarm Internet Lock on the comp. And even then, none of it matters. Not the poetic descriptions of vagrants fading into urban colors, not the dialogue involving choices. We're talking earnest questions that nobody wants to answer. Understandable.
5. I have been trying to avoid all political news. Fallujah, rigged elections, mandates, tax code readjusted for the rich. But this, apparently, is an impossibility. My moral concern about my country has eaten away hours of my time -- reading news stories, replies, angry bloggers, the like. Before I know it, it's 2 AM. The sad thing is I haven't a clue as to how we can win. A few general ideas, sure. But nothing within my current existential purview. What a waste!
6. Invariably, people want to talk politics in social clusters. And I'm sick sick sick of it. Somehow, everything else seems trivial. You can't talk about a winning restaurant or a fantastic feeling someone had last week without coming across like a complete and utter cad. To resist social discourse is to be Donne's island, but it all leaves me feeling spent and secluded these days. And so I'm reluctant to chatter or socialize, even when I force myself to. Plus, I am now very cognizant of stupid people and I don't like these elitist impulses.
7. There are strange people taking away the solitary time I need during my weekday lunches to remain a happy and sane person. And apparently I'm not alone. The strange people in question have sensed the dip in cheeeriness and have brought in their efficiency experts and their positive values programs and their Leo Buscalgia rhetroic (accompanied by milky New Agers who resemble the palette of Cream & Wheat and cherub-cheeked bald guys who haven't smiled convincingly since 1986), and it all makes everyone feel uncomfortable. And they are rebuked in whispers.
8. There is a general feeling of defeat in the Financial District. People are overworked, nobody's hiring. This is the new American way -- at least for the next four years. And while one can complain, the general sense is that one should not if she expects to keep her job. It is much like the mentality behind the Great Depression. Guilt for having to settle within a socioeconomic archipelago of overqualification.
9. There are surely better ways to eke one's existence than this.
10. I have no shame about how these points are interpreted.
11. I'm a cheery soul and I'm fighting every impulse that resembles that moment in Happiness where Ben Gazarra willingly applies the salt to his meal. As long as I exist on this planet, I will not throw in the towel. But I weep at the growing batallion of Gazarras who have seemingly infiltrated every urban hot pocket.

But Will They Be Sober Enough to Spot All the Hilarious Dale Carnegie References?

The Gaddis Drinking Club: the best thing since sliced bread.

Beating a Dead Horse

This morning, several conservative litbloggers weighed in on the Red States vs. Blue States business.

Well, when you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way.

Really, I haven't seen such vitriolic political nonsense in this nation since the Baltimore Riots of 1812 and 1861. (And if Baltimore is the place that the shit starts stirring, I expect the Hag to offer a Daily Riot Likelihood Report.) Let's not make that mistake, shall we? The election's over, the nation's divided. Depending upon where you sit, the country is either (a) going to hell in a handbasket or (b) moving in the direction the people want it to. How about this: Can we move on now? You have your side, we have ours. You'll have a cakewalk, we'll have a fight. Blah blah blah.

But in the end, we'll kick your asses. We always do.

Round

• Mark Sarvas has cemented himself as the roaming reading attendee of the blogosphere. In addition to checking out David Foster Wallace (against his will! and with a rollicking backblog to boot!), he also has the skinny on Vermin on the Mount. We don't believe San Francisco is the center of the literary universe, in part because the pronouncement was handed down from the mountain by Sam Tanenhaus, but we'll be doing our best over the coming months to offer similar reports here, as time permits.
• Some of our favorite litbloggers will be on the Round Table, a WAMC radio program, this morning.
• Adobe Books, home to frenetic art shows and a great place to nab rare books has their books organized by color. If you're in the San Francsico area, check it out.
• As predicted by nearly everyone, Suite Francaise, the long-lost novel written by Holocaust victim Irene Nemirovsky has taken the Renaudot. This is the first time that the esteemed French prize has been awarded posthumously. Foreign rights were garnered at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
• In what may be another sign of changing literary priorities, North Carolina Central University has withdrawn funding for its literary magazine. It was just $7,000 on the budget, and the money will now go to "student leadership and women's issue programs." The remaining $6,000, no doubt, will go to more perqs for the football team.
• Alice Munro gets another writeup -- this time in Newsday. Fortunately, this time around, the article concentrates more on her writing (and her love for William Maxwell) rather than wasting column inches on her "thinnish" weight.
• Jonathan Rose has an intriguing article about the working class's relationship with reading over the years.
• Nevada has a poet laureate?
• A film is in the works on the life of Sir Walter Scott.
• And Gerard Jones has gone Hollywood on us (via Moby).

You Dirty Rat

There is a rat in the apartment. I discovered him making an escape tonight after investigating some sounds in the kitchen. The rat is small and scampers through a small hole that I found near the stove. Even though the rodent may be tiny and spurious, the simple fact is that he scares the bejesus out of me, as rats seem to do. There's the disturbing possibility that he could run like the devil in the post-midnight hours and take a bite out of my flesh. Or something worse. I didn't read H.P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" lightly.

The timing's about right, given that I end up dealing with a rat perhaps every four or five years. The last time, the rat emerged as I was whipping up my trademark pasta sauce. I was a foolish twenty-six back then. And I immediately freaked out. This time around, there's slightly more maturity, in that my reaction doesn't involve jumping onto the closest countertop like some housewife in a Warner Brothers cartoon. So my manhood's on the line too.

But this sort of thing is to be expected. It's getting to be the wintertime. Which means the rats are coming in from the cold.

Of course, when humans in the Western world deal with these sorts of things, they, of course, go all out. Certainly in my case, obscenely so. I'm now the proud owner of three boxes of rat poison, several traps, and a barrage of truly masochistic devices that will kill this dreadful beast. I feel like Wile E. Coyote ordering from Acme.

Part of me sees the hypocrisy in demonizing the rat. Part of me would like to be friends with the rat. But because I'm terribly afraid, because I detest its presence and its mentality (which is, primarily, to scavenge upon what it might find, which isn't much, given that my food's all packed away), I want the rat dead. I want it out of my life. Go bother some other bachelor. The NIMBY principle was never more strernly (and justifiably!) applied than it is for rats.

So I have declared war. Chances are the rat's just as frightened of me as I am of him. (He certainly skedaddled fast when I turned the light on.) Granted, if the bookies were to put a spread on this, I'd win by leaps and bounds. I have a bigger brain. I'm larger than the rat. But it moves much faster and the rat's interests and existence aren't as complicated as mine. Even so, does the rat have brothers or sisters? Or is it simply vermin prepared to spread a new wave of bubonic? Even if I defeat the rat (as I suspect I will), who's the real winner in this battle?

Tanenhaus Shows Disrespect for Literature by Turning Borges Into Joe Camel

No brownies for you, Tanenhaus!

Thought of the Morning

Six years ago, the American public saw one of the most brutal battle scenes in film history. Despite the fact that Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan reached across several audiences, left and right, and was much talked about and led to a very public reconsideration of going to war for the right reasons and what our boys were in there for, the American people still voted for Bush.

Ergo, the American public has no memory in cases of exemplary artistic influence.

Also: head hurts.

#10 --collapse

Ladies and gentlemen, you've been fantastic. I can barely compose sentences. So this suggests (for me, anyway) that Drunken ______ is at an end. I am sloshed beyond compare and shall rest drunkenly. Allah's speed.

#9 -- the male mind

8:50 PM: I am officially on Screwdriver Five (I think). I am also colliding iinto walls and it is heinously arduous for me to type in a fucking post. I hope for B's sake that this isn't considered "moderate." It sure as hell doesn't feel that way. My head is beginning to throb. In my defense, I should say that drinking copious amounts of alochol is no longer a reality for me. At least, it hasn't been the case since my mid-twenties. So I've had to force the stuff down my gullet, with the caveat that I should last to some degree. I'm a man of my word, as some folks here know.

Anyway, fair is fair. And I'm happy to address Lauren's point concerning "the end of the relationship." From my standpoint, at least, the female anatomy has been of more pressing interest since the end of the relationship. The value of a relationship involves rampant sex and intimacy that stymies the male resolve to some degree. But when it boils down to a solitary existence, the male is prone to download porn and to drift his eyes towards the fantastic tits bundled beneath a tight and revealing upper garment. This is comparatively normal, I'd say, as males go. We really can't help ourselves. It's biological. But in our defense (or at least my defense), we are also interested in the brains behind the machine. Except that this concern is revealed later in the game. Surely, my explicitly stipulated "putty" clause from the post in question was clear enough. But if it wasn't, let me be the first (if not the umpteenth) to suggest that males are inherently visual and that, ostensibly, there is nothing wrong with this. We love your anatomy. We love to take it home with us. But, as was the case with this afternoon's "let's swap the material objects we left in each other's apartments" meetings with my ex-gf, we males, I suspect, take the end of a relationship harder than the female hoping to become steadfast friends at the drop of a hat. It bothers us to enter some domicile in which we were previously intimate, precisely because we are inherently visual procrastinators.

Does this sort of answer your question, Lauren? If not, please advise and, as the drinks continue to pour down my larynx, I'd be happy to clarify. Kiss kiss.

#8 -- further

I'm very impressed with Richard Powers' The Time of Our Singing. He is concerned with virtue in wholly unanticipated ways. Whereas, I want to beat the hell out of Tom Wolfe's cartoonish depiction of humanity in I Am Charlotte Simmons. I'll have more to say on the latter, probably at January. But for the moment, I ask what's worse? Deluding yourself into Balazc/Zola realism or coming to terms with your own intellectual limitations and taking a few risks. For my money, Richard Powers kicks Tom Wolfe's ass any day of the week.

[UPDATE: Chance Morrison is also participating. Woo!]

#7 -- tipsy?

It occurs to me that I should probably be drunker. I should point out that, despite several screwdrivers, whiskeys and Pilsners, I am still unfortunately coherent. I'm doing the best that I can. But there is this thing called an evening in which one must endure.

Even so, I suspect that National Drunken Writer Night, to most people, involves keeping on the safe 'n sane. The question here is whether you want endurance or the immediate cum shot. If desirable, please advise in the comments as to how you'd like me to proceed with drink.

[Note: I should point out that typing is becoming harder. So perhaps I've fulfilled some of the dicta behind this exercise. B will know for sure. But if there are any independent judges, please fire away. Also check out Gwenda, who is doing a more remarkable job than I am at this. She, alas, has an understanding husband, whereas I have the remarkable savior of Kazaa Lite-downloaded pornography. The porn, I should point out, is disappointing and hardly as valuable as, oh say, a significant other. I doubt my capacity to go into the world on the prowl, but stranger things have happened. You want interactive? This is it, baby!]

#6 -- comstock lode

How many Gordon Comstock's are there out amongst us? I speak, of course, of the protagonist in Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Comstock was an ad man who willingly ostracized himself from his heinous profession with the idea of being a poet pursuing truth, as opposed to sticking as an ad man. Circumstances eventually brought Comstock back into the advertising fold. But I evoke Comstock because, as I was shamefully trying to light up a cigarette (a habit that, regrettably, comes with drink), I was recently recognized on the streets by a neighbor. The neighbor introduced me to a friend of his and then proceeded to roundly mock me for producing a "highly literate play" called Something an Alligator written by a guy that's "read too much."

The neighbor, I should point out, had criticized me for daring to make the next play "more accessible." I replied at the time, What's wrong with this? I was a guy who dared to challenge an audience and learned from the results. Bombard the audience with too much and they will draw blood. Thus, behavior should be crystal-clear. Hence, my current research efforts to make the next play right.

So this neighbor, who collects books and moonlights as a sedentary book collector, hopes to draw my blood. But he makes me think of Comstock because, like Comstock, I've remained idealistic, but, unlike Comstock, I've learned from my results. And I'm determined to presevere just to spite the bastards.

How you like them apples?

#5 -- parallel park

In San Francisco (at least), there is sympathy for the parallel parker. Even when the vehicle appears to have been owned for some time, San Franciscans will dutifully instruct a parallel parker who just doesn't have the shit to get his/her vehicle thoroughly ensconced in one of our rare parking spaces. I just got back from talking with folks outside of a neighborhood dive. The empathy was commensurate with, perhaps, a child unable to find the proper sexual configurations within a Barbie Dream House. We were all there, encouraging the driver to make a hard left and a hard right, and get her remarkably sized vehicle into a spot that was, I'm sad to say, capacious enough for two vehicles.

But she did it. With our guidance. She was able to squeeze her SUV into her spot because we challenged her to apply extra drive. Perhaps there is a chapter in the book, The Wisdom of Crowds, which covers this. Needless to say, the aforementioned SUV was still far from the curb -- but not as far as the small vehicle inhabiting the space in front of it.

This is what community is all about.

[In other news, Gwenda's got a mean piece about clowns. Bless our loyal originator. But where the hell is Sarvas?]

#4: already women are immensely desirable

6:46 PM: The truth is I didn't expect to be smashed so early. Something about vodka does this to a man. I feel as if I should be wearing a babushka or at the very least dancing a Russian jig. The sky is dark and this, of course, creates the illusion that it is somehow night when it is, in fact, barely early evening. So it goes.

I should perhaps put in some words of wisdom about how the male perceives women after the end of a relationship (no stranger here, given that it went down recently for me). The truth is that males are despicably obvious when it comes to fawning over the almighty female anatomy (which is quite sublime, I assure you). And this affliction only worsens as one gets older. Speaking for myself at least, I find that I am more of a perverted bastard at 30 than I ever was at 25. I love women in all of their manifold forms, and I would, of course, be happy to bang and love each and every one of them. It is not equal opportunity that motivates these interests, but a je ne sais quo obsession for women in all of their manifold and beautiful forms. They are all good, really, if men would only give them the chance. (And I certainly do.) Or at least take stock in the human heart.

Men, of course, won't confess this. Because, for whatever reason, they consider it a matter of pride over who they lust after. Never mind that their fantasies are completely incompatible with reality and that, in the end, they would sooner fuck a hairless pig than cop to an unsuccessful Saturday night. In this way, men remain barbarians and it is truly a tragic affair. But, in fact, reality offers some considerable surprises when one rides on impulse.

#3 -- time for some fiction

He figured what the hell. It was time to set fire to the library. The books had taunted him, yes. But the cruel overdue fees had disturbed him more. Those ruthless librarians, which he had found sexy since his first erection, had let him down. There was no way he'd be able to finish all the books. Every branch that had been set up had been designed to completely diminish his hopes for remaining a smart, erudite young thing. At the age of 19, he had hoped that he'd be some majestic galvanizer. Some hot young stallion who could quote Baudelaire while pounding into some blitzed naif and giving her the orgasm of her life. Better yet, maybe his super smarts would be commissioned to ransack some jaded hack working for a lesser New York paper. Starfucking his way to a blurb on the latest Nora Roberts or, at the very least, servicing one of those beautiful fortysomething career women that turned his insides into sweet lime Jello. They were underrated, those super-sharp slightly older ladies. And even if they were facing an unfair race on the gender circuit, particularly in light of the November election and its consequences, he appreciated them.

It was a base existence, and he had managed many rolls in the hay. The time had come to take his convictions to the next level. To indeed invoke an act that was wholly irrational and really had no explanation to anyone outside of his arrogant shell.

So he pulled out his dogeared copy of The Anarchist's Cookbook and flipped through for a recipe for a Molotov cocktail. Unfortunately, no one had informed him that The Anarchist's Cookbook wasn't nearly as accurate as the black helicopter wags thought it was. But that didn't matter. Because he was a very clumsy mofo and he often conducted these experiments naked. To say the least, this was a colossal mistake for a clumsy person to make. So while in the process of shaking and stirring the goods, he dropped the lit match upon his crotch. It was an accident. But then so many aspects of his life had been accidents. The big questions was whether he'd learn to adapt to this most recent contretemps.

His pubic hair lit into a glorious conflagration. He yelped and he hollered and he tried to put it out. But the fire spread down his legs. It should be noted that he was a hairy guy. He had so much hair on his body that it was really a matter of a few years before he anonymously went into a laser hair removal clinic and finally calibrated the appropriate hair-to-flesh ratio to an acceptable level for the mighty brains who wished to hump him.

But since there was a major strand of hair (a fey form of kindling, as it were) connecting his pubic regions to his legs, it was (so the pundits remarked in the next day's newspapers) only a matter of time. Soon his entire nether regions and his legs were being lapped by majestic flames. Unfortunately, he was alone. Which meant, of course, that no one was around to capture this exciting moment on video.

So he decided to run naked in the streets. The excitement got several strangers' attention. And he was whsked by an ambulance to a hospital. He spent the next six years paying off the bills.

The unfortunate consequence was that the journalists refused to fuck him as frequently as they once did. The scars of second-degree burns, alas, didn't have quite the same sex appeal as a wonderfully unwrinkled youth revealing his nakedness to a woman of note.

But if there was a positive aspect to this tale, he soon developed the greatest respect for libraries. And he was able to encourage several young twentysomethings hoping to land a lay that books were far sexier than those hot op-ed mommas who weren't nearly as populist-minded in social surroundings as they claimed to be in their columns.

#2 -- peter o'toole is a beautiful man

Peter O'Toole, sloshed out of his gourd after receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award, propped up by Roger Ebert and (even better) that thespic Z-list lackey Jason Patric. Certainly apropos of National Drunken Writing Night.

#1 -- and so it begins

3:41 PM: Fuck it. I've started screwdriver one. Eastern time counts, doesn't it? The screwdriver, I should point out, is about as close you can get to that perilous threshold between straight shots of absinthe (name your testosterone-charged elixir of choice) and the decidedly unmanly category of girlie drink (mai tais, pretty much anything having to do with fruit, and of course the classy manhattan) while retaining some semblance of manhood. Or, even better, I walk the wild gender-neutral line between. Take that, eleven states! I'm almost willing to change my sexual orientation just to spite the bastards. But, of course, I've never found the penis, the gym-toned ass, or the male developed chest even remotely sexy. More my fault than anything else. Plus, women are just too damned sexy. They have the curves and fabulous anatomy that, if we were less civilied, we would rip endless bodices over. Smooth legs, their wonderful smell, breasts, even their shoulders and noses are fantastic. And if they're smart, acerbic and take no prisoners, I am nothing more than putty.

Archive's "Fuck U" plays in the background. Suitable.

I fear that tonight's drinking (and writing) will put me in an aggro mood. So be it. Rather than attempt the impossible (namely, applying some Photoshopped graphic of reference with each entry), I've decided to simply number the fuckers and apply the usual e.e. cummings/livejournal crap.

Drink up, America! You're fucked (well, at least temprarily).

(UPDATE: Holy hell, is Gwenda in on this? Too fucking cool.)

Roeper Slash Ebert Fiction

Ebert spread banana oil over Jonathan Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum was spread-eagled across the popcorn booth, his bulging cucumber growing beneath the overturned extra large popcorn bucket carefully placed there by the management. Rosenbaum felt Ebert's gentle fingers caress him, bristling across his piebald chest hair. He knew that those fingers had typed all those glowing reviews for Woody Allen. They had even given Celebrity two and a half stars. Would Ebert show him the same generosity?

Rosenbaum hesitated as Ebert's loving touch eased in, putting him at ease. Yes, he knew indeed how those hands had won a Pulitzer. Gene Siskel must have been a lucky guy. Rosenbaum had to confess.

"I always liked your pudgy bottom," whispered Rosenbaum as Ebert tightened the blindfold. "Do me."

Ebert smiled. He suddenly had an idea for his Video Pick of the Week. But this time, it was a Video Pick for one.

"You're just saying that because of the recent stroke," Ebert replied. "The good news is that you'll be my love slave for the weekend."

Rosenbaum's eyes widened.

"Don't worry. We'll sit through Dekalog together. It will be like a nice little picnic. The wife, you see, is out of town."

Ebert puncutated this last sentence by taking off his glasses and licking the banana oil, applying his tongue in a soft loving curlicue around Rosenbaum's left nipple. Rosenbaum liked it when Ebert did that. J. Hoberman wasn't nearly as good.

Suddenly, Ebert's head bolted up from Rosenbaum's torso.

"Richard!" he screamed down the art deco lobby.

Ebert clapped his hands. Merely a second later, Roeper, the weasly little hunchback, scampered across the theatre lobby. He dragged the corpse of Vincent Canby, now well-used. Roeper, the beady-eyed necrophile, had jismed into Canby's nostrils twelve times that morning. When Ebert saw Roeper's gaping maw, he tried to stare away.

Still, Roeper was a trusty servant. And you had to give Roeper props when, during the legendary ten-day orgy, he had pleasured Janet Maslin while simultaneously boffing David Denby in the ass.

Oh, there'd be some hot action this weekend all right. First, a little bit of intimacy with Rosenbaum, followed by a delightful threesome with Elvis Mitchell and Rex Reed, Ebert's longtime nemesis. Fortunately, Ebert knew that love would bring everyone together.

(inspired by Cinetrix)

Pollack's No Working Class Hero

Neal Pollack: "That would quickly find me at the wrong end of a fist or a beer bottle."

"Pal, I'd rather have a cup of coffee with my next-door neighbor every day for the rest of my life than share one 'hazelnut latte' with you. He thinks I'm going to hell but helped me fix my lawnmower last weekend anyway. "

Blah blah blah.

Lately, Neal Pollack seems to be operating under some illusion that he's the blue-collar voice of reason (complete with Star Trek references!). I hope the new schtick wears off. Of course, I have no worries. I'm sure his post-Nov. 2 ravings are just a temporary affliction that came with the six figure check he got from Bill Gerber, which should last him very handily during the next four years while the tax code gets uprooted.

Next thing you know, Pollack's going to be making documentaries and telling us that he's a factory worker from Flint, Michigan.

But no matter. Maybe he should just follow his own advice and shut the fuck up.

See? Satirical genius! I'm recused from responsibility! In your faces and pocketbooks, foolish readers! Such courageous writing! Why, Terry Southern would give me a rim job!

Where's the realism and the attention to details? What's needed among the blogs in this turbulent time is a batallion, a brigade, of Zolas marching from here to Montgomery uniting the two Americas: the Real America and the Pretend America, if you catch my drift. Neal Pollack is a bag of bones. His work is no longer relevant. He is the one stooge in a sea of self-indulgent bloggers trying to comment upon the current situation. And he is a friend of Dave Eggers! It doesn't get much lower than that.

The time has come for bloggers to concentrate on the tiny important details of the world around us rather than be funny. That involves going to colleges and watching the world around us helplessly while the sorority girls ignore our erections.

I hereby renounce the use of satire. Life is too austere and heartbreaking. The white suit is in the closet. Blame the liberal elite. They haven't got a clue. I haul my colostomy bag in their general direction.

Volunteers Needed

I'm currently researching the next play.

If you are in a polyamorous relationship (meaning: more than two people), I'd be interested in talking to you -- ideally in person, but, if desired, email or phone works too. Sexual persuasion and gender do not matter. However, I hope to concentrate on relationships that have been going on for at least two or three years.

If you have an hour or two to spare and you'd be interested in a confidential chat, please feel free to drop me an email at ed AT edrants.com.

Thanks,

Ed

Round Robin

• Okay, how about some cool things coming out of the U.S. government next year, such as some nifty stamps, including Marian Anderson in February (to counterbalance the odious Reagan one), Jim Henson and the Muppets in March, Robert Penn Warren in April, a Masterworks of Modern Architecture set in June, and a Greta Garbo stamp in September. The Garbo stamp is rumored to be the first talking postage concocted by the U.S. Postal Service. It will not be sold in sets and the stamp will remind you to mail it through repeated entreaties to "be alone."
• There's a rollicking debate going on at Tingle Alley about migrating within the United States. Carrie suggested that instead of moving to Canada, bluestockings might better serve this nation by moving to a red state. Several lovely people have made some fabulous cases.
• I was remiss in noting the Complete Review's incredible coverage of Checkpoint. It seems more pertinent now, somehow.
• James Patterson's ex-girlfriend has sued him for breach of contract and copyright infringement. One only hopes that the legal battle prevents him from gluttoning the bookstores with more tripe. Perhaps Karen Valby might want to be called in as a character witness.
• The bad reviews for I Am Charlotte Simmons keep on coming. David Kipen suggests that "Wolfe needs a cold shower in the worst way." Meanwhile, Bob Minzesheimer demands a Wolfe embargo on "loins."
• And the Guardian First Book shortlist has been announced: Matthew Hollis' Ground Water, David Bezmogis' Natasha, Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Rory Stewart's The Places in Between, and Armand Marie Leroi's intriguingly titled Mutants: On the Form, Varieties and Errors of the Human Body.

National Drunken Writing Night

The glorious B has unleashed National Drunken Writing Night. It's set for this Saturday. Depending upon a few things, I may just be able to swing it (and swig it). Look for incoherent ramblings and a good deal of "I love you, motherfucker!" here this Saturday.

War & Peace, Randy Canadians & Unknown Poets

• Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi can't get his memoirs published in the States. Why? There's an embargo in Iran. Ebadi has responded by suing the United States. Her memoir, it should be noted, is the story of "a woman, a mother and a lawyer living and working in a country that confronts many human rights problems." This may be the first flagrant example of, as Moby Lives recently asked for ideas on, poltiics having a definitive influence upon literature.
• At the Vancouver International Writers Festival, Natalee Caple declared that one of her desires is to excel at "literary sex: better, more accurate sex scenes in Canadian novels...written by stronger, more difficult, troubled, kick-ass women characters." Caple also felt bad about one of her characters losing a leg. So out of sympathy, she decided to give him a hand job. If this is the kind of generosity we can expect from Canadian writers, perhaps this isn't such a crazy idea after all.
• Literary scholars are reassessing the influence of Louis Zukofsky. Several professors, who recently received substantial checks from Zukofsky's heirs, have declared Zukofsky "the best poet of his generation." In response to the overblown plaudits, Heidi Julavits is expected to write an anti-praise manifesto in the January 2005 edition of The Believer.
• Frank DiGiacomo is expected to "co-author" Harvey Weinstein's memoir. In preparation for the job, DiGiacomo has begun humiliating lowly interns, smoking and swearing like a motherfucker, and exclaiming "Ben Affleck is my bitch" throughout the Conde Nast building.

Putting the Heart into Heartland

Janet Sullivanmakes a strong case for the real "heartland": "To me, the heartland of this country is anywhere that people work their asses off to make their lives better for their families. They stay true to their better angels no matter how miserable things get or how much easier it would be to succumb to hate and irrational fear. They read, and listen, and look for the truth and stay informed about what's really going on, no matter how grim the news. They don't live in Fox News cocoons, they don't blast Rush Limbaugh from their pickups, and they don't vote blindly for the guys whose prejudices most neatly line up with their own. Their concerns are genuine, their values are consistent, their principles are rock-solid, and their hearts are true. "

With all this talk of Jesusland, it's worth considering that the Dems who are currently beating a steadfast retreat (you know who you are) instead of rebounding as their hearts are recovering from a bad relationship are no better off from the unilateralists who go out of their way to avoid an opposing viewpoint. It is our duty to fight and to march on, even when the chips are down. That's what this nation is all about. The next four years are going to be tough, but we can begin putting a plan into play to get the two houses in our hands in 2006. If the Dems control the two houses (and, in particular, the Senate), this should at least bungle up the White House's unilateralism (or at least slow it down) and open up some bipartisan solutions.

The questions that the Left must answer are:

(a) Does it have the courage to broaden its base and build up the antiwar and anti-Bush coalition?
(b) Can it find a hep way to bring in the 18-24 vote? Even if we can spike this up from 10% to 40% turnout, that's 8.1 million extra voters who can make a difference (enough to handily give a Democratic candidate 52% of the popular vote in 2008).
(c) How do we mobilize a fearless "true heartland" bloc to stand against the fundie herd?

And with the idea of moving forward just to spite the bastards in mind, please allow me to apologize to my readers for the recent political fulminations. I pledge to get back to literary news and the like, but not without a vigilant eye on other topics.

[UPDATE: Dan Green rightly rallies lit bloggers against the gloom.]

Oh Fuck You, Gloomy Cloud

The despondency circulated through the streets. Street cleaners, students, secretaries, lawyers, businessmen, the unemployed, the overly employed, the overtaxed, the overstressed, the overworked, the over and out susurrating speculative horrors about the Night We Lost America. Those Ohio hicks, those motherfuckers. How could they vote for Bush? How could America betray itself? How could they give the two houses to the rampant Republican gastropods? How many Supreme Court justices would be lost on the slime trail? Fuck, fuck, doublefuck in a clusterbun. Can you super size that?

Options: 1. Roll into a ball and sob, damning the moronic masses. 2. Move to Canada, Mexico, Australia, wherever (if you could get the cash). 3. Contemplate crazed national scenarios such as splitting the States up into three separate nations: the West, Intolerance Central, and East Coast Schizophrenia.

And then there was the other side: Watch those liberals squirm! Funny shit. They're so incensed. Merciless mirth, no chance of eclat. Viva la revolucion! Well, boys, we took away their hope. We darn near smashed it with a rubber mallet and banned them disgusting faggots from marryin' to boot. Fire the rifles, boys, and pass the bourbon. Sheet. In no time, them uptight bitches will be controlled and we'll all hold hands and SING to the Lord!

The immediate impulse was to give up and give into bile. And for several hours, I did. A scowl was permanently affixed to my face and several people thought I was upset with them. At one point, "God Save the Queen" was sung (in a corporate environment, no less) and restylized to fit in with the U.S. 2004 template. It killed me to see my faith in humanity destroyed by a torrent of misinformation and to become an elitist overnight. But there it was -- the indisputable proof on the chalkboard. Nothing to understand about it. Joe Sixpack and I parted ways last night. Not that I had much to do with him.

I wish I could tell you that John Kerry's concession speech was the proper panacea. It was a damn fine speech, but oh I'd be lying, dear readers. I hadn't felt such a horrible feeling of powerlessness since September 11. I wanted to work. I wanted to keep going just to spite the bastards. But it was no good. I was ready to give up politics completely, say to hell with my long-term goals, and offer a tepid report here on the end of Great American Government.

But then I started to realize that it's not over. And that's the thing that got me out of the shell.

The problem in thinking about next year's demolition crew is that we're giving into our worst fears. Sure, it's probable that the Patriot Act will be broadened, that more people will die and unjust folks will be thrown into the can, that the draft will be reinstated, and that several neocon horrors will jet out of the loom faster than anyone can say Oliver Wendell Holmes.

But none of it has happened yet. And that concerns me. Because aren't these paranoid fantasies exactly the kind of black helicopter bile that drips out of Limbaugh's maw and passes for fact? Isn't this exactly the same tactic we've been condemning the GOP for?

They have turned 48% of us into malicious sons of bitches. And the Republicans are loving every damn minute of it.

The time has come to stop feeling helpless and start getting on the offense. And here are a few things to chew on:

1. You don't have to be afraid. This is precisely what the Rove machine wanted. Live every day with courage.
2. If new laws go down, you don't have to do anything you don't want to. (It's a little something called civil disobedience, folks.) We are not cattle and we need to stop being treated like such.
3. Write letters to your representatives. Block doorways. Stop the wheels from rolling.
4. Write letters to your newspapers. Get the word out to the media conduits. Let the money men who control the airwaves know that you are watching. And when they deliberately lie, send letters to the producers and their sponsors threatening to boycott.
5. Have the cojones to go to jail for a cause (that means you, you trendy parvenus!). Our grandmothers and grandfathers did. Where the fuck are your balls? Stop worrying about the black marks on your record and just do it.
6. Begin the fight today. Lobby everyone you know. Hold meetings in your neighborhood. Read Congressional Records, take notes, and communicate.
7. Be eloquent. We have no heroes. It's time to start being one.
8. Above all, oh fuck you, gloomy cloud.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Bush to Grow Moustache to Seal Orwell's Prophecy

"The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran." -- George Orwell, 1984

Fuck You, America

Right now, it looks like Bush has got it. There are no words to express my sorrow. There are no emotions left to expend. I have no faith in the commonweal. I watch as this nation crawls into an atavistic morass. And so the old Jefferson adage goes, we clearly deserve the government that we get. My heart aches for the future of this country. Not much there. Pass the bottle.

Fuck

Ohio. Jesus. This nation is on the road to hell.

Running Scared

What the fuck? The President is going on the air BEFORE the polls are closed?

Election Day AM Roundup

• Drudge has been thoroughly debunked. The Philly odometers tallied votes from previous elections. Will Drudge ever be disregarded for his continued failures as a "journalist?" DEVELOPING.
• There's chaos in NYC (will any of our currently silent NYC bloggers report in?) and Santa Clara.
• The truth behind exit polls.
• Jeff's staying home.
• Tom Hayden weighs in and he says it's going to get rowdy. (via Moby)
• Porn director Seymore Butts is offering free porn to anyone who voted today. (via Wonkette)
• The Gray Lady offers a roundup of political bloggers tossing out thoughts about the election, but foolishly suggests that the blog has forever transformed politics.

Return of the Reluctant Endorsements

Well, since George is doing it, here then are Return of the Reluctant's endorsements for the 2004 California election:

President: John Kerry
Senator: Barbara Boxer
Rep: Nancy Pelosi
1A: No
59: Fuck yeah.
60: Fuck yeah.
60A: Yes.
61: Yes.
62: No fucking way.
63: Yes.
64: Absofuckinglutely no way.
65: No.
66: Fuck yeah.
67: No.
68: No.
69: No fucking way.
70: No.
71: Yes. (This was the hardest decision, given my fury over states being squeezed by an ineptly managed federal government. But my sister, who apparently is more of a pessimist than I am, made a compelling point about the lack of federal funds for stem cell research given a Bush victory.)
72: Fuck yeah.

Fear and Voting in San Francisco

I was officiailly Voter No. 1 in my precinct. Even at 7 AM, there was a queue heading out the door. Young ones, old ones, various persuasions. The people who got to the polls early had giant smiles on their face. They longed to communicate their ecstacy to their brethren. This Kerry vote, apparently, was the new zen. Forego your moring jog and cast thy ballot. Better than the morning newspaper and coffee routine, better even than morning sex.

The people I talked with were prepared to commit representative revolution. And they were all ten minutes early. One woman panicked when she discovered that her name wasn't on the roster. Would her vote count? Would they take that away? She had recently moved and was prepared to go back to her old neighborhood to vote, if necessary. The needs of her job could wait.

I chatted with a poll worker and he said that this was the largest crowd he'd seen in eight years. I asked him if it was going to be a busy day. "Well, you get the morning crowd before work. But this is a big crowd."

I came back later, and the line was longer at 7:30. Had these people gone through the Tolstoy-length voter information packet in toto? Well, yes and no. "I only vote for the props I feel passionate about. I'm really here for Kerry," said one of my neighbors. A man told me that he had holed himself up over the weekend and was prepared to incinerate the expensive campaign literature that had been lodged under his doorstep. "Those fuckers don't know when to quit," he said. "There oughta be a law." I knew what he meant. I'd received five automated voicemails the night before that I'd quickly erased.

A young lady of twenty was passing out pamphlets for a supervisor in front of my polling place. I told her that she was less than 100 feet away from the polling place and that current laws prohibited dissemination of campaign literature. She pointed to the door. I pointed to the clearly marked sign that laid down the limit. "Do you really want to be as bad as the bad guys?" I asked. Across the street, an unshaven foirtysomthing man popped his head out of his window and boomed a sterner warning. The young lady ambled down the street, but anyone could see that she'd be there all day.

When I fed my ballots into the machine, there was another young lady with a video camera who captured my efforts to simultaneously hold onto my morning cup of coffee and tear the receipts from the top of the sheets. I could have pointed out to her that she needed a release. But I kept silent. Like the others, this race had emboldened her to shoot a spontaneous documentary. Of what, who knew? Did she foresee another battle in Florida? Was this B-roll for a nonfictional narrative that no one could predict?

If there was any consolation about 2000's Florida fiasco, it was this: the sham had reminded everyone how important it was to vote. It had awakened the dormant democratic pulse. And even if King George ascends to the throne again, I know that this time it won't go down without a fight.

Vote Today

Pale Fire

Jacques-Andre Widmer interviewed Nabokov at the age of 20. He recollects his experiences. (via Tingle Alley)

J-Franz Returns

Rake points to a new story from J-Franz in the New Yorker. Our immediate impressions can be summed up as follows:

• Hey, J, ever heard of paragraph breaks?
• Was there ever a clunkier lead sentence wrought in Remnick's pages?
• This "young husband," does he have a name?
• "The divorce was done by mail." How convenient!
• "[H]he feared his only purpose on the planet was to insert his penis in the vaginas of the greatest possible number of women." Mock clinical language is so 1986, Franz.
• "But Ron insisted that he had never seen this word before, that her vocabulary was much larger than his, and, absurdly, that he had never in his life scored eighty-seven points in one Scrabble play." Dave Eggers-style nonsequiturs are a sudden influence on J-Franz?
• "..but he was forty years old, and it was time to grow up..." Or autobiographical?
• "In later years Antonia never, in her stocking-footed friends’ hearing, spoke of him with anger, always only pity, because, she said, he knew himself so poorly." Comma, comma, commala!

Take That, Birnbaum!

Today's Word of the Day is "jejune."

jejune \juh-JOON\, adjective:
1. Lacking in nutritive value.
2. Displaying or suggesting a lack of maturity; childish.
3. Lacking interest or significance; dull; meager; dry.

Were I to make this public now, it would be dismissed as the raving of a mind at the end of its tether, unable to distinguish fiction from reality, real life from the jejune fantasies of its youth.
--Ronald Wright, A Scientific Romance

By the inflection of his voice, the expression of his face, and the motion of his body, he signals that he is aware of all the ways he may be thought silly or jejune, and that he might even think so himself.
--Jedediah Purdy, For Common Things

A while ago, Michael Kinsley wrote that Jewish Americans envied Israelis for living out history in a way that made the comfort and security of life in New York or Los Angeles seem jejune.
--Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "The Big Kibbutz," New York Times, March 2, 1997

Jejune derives from Latin jejunus, "fasting, hence hungry, hence scanty, meager, weak."

Sideways

I have to concur with the esteemed OGIC, although for entirely different reasons. Sideways kicks serious butt, but it is because Alexander Payne has somehow found a way to combine the smooth comedy jazz of Blake Edwards (complete with the Sideways Jazz Orchestra!) with the realism of Cassevetes. That's no small achievement, particularly when you consider that this is the first of Payne's films that has gone out of its way to avoid the usual social satire (with the exception of a funny Grapes of Wrath television reference, some DeLilloesque moments in fast food restaurants, and a waitress played by Missy Doty who appears near the end of the film).

It helps that Sideways rides largely on Paul Giamatti's limitless talent. Giamatti's hounddog eyes are capable of almost every expression in the human spectrum. Necessary, given that Giamatti portrays a fantastic midlife neurotic. But amazingly, Giamatti somehow finds a way to underplay his larger-than-life character, even when he's guzzling pinot while scampering down a hill. That's a real actor in action, folks.

I should remind OGIC that Payne's softness is nothing new. His last film, About Schmidt, with its unexpected existential angle, suggested a filmmaker that vowed to look hard into the human heart, no matter what the costs. In this sense, however, I don't think Sideways succeeds quite as well, particularly during a treacly monologue delivered by Virginia Madsen midway through the film. (Bad enough that the monologue was unabashedly poetic, but were the syrupy strings necessary?)

This modest fumble is but a small price to pay for such a remarkable character study. Details are introduced and paid off with revelatory glimpses that express contradictory motivations. And for those who fear that the mischevious Payne has departed, be aware that there are flapping penises, a great gag involving a golf ball, and one extremely twisted moment involving the excellent Thomas Haden Church at the Days Inn, whereby he attempts to explain the reasoning for his actions and we are not certain to believe him because he is, after all, an actor.

Sideways also demonstrates that Payne's quite willing to go the distance in the visual department. This was, I must confess, quite a lovely surprise. There's a fantastic sequence where Giamatti gets staggeringly drunk at a restaurant. We see the sequence entirely in close-ups and the events are so fabulously discordant that we immediately find ourselves emotionally connected with Giamatti's plight and desperation. I also appreciated the casting and deployment of Sandra Oh. I should point out that I have been in love with Oh's acting abilities since I first saw her in Last Night. Here, Payne presents a character who appears sexually uninhibited and then focuses tight on Oh's angelic complexion (despite simultaneous events), only to tear out the carpet from under us and provide a glimpse into her true feelings when certain revelations come to light.

In case I have not made myself abundantly clear, Sideways is a kickass flick bristling with humanity. Who else but Payne could avoid the pretentious Whit Stillman WASP schtick in a film set entirely in wine country?

PMR

• Dan Brown has donated $2.2 million to his old high school. Now if only he'd conduct some real philanthropy and stop writing dumbed down Eco.
• Alisa Valdes-Rodriquez has issued an intriguing ultimatum.
• D-Loy Jo suggests that Bush has lost the war on the publishing front.
• The harp is making a comeback.
• Will Graham Greene's work last?

Kerry Lulls Crying Baby to Silence with Tedious Platitudes; Wins Grateful Mother's Vote

"Don't Film Me" -- the Last Cry of a Scoundrel

Joshuah Bearman: "Which is why we drove them away. The trick with Republican staffers running dirty tricks, we discovered, is to turn cameras on them. They wilt like shrinking violets. Stephen Elliott and I are out here with a documentary crew, and when the film started rolling, the GOP’s bogus Gay Pride parade came to a quick end. 'Don’t film me,' the ringleader said when we stuck to them. 'I’m expressing my freedom of speech.'" (via Bondgirl)

Politics is a Sham

I'd express my malaise about tomorrow, but Jeff and Maud have ably covered this ground. I'll only say that I've never felt so much disgust for politics. On the national, state and local level, we have been inundated with lies, ultimatums, and outright blackmail if we don't abide by one party line or the other.

Tomorrow's election is perhaps the most important election in the last sixty years. So I encourage all Return of the Reluctant readers to vote. However, to put my own personal partisanship aside, I also urge all voters to vote who they feel is right for the job. Contrary to the leaflets that clog the mailboxes, no one is holding a gun to your head to abide by some austere answer key. You can vote any combo you want. You can vote any candidate you want. Just don't become a drone.

AMR

• Jonathan Stroud unveils his favorite fantasy novels.
• "Hot" John Sayles talks about his short story collection with the Globe.
• The Hag has new digs (and she's now read Marquand to boot!).
• The New Yorker goes all Nancy Drew on us.
• Hemingway the boxer.
• Dave Eggers: this generation's Jack Kerouac?
• Newsday talks with M.G. Vassanji.

Song of Solomon

It's official. Deborah Solomon now rivals Rex Reed as the least distinguished interviewer of the past forty years and comes perilously close to Ann Coulter as the most deliberately hateful writer working today. One is tempted to unleash limitless fury against such a bilious interlocutor. But that would only involve resorting to her level.

Nevertheless, Solomon's interview with Christine Schutt sets a new low for the Times. It smacks of an anti-intellectual hubris that, at the risk of invoking Godwin, one might associate with the 1933 Opernplatz incident, whereby brownshirts tossed "un-German" books (in Solomon's case, books that aren't published by a mainstream press) into a raging conflagration of pure destruction. The actual quality of Schutt's work isn't discussed. But the publishing circumstances and Schutt's lifestyle choices are. It is a complete disgrace that such a fixation would be encouraged, let alone published, in a major newspaper. It suggests that the New York Times (possibly in collusion with Tanenhaus' diminishing returns on the literary fiction front) has openly declared a war on literary culture. And, as such, it has no substantive value to any serious newspaper reader.

Not only does Solomon compare literary excellence with a washing machine, but, in inveighing against Schutt for the formulation of a story idea, she is utterly incapable (perhaps deliberately so) of comprehending how art originates, let alone understanding the distinction between art and reality. This lack of comprehension is interesting, given Solomon's roots as an art critic for the Wall Street Journal. But even then, Solomon was hungrier than a gravid wolf. She was fired by Raymond Sokolov because she insisted on writing for several other publications on the WSJ's dime. But that didn't stop her from tossing soda onto Sokolov's lap.

Solomon has a long history of failing to get the job done. In 2001, Solomon attacked the Milwaukee Art Museum without bothering to visit the museum or its collections. And, as Charlie Finch has suggested, Utopia Parkway, Solomon's biography of Joseph Cornell, is the rare case in which the author clearly despises her subject.

So what do you do when you're a jaded biographer dissatisfied with your work? You lash out at your subjects. Instead of confronting a major politician about the history of his remarks, you ask him about his hair. You ask one of the greatest figures in rock and roll history if he's dying. You take the easy route and go after the easy targets.

What does Solomon's continued employment (and corresponding attack dog tactics) prove? It suggests that the Times is more interested in catering to devout readers of People or Maxim than actually probing its subjects. It communicates to its loyal readership that they are dumb, dumb, dumb, and that the Grey Lady (ridiculously enough) is oh so cool. It perpetuates a sad chronicle of a major newspaper that consistently undervalues literature.

And in adopting and reinforcing this stance, the Times has demonstrated that it is no different from the half-literate country bumpkins.