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

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

“How many hits?” he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or to put it another way, what the fuck?

Confused and terrified of the American shopping experience,

Edward Champion

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

Boo yah, low carbers! I win!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GOOD ED: Can I give you a hug?

BAD ED: Hell no, bitch.

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

BAD ED: That cute girl who recommended it.

GOOD ED: What?

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

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

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

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

GOOD ED: Fair enough.

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

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

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

GOOD ED: The standards are high.

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

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

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

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

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

[Sounds of scuffling, whimpering and various shouts.]

GOOD ED: [unintelligible]

ED: But I…

[Here, the tape cuts out.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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