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

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

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

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

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

Sarvas’ interview with Andrew Sean Greer is up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charles needs a job. Hire him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A list of epistolary fiction.

War letters.

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

“Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter Writing” by Charles Dodgson

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

Einstein’s letters to FDR.

The letters of Henry James.

The letters of Jane Austen.

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