Rambo finds literary meaning in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer'”

Wired: “Author J.A. Konrath sold his first book to Hyperion as part of a three book deal for his Lt. Jacqueline ‘Jack’ Daniels thriller series. To promote the first book, Konrath’s publisher sent him out on an 11-bookstore tour. But by utilizing the GPS device in his rental car, he ended up visiting 106 bookstores on that tour. His ability to use the technology to find more places to promote his book impressed his publisher enough that this summer, Hyperion is sending Konrath out for a two-month, 500 bookstore tour.”

For those who enjoyed the Black Swan Green roundtable with Megan and me, I’m pleased to report that there’s another roundtable discussion in the works for another very interesting author. This time, however, we’ve upped the ante and added three more to our roster. Here are the participants: Megan Sullivan, Scott Esposito, Gwenda Bond, Dan Wickett and me.

Expect more here in a few weeks, when I will reveal the name of the author and some of the discussion will begin.

Who’s the real insecure, catty bitch? Markos Moulitsas needs to get over himself.

• Sigrid Rausing, owner of Granta, gets the investigation treatment from The Guardian. Are Rausing’s “charitable causes” actually ways to evade taxes and promote friends’ books? Has Granta’s collaborative editorialship turned into a dictatorship? You make the call.
• Donald Hall is the new poet laureate. Give him enough time and he’ll be the new black too. More on Donald Hall at the Biederbecke Affair.
• Michelle Richmond notes the Chronicle Book Review‘s diminishing pages and relays Ann Cummins’ advice that people contact Chronicle‘s ombudsman Dick Rogers. But Rogers is there more to vet standards or accuracy and Cummins is, quite frankly, being as diffident as a Democrat. Given that the Chronicle tried this once before, I’m thinking that energies might better be directed towards the money men (i.e., the people who make these decisions to cut pages). That would, of course, mean Bronstein and company, or these guys. If you want the Chronicle Book Review, letting the money men know you subscribe to the paper because of it is the answer.
• “TV’s Book Club lascivious, not literary.” Oh, come on. Was anyone really expecting meaningful literary discussion?
• Product placement in books.
• The Wind in the Willows: childhood classic or cash bonanza television adaptation?
• Like books? Then move to Wigtown, Scotland, where the streets are literally lined with books.
• John Cleese to teach comedy.

“Cancel the account.” Three words understood by all people, except AOL customer service reps. (via MeFi)

Now that John Freeman has exposed the terrible truth behind the Amazon Affiliates program, the time has come to reveal more allegations that have previously remained quiet rumors. Mr. Freeman, as you will soon learn, has only just scratched the surface. The litblogosphere is actually a disgraceful den of small-time crime, an online millieu where babies are eaten, adorable kittens are barbequed (cat photos indeed!) and tags are torn off mattresses.

It is with great trepidation that I expose the truth behind this criminal cabal. I know that my keystrokes are being logged right now by Mark Sarvas and that there will be violent repurcussions once the following information is released to the Internet. But I am not afraid, dear readers! While I know that my right leg will likely be chopped off by tomorrow morning by Scott Esposito, my sense of ethics compels me to report the truth and commit this altruistic act. I did, after all, inherit the self-immolation gene. Here then is a small sampling of what I can tell you at the present time.

1. While Ron Hogan might tell you otherwise, there is a real-life inspiration behind Beatrice. Beatrice is actually the name of a seventy-two year old woman who Mr. Hogan mugged on a summer afternoon in Central Park. September 5, 1994, to be exact. Not only did Mr. Hogan snatch the poor woman’s purse and spill out the contents in her presence, but he demanded that she tell him her first name, in order to, as the police report I have in my hands documents, “immortalize her on the Internet.”

2. Wendi Kaufman, the blogger behind The Happy Booker, is actually far from happy. She has been doped up for some time on what trusted medical authorities refer to as “happy pills.” She has neither won a Booker, nor authored a book. That these scandalous lies have been allowed to disseminate through many conduits is a tribute to the great spin that these litbloggers, who link each other with a gusto comparable to cocker spaniels copulating, place upon their self-worth. She has also claimed to have seventeen brothers — all of them named Ted. Can such an unethical prevaricator be trusted?

3. Maud Newton has repeatedly misled her reading public, trying to throw her readers off with posts which suggest that her site is not for sale. But it isn’t an accident that she was listed by mistake in the Crown publishing catalog. There is a pyramid scheme currently making the rounds around the nation. Ms. Newton, going by the nom de guerre of “Caitlin Flanagan,” is in charge. The hysterical writer spouting forth Eisenhower-era sentiments is a mere McGuffin! Sadly, one of the people at Crown was taken in by the scam and took vengeance upon Ms. Newton by listing her website in the catalog. But this hasn’t stopped Ms. Newton from offering stern denials.

4. Dan Wickett’s notion of an emerging writer has less to do with literature and more to do with the way a particular male organ emerges from a pair of boxers. For many years, Mr. Wickett has been making a little pocket money (pardon the pun) by disseminating certain photographs of midlist writers. This explains his considerable ebullience and his replies to email at odd hours. Upon receipt of a starving writer’s genital dauggerotype (yes, he insists upon dauggerotypes), a small cash payment is then sent to a Mailboxes, Etc. outlet in Michigan and Mr. Wickett then writes a little something about each writer in question on his blog. This is a carefully concealed form of buzz marketing that has shocked the litblogosphere.

5. It is an undisputed fact that Sarah Weinman is a known cannibal, but what you may not know is that she is a CSIS agent, working in tandem with an American shadow government, replacing all literary fiction currently stocked in U.S. bookstores and libraries with mysteries. By 2012, Weinman’s diabolical plan, currently styled Operation Agatha, will be complete. Anyone asking for a Philip Roth novel will be placed on a list of agitators. (I was unable to obtain this list through the Freedom of Information Act, so I am now operating from anonymous sources.) Dissenters who insist on reading literary fiction will be thrown into concentration camps and will be “corrected” by being exposed to Ian Rankin’s Rebus series in full.

6. Levi Asher, the man behind the so-called “Overrated Writers Project,” has been lying through his teeth the entire time. Aside from the fact that Mr. Asher owns a copy of every Vollmann limited edition CoTangent book, Mr. Asher once stalked Jonathan Lethem, eventually knocking on his door and asking Mr. Lethem if he could perform housework gratis. Mr. Lethem, being very uncomfortable with this request from a stranger, politely declined and gave him a twenty dollar bill for the cabfare home. Mr. Asher, having a hubris the size of Wisconsin, ripped up Mr. Lethem’s twenty dollar bill, turned on his heel and left. This happened six months ago. And it has only been careful planning that has caused Mr. Asher to let down the axe so recently.

7. You might think that Jeff Bryant’s tagline “One person’s crap is another person’s blog…” was simply some litblogger goofing off. But you’d be wrong. Because Mr. Bryant actually profits off of scatological deposits he finds on the street. Selling these on eBay, Mr. Bryant has amassed a small fortune that he fails to report on his 1040s. So don’t buy Mr. Bryant’s “I’m a new father” routine. The kid is clearly disguising an unreported cash bonanza.

Other Troubling Ethical Dilemmas:

8. Megan Sullivan is reportedly sitting on a suitcase of cash that she received by mistake and has sent Los Angeles Times Book Review editor David Ulin a number of random bills to ensure that all of Rupert Thomson’s books get future coverage.

9. Robert Birnbaum has resigned in protest from the mob because he doesn’t approve of Condoleeza Rice speaking in front of the five families.

10. Miss Snark is not a literary agent, and is merely a person fond of printing out emails and taping them to the walls of her home.

11. Jessa Crispin buys non-organic produce from time to time.

12. Bud Parr actually spends most of his time playing golf and has not finished a single book in 2006.

13. Lizzie Skurnick sleeps with the fishes. The person who claims to post as “The Old Hag” is actually a complicated algorithm designed by some guy named Dimitri that the litbloggers added to their payroll.

14. Kevin Holtsberry is a closet liberal and pretends to be conservative in order to confuse the mainstream media (and John Freeman, in particular).

15. Sam Jones uses a psuedonym only because he is a witness relocation program.

16. Every time Jenny Davidson uses an exclamation mark, a publisher has sent one of the litbloggers a check. Her blog, Light Reading, is written in a secret code so that the appropriate accountants can cook the books.

17. It was Gwenda Bond who sent Dave Itzkoff the fruit basket. Itzkoff is clearly more corruptible than Sam Tanenhaus, but the litbloggers are working on the big cheese. The staged BEA confrontation between Sam Tanenhaus and Edward Champion was designed to suggest enmity, when in fact Mr. Tanenhaus is Mr. Champion’s love slave.

18. C. Max Magee. Millions. Enough said.

19. The Rake’s Progress refers to the progressive slot poker machines the litbloggers have installed in Nevada.

20. Scott McKenzie handles the slush money.

21. The secret code word is “tangerine muumuu.”

• Lest you believe that Texas (outside of Austin) is a bad place, I should note that this year is Conan’s 100th birthday and the folks in Cross Plains, Texas do know how to celebrate a native son. (via Slushpile)
• It seems that US Senators have plenty of time to write books, but it can’t be an accident that most of the writers are Democrats. Call me a man of civic responsibility, but shouldn’t the Demos be putting all their energies into fighting the Republicans and gearing up for the midterm elections?
• Colm Toibin’s The Master has won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Strangely enough, Toibin is the first Irish novelist to win the award since its 1996 inception. He is also the first novelist named “Colm” to win any award whatsoever. The IMPAC people are now scouring the Irish countryside looking for more writers named “Colm,” hoping that they can be enlisted to keep IMPAC money in Ireland’s good hands.
• This isn’t book-related, but since I’ve been listening to a lot of the Stranglers lately (perhaps, along with The Damned, the most underrated UK punk band to come out of the 1970s), I should note that Hugh Cornwell, the man who penned such unforgettable lyrics as “Whatever happened to Leon Trotsky? / He got an icepick that made his ears burn,” has a new solo album and gets the profile treatment from the Sydney Morning Herald.
• RIP Ingo Preminger.
• Billy Bragg is pissed at MySpace. (via Ron Silliman)
• Mr. T Experience frontman Frank Portman has a book out. (via Largehearted Boy)
• James Wolcot on The Complete New Yorker.
• Stephen Joyce is an asshole.
• An interview with The National’s Matt Berninger.

Bronson Pinchot is a freemason? WTF?

Since I cannot login to the Critical Mass blog without signing up for a Blogger account, here is my response to Mr. Freeman’s flummery:

Mr. Freeman’s objection here is laughably tautological — a transparent attempt to tarnish a medium that he views, rather strangely, as a competitive threat while clinging to a red herring that, in an age when Target bankrolls an entire issue of The New Yorker (in which Critical Mass contributors Celia McGee and Laura Miller, both curiously silent, have appeared), is more Tinkertoy than tinker’s damn on closer examination.

If we are to quibble with picayune forms of income, one might argue that any freelancer employed to review a book for a newspaper also “gets a cut” for the book that she is reviewing — in large part because book review sections frequently run advertisements for the books being reviewed or have the regrettable interference of editors who decide, whether independently or after meetings with the lucre-minded top brass, what is saleable to their readers. Are not these advertisements, which sustain the publication and pay the salaries of the people who author the review, as “unethical” as the meager pennies that flow from the Amazon links? Is not the New York Times‘ recent failure to include a full-length Gilbert Sorrentino obituary “unethical” because the publication will not recognize subjects that certain Sunday morning upper-class basket weavers and golf players (they being the ones who hand over the cash) find comforting and nonconfrontational?

The rule here seems to apply only to the upstarts rather than these hoary hotheads, who lap up scraps like birdbrained predators incapable of observing the dying ecology around them.

Other than the notion here that litbloggers are cutting out the middlemen, I really don’t see what the difference is here. There may not be a traditional separation between sales and editorial. But this doesn’t mean that, with a great deal of alacrity, an enterprising litblogger might find a way to make a new model work while maintaining a certain autonomy which ensures ethical journalism. (I actually agree somewhat with Mr. Freeman about Amazon links embedded within content, but I also note Mr. Orthofer’s remarks on Amazon as an information source.)

Further, the term “buzz marketing” implies that litbloggers are employed to write uncritical and raving puff pieces about books. But this simply isn’t the case at all. Unless Mr. Freeman can point to a specific example of a litblogger taking money from a publisher and writing sullied euphoria along these lines, his assertion here is groundless. But I suspect that a man who mistakes mirth for marketing is a man who has supped too much on gruel.

[UPDATE: More from Bud Parr, Ron Hogan, Sarah Weinman and Scott McKenzie. And, of course, don’t miss Scott and Max’s salvos in the original thread.]