- From 1934 to 1949, the Philly Inquirer published “complete illustrated novels” in its Sunday book review section. You’d be hard-pressed to find even the most secure and well-funded Sunday supplements doing anything like this today. (via Books, Inq.)
- Primo Levi’s “A Tranquil Star.”
- Keith Gessen asks, “Where is Martin Amis heading next?”
- Behold: New Critics.
- Obviously, Kim Bofo has never read Faulkner. The “clever literary thing” is something known as eye dialect, designed to convey cadences in phonetic terms. It is not intended to be “clever,” nor is it intended to spawn anti-intellectual hostility from across the big pond. More information can be found here and here.
- Joyce and Beckett play golf. (via Fimoculous)
- The 11 Least Intimidating Movie Villains. (via Quiddity)
- Poor Mike Judge. Fox doesn’t deserve him.
Month / February 2007
NBN Trumps Perseus PGW Offer
We’re now less than a week away from the February 12 bankruptcy hearing. But this morning, PW reporter Jim Milliot revealed that one of the two mystery buyers was the National Book Network. NBN made a better offer to PGW clients than Perseus. NBN plans 85 cents on the dollar and only a three-year contract extension (as opposed to Perseus’s 70 cents and four years). Further, NBN has filed an unsecured claim to retrieve the remaining funds, instead of an administrative claim. This is a good sign that NBN might be spreading some of the monies around to the creditors. Galleycat has a memo of NBN’s offer for your perusal.
Radio Free PGW, in a shocking digression from its trademark cynicism, has signaled its approval of NBN, writing, “Hopefully, this will mark an end to the hard sell and arm twisting, and we hope to never hear the words ‘sixty-five percent’ again.”
Of course, since many PGW clients have signed agreements with Perseus (and from what I can determine, these agreements are by no means final; Perseus must have 65% of the PGW clients signed on before the February 12 hearing for the deal to go through), it will be interesting to see how this showdown between NBN and Perseus plays out. And what of the third rumored AMS purchaser? Will we see 90 cents on the dollar and two years? 110 cents on the dollar and six months? Come on, indie presses, hold out and watch these titans tear their follicles out while trying to woo you!
New Jack Butler Interview
A hot tipster has informed me that a Jack Butler interview will be appearing in the Summer/Fall 2005 issue of the Mississippi Quarterly. What’s more, said tipster somehow scored a copy of this interview and passed it along, to which I raise my highball glass with gratitude. Of course, I wouldn’t mention any of this if I didn’t provide you with a sneak peek. So here goes:
JB: I soon resolved not to become a rehasher, a writer who goes back to some imagined South of the past and merely iterates the stereotype, however vigorous the stereotype might seem. This resolve was not the result of loving SF. It was just, who wants to be a copycat?
My scientific and SF background came to the rescue. I appropriated from physics the notion of the multiverse. My multiverse consists not only of the quantum probability alternate universes, but all of the universes that can be imagined (including, like Woody Allen, those of fiction), and, as I like to say, all of those that can’t be imagined as well. I work, from time to time, on a collection of stories patterned loosely after The Canterbury Tales, which I call Tales from the Multiverse. It owes a lot to science fiction, but more to Chaucer’s incredible poem.
Since my Yoknapatawpha is the multiverse, I am freed from the constraints of consistency.
* * *
You hear that, gang? To paraphrase a really crappy cartoon about robots, there’s more to Jack Butler than meets the eye. Sometimes, anachronistic education is the mad and unexpected muse.
Chunky Roundup
- If you’re anything like me, you consider Jackie Collins’ words to be about as insightful and comprehensible to your life as those incomprehensible furniture instructions printed who knows where. Yet Ms. Collins seems to believe that she can help Victoria Beckham. Perhaps Ms. Collins is attempting to atone for past conversational setbacks. Or perhaps she’s alarmed that Tony Danza didn’t follow her advice to get his nipples pierced in order to ward off evil eidolons. Either way, I’m awaiting the inevitable novel fictionalizing Ms. Collins’ admonishments, Fool Me Spice, Shame on Me.
- It wouldn’t be a Tuesday without a Lethem story. (Hell, it would be Tuesday without a Collins story. But I’ve already blown that promise and you can send your disused prophylactics to me by mail in protest.) It appears that Boston musicians are creating an original song from the lyrics in Lethem’s upcoming novel, You Don’t Love Me Yet. The winning song will be unfurled at Lethem Central and it will be performed at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on March 27. Whether this will translate into a Clap Your Hands-style indie hit through the Internet or an unsettling choice at your karaoke bar of choice remains anyone’s guess.
- Cathy Young offers this disingenuous claim: “Respectable modern-day literature has no shortage of derivative works: What are Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead or John Updike’s Gertrude and Claudius but Hamlet fanfics?” I think not. There’s a fundamental difference between “writers” who labor over bad prose describing Kirk schtupping Spock and writers like Stoppard offering a witty and separately realized tale of two overlooked bumblers. In Hamlet, R&G were little more than minor characters with scant attributes. Plus, I don’t believe international copyright law applies to works published in 1599. Besides, it’s not as if Updike and Stoppard are going to other characters for the majority of their work. Updike and Stoppard have indelible characters like Rabbit Angstrom and Moon to fuel their respective imaginations. Fanfic writers, by contrast, often have no narrative ideas other than derivative stories involving characters they don’t own or have not created. Further, they are often inept with subject-verb agreement. I advise novice writers to toil at such infecundities at their own peril. What’s more, Ms. Young has also taken Lee Goldberg’s comments out of context. But then one would expect no less of a self-acknowledged fan fiction writer accustomed to absconding with characters she has neither the right nor the talent to tinker with. (And lest I be accused of attacking Ms. Young’s character, let’s let her fiction speak for itself. This story reveals such blunders as “Xena’s voice spilled into his reverie.” You mean, Xena’s voice is liquid as opposed to aural? Who knew? Or how about: “Back in his leather pants, Ares came out into the main room of the house.” The prepositional phrase is unnecessary. We’re already in the goddam house. The words “out into” are oxymoronic. And what in the hell does that dreadful clause about the leather pants have to do with the sentence’s purpose? I could examine this dreadful prose at length, but I’d rather spend a weekend hiring someone to saw my limbs off.)
Everything They Want
All Headline News: “Sources say that George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley are going to reform Wham!.”
I’m concerned here. And it’s not just because of the period that follows the exclamation mark in that sentence, but because I’ve long referred to Ridgeley as “That Other Guy.” I’ve felt very comfortable doing this over the years and, if Wham! is to reform, then referring to him as Ridgeley is going to require a synapse I don’t feel like using, something that I’d rather use to memorize a line of poetry than another pedantic pop cultural nugget.
BSS #96: Neal Pollack
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Contemplating the litigious aspects of fatherhood.
Author: Neal Pollack
Subjects Discussed: The stigma against father memoirs, the Neal Pollack persona vs. the real Neal Pollack, neighborhood activism, politics, writing a book to “feed my family,” balancing art and commerce, the Chicago theatre scene, on being “family stunty,” responding to Marritt Ingman’s criticisms about failing to acknowledge previous subcultural parenting books, the desuetude of Mr. Mom, the conformist aspects of being an “alternadad,” the mommy wars, how Alternadad “rocks the boat,” the hostile reactions to the Elijah biting essay, the “Shut Up” essay, harsh reactions to Pollack in general, provoking readers, Never Mind the Pollacks, family films, pot vaporizing, the bad breakup with Dave Eggers, on pissing people off, involvement with Cracked, Regina as “straight man,” and sticking with dad writing.
EXCERPT FROM SHOW:
Correspondent: A lot of people have been sort of criticizing this book. I don’t necessarily agree with them, but I think that people are saying…
Pollack: Some people. There’s been positive and negative criticism. You know, this has definitely been the best reviewed book I’ve written. So I mean…so what were you going to posit?
Correspondent: The question is: the nature of commentary. Even in a crude form, does it have any kind of value? It seems to me that the “Shut Up” essay was more of a visceral reaction, but at the same time…
Pollack: Yeah.
Correspondent: …a lot of people really were upset by it.
Pollack: Yeah, and a lot of people also really liked it. That’s the thing. I’ve always had this uncanny ability. I’ve always had this sort of “love me or hate me” kind of thing going on. Especially with my writing. And again, people were upset by it. But I also had a lot of people telling me they appreciated it. And that’s the same thing with this book. For some reason, even though it’s a pretty simple book about a pretty basic subject, it’s been getting harsh reaction and then a lot of praise too. So again it’s just a sign that I’m doing something right.
BSS #95: Heidi Julavits
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Enchanted with sobriquets.
Author: Heidi Julavits
Subjects Discussed: Heidi’s middle name, the psychotherapeutic muse, Michelle Stacey’s The Fasting Girl, Mollie Fancher, science vs. faith, Freud’s Dora study, responding to Marisa Meltzer’s claims of conservatism, the pros and cons of unreliable narrative, “What Might Have Happened,” setting a novel in indoor environments, dialogue vs. description, Tim O’Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods, narrative resolution and ambiguity, perfect endings, Before Sunset, cultural metaphors vs. gesture, Viewmasters, repartee vs. gushing in a therapeutic environment, pushovers, grief tea, the inspirations for Hyper Radiance, clarifying the antisnark manifesto, Nick Hornby, The Believer‘s role in review coverage, Dale Peck, and constructive criticism.
EXCERPT FROM SHOW:
Correspondent: For example, Nick Hornby’s column. I mean, there’s a risk that he can be almost a more highbrow form of Harriet Klausner in the fact that he writes nothing but positivism.
Julavits: Yeah.
Correspondent: I mean, isn’t there something about laying one’s cards down on the table and offering not necessarily — okay, to bring up the Dale Peck review.
Julavits: Yeah.
Correspondent: I object more about the literalism behind the amazing sentence “Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation.” That’s an extraordinary thing to say.
Julavits: Also unprovable though. I guess I feel like the reason that I feel like there are writers who are extremely critical, and I mentioned them in my essay. But Daniel Mendelsohn — I mean, that guy pulls no punches. But he only says things that are actually provable, thereby showing that he is a serious intellect. You know, he’s not out there just to throw slanders around and call attention to himself, which is what Dale Peck — I didn’t want to read past that first sentence. Because this is not going to be an intellectually serious takedown of Rick Moody. This is just going to be someone throwing their fists around.
Fatal Attraction Meets SpaceCamp?
Associated Press: “An astronaut drove 900 miles and donned a disguise to confront a woman she believed was her rival for the affections of a space shuttle pilot, police said. She was arrested Monday and charged with attempted kidnapping and other counts.”
And that’s only the beginning.
(via MeFi)
“Secret Racism”
Who knew that liberals had a “secret racism about blacks?” What’s even more hilarious is that this claim comes from morons who don’t even know the difference between Lionel Jefferson and Lionel Richie.
Proof of Your Host’s Idiocy
I learned tonight that I have mispronounced “omniscient” for years. Pay no attention to that linguistic bumbler at the gates.
Trouble in NBCC Paradise?
John Freeman now seems to be fighting his peers. (Read the comments.)
New Richard Powers Interview
In this month’s Believer (incidentally, the first issue to carry an advertisement, of which the editors write, “This is the first time we’re taking ads, and it will allow the magazine to continue to exist. In future issues, there will be one page occupied by an advertising message, and this message will likely always be for a book or books you might want to buy. Having this one page of advertising per issue will enable us to pay our tiny staff better. Thanks for understanding.”), there’s a new interview with Richard Powers conducted by Alex Michod.
I Hate Charlie Brooker
Unless you have been walking around with your eyes repeatedly stapled together by an Arrow T50, and your earholes sodomized by a dominatrix’s sex toy collection, with a blindfold — a big throbbing blindfold as impenetrable as onyx — tied round it, goddammit goddammit, in the dark, the cold frightening dark where imaginary leopards gnaw upon your ankles and Fleet Street hacks bang out really fucking fragmented ledes magically syncopated to their inveterate pill-popping and flask-swigging, you surely haven’t failed to notice the latest expression of mass culture rage authored by Charlie Fucking Brooker, which has inspired a Metafilter thread, taken over the Guardian‘s column inches and, blimey, the internet (no capital letters for you, you damn evil bloggers!) in a series of crudely written sentences that come across as incoherent bloviating aimed at — well, I’m not sure exactly.
The point is this: Charlie Brooker is an angry man. Or he wants us to believe that he’s an angry man. Well, I can outdistance this Charlie Come Lately in a few paragraphs.
Charlie Fucking Brooker (hereinafter referred to, as I see fit, as “CFB”) needs to step out of his flat every once in a while. He needs to get out right now so that I can beat him up. Or maybe someone else can beat him up. Or maybe Mac enthusiasts can beat him up. Because he just doesn’t understand. And because he doesn’t understand and we cannot comprehend his rambling column (three word summary, folks: he hates Macs) and he feels compelled to declare a technological jihad, there is only one solution: a bunch of scrawny geeks, at least six thousand of them, attacking Charlie Brooker at Wembley Stadium. Someone needs to charge admission. Someone needs to provide chainsaws. And somebody needs to film it.
Charlie Brooker may hate Macs, but I hate Charlie Fucking Brooker. I have always hated Charlie Fucking Brooker even before I knew who he was. Even before I was aware that he was a columnist. Even before I knew his name. When I was a boy, I asked several of my friends who I might hate in my adulthood and they suggested that it would be some English guy named Charlie. I did not know who this Charlie would be. Oh, but now I know who he is!
I hate the people who read Charlie Fucking Brooker, and I hate the people who think they read Charlie Fucking Brooker. I even hate the people who even considered reading Charlie Brooker. I will go on hating Charlie Fucking Brooker, even if we have a crazy night and he proves okay in the sack. Even if he turns out to be a good guy and he buys me a lager.
There can be no quarter! Charlie Brooker must be stopped. But more importantly, he must be hated!
This has been a cultural commentary.
This week: Ed spent an uninterrupted sixteen hour period contemplating several ways to murder Charlie Fucking Brooker (on his PC). He went to the gun range and fired about thirty-two rounds of ammo into targets that he named Charlie Fucking Brooker. He read Charlie Fucking Brooker‘s latest column and realized that the UK finally had its own version of Chuck Klosterman.
Dubya Begins “Presidential Book Club” with Vanity Press Title; Washington Insiders Remain Skeptical
Roundup
- The Millions’ Garth Risk Hallberg offers “an attempt of a review” for Against the Day.
- Orhan Pamuk is not pleased with “being secure.” Accordingly, Pamuk has spent much of his spare time combing through the DSM-IV for ways to be insecure. In addition to isolating a large chunk of his friends by revealing TMI at cafe sitdowns, Pamuk has adopted an awkward gait, hunched shoulders, and has started to pen confessional essays similar to Jonathan Franzen’s.
- Clive Cussler inflating book sales? The next thing you know, he’ll inflate his literary worth!
- Be sure to drop by the Litblog Co-Op this week for discussion on Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s The Wizard of the Crow, which also made my top ten books of 2006.
- Poet John Hewitt is set to become a “Statue of Liberty man.” But the more important question, still unanswered, is whether Hewitt was a breast man or an ass man.
- Norman Mailer: “I’m not as interested in fights as I once was. I used to enjoy a fight. Now I look at (a fight) as something that’s going to use up a lot of the little working time I probably have left. I don’t want to get to the point where I’m frantic about the working time.” Well, then how will the old man get out all that aggression so that he can feed his ego? Cross-stitching? Bocce?
- Ed Park on PKD’s Voices from the Street.
- Michael Chabon on McCarthy’s The Road. (via Bookdaddy)
- Embarrassing books, including Bill O’Reilly’s Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Television and Murder. (via Bookshelves of Doom)
- Revolutionary Road: the movie? I don’t know about this. With Sam “I’m About As Subtle as CG Petals” Mendes at the helm, I can’t see Richard Yates’ classic novel being given the hard realism treatment it deserves. (via Matthew Tiffany)
- To those who have asked me to respond to the Gavin Newsom scandal, I truly could not care less. I’m more concerned with, say, affordable housing, the homeless, the social impact of Proposition F, MUNI’s failures, and at least four thousand other issues pertaining to San Francisco. And I’m appalled at how I have been asked nearly every day during the past week to engage or joke on the matter, when what happened is between the involved parties and is frankly none of my business. And for those who might impute that I’m a Gavin apologist, I should also note that I voted for Matt Gonzalez, not Gavin, in the last election.
Tanenhaus Has Shortcomings, To Be Sure
Sam Tanenhaus: “Shortcomings, to be sure. But so what? Nature doesn’t owe us perfection. Novelists don’t either. Who among us would even recognize perfection if we saw it?”
With these five simple sentences, Sam Tanenhaus has spelled out why the New York Times Book Review is a publication hostile to penetrating insights on fiction. Literary criticism, as I understand it, is not the quest for perfection, nor should one expect a single volume to yield near universal plaudits from all who read it. (Unless, of course, like the old Saturday Night Live sketch suggested, you liked Cats and you’d see it again and again.) One of criticism’s vital functions is to present doubting Thomases who cast aspersions on a book’s greatness and brave critics with cogent arguments explaining why a universally derided book is worth reading.
I happen to believe Rupert Thomson’s The Book of Revelation to be a near perfect novel, but while attaching a melodramatic modifier might be good for blurbs, it doesn’t tell you anything about why I believe it to be a near perfect novel. I can tell you in very specific terms why I believe it to be one one of the best novels of the past ten years, but I would not deny another critic her right to express why it fails, using supportive examples and reasonable terms.
Literary criticism is certainly not a matter of bullshit lists. It is not a matter of declaring an author above a single reproach, as Tanenhaus has done. Literary criticism is a quest for understanding, a way of playing booster to authors who are maligned or misunderstood and skeptic to the critical darlings.
Edmund Wilson once described the situation this way:
No matter how thoroughly and searchingly we may have scrutinized works of literature from the historical and biographical point of view, we must be able to tell good from bad, the first-rate from the second-rate. We shall otherwise not write literary criticism at all, but merely social or political history as reflected in literary texts, or psychological case histories from past eras.
It is not enough for the critic to describe a book as first-rate. The critic has the duty to explain why this is so while considering the blind partisanship of her enthusiasms. A good book review editor will cultivate these critical impulses in his contributors, instead of penning a 2,000 word love letter that could have just as easily read:
I LOVE SAUL BELLOW. SAUL BELLOW IS GREAT. DO NOT PICK ON MY AUCTORIAL HERO. (rinse, lather, repeat ad infinitum)
Racist Restaurants
Here’s one of the more disheartening and rarely discussed moments in American cultural history: A restaurant chain called Coon Chicken Inn, alluded to in the films Ghost World and C.S.A., actually existed between the 1920s and the 1950s. Diners would enter through the doors of a ghastly racist caricature. It was one of Portland’s most popular restaurants, in part because there was a small African American population in Portland and in part because the food was cheap.
The restaurant chain was opened by Maxon Lester Graham and Graham’s descendants has issued a wholesale disapproval of the Coon Chicken Inn. This descendant reports that the racist logo was on every dish, piece of silverware, menu and paper product.
Interestingly, a few weeks ago, the Oregonian reported that the former Coon Chicken Inn has been purchased by an African American man named Ernest Clyde Jenkins III.
While Coon Chicken is now gone, it was by no means the only racist American restaurant. If you visit Santa Barbara, you can find the original Sambo’s restaurant, based on Helen Bannerman’s racist children’s book, The Story of Little Black Sambo. There were once as many as 1,200 outlets. Now there is one. Says restaurant critic John Dickson, “So when are you going to go nationwide AGAIN?” Presumably, Mr. Dickson is also fond of golliwoggs.
Five Television Intros
I encountered this list of the ten best television intros and I was a bit underwhelmed. So here’s an additional list of intros to add to the pile:
1. The Prisoner: When was the last time that you experienced a television series intro that was this cinematic? Everything from the great match editing of McGoohan walking down the corridor, with the shadow passing over his face cutting to the shadow passing over his tapping heels, to the retro typewriter Xing out McGoohan’s photo throws you into the intricate allegory that The Prisoner dared to bring to its viewers.
2. The Muppet Show: If you examine The Muppet Show‘s premise (a bunch of puppets running a variety show) from a hard rationalist’s perspective, the show is pretty damn absurd. So what better way to set the mood then unleashing a mad torrent of Muppets singing and dancing?
3. Six Feet Under: Whatever one’s feelings on Thomas Newman’s theme, one must admire the deft stop-motion animation, the unusual angles that the coffin is pulled out of the hearse, and the great match cutting (such as the gurney wheel turning on cue).
4. The Drew Carey Show: My feelings on The Drew Carey Show are mixed, but I did greatly enjoy the show’s intro, in large part because I’m a sucker for anachronistic urban dancing.
5. The Six Million Dollar Man: It was a pretty lame show, but there’s a reason why this intro remains indelible. Starting off with a straight-faced summation of Steve Austin’s accident, we are then given all manner of superimposed graphics, followed by that indelible narration. It’s too bad the writing on the show wasn’t this effectively melodramatic.
Nothing Spells Out “Guy in a Suit” More Than This
BSS #94: Stephen Graham Jones & Scott McKenzie
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Not sacrificing time for horror.
Guests: Scott McKenzie and Stephen Graham Jones
Subjects Discussed: Approachable authors in the frozen food section, the implementation of pre-2000 references into narrative, the lineage of horror films, screenplay terminology, the relationship between Demon Theory‘s top text story and the footnotes, movie references, protagonists vs. ensemble casts, horror novels, drafting vs. editing, the influence of real-life horror, girls in bras, Jones’ unintentional academic life, trepidations towards New York, refraction and contemporary “science” novels, Against the Day, small town writing communities, Jones’ influences, how the trilogy structure changed the footnotes, the difficulties of writing screenplays, drive-by urinals, and the major stylistic difference between the Demon Theory hardcover and paperback.
(A co-production of the LBC, Pinky’s Paperhaus and The Bat Segundo Show)
EXCERPT FROM SHOW:
Jones: I just discovered that footnote function in my Microsoft Word, I guess. And I was writing Demon Theory and having a ball with the screenplay terminology and all that. But then maybe, I guess fifteen pages into it, if that, I started dropping footnotes. They were meant to be deleted later. I was dropping them. Like I was calling myself names. Like “You obviously stole this from Halloween.” “You stole this from here.” You know. But then they just kept snowballing and snowballing until everything was stolen from something. And that kind of just became one of Demon Theory‘s conceits, I guess.
BSS #93: Nick Mamatas
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Introspective about his long lost lawn gnome.
Author: Nick Mamatas
Subjects Discussed: The X+Y book formula, H.P. Lovecraft, Jack Kerouac, Aristophanes’ The Acharnians, telepathy, garden gnomes, radioactive fallout, conspiracies, Elián González , Littleton, Under My Roof as allegory, the influence of current events upon narrative, Cthulhu as muse, Lovecraftian poetry, crazy tenants, writing short novels in a “big book”-friendly environment, working with Night Shade and Soft Skull, Skybars, the downside of product placement in the future, pursuing an MFA, health insurance, narrative ideology, character testimonials, the influence of Animal House, micronation novels, George Saunders’ The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, Duck Soup, and life-changing YA novel experiences.
EXCERPT FROM SHOW:
Mamatas: Well, at first it was going to be a lawn jockey.
Correspondent: Really?
Mamatas: Yes. In an early draft, I had it as a lawn jockey. But I figured that was too unctuously petty bourgeois. I thought a garden gnome was more down market. And also, they’re bigger. So you can put more nuclear stuff inside a garden gnome.
Correspondent: But at the same time, there’s also a certain kind of suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader. Because if you actually go ahead and try to produce a nuclear device in a garden gnome, there’s going to be some radioactive fallout. The FBI guys kind of show up and like — I’m thinking the FBI would immediately sort of seize this family. And yet they don’t. I was wondering if this kind of realism isn’t of concern for you, or is it meant to be more of a meditative kind of…
Mamatas: Well, partially it’s meditative. Partially, people get away with things, you know. 9/11 — people got away with it, even though there were many people watching these terrorists and keeping their eye on them. But they all managed to get through and carry out this attack. There’s almost a nationalist type of myth that the FBI and the CIA are super-competent and that we always know what’s going on. That’s part of why we have the 9/11 denial movement, or conspiracy movement.
Planet Earth, It Was Fun While It Lasted
Associated Press: “The world’s leading climate scientists said global warming has begun, is ‘very likely’ caused by man, and will be unstoppable for centuries, according to a report obtained Friday by The Associated Press….The panel predicted temperature rises of 2-11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. That was a wider range than in the 2001 report. However, the panel also said its best estimate was for temperature rises of 3.2-7.1 degrees Fahrenheit. In 2001, all the panel gave was a range of 2.5-10.4 degrees Fahrenheit. On sea levels, the report projects rises of 7-23 inches by the end of the century. An additional 3.9-7.8 inches are possible if recent, surprising melting of polar ice sheets continues.”
DFW Rewritten Again
Here is the first paragraph of David Foster Wallace’s “Good People” rewritten:
They were up, up being not down but up, at that park at the lake, by the edge of the lake really we mean it when we say that the park was situated not just at the lake but at its edge because these details are important, with part of a downed tree, downed not upped get it, in the shallows half hidden as opposed to wholly hidden by the bank, by which we mean a lake bank and not a place where you deposit checks. Lane A. Dean, Jr., son of Lane A. Dean, Sr., who generally went by just Lane A. Dean when filing his tax returns, no senior thank you very much, and his girlfriend, who was not related to the Deans except carnally and with only one Dean, both in bluejeans and button-up shirts, contemplating why they had decided against button-down shirts. They sat up, not down and certainly not like a downed tree, on the table’s top portion and had their shoes on the bench part that people sat on to picnic or simply to put their shoes on the bench part or fellowship together in carefree times without a care in the world. They’d gone to different high schools but the same junior college, and in college they contemplated why they had gone to different high schools, where they had met in campus ministries not in high school but in college. It was springtime, not summertime, wintertime or autumn, and the park’s grass was very green as most grass is and the air suffused with honeysuckle and lilacs both, which was almost too much and certainly not as much if it had been just honeysuckle or just lilacs. But because it was honeysuckle and lilacs both, this was serious business. The air was suffused, I tell you. There were bees, big bees and small bees, and the angle of the sun, in contrast to the sun’s angle, made the water, water that could be found in the lake in which the park they were now sitting in could be found along its edge, of the shallows, shallow for shallows, look dark. There had been more storms that week, and less storms last week, with some downed trees, all downed, and the sound of chainsaws all up, like Lane and his girlfriend, and down, like the trees, his parents’ street. Their postures on the picnic table, quite up as we have established, were both the same forward kind with their shoulders rounded, forward and up, and elbows on their knees, perhaps to ward off the bees. In this position the girl rocked slightly, still up and forward, and once put her face in her hands, down down down like the downed trees still downed, but she was not crying, for people sitting up and forward do not cry unless you taunt them. Lane was very still and immobile and looking past the bank of the lake that was conveniently located next to the park at the downed tree in the shallows, which had certainly remained downed, and its ball of exposed roots going all directions, not just up, down and forward and not in collusion with the bees or the honeysuckle or the lilacs or all of it, and the tree’s cloud of branches all half in the water, either half-empty or half-full like the glass of water I am now observing on my desk which I cannot decide to be optimistic or pessimistic about, or perhaps up, down, or forward about. The only other individual, not Lane A. Dean, Sr., Lane A. Dean, Jr. or Lane A. Dean, Jr.’s girlfriend, nearby was a dozen spaced tables away, not a baker’s dozen but an absolute twelve tables, by himself, standing upright, not downright and this was up like Lane and his girlfriend we must remind you. Looking at the torn-up, not torn-down, hole in the ground, where you often find holes, there where the tree had gone over, downed as befitting a downed tree. It was still early yet and all the shadows wheeling right, a new direction pay attention, and shortening. The girl, girlfriend of Lane, wore a thin old checked cotton shirt, button-up or button-down, with pearl-colored snaps with the long sleeves down, not up, I believe you catch the auctorial drift, and always smelled very good and clean, not very bad and dirty but we’re leaving the up/down question up in the air for your interpretation even if we must remind you that wafts travel up, like someone you could trust and care about even if you weren’t in love, or like, or hate, or divorce proceedings. Lane Dean, the son not the father, had liked the smell, very good and clean, of her right away. His mother, not named Lane but certainly named Dean, called her down to earth, up to earth a concept beyond her ken, and liked her, though she was good people, for being up not down, you could tell – she made this evident in little ways, ways that were certainly not enormous. The shallows, remember them, lapped from different directions, and can you keep track of all the directions I’ve given readers, at the tree, downed we must remind you, as if almost teething on it, bite bite bite. Sometimes when alone and thinking, because he could not think when he was with her, or struggling to turn a matter over to Jesus Christ in prayer, all this while praying, he would find himself, up down, putting his fist in his palm, teething like the downed tree, we could suggest, and turning it slightly, up down, as if still playing and pounding and teething and upping and downing his glove to stay sharp and alert in center, center being a position that was neither up nor down. He did not do this now, it would be cruel and indecent and entirely disrespectful to the teething downed tree to do this now, or to do it now later, or to later do it now. The older individual, still twelve spaced tables away, stood beside his picnic table, still twelve tables away – he was at it but not sitting, certainly standing up like Lane and his girlfriend we’re sitting up and forward – and looked also out of place in a suit coat or jacket or skirt or hat or cap or the kind of things that are on my mind when I consider the sartorial offerings, up and down, over the past century or really just the kind of men’s hat Lane’s grandfather, who was not named Lane Dean but had sired Lane Dean, who in turn sired Lane Dean, Jr., wore in photos as a young insurance man, certainly not old in these photos. He appeared to be looking across the lake, new direction. If he moved, Lane didn’t see it or discern it or distinguish it or any number of verbs you would associate with observation. He looked more like a picture, a picture reminiscent of Lane’s grandfather who was named Dean but not Lane Dean, than a man. There were not any ducks in view, damn damn damn downed trees getting in the way not up but down and not across but occluding the ducks.
DFW’s paragraph is 502 words. My revised paragraph is 1,209 words.
Brief Silence
I am operating on a prepossessing paucity of sleep and still have many things to do today. So things may be quiet on this end, at least for today. However, two more podcasts will be unleashed tonight. There will also be dancing bears, if I play my cards right.