- Well, hello there, readers! I’m posting this on Monday, except I’m not really writing this on Monday. I am actually cobbling a few things together on Sunday just to throw you off! You see, while I normally maintain the practice of posting things in real time, Monday is occupied. I’ll spare you the details, but it involves more marsupial-style assaults on the keyboard and all manner of crazed pedantic info. So I’m going to try this temporally displaced post in lieu of real-time content and see if there’s any controversy. It is, after all, somehow dishonest. And you’ll even be reading this when the sun’s up, when, in fact, it’s “currently” dark outside. All this is a way of demonstrating just how incorrigible litbloggers are.
- Now what in the sam hill is going on here? It seems to involve haircuts, a trip to Jamaica, the recent acquisition of a digital camera, and the sticking out of tongues. I approve of at least two elements of this divine equation. Indeed, all this is a helpful reminder that I really need to get in more trouble. What I do know is that my current digital camera is on the fritz. So I can’t shock you with frightening photos of what I tend to look like after I’ve had a recent haircut (self-inflicted, I must confess; this is what happens when you bald). But I plan to frighten in other ways. And none of it involves Jonathan Franzen.
- I haven’t yet confessed how vital the hero is to Brooklyn food culture. Let me assure you that it is vital, although this means nothing to you because you are reading this many hours from the composition of this post. Which is to say that, yes, you should be worried about temporal blogging experiments.
- I regret to inform Ms. Klein (and Mr. Steinberg) that the shock is not wearing off. The problem is that “shock doctrine” is designed more as a buzz word rather than a bona-fide doctrine. I have no more use for buzz words than I do buzz cuts that do not come from my hand. It is just possible that Naomi Klein is a suitable barber, but I doubt it.
- Pete Anderson is trying out Oxford American and blogging about it. We really need more of these magazine consumer reports. So I put forth the question to readers: what are your magazine subscriptions and are you really getting your money’s worth?
- Chip McGrath is busy devoting at least two grafs to Martin’s appearance. I wonder sometimes if McGrath is wasting his times these days or if I’ve seriously overestimated him. This is a damn superficial interview. (And why the hell do you call this guy “Chip?” You may as well call him Sparky while you’re at it.)
- Kurt Vonnegut is the most popular novelist of 2007 and Slaughterhouse-Five has sold 280,000 copies since 2006.
- The Kansas City Star has named its top 100 books of the year. But since How Starbucks Saved My Life and the vastly overrated Amy Bloom novel Away is on it, well, you know what you’re in for.
- I would like to tell you that a novel by an author is better than you might be thinking, but these opinions shall have to be restrained.
- I also wish to confess of the noisy pipes here in Brooklyn. Good goddam, the sounds wake me up! How were such vociferous pipes constructed? Why weren’t they replaced? And why do we put up with this noise? Guess I’m now a New Yorker of sorts.
- I have, incidentally, grown another beard. Rex Reed calls it “the best beard Ed Champion tried to grow since the last one.” Roger Ebert says, “Thousands of follicles come together and we are left wondering why.” Kenneth Turan writes, “Why does he grow these beards in the first place? It is this rhetorical question that best represents the Ed Champion problem in a nutshell.” Okay, the reviews are mixed. But, for now, I’m keeping it.
Month / November 2007
Early Report on “Diary of the Dead”
Film Ick: “Last thought: I saw Diary of the Dead last night. It’s quite brilliant indeed – despite a few obvious problems with the overall concept. An angry, passionate, beautiful film that asks a lot of the right questions but doesn’t pretend to have all the right answers. The US release is in February; there’s no UK date yet; despite the AFM pre-sales hullaballoo, Romero claims to have no ideas for the next one yet and wouldn’t want us to hold our breath for it. I’d like to thank George Romero for being so committed to actually making films worth caring about, thinking about and, actually, loving. Diary repays your love. And it will join you when you stand up against the corruption, hypocrisy and greed.”
BSG “Razor”: Discouraging Signs
Heather Havrilesky: “‘Razor’ is neither the fascinating, heart-pounding ‘Battlestar’ of our fondest memories nor the cheesy, ‘All Along the Watchtower’-lyrics-spewing ‘Battlestar’ of our worst nightmares. But those hungry for a glimpse of Starbuck and Apollo will eat it up faster than a leftover-turkey-and-stuffing sandwich.”
Okay, let’s come clean and get geeky. I don’t watch much television, but, in the interests of keeping reasonably au courant with contemporary culture, BSG is one of the four shows I keep up with. Last season was pretty damn dreadful — the kind of soporific writing reminiscent of people whose exposure to science fiction doesn’t extend past the purported Golden Age of Science Fiction from the 1950’s. (The “expertise” of Dave Itzkoff comes to mind in considering these flaccid plots, particularly that wretched flashback-laden boxing episode.) And the fact of the matter is that the mealy-mouthed metaphor of a leftover sandwich simply isn’t enough to exonerate the egregious missteps in last season’s finale. Sure, I’ll watch out of morbid curiosity. But someone needs to demand better standards from Ron Moore. Perhaps the WGA strike will force Moore to ruminate for a while and find his mojo again. (Or maybe he might want to try writing a few episodes instead of sitting it out as “developer” or “executive producer.” Or does he wish to become another Rick Berman?)
I cannot believe that “it’s pretty impossible to keep that level of intensity going on for too long, and there’s no way that ‘Battlestar’ could escape falling into a repetitive formula.” Does Havrilesky so easily forget that Moore once had the balls to recast the series in dramatic fashion at the end of the second season, only to allow the show to deteriorate into derivative third season episodes once the crew escaped New Caprica? He lacks the courage to lay down the one card he has to play: the discovery of Earth, which presumably will occur in the forthcoming fourth and final season. Maybe he knows that his chips are up.
Further n.b.: I am by no means watching this show that closely, but if Havrilesky cannot remember the Centurions (and that would be with an O, not an A; are the Salon copy editors asleep at the desk?) who have appeared at various points throughout the series — largely employed in planetary surface battles — then one wonders whether Havrilesky is even paying attention.
Peter and David
Silverblatt Speaks
Nudge Nudge
New Review
My review of Steve Erickson’s Zeroville can be found in today’s Philly Inquirer.
Along Central Park’s Perimeter
Saturday morning’s walk extended, to my surprise, across six miles in Manhattan. Mammoth bleachers for the Thanksgiving Day Parade were settled and half-unpacked by imposing tractors, stretched in sequential array upon the western edge of Central Park from West 81st to somewhere in the seventies, more no doubt to follow in the forthcoming days. There were numerous dogs — one unduly burdened by a carriage attached to his hind legs, as if he were a miniature Ben-Hur steed in service to his owner. I had thought that this poor dog had suffered an injured leg, and that the owner had attached the carriage to provide locative succor. But the contraption appeared more in the service of the owner, who didn’t seem to be aware that dogs could perambulate as fast, if not faster, than mere humans. A boy no more than seven years of age observed this rigged dog and thought him special by way of the wheels, but I felt sad for the dog, who was pressed to move faster by his master.
The bleachers were something of a burden, for they impeded steady foot traffic and we were forced to cross the street, contending with oppressive red lights, which we defied by jaywalking, and pedestrians who didn’t shuffle down sidewalks with our celerity. Certainly, they had the right to saunter. But when you get into the groove of walking, it’s hard not to go hard-core and we weaved like cars desperately careening across lanes to make an appointment. But we had no particular destination in mind.
The poor pedicab drivers, mostly African-American, shiver in the cold along 59th Street, waiting for desperate fares. They are the modern rickshaws, but the tourists prefer the horses. The statue of poor General William Tecumseh Sherman — at 59th Street and Park, in considerable disrepair, with a fading gold sheen — is largely ignored by the tourists, who settle for the horse drawn carriages at $37 per half hour, when they can have this needlessly abandoned historical figure for free. Perhaps they disapprove of the general’s march or Trump’s gilded endowment from not long ago. I find myself commiserating with the forgotten historical figures interspersed throughout the five boroughs, sometimes addressing them directly. “Who are you?” I ask a statue with an unfamiliar name. I then begin to apologize to them personally for not knowing the history and start asking these bronzed and iron representations questions, for the plagues which depict their histories are often unsuitable. I never seem to receive answers, nor do I receive strange looks from other New Yorkers. Perhaps inquiries along these lines are a common practice, or perhaps nobody is as interested in the past as I am. I am forced to Google the info later.
Concerning Trump, easily the most wretched buildings along the southern edge of Central Park are the Trump condos, which are as inventive as an accountant taking on architecture as a hobby with their flat rectilinear exteriors and banal facades.
Near the end of this peregrination, I stepped into a Men’s Wearhouse just to time how long it would take for a salesman to approach me. Total interval: nine seconds. And I was besieged with endless questions about my suit size, the smart sartorial items I was presumably pining for, and the suggestion of smart pants. But I left the store, not particularly surprised at the aggressive sales tactic. At least the Men’s Wearhouse staff have the decency to stand away from the door, which is not the case with the Madison Avenue men’s clothing stores, who hound you within two to three seconds with pathological fervor. They stand right by the doors and one considers applying for a restraining order.
Generally speaking, no clothing was purchased, I’m afraid to report. But if you have nothing to purchase or nothing to see as a tourist, it’s often a defiance of other’s expectations when you randomly walk through the streets of New York.
John Freeman — Ethical Reviewer
Here’s an ethical question for you — a query not rooted in malice, but in a curiosity and concern for journalistic integrity. If your partner is a literary agent representing Jonathan Safran Foer, Manil Suri, Edwidge Danticat, and Junot Díaz, do you recuse yourself from reviewing or interviewing their books?
John Freeman interviewed Jonathan Safran Foer in 2005. Personally, I see no problem with interviewing an author who is a friend or an associate, provided one holds one’s questions to the same probing journalistic standards. (A few friends and associates have been interviewed for The Bat Segundo Show, but I always inform them that I’m not going to offer them softball questions. And they know what they’re in for with me.)
Reviewing books, on the other hand, is a more clear-cut ethical scenario. I have dug around. Unless I am missing something, it appears that Freeman has avoided reviewing any of Nicole Aragi’s clients since 2004. So I must commend Freeman for maintaining an ethically honest reviewing practice.
[UPDATE: Before other parties blow this out of proportion, Freeman leaves this comment at Mark’s:
Hpp — to answer your question, sadly, yes, which is a shame because it means no more Colson Whitehead, Thuy Le The Diem, Edwidge Danticat, Viktor Pelevin, Jonathan Safran Foer, Junot Diaz. It also means I’ve had to recuse myself in voting at the NBCC sometimes. Occasionally, an English or overseas newspaper will ask me to interview one of Nicole’s clients — Jonathan Safran Foer, say — and have said go ahead after I explain the connection. But I don’t seek those assignments out.
]
Did Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson Rip Off Grant Naylor?
In consideration of British comedy history, here are two video clips. The first clip is from “The End,” the first episode of Red Dwarf, written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor and produced in 1987:
The second clip is “The Exam,” written by Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson, taken from the first episode of Mr. Bean and produced in 1989:
Both of these scenes are funny, but there are a number of striking similarities: the effort to blow into the paper, the cheater flipping over the paper and being surprised that there is information on both sides of the exam, and the cheater closing his eyes in disbelief only to open his eyes and see the exam in front of him.
The National Post reported that Mr. Bean was conceived as a test character in 1987. Sketches for Mr. Bean had apparently been performed on stage. But in this interview, Atkinson revealed, “And so we thought wouldn’t it be interesting to bring them to Montreal, which we did in 1989. We tried them out on basically a French-speaking audience. And then we did the English-speaking side.”
The big question here is what Mr. Bean sketch he’s talking about. Was “The Exam” one of the candidates? According to the Just for Laughs page:
The sketch, which was in the form of a lecture on dating techniques, was first tested out at one of the French galas. It was met with such an overwhelming positive response, that it was added to the HBO special, and was met with the same response. BBC brass watched the tape of his performance at Juste pour rire and the following year Atkinson’s “Mr. Bean” TV series aired for the first time and made Atkinson an international star.
This suggests that “The Exam” may have been written sometime in 1989 — shortly after the BBC commissioned the first thirty-minute installment of Mr. Bean. A version of this sketch was also included in a Rowan Atkinson one hour HBO special, which was performed and filmed on December 19th and 20th, 1991 in Boston’s Huntington Theater.
Still, I have to wonder whether Curtis and Atkinson were inspired, in part, by Red Dwarf. Obviously, hot off the success of Blackadder, they were very concerned about whether Mr. Bean was going to draw a major audience. But did they see Red Dwarf and abscond with a few of Grant Naylor’s ideas just after signing on with the BBC? And what do Grant and Naylor have to say about this?
Coming Soon to The Bat Segundo Show
Just hours before 2006 NBA finalist Jess Walter headed on a plane back to Spokane, we talked about his novel, The Zero, which he fully confesses to be an allegory of post-9/11 life.
Walter: We were clinging to our economy, and the fact that our leaders — Giuliani and Bush at the time — said they attacked our economy. They attacked our way of life. And the fact that we didn’t bat an eye over the fact that they equated our economy with America, with our way of life, it was as if we had forgotten that there was some larger thing. And then, as we started debating whether or not it was okay to torture, and this lurched into a war that I didn’t agree with, it just seemed as if the conflation of victim and hero, the confusion of economy and country, were disastrous. And so, it comes out in a novel.
Correspondent: But it’s not all bad. You have, for example, the honor of the tip. The dollars constantly inserted under the martini glass.
Walter: Right.
Correspondent: So I don’t think it’s entirely a cynical view you have of the..
Walter: No, no. I’m not entirely cynical. Again, this is all — I sound so dour and political. But this is all framed in a novel that’s hopefully funny and entertaining. And I remember those ghost bars being in Lower Manhattan. I mean, I was right in the thick of Ground Zero. So you’d walk into these ghost bars and there’s no reason for firefighters not to take the bottle down and take a drink. And some of them would leave a dollar tip. Was that an ironic tip? Was that a real tip? I don’t know. But the descriptions of Ground Zero in the book. In my mind, the book starts when I arrived five days after. And so, from that moment on, it does hopefully capture everything. Some honor, some pathos, and a lot of cynicism.
Correspondent: The whole notion of Jesus being mentioned 93 times in the Koran. Where did that come from?
Walter: Jesus is mentioned 93 times in the Koran.
Correspondent: It really is?
Walter: It really is. If you think about the history of religion in our world and all these pantheistic movements, and all these animism and natural worship, to all of a sudden come up with monotheism with gods that are almost exactly the same, with some of the same prophets, but just these tiny gradations of difference — to have those cause the death and destruction of millions upon millions of people and lead us to the brink of mutual destruction over a couple of degrees, it’s another kind of insanity. These religions are so incredibly similar. And within the differences, obviously, are enough places for all of us to die and the fundamentalists are the one who cling to those differences.
Roundup
- I’ve learned from a few people that there are falsehoods now circulating about things that I purportedly did at the National Book Awards. Look, folks, if you think I did something, email me and I’ll be happy to clarify and tell you the truth. (For example, since I learned that Joan Didion did not want to be interviewed, I left her alone. And I was sure to ask everyone I taped if they had a few minutes before talking with them.) Frankly, I was too busy working my ass off to do much of anything else besides journalism.
- Lee Goldberg observes that the AMPTP has been smearing the WGA with attack ads in newspapers, and notes WGA President Patric Verrone’s response.
- There’s a new Bookforum up, with lots of good stuff, including John Banville on the pulp age, pointing out that the worlds portrayed in The Big Book of Pulps — alas, its hefty thud has not yet landed in my mailbox — “where men were men and women loved them for it, where crooks were crooks and easily identified by the scars on their faces and the gats in their mitts, where policemen were dull but honest and never used four-letter words, where a good man was feared by the lawless and respected by the law-abiding.”
- I realize that I’m slacking on the podcasts, but there’s work to be done and deadlines to meet, and I’m dancing as fast as I can. For those of you awaiting the Andrea Barrett interview, Curled Up has also talked with Barrett. (via Chasing Ray)
- James Marcus has his National Book Awards report up, and he is right to observe that Didion’s voice “was like hearing somebody play a piano with only two keys–C and C-sharp.” And here’s Levi’s report. Jason has begun posting several videos, where he’s asked many writers what their first job was. He even got Hitch on tape, who I understand told Jason that he hadn’t been asked that question in a very long time.
- I’ve been asking the same question: Where is the new Gawker blog involving Annalee Newitz?
- Granta 20 author Adam Thirlwell has, at long last, followed up Politics with a new volume, Miss Herbert. But another Granta 20 Phillip Hensher doesn’t care for it, calling it “a rambling and highly egocentric work of criticism, about a bunch of unconnected writers whom Thirlwell happens to have read, and with whom he wants to associate himself.” Actually, he’s made me more curious about the book. Is it possible that Thirlwell has styled a Nicholson Baker’s U and I for this decade? We’ll see.
- USA Today now has a voluntary buyout offer for 45 staffers. Presumably, this means later firings. I hope that Bob Minzesheimer, the amicable staffer who sat with us at the bloggers’ table on Wednesday, isn’t one of the casualties when the blade comes down.
- There are currently some excited rumblings for Robert Williams, a Manchester bookseller who recently enticed Faber for a partially completed first novel for teenagers.
- Poetry at the movies. (via Bookslut)
- No kvetching from you, Wheeler. This blog’s reading level is elementary school, likely due to the rudimentary crudity of recent live-blogging reports. Or perhaps the truth has finally come out that I’m actually a nine years old prodigy who has been grounded to his bedroom for the past four years and is regularly beaten on the schoolyard for his recurrent use of “jejune” in everyday conversation.
And You Thought Bloggers Were the Unprofessional Ones
Leon Neyfakh: “Chuck Shelton, the editor of the publishing trade publication Kirkus, came over to the table to say hello to Mr. Karp. Mr. Shelton greeted Mr. Hitchens, whom he said he knew from cocktail parties. Shortly thereafter, according to Mr. Shelton, he was inexplicably touching Mr. Hitchens’ penis and rubbing his balls.”
Whether Mr. Shelton paid for the privilege is unknown. I can only presume that this was merely an unprofessional gesture.
Coming Soon to The Bat Segundo Show
This morning, as the man was midway through packing his carefully prepared clothing and about to check out of his hotel, Ken Kalfus was generous to take some time out of his schedule to talk with me about his book, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country. His novel, which blissfully assaults the “irony is dead” conventions of post-9/11 life, began from a short story. Kalfus is now working on short stories, but it’s just possible that, in his concern for words and language, he’ll find that grand idea that will translate into a third novel.
(And, incidentally, Kalfus will be reading with another 2006 National Book Award finalist, Jess Walter, tonight at Bookcourt at 7:00 PM.)
A good part of our conversation was concerned with the following passage, which Kalfus agreed was one of the key galvanizing points for Disorder:
But Joyce felt something erupt inside her, something warm, very much like, yes it was, a pang of pleasure, so intense it was nearly like the appeasement of hunger. It was a giddiness, an elation. The deep-bellied roar of the tower’s collapse finally reached her and went on for minutes, it seemed, followed by an unnaturally warm gust that pushed back her hair and ruffled her blouse.
Correspondent: So, in this case, it looks like you have long sentences. But they resemble short sentences by way of the comma.
Kalfus: You know, you want these words to go off in the reader’s head in a certain way. You really do. I mean, that’s what you’re trying to do when you write. And sometimes, you do that with commas. Or you do that with sentences. You do it with colons. Semicolons. Whatever it takes, you do.
Correspondent: Is it largely intuitive? This rhythm that you’re looking for. How much of it is planned through kind of a psychological approach? Do you test this kind of thing on other readers?
Kalfus: No, no, no, no. But there’s a lot of rewriting. I can’t say. If I were to look at it again, I might want to change something in that sentence. It sounded pretty good when you read it. It’s partly intuitive. And then you write it down and it looks like junk. And then you rewrite it again. You know, you go over and over and over it again. So the process is making these sentences work. And, quite frankly, I’ve discovered that’s maybe the easiest thing — the most pleasurable thing about writing — is getting those sentences right. It’s a lot of work, but in a way, maybe it’s the easiest thing. Because you can always tinker with it, tinker with it. Plot and character are actually more — are probably the big things that are more demanding when you’re plotting or you’re putting it out. Making sure that the major parts work. Dealing with sentences, you can always rewrite those little sentences. But once the story gets locked in, it’s hard to shift things.
Correspondent: So, for you, the sentence is more of the motivating factor than the actual plot and the character…
Kalfus: You know what. I can’t answer for everybody. I think we write because we love language. Was Shakespeare really obsessed about Denmark? About succession in Elsinore? Or fathers and sons? He had some ideas for some great lines. And he found a story that he could use. But I think all of us come to writing for the love of language. And the stories come after that. There’s a story when I write a book or a project. But I saw a way of using language in a way that was interesting to me.
Correspondent: Well, that’s a good point. Because people remember Twelfth Night not really for the plot, but “If music be the food of love, play on.”
Kalfus: That’s very awkward to compare myself to Shakespeare.
Correspondent: I’m sorry about that.
Kalfus: But I see an opportunity to use language when I write.
For What It’s Worth
Hmmm, I don’t know how “Franzen’s no fun” equates to “Franzen’s a jerk.” I certainly didn’t say the latter to this individual. But unlike this individual, I won’t use modifiers here. I’ll let listeners judge for themselves whether the encounter was a “toxic provocation.”
Cindy Lee Johnson
Denis Johnson’s wife is now up. She is assuring us that Johnson “is on assignment. Legitimate.” She is now reading an acceptance speech.
“Naturally, I’m very grateful to the National Book Foundation for this award and I’m very sorry to miss this one chance to dress up in a tuxedo.”
“And Cindy, who have I forgotten? To all the judges who voted for Tree of Smoke, thank you so much.”
“I’d like to thank God.”
That’s pretty funny — that last line.
And, By the Way….
The Mysterious Two did have the inside tip.
And the Fiction Winner Is…
The presenter this year is Francine Prose, also the chair of the judges.
Lebowitz said that, given the laundry list of Prose’s achievements, she “has the envy of Joyce Carol Oates.”
She is boasting about what a pleasure it was to read the books. She talked every few weeks with her fellow panelists. “I often thought this was how writers talk about books. And I often thought that I wish everybody talked about books this year.” She is forced to name these authors alphabetically.
And the fiction winner is Denis Johnson!
Tim Weiner Speech
He has a deep Brooklyn accent. He means business. He is thanking a lot of people.
Above all, Phyllis Grann — “a great editor, a force of nature.” The spotlight is on her.
“These people, ladies and gentleman, turned my finished manuscript into a hardcover books in three weeks.”
Wow.
“One of the great things about being a newspaper reporter is that you get paid to get an education.”
He tried to set out his record in “simple declarative sentences.”
Nonfiction Award
David Shields is presenting the Nonfiction Award.
Shields is walking slowly up to the stage. He does want to keep us in suspense. Particularly after Hass’s protracted speech. And he is READ-ING THE BOOK TIT-LES SO SLOW-LY. We’ve been here for four hours. Come on, dude. Will it be Hitch?
“How did the panel choose these five books? We got along famously for the first several months. We made the usual jokes about how we could make it up to our respective mail carriers.” (He’s not getting laughs. And now he’s blundered another joke — “under the weight” — uh.) And the bland manner he puts into “When it came to crunch time….” Okay, now I’m longing for Hass to get on the stage again.
“To quote the poet, writing is fighting.” Which poet? “And the book that we judge to matter the most, that we thought mattered the most…”
Doesn’t this man realize that there are reporters here on deadline?
But the nonfiction winner is Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.
[12/30/07 UPDATE: A reader writes in to inform me that David Shields has a stutter and that his slow-speaking style came about because of this.]
Jason Boog’s Video of Tonight
Robert Haas Speech
He quoted Emily Dickinson, “Success is counted sweetest / By those who ne’er succeed.”
“Poems have always been rich and plangent.”
He is being very kind towards his fellow nominees, as everybody else is. Indeed, he is spending much of his speech talking about “learning from them.”
“We’ve labored together to make poems that offer new shapes of feeling, new shapes of perception, and to say something about what it’s like to be alive at a given time.”
Apparently, his best friend in high school was Joan Didion’s cousin. “I have a cousin who wants to be a writer. She got a job with a magazine called Vogue.” “What does Vogue mean?” asked the young Haas. “It’s French for ‘fog.'”
Poetry Finalist`
Fran Lebowitz: “One down, three to go.”
Charles Simic is now presenting. “This is an amazing time in American poetry, as we found out reading these books. A lot of good poems have been written and published. At least ten to fifteen books would have been on our short list of finalists.”
There is, incidentally, a Powerpoint presentation on the screen which blips up all the book covers for each category.
But the winner is Robert Hass’s Time and Materials.
Sarah’s Twitter
Alexie Speech
“Well, I obviously should have been writing YA all along.”
Nervous, truly awe-struck.
The first book he remembered was Ezra Jack Keats’s The Snowy Day Board Book. He was struck by the gorgeous isolation. His first creative writing teacher handed him a Native American volume. He had never read a book by another Native American before. “I knew right then at that moment when I read that line that I wanted to be a writer. And it’s been a gorgeous and magic and terrifying twenty years since then. And now I stand before you grateful.”
He thanked his editor Jennifer Brown, “even though I could be an arrogant bastard.”
Young People Prize Winner
Sherman Alexie!
9:49 PM
And nope, no awards have been announced yet. I’ll post them the minute that they announce them. Have no fear!
Jason Boog on Video
So get this. I may have put up ten podcasts, but Jason Boog has shot and edited a ten minute video with numerous people here which is, as I type this, is now in preprocessing to final. And he’s going to upload this very soon.
What the Hell Are Publicists Doing in the Press Balcony?
Harcourt’s Michelle Blankenship has been wandering around the press balcony talking to people. Every other publicist has been kind and had the decency to stay out and talk to journalists on the floor. Not Blankenship, apparently.
NBA 2007 Podcast #10: Sherman Alexie
(This podcast is part of our National Book Awards coverage for 2007, in which five bloggers are attempting various journalistic experiments using unusual technological methods. For more posts and other tomfoolery, keep checking under this category.)
People on This Podcast: Sherman Alexie
Click to listen: (MP3)