There is an exotic gentleman named Joshua Henkin now blogging at The Elegant Variation. He is guest blogging with some prolificity and even referring to previous guest blogging appearances. I get the sense that if it was possible for him to guest blog for eternity, he would do so if he had the chance. In fact, I’ve now hit Page Down six times and there are still posts by Joshua Henkin. Which leads me to believe that it is no longer the place to find Mark Sarvas, but the place to find Joshua Henkin. Whether the exotic gentleman will become an exotic dancer, perhaps posting a YouTube video offering indisputable evidence that he has in fact made the switch from “gentleman” to “dancer” (or perhaps he is both!), is one of those maddening questions that leaves me in some suspense. I am convinced that Joshua Henkin may do something very crazy, something that will make my jaw drop like the final scene of a Hitchcock film.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is to suggest that you experience the Joshua Henkin Experience. And if you don’t want to do this, you can always live vicariously through me with this post. And if that option isn’t good enough, you can always leave a comment here informing me how out of touch I am, or reminding me that I haven’t yet touched Joshua Henkin. And I will respond later with needless over-the-top bravado. All I have to say is thank heavens I’m wearing pants right now.

James Tata reconsiders that particular strata known as the mid-career (b. 1960 or thereabouts) Great American Novelist. It is, of course, most regrettable that Age should matter, but with so many GANs dropping off of late (Vonnegut, Mailer, et al.), one wonders who will be taught in tomorrow’s classrooms. The current crop identified by Mr. Tata do in part fall into a certain rubric of, as he suggests, “nothing more than comic book characters and escapist fantasy,” which suggests a new concern for the next hopeful pantheon. But this “hopeful” qualifier presumes that these writers care about being listed in syllabi, much less proscribing their concerns for what is Important Literature by writing Serious Novels. So I put forth the question to the peanut gallery: Who, born between the years of 1960 and 1970, has a shot at being tomorrow’s Great American Novelist? Is the list that Tata offers the True List? Or is it too early to tell? Has literature become something too specialized to make such a judgment call? (I respond “yes” to the last rhetorical question, but I don’t necessarily think that this is a bad thing.)

27 minutes.

John Leonard on The Spooky Art: “Still the book feels like one of those late-night cable commercials for Roy Orbison’s Greatest Hits, or Conway Twitty’s: act now, call this toll-free number, and we will also send you, at no extra charge, a cool tool to sharpen your knives, whiten your teeth, and screw your neighbors.”

We all knew this was coming: the approbations, the lionizations, the veritable bullshit that Norman Mailer was a gift to the world. All this largely perpetuated by a man advertising for himself. Literally. Not just the book. Mailer was so insecure, so arrogant, so unwilling to listen, that he took out advertisements in newspapers that panned his work.

Well, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to dissent. I’ve been asked multiple times today about what I feel about Mailer kicking the bucket and I have quietly nodded my head to allow those who cared for him to have their quiet moments of consideration. But I never really cared for the man’s writing. There was an interview opportunity for The Castle in the Forest that I didn’t pursue a few years ago. Could have made happen if I really wanted to. But I didn’t, not only because the novel was the most trite and preposterous nonsense I had read in three years, but the idea of talking to Mailer was like being trapped in a closet with an insufferable narcissist.

What did Mailer give us? What was his chief contribution to letters? Mailer as King of the Universe. Mailer as knowing egomaniac. Mailer as hyper-masculine creature of the day and night. Mailer who never listened to anybody but himself. Mailer who, if he considered your work, did it because he wanted you to know he was Mailer and that you were not Mailer. Mailer the sexist pig who got his ass whooped by Germaine Greer.

Well, fuck Norman Mailer. Someone needs to do an HST-style obit for the man. I am not the person to do this, in large part because I don’t have the time. But if I read one more bullshit item about how Mailer was the King of the Universe, then I’m going to require a shotgun or something.

(This writeup, however, is a good start.)

UPDATE: More on Mailer’s “genius,” from the comments in the above link:

Later, Mr. Mailer wrote a piece for a magazine where I worked as an editor, for which he was paid $50,000 (a shocking amount, then and now). The literary lion had trouble delivering and had to be given a conference room at the magazine (Esquire) and an “assistant” to help him meet his deadline. The piece was a routine interview. The final result was such a horrific mish-mash that, once again, I couldn’t finish it without much determined skimming. All in all, he seemed to have no special talent for either long-form works or routine culture pieces. So what was his talent anyway? Self-promotion, I guess.

Publishers Weekly reports that the writers strike is causing author appearances to be canceled. And I have to ask whether this is really that terrible of a development. Getting an author on Colbert may raise visibility, but it’s really just an excuse for Colbert to employ his schtick. Meaningful conversation about the books almost never happens on television. And certainly Colbert hasn’t read the books in question. I’m also wondering if there’s as significant a sales boost with a Colbert appearance as there is for an outlet devoted to books.

It appears that I chose wisely to go to Hoboken last night. James Marcus has a report from last night’s Atlantic Monthly party that sounds like a Fitzgerald nightmare. John Koblin was also there too. I don’t know who the consummate moron was who came up with the absurd idea of a VIP party on a stage that other partygoers could watch, but I must commend this person for demonstrating just how trivial and incompetent the Atlantic is at celebrating its apparent legacy.

You may recall that I initiated a pledge drive here. The reason for this was because BlogAds had failed to pay me out for ads that had run on this site. The remaining ad, for which I have still not been paid for, was a large, month-long ad in September from the Library of Congress that appeared here and on other literary blogs. The payment was due by the Library of Congress on September 30th. Well, the money didn’t arrive then and it didn’t arrive by October 30th. Which meant that even if it does arrive by the end of this month, I’m not going to see it until December 15th. (BlogAds pays out bloggers on the 15th of each month — for monies that have come in by the end of the previous month.)

Since I received no response — indeed, no information whatsoever — from BlogAds on what was happening, I was forced to become my own collection agency. After a few voicemails to Matt Raymond, Raymond was good enough to promptly inform me that the Contracts Office had indeed executed this order. Indeed, when I contacted him a few weeks ago, Raymond had passed along my concerns to Marc Wasserman, the middleman at BlogAds who had set this up.

But Wasserman has not given me any information as to when the Library of Congress paid BlogAds. Indeed, he failed to email me weeks ago and he has failed to reply to any of my emails on the subject. This presents Matt Raymond and I with an awkward situation, having to atone for the lack of communication and professionalism by Wasserman and BlogAds.

In other words, as far as BlogAds is concerned, bloggers come last and they can be paid three months after an ad appears, as far as they are concerned. If they are indeed holding onto the money rightly due to me and other bloggers who ran the Library of Congress ad, for which they have collected a commission, then this is an unethical operation. It does not help matters that Wasserman has remained dishonest and uncommunicative about the true status of payment. I understand that sometimes things happen. But not communicating is worse than laying down the cards of truth.

It turns out that BlogAds actually has a history of screwing over bloggers. Billy Dennis experienced a similar scenario. The monies were received before the end of the month and BlogAds failed to register it properly within their system and reducing a month-long ad after the fact to two weeks, causing Dennis to be paid late.

If Wasserman does not provide an answer to me in the next two days, then I am done with BlogAds for good and I will proceed with alternative options. (And if there’s a service along these lines who can promise communication and competence, I’m happy to entertain offers.) I’m not supposed to be the one making calls and trying to collect and clarify. Wasserman and BlogAds are.

The moral of the story: BlogAds cares more about “ads” than they do about “blogs.” And if you’re expected a professional and reliable sideline, you’re going to be in for a major disappointment.

[11/9 UPDATE: I’ve spoken on the phone with Miklos Gaspar at BlogAds. We had a constructive conversation about this imbroglio and exchanged respective information. Gaspar was apologetic about the lack of response. He says that the Library of Congress has not paid. I have also put in calls to the Contracts Office at the Library of Congress to find out what has happened, including one gentleman who gave me an elaborate overview of how contracts are signed and payment is allocated. It is very possible that this is caught up in governmental red tape. So for all the bloggers who ran this ad and didn’t get paid, I’m hoping to get a very specific idea about when everybody will get paid for this ad early next week.]

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Is Otto Peltzer Otto Penzler? Note the surname.]

Not that I want to say anything negative about literary critics, for I am a literary critic. I am indeed the best literary critic. When it comes to blowhards, there can be no better specimen than myself. And I have the trophy wife and the bookstore to prove it. If you don’t believe me, I can show you my chaise longue and perhaps we can come to a financial agreement pertaining to what you can do with something nestled beneath my own zipper.

Yet it often seems that other literary critics remain lost and troublingly incompatible with my dignified and nonpareil tastes, which are better than Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin, and Edmund Wilson combined. I, Otto Peltzer, have long understood that the Caucasian male is the only qualified author to write the major literary works of our time. And yet looking at the National Book Award nominees, one sees some mousy chick named Lydia Davis among the lot, who has apparently been awarded something called a MacArthur fellowship. This was a fellowship in which I had no say and thus must be disregarded. Who are the people responsible for Davis’s inclusion in the longlist? And why do they threaten the white male’s domination over today’s literature?

I am convinced that Denis Johnson is responsible for this. It has been impossible to avoid Tree of Smoke because it is big and fat, and written by a white male, and thus “important” in some way. I’ll spare you supportive examples. I am Otto Peltzer and you’re just going to have to take my word for it. Tree of Smoke is bad because there are two nouns in the title and because I couldn’t get past the first sentence. Although I should observe that Johnson was born in Munich, which is certainly a promising nation for the literary master race.

I can also tell you, without citing anything specific, that Denis Johnson is as baffled about Lydia Davis as I am. A distant cousin tells me that his friend read an interview with Denis Johnson written by another friend. In this interview, Johnson confessed this. Therefore, this must be true.

Who’s read Denis Johnson? And who’s read Lydia Davis? Otto Peltzer has. And that’s all you need to know.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be settling into my den with some claret and my Hardy Boys books — far more important than any of the National Book Awards finalists and celebrating the experience of white male power in a manner that this year’s crop of finalists certainly cannot.