Okay, ladies and gents, after nearly six months of experimentation (well, five actually, but who’s really counting?), I have decided to break the single post a day rule. For one thing, the amount of energy it takes to bang out a 900 word post every goddam day along with podcasts, freelancing assignments, fiction writing, kinky activity, lacrosse, eating tasty sandwiches, and numerous other tasks I perform each day felt as if I was attempting to power up a small city. For another thing, there have been too many instances in which I’ve wanted to write something in short format but have felt obligated in some sense to bang out some epic post. So I’ve decided to do away with the moratorium on roundups, paragraph-length posts, and other assorted bite-sized candy. Unfettered by these constraints, I shall have more opportunities to offend the smug and humorless, tap dance upon stiff toes, perhaps appraise newspaper sections with the reward or denial of delivered pastries, and otherwise be a giddy bastard.

For what it’s worth, I’ve written a good deal of material over the past few months that has been rejected by the editors here. The common answer? “Sorry, that’s a Reluctant post.” Clearly, this suggests that some of the Reluctant energy did not go away. I was just as shocked as anyone to learn that I had not matured. I would like to think that what we’ll be seeing here is some bastard stepchild of Reluctant and Filthy, which we’ll call Filthy Habits for now. Longass thoughtful posts. Short-form randomness. And the middle child, always the most neglected in a dutifully dysfunctional family, which we’ll call Henry. Most Henries I’ve met tend to be middle children, which is not to suggest that they are inferior in any sense. But they are after all named Henry.

And for the record, guest posts are still welcome. We still have editors here. At least I think we do.

A chicken wrap now sits in a plastic container in the fridge, and I made this chicken wrap appear because I had skipped lunch, and was very confused. I did not pay for it. It was an unanticipated duplicate to replace the original chicken wrap. The wrap, kindly and originally ordered for me by someone else, had not arrived. Forgotten by the delivery man. Or so we thought. The “missing” chicken wrap was located after I barked into the phone, rationale on the wane. And I felt embarrassed. I ate the original chicken wrap while we waited for Delivery #2. We were then forced to hide the remains of the original chicken wrap. A serendipitous larceny with me as the main perp. Something I imagine an Enron accountant might have done had he dealt with chicken wraps instead of beans. I drifted into mock Method, feigning hunger just as the delivery man arrived again and after I had eaten the original chicken wrap. I felt guilty for this, even though the delivery man did not see me and did not particularly care. I pondered returning the spare chicken wrap and almost did. It would be something new indeed to return a chicken wrap to a restaurant and to offer a complicated explanation. But it was no good. The chicken wrap could not be sold again. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It had cooled. And how to explain anyway? I should have tipped the guy when he came a second time, but somebody else did. Perhaps I was frozen because others understood my dilemma better than I did, or were better and kinder people than me, or understood that my reaction arose because I was very hungry, because they had their sandwiches and I didn’t. After everyone had eaten, the second chicken wrap was offered to me, and I took it after some initial resistance, my own idea being that I could give this to a homeless man and atone. But I could find nobody homeless on the way home, and the plastic container was deposited in the fridge, where it is now situated like a metaphorical millstone. I do not know if I will ever eat it or if I can find someone else to eat it.

I feel very bad about all of this. Mix-ups like this do happen from time to time. I’m sure I’m not the first person in human history to believe for a moment that a chicken wrap ordered through takeout had not arrived, only to discover that it had arrived. And in my defense, another sandwich we had ordered had not arrived. So there was a two sandwich shortfall we had conveyed, with the chicken wrap being located post-phone call. So it’s not as if there hadn’t been some kind of mistake. There was. But does this excuse the minor deceit? The ethical dilemma of permitting my twelve hour hunger to overtake my mind, turning me into some slightly crazed animal, causing me to snap at the guy on the phone, still stings at me. The group did not, as a whole, see the chicken wrap that had been rightly delivered. Perhaps they did not want to see the chicken wrap. Perhaps none of us were meant to see the chicken wrap. Things get lost all the time. Human cognitive skills work only so well. Sometimes, we lose things and we find them right in front of us. And sometimes a chicken wrap contretemps reveals our gravest limitations.

The action begins at the four minute mark. Kevin James does not know basic history. It is stunning that such an ignorant moron would be permitted to host a radio show.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m pleased to announce that Harper has given me a $3 million advance and a guaranteed public shaming by Oprah for my first novel, Hazy Chintzy Afternoon. I banged out the novel in two weeks in a drunken haze and forgot to use spell check. Hopefully, the copy editors will fix my mistakes. I trust that this novel will be taken more seriously than other offerings. What follows is an excerpt.]

Every city can be written about, and every writer writes about every city, employing facts that may be lies and lies that may be facts. Learning lies is really an enjoyable, and sometimes enlightening process. And, of course, it’s fun too!!! Here is Fun Facts, Volume 1.

After serving as a liar, James Frey, the forty-third vice president of the United States, was sodomized by the entire Cabinet to protect national security. Some believe that it was George Herbert Walker Bush who served as vice president. But it was really James Frey, whose father was a costermonger in 1893 London.

James Frey is 92 years old.

It is illegal to manufacture James Frey in the industrial zone of downtown Los Angeles. The issue is a sensitive one. The 1992 Los Angeles Riots were caused not by Rodney King, but by three James Freys being manufactured by accident in a sweatshop. The sweatshop had been promised an exclusive James Frey, but three James Freys had been let loose.

James Frey inhaled a large portion of Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes at the Self Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine Temple in Pacific Palisades. He believed that when his lungs were at one with Gandhi, he would inevitably be forgiven by the public.

The economy of James Frey is larger than that of forty-six of the fifty states in the United States of America. James Frey’s current propulsion into godhood will ensure that a new edition of the dollar bill will be printed with Frey’s saggy face on the front.

It is not illegal to kick James Frey in the nuts within the city limits of Los Angeles.

Herding flocks of more than 2,000 James Freys on Hollywood Boulevard will result in a catastrophic collision between matter and antimatter and the subsequent destruction of the universe; because of this, any James Frey will be shot on sight by vigilant members of the Los Angeles Police Department.

It is legal for James Frey to be considered a sex offender.

The first sex offender recorded in the Megan’s Law database is closely related to James Frey.

There are sixty-five people in Los Angeles named James Frey who committed suicide upon hearing that James Frey was a liar.

There is more pornography produced in Los Angeles than in the rest of the world combined. Many of these pornographers produce their pornography in the vain hope that the mass dissemination of porn will somehow drown out any attention given to child molesters like James Frey.

Every year, approximately 100,000 women in Los Angeles County remove their eyeballs so that they will never catch sight of James Frey in their lifetimes.

Fun fun fun, everyone knows that a shotgun blast to the head is more fun than a James Frey novel.

The Safely Surrendered Frey Law of Los Angeles County states that citizens who possess a James Frey within their closets are permitted to bring the James Frey to any designated hospital or fire station and give the James Frey up without fear of arrest or prosecution. The authorities of Los Angeles County urge the Frey owner to participate in the subsequent conflagration.

Fifty-four percent of the citizens of Los Angeles County take pills on a daily basis in order to prevent their lips from loosening the words “James Frey” in casual discourse, compared with twenty-two percent of the citizens in the rest of the country.

It is illegal in the City of Los Angeles to provide or administer a James Frey book to children under the age of sixteen. James Frey books have, in fact, resulted in a rampant spate of illiteracy and this correlative connection was observed by the National Endowment of the Arts in the “Reading at Risk” report.

The average citizen of Los Angeles is capable of beating the shit out of James Frey with little effort.

The average citizen of Los Angeles is a better novelist than James Fey.

Dear Young Reviewer:

Thank you so much for writing in! Your writing samples are acceptable, which is saying something, seeing as how they’ve been published on one of those goddam blogs. However, we are under constraints to reduce our expenses and demonstrate to our shareholders that we can turn this rag into a profitable joint. Sure, we could compensate you for some piddling price that reflects the wages of someone who works in an export processing zone. But desperate times have had us thinking outside the box. Therefore, I hope that we can insult your intelligence by selling you on a new idea.

As you know, Books Daily is one of the most important publications for books. Sometimes, we even put a star next to a review! In a mere 100 words, we feel that we can encapsulate a book’s essence. Therefore, any reviews assigned after June 15 will undergo a stunning new business model: one that I believe you’ll find acceptable under the circumstances. Instead of paying you to review the book, we’d like you to pay us at the rate of $25 per review. Please know that we value the work you do for us. We value it so highly that we really think that you should be paying us at this juncture. Your astute reading and writing are what make our magazine so valuable in the industry and we regret this necessary action. All of us here are experiencing change. Some of us, in fact, are sleeping with the money men so that we can pay our rent. This is the only way we can justify our jobs as our magazine remains on the selling block. Our offices have, in fact, become a haven for drug trafficking. We figure that if we can’t hook the kids on books, we can certainly hook them on a particularly addictive form of Ketamine.

But we trust that you’ll understand why we’re doing this. After all, if you’re willing to expend seven to ten hours on a book and write a capsule on it for $25 (wow, you’re working for a mere $2.50/hour!), then surely you’re willing to pay us for the privilege of writing in our esteemed pages.

And just so you have an extra incentive, we’ll be happy to ship you some Benzadrine and other sleep supressants so that you can finish up your reviews for us. Hell, we’ll even give you a 10% discount if you’d like to buy any drugs.

With your modest financial sacrifice, we are committed to being the gold standard in book reviewing. And we hope that you will continue to enjoy our metaphorical violation of your pristine orifice. We really appreciate the way you’re stretching it out for us.

Very truly yours,

Sara Craven
Editor, BOOKS DAILY

The rather odd modifier “unputdownable” is frequently attached to a book that compulsively entertains, offers a consistently fascinating narrative, or otherwise works to subsume the reader into an almost narcotic reading state characterized by the manic flipping of pages and circles under the reader’s eyes. Scott Smith’s The Ruins, Stephen King’s The Stand, and Audrey Nieffenger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife come to mind. But so do Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections (despite Franzen’s near humorless disposition and narcissistic essays, one must be honest about the work), Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke, Sarah Waters’s picaresque romps, and David Markson’s volumes. An “unputdownable” book need not be explicitly written for the crowd. While there is inherently a subjective component in what one reader finds “unputdownable,” the perhaps unfair line of demarcation I have drawn between the crowd-pleaser and the literary offering nevertheless suggests that there is such a thing as a literary page-turner. (A pal of mine once characterized Human Smoke as “potato chips” and remarked that it was very hard for him to stop reading.)

I don’t know if an “unputdownable” book is the literary equivalent of an earworm — that song that gets stuck in your head and that requires a fairly elaborate system of recurrent playback to get the terrible tune out. You play some goddam irresistible Pale Young Gentlemen song over and over until the melodic tendrils eventually detach from your lobes. For a while, you’re safe. And then inevitably, another catchy song latches onto your brain. And you must either repeat the process or go for a brisk walk or copulate with a loved one or circulate a bong amongst esteemed colleagues whereby the song is perhaps replayed yet again and the earworm sticks unfairly to other craws and the song’s sensations are even more pronounced and more troubling with the dutiful appreciation of tetrahydrocannabinol — in short, you do anything you can to get the earworm out!

But the salient difference between the earworm and the unputdownable novel is that, while the earworm occupies perhaps a three to five minute interval that may be repeated ad nauseum, the unputdownable novel involves getting to the end, whereby the obsessive tendency of experiencing the work is laid to a momentary rest. Unless one decides to repeat the journey.

The last unputdownable novel I read was Andre Dubus III’s The Garden of Last Days, which, save for a bite to eat and a few necessary conversations, I finished in one crazed sitting. I could not put the book down and I was quite alarmed by the rapid manner in which I had wolfed down this 535 page volume. While I mostly enjoyed the book, this is not to suggest that the book was without problems. A characterization of a 9/11 hijacker didn’t entirely ring true, particularly near the end. When one major story thread was resolved — one of the book’s major “unputdownable” qualities — Dubus struggled for about fifty pages before finding his momentum, only to secure the dreaded “unputdownable” pace again.

But despite my quibbles, I certainly wanted to know what was going to happen next. And I would contend that any book with an “unputdownable” quality is successful in some sense. This stance may alarm Dan Green, who has recently (and quite rightly) taken to task the “current literary culture mired in middlebrow mediocrity” and the mystifying hosannas granted to Amy Bloom’s quite putdownable novel, Away. While I do not think that a book should be judged “good” predominantly for its “unputdownable” nature, I do think that there is a rather snobbish attitude and a strange suspicion towards any book functioning as a surrogate form of oxygen. Perhaps this suspicion arises because literature is all too frequently misconstrued as some kind of cultural castor oil that’s good for you. With austere “gatekeepers” now in the practice of prescribing “GoodReads” and other prescriptive remedies that have more to do with authority and less to do with a variegated appreciation of literature, this sulfurous climate sometimes involves separating one’s sense of enjoyment from a sense of appreciation, which betrays John Updike’s first rule of reviewing:

Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

This tendency may also echo the separation of the head and the heart that T.S. Eliot observed in his 1921 essay, “The Metaphysical Poets”:

We may express the difference by the following theory: The poets of the seventeenth century, the successors of the dramatists of the sixteenth, possessed a mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of experience. They are simple, artificial, difficult, or fantastic, as their predecessors were; no less nor more than Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, Guinicelli, or Cino. In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered; and this dissociation, as is natural, was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century, Milton and Dryden. Each of these men performed certain poetic functions so magnificently well that the magnitude of the effect concealed the absence of others. The language went on and in some respects improved; the best verse of Collins, Gray, Johnson, and even Goldsmith satisfies some of our fastidious demands better than that of Donne or Marvell or King. But while the language became more refined, the feeling became more crude. The feeling, the sensibility, expressed in the Country Churchyard (to say nothing of Tennyson and Browning) is cruder than that in the Coy Mistress.

The second effect of the influence of Milton and Dryden followed from the first, and was therefore slow in manifestation. The sentimental age began early in the eighteenth century, and continued. The poets revolted against the ratiocinative, the descriptive; they thought and felt by fits, unbalanced; they reflected.

Is it possible that this dismaying disparity between thought and feeling has extended into the reach of “unputdownable” novels? That the shame felt in enjoying an “unputdownable” novel is no less different from a Goldsmith poem that is technically adroit but, in Eliot’s view, quite unfeeling?

One does not, of course, place the work of Stephen King in the same category as Thomas Gray. But to do so misses the point. A reader’s inability to open’s one heart in an effort to find some synthesis between heart and head certainly results in ill-thought douchery from the “important” critics. And I would like to think that an enlightened reader could find something within an “unputdownable” book that may help expand her notion of what literature can be. To thumb one’s nose up at a book that has grabbed the reader’s lapels is to thumb one’s nose up at a vital part of reading. In doing so, the reader confesses quite openly that he’s something of a bore. If literary culture is to endure, then why not consider this quality with the same attention that one considers the rest?

Subject, thirty-three, contemplated writing a confessional post that pointed to certain emotions established by (a) two phone calls, one currently unreturned, (b) the ontological isthmus from one apartment to another that must be crossed in the next two weeks, and (c) watching a late-period Woody Allen film, flawed but interesting, on Tuesday night, accompanied by aperitif but no meal. Subject did not consider (d) a lengthy book he was reading which was both profoundly moving and profoundly disturbing, a book he was rereading with what he assumed was greater wisdom and the troubling dilemma that his own age was closer to that of the protagonist. Book susceptibility hit him again, had him thinking of his own life in the third person, just as this book depicted a fictional character’s life in the third person. Subject has since shifted over to an enjoyable space opera book to improve mood. But subject now ponders precisely why the book in question caused him to momentarily consider breaking that personal threshold between himself and readers. Not that subject would reveal everything exactly. And not that subject is depressed. But subject is currently wondering why some books hit him just as hard in the heart as real-life encounters. Subject does not feel a particular sense of shame at being moved by fictional characters, but he does find the emotional crossover to be more than a bit goddam peculiar. Perhaps this is why subject had contemplated spilling emotions in some sense. Or perhaps subject is susceptible to text because he is currently proceeding forth with his own novel, in which he feels very deeply about his characters, even as he shifts them into terrible scenarios and must hear their cries of pain and anguish. But if subject felt sufficiently empathetic, why then did he do this? Because it was true, subject rationalizes. Even though this being the terrain of fiction, it is decidedly not true. Sure, subject has lifted a few ideas from personal experience, subverted and obverted many of them, modified them, found some surprising parallels and differences between self and subjects. So why then the sudden empathy overload that subject customarily feels for humans being transposed into fiction, both penned by subject and read by subject? Subject does not feel that he is retreating into this narrative, but he does sometimes feel that he is occupying this textual territory a bit longer than he feels comfortable. Subject carries on because he must perform his daily duty. But subject wonders why he decided to continue anew with this text while shifting residences and trying to extinguish sundry fires. No wonder subject has been taking more naps and feeling more exhausted. Subject now understands why novel writing is “difficult.” The hypocrisies of making characters miserable while likewise empathizing with them has subject wondering whether there are similar hypocrisies in his day-to-day dealings with everyday people, who are not invented and who have considerably more complex feelings than anything he could possibly set down on paper. It occurs to subject that the novelists he admires are those who tend to feel this moral conflict, and that those who do not are probably not doing their job. Then again, subject does not have a shitload of novels behind him. So perhaps this is all naivete on his part.

I always dreamed of being like Jackie Collins or Danielle Steele. Of writing novels devoid of character or intelligence or truth. Of multiple marriages that the tabloids could gloss over. Of a hack career that had nothing to do with my color, but everything to do with my narcissism and my execrable prose. I would be the center of attention! It would all be about me, me, ME!

I dreamed of appealing to the lowest common denominator. Maybe I, too, would sell over 400 to 500 million novels. Nay, two billion novels! I’d sell novels the same way that Atari once put out twelve million cartridges of Pac-Man with only ten million Atari 2600 units in circulation. There’d be more novels than readers! And all of them would have “Great” in the title. If there was one thing I was good for, it was writing novels with the word “Great” in the title. I’d even write a novel called The Great Gatsby so that the racist author F. Scott Fitzgerald would be forgotten. Maybe we could hold a book burning and incinerate all Caucasian scum.

If they wouldn’t buy my books or respect my delusions of grandeur, well, I could always play the race card without bothering to include an indispensible party. Never mind the other authors who had seen their work thrive for the very reasons that I would sue over.

I’d hide behind a pseudonym and recruit a bunch of rabid dittoheads to shout “Injustice!” at the top of their lungs without any of them bothering to investigate the claims.

For I am an American. And like many Americans, I am prone to litigious hysteria.

Anybody who disagreed with me or who questioned my claims would be declared a racist. Who knew that a white guy like George Bush would give me such inspiration? And the scum Ed Champion would at long last be revealed to be the Grand Wizard we all know him to be, together with that craven white supremacist Lynne Scanlon.

Sometimes, it’s good to be living the dream.

I’m very pleased to share that the matter has now been resolved to my financial and narcissistic satisfaction through an agreement, the terms of which can never be discussed. The details of my claims can never be completely checked out. Yes, other African-Americans will continue to see their work marginalized. And even though they may have more legitimate claims, cemented upon hard paths of contracts and documents memorializing conversations and developments, their important fight has now received a setback thanks to my solipsistic pursuits.

Who really needs to consider the bigger picture? I knew all along that Penguin would settle this suit privately so that they could get rid of it. I knew all along that my claims would never be verified. And I knew that my followers would carry on drinking the Kool-Aid.

Only in America can you have a dream sooooooooo bright; as bright as the sun itself. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m blowing the first installment of the settlement money on a two week vacation to Maui, where I will begin work on my next novel, The Great Prevaricator.

Due to many pleasant events over the next few weeks, posting will be less regular, less frequent, with a possibility of intermittent showers and random madness here as the monsters use my brain. There is considerable output right now on the novel. (Somehow, a great anger in relation to current events has created an unanticipated rush.) But the energies I’m now committing to fiction have forced me to slow down a bit on other fronts.

I’m not attending BEA this year because I’m moving that weekend (within New York: same mailing address applicable). Bat Segundo interviews will continue, but at a somewhat reduced rate of production. (May is booked. June and July pitches are welcome.)

There are a number of pieces I’ve written that are floating around out there and I will link to them when they are made available. In the meantime, you can check out a podcast interview with David Hajdu, a podcast interview with Sarah Hall (the 70 minute conversation covers all three books and a lengthy article on Hall’s three books is forthcoming), a review of Stephen Greenhouse’s The Big Squeeze, a review of Martin Millar’s Lonely Werewolf Girl, and some hasty thoughts on Act II in Hamlet.

More very soon, I hope!

In the interim, here’s a running list of links of interest:

5/12/08:

• MP3: John P. Marquand’s Wickford Point adapted by Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater.
• Comic book scripts from Vaughan, Millar, Moore, and more. (via MeFi)
• Due to circumstances beyond my control (and I still haven’t been sent the book), I was unable to speak with the great Aleksandar Hemon when he came through New York. But Chicagoist caught up with him recently. (via Mark Athitakis)
• Steven Gillis guests at The Syntax of Things.
• Tom Bissell’s interview with the Avenger. (via Eric)
• Three Guys, One Book.
• Callie on ridiculous paperback reissue covers.
• The OED is going all digital. Nothing Luddite about it. This is utterly depressing news for those of us who like to hole up on the couch with a thick dictionary on one side and a thick tome on the other. What next? An imposed limit on reference book page counts? (via CAAF)
• GoodReads! Golly! The overwhelming message: We Take No Chances.
• Fashion predictions from 1930s designers. (via Linda Richards)
• I had a post tying together China, Myanmar, and Jenna Bush, but I have decided to abandon it for now. It may resurface.
• Ezra Klein on the Kindle.
• David Ulin: not a fan of the new Frey book.

5/14/08:

• It’s good to know that the President is making a true sacrifice.
• RIP Oakley Hall.
• Things younger than McCain.

Dear Peter:

I write to impress my most profound apologies for our recent disservice to your book, Cup in the Hole: My Year Puncturing Baltimore’s Yeastern District. Had we been aware just how much these typographical errors had infected your work, we most certainly would have cleansed up the mess earlier. But we did not catch this problem until it was too late, and we were near the end of our reproduction cycle. We have suffered as much as you have. There are no excuses, but I assure you that our offices have been both labiarus and pro-active in preventing such grafts in the future. We funged up. I can’t tell you of the pain and embarassment that this mistook has caused us. I wish to assure you that we are now committed to reprinting your grate book in a cleaner and more hygienic light so that readers will at long last know how vulvid your account is.

Please also be advised that the entire stuff in our orifice have been undergoing remedial Anguish courses to insure that this will not happen again. We have plunged deeply into this matter to clean things up, so that a redouche will not occur. The main copy auditor for your book has been told that his services are no longer required. It was a tough decision, but we cannot afford to be tax about such matters. We have looked into our books to ensure that there are no additional errors.

I hope that you can accept our deepest apoplexies. We take these matters very serially and we will be doing everything in our powers to ensure that future additions of your book will not be butchered. But if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call my direct wine. I’m alway happy to clear everything up over a lengthy phone fermentation.

Deeply and sincerely bores,

DICTATED BUT NOT READ

Peter Doughboy
Director
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

From John P. Marquand’s Wickford Point:

No one could teach anyone else to write. You could be as industrious as you pleased; you could steep yourself in the technique of all the Flauberts and Maupassants and Dickenses who had gone before, and out of it would come exactly nothing. That was the problem with Allen Southby.

There is something revealing about amateur fiction which is particularly ghastly, for in this type of effort you see all the machinery behind the scene. I could tell exactly what Allen had been reading before he had set to work. He had made a study of Hardy — it must have been a dreary task — and then he had touched on Sherwood Anderson and Glenway Westcott and O’Neill. He had been reading a lot of those earth-earthy books, where the smell of dung and the scent of the virgin sod turned by the plow runs through long paragraphs of primitive through slightly perverted human passion; but those others could write, and Allen Southby never would if he lived as long as Moses. Nevertheless I was finding the thing stimulating again. I was thinking of ways in which I might have changed it.

Allen was back at his desk, fiddling with his folio volume. He saw me right away when I paused and reached for the whisky glass.

“There’s nothing the matter with it, is there, Jim?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “It’s very provocative, Allen.”

“That’s wonderful,” said Allen. “Thank you, Jim, but we mustn’t disturb Joe.”

The delicate feeling of liking that I was experiencing for him, born possibly from a sense of remorse, vanished with this remark. He was an intellectual snob and an intellectual climber. He had intimated without much tact that any admiration of mine was inconsequential now that Joe was there. He would never know that my remark had been completely truthful. Southby had been provocative because he was writing about something which I could understand far better than he could ever understand it. It was not the plot, which was horrible, that arrested my attention so much as his manner of writing. His pages resembled the efforts of visiting writers, who had spent their summers in Maine and on Cape Cod, to depict the New England scene. The effort was the same as when some Northern writer attempted an epic of the South, and could see nothing but nigger mammies and old plantations and colonels drinking juleps. These others,when they faced New England, saw only white houses, church spires, lilacs and picket hedges, gingham hypocrisy and psychoses and intolerance. Not even Kipling, the keenest observer who had touched our coast, could do it. There was something which they did not see, an inexorable sort of gentleness, a vanity of effort, a sadness of predestined failure.

I must have the same thing Tayari had. A deadly strain, not unlike the vicious superflu portrayed in Fiona Maazel’s Last, Last Chance, has knocked your faithful correspondent on his ass. So PEN World Voices coverage remains stalled for the present time. I’m going to see how I feel tomorrow and, if I feel better, I will venture out and report what I can. In the meantime, you can check out my review of Susan Hubbard’s The Year of Disappearances in Saturday’s edition of The Los Angeles Times.