As if the 9/11 victimhood card being played by politicians to start wars based on fixed intelligence and now being used by priapic reactionaries to prop up London as a fait accompli for living in chronic fear* weren’t bad enough, it seems that the Portland Tribune has seen fit to offer yet another ridiculous article about how 9/11 has made it difficult to finish novels. Here’s what novelist Richard Rinaldi has to say:

“And because so much had changed, I was aware that I’d probably lost a novel, but so what? In the scheme of things it didn’t matter. My options were to just throw it away or put it another city. But my agents were leaning on me to include 9/11. Initially I was very reluctant, but I came around and said, ‘All right, I’ll give it a try.’ “

For those who haven’t been watching the calendar, 9/11 was three and a half fucking years ago. In other words, most of the time it takes to finish an undergraduate degree (assuming that you’re on the four year plan).

While certainly 9/11 has changed American life, I’m disheartened by the idea that a novel itself must completely change or drastically alter its content to reflect the jingoism of its time. Particularly when authors are, for the most part, paid a pittance to sweat over a novel that they’ve labored over for many years. The thing that matters is what the author has to say at the time he writes it. Wrapping a novel around the American flag or a sense of victimhood that will date poorly is hypocritical to the nature of art, and I would argue that it’s akin to a total sellout. Do we really need a marketplace saturated with potboilers that represent today’s answers to Peter Bryant’s Red Alert? Further, is a literary effort truly literature if it answers to the dicta of what’s hot with the public? Besides, from a marketing standpoint, this seems anathema to the nature of publishing, given that a book undergoes a two-year production process and attitudes are likely to change.

Technorati Tags: publishing, artistic integrity, Richard Rinaldi, jingoism, sellout

* — For more on this subject, Ian McEwan has penned an essay for the Guardian on how the London bombings were inevitable.

The battle between the two San Francisco alt-weeklies (one a New Times offshoot; the other indie and full of piss and vinegar) continues. But as the Guardian has reported, things have become a little sleazier. It seems that Clear Channel, known for promoting conservative radio and restricting free speech, has entered the fray. Bill Graham Presents, which owns the Warfield Theatre, is a Clear Channel subsidiary. In exchange for an exclusive advertising deal with SF Weekly, the Warfield over the next three years will be renamed (wait for it) the SF Weekly Warfield.

Pacific Bell Park was silly enough. But I think this corporate subsidizing takes the cake in the preposterous department. For one thing, “weekly” has transformed from a noun to an accidental advertising. One can only imagine future conversations among avid concertgoers:

Abbott: Hey man, you gonna check out the Killers?

Costello: Aw shit yeah! Gotta grab some tickets. Where they playing?

Abbott: The SF Weekly Warfield?

Costello: Where is it this week?

Abbott: No, the SF Weekly Warfield.

Costello: I know it’s weekly, but what kind of Warfield is it going to be?

Abbott: That’s the theatre’s name.

Costello: Gotcha, but where’s it going to be?

Abbott: In San Francisco. At the Weekly.

Costello: The Warfield?

Abbott: Yup.

Costello: And it changes every week.

Abbott: Yes. The music, not the place.

Costello: So where’s the Warfield going to be?

Technorati Tags: alt-weekly, warfield, San Francisco

I’ve let the Tanenhaus Brownie Watch updates slip for the past month. However, I’d like to ensure RotR readers that this Sunday, the weekly test will return, including the seminal male to female book reviewer test. In the meantime, the prolific Lauren Baratz-Logsted offers a guest essay over at Booksquare about bias against female reviewers. Ms. Baratz-Logsted offers her thoughts on this issue, takes up the troubling divide between male and female authors, and points to “[a] book review created by, for and about women; a book review that has room for Joyce Carol Oates, every single one of her books as they come out, but that also has room for all genres.” Until this utopian ideal happens, I direct readers to Domestic Goddess, a moderated e-journal devoted to womenwriters who pen domestic fiction, A Celebration of Women Writers, which has been attempting to collect online information on women writers for the past eleven years, Scribbling Women, and the Women Writers Project, which collects texts penned by women between 1400 and 1850.

Technorati Tags: women writers, NYTBR

I’m hoping it’s either serendipity or perhaps a subconsious riff on the deisgn similarities manifest within book covers, but it looks like the New York Times may have ripped off Nathalie Chicha. Not only did Andrew Adam Newman use the same examples that Nathalie used, but he quoted the blog Foreword, quite literally jonesing Foreword’s proprietor for examples rather than doing the legwork himself. (That would involve going to a bookstore and using a pair of eyes.)

It can be argued that a good journalist essentially collects information and assembles it. But the real question I have to ask is why Newman didn’t at least consult Nathalie in the course of writing his article, particularly when she was the one who ferreted out the issue in the first place and when a link to her visual examples was featured in the comments section at Foreword. Newman could have included a simple sentence along the lines of “Nathalie Chicha, editor of the blog Galleycat, has collected several interpretive examples of what these covers might mean.”

I would suggest that tracking the original source of an association is what a paid journalist should be expected to do. It’s decent and ethical and it also allows you to swap information with the enthused experts. Everybody wins.

(While I am not paid to blog here, I do go out of my way to attribute the original source, if I have found an item from somebody else — because it’s just possible that for anyone interested in the topic, there may be a debate or an additional debate or possibly a fantastic rabbit hole to head down.)

Most bloggers do this. It’s not entirely perfect, given that we’re posting entries on the fly, but it is possible to track linkage. However, if this is a case where bloggers are doing a better job of accrediting a source than Andrew Adam Newman, the real question is why the Times didn’t hire Nathalie Chicha to write the piece. She had the knowledge, she had the curiosity, and if a bit of cash and a shrewd and encouraging editor had been thrown her way, I’m convinced she would have dug up the reasoning behind the design similarities.

As widely reported throughout the blogosphere (and with a particularly heartfelt tribute from Sarah), the man who signed his checks Evan Hunter and who offered books under the names Hunter and Ed McBain has passed on. He was 78.

My first introduction to Hunter’s books were through a few hardcovers that somebody had given to me. This person was going to throw the tomes away and, being a selective packrat when it comes to books, I stopped him in the nick of time. Let’s just say that I was dubious about the “sultry” women on the covers, who sported pistols and wore their hair in dated feathery 1980s efforts to look what some publisher perceived as “trashy.” Presumably, it moved books. But the look of these ladies, to my eyes anyway, was about as morally compromised as It’s a Wonderful Life‘s George Bailey.

But I read them anyway. And found that the text itself was far from the pinup cliches on the cover. These were cops who had sizable problems, inhabiting a gritty world that was damn near hopeless, but bristling with life as if to defy the hard breaks. What made the McBain novels work were the telling details tossed so effortlessly throughout the text. A carefully wiped counterpane or a hastily tied garbage bag wouldn’t just give you a hint to the crime. It would tell you everything you needed to know about the people.

I’ve only read a few of his novels and that was many years ago. But now than Hunter’s gone, I hope I can work in some time to check out a good deal more.